***************************************************************** 07/08/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.168 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 The Nuclear Option Revisited 2 Britain Nuclear Accident Probed 3 Nuclear plant accident probed 4 Nuclear fuel route called safe for Iowa 5 Politician looks to Washington for cue 6 Group opposes review of EPA's Yucca standards 7 Revealed: nuclear plant accident after fuel rods collapse 8 TEPCO sets zero-waste goal 9 No time to waste: Anti-nuclear activists are ready to spread 10 Colo. won't store radioactive waste 11 EU's Palacio says phasing out N-power irresponsible 12 E.German nuclear waste site watched by govt 13 Exelon Illinois nuclear unit prepares to restart 14 EPA says radioactive waste to be removed from old Shattuck site 15 Anti-nuke tour begins in NSW 16 Environmentalists confront communities with nuclear waste 17 Dresden reactor shut down 2nd time 18 Imported uranium will now have duty 19 Action, at last - Chao delivers on promises 20 Letter: Electric utilities could force USEC out of uranium 21 Valve fixed, nuke plant reopens 22 Campus nuclear programs in decline 23 Nuclear power or shortages? 24 Exelon cancels alert at Illinois nuclear unit 25 Nuclear-Power Industry Chief to Visit Weapons Site in Georgia 26 Tennessee Valley Authority Searches Mississippi for Power Plant Sites 27 Lin calls for power-plant referendum 28 Armenian Nuclear Power Station to Carry Out Preventative Maintenance 29 URENCO Response to Commerce Department Determination NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 Kursk hazards and challenges 2 Bush hopes nuclear-test treaty dies in Senate 3 German nuke waste shipment next week - Greenpeace 4 Bomb training may rise at Fallon 5 Bush Wants Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Die 6 Nuclear workers' lawsuit settled 7 Atomic fallout covered the city 8 STEPTOE AND SUB 9 Pacific Islanders protest treatment by isle hospitals 10 US kills CTBT by not ratifying it ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 The Nuclear Option Revisited Sunday, July 8, 2001 | Too expensive and unacceptably risky, nuclear power was declared dead long ago. So why would we resurrect it? By AMORY B. LOVINS, L. HUNTER LOVINS SNOWMASS, Colo.--Buoyed by a supportive White House, growing climate concerns, temporarily high gas prices, and California's electricity mess, the nuclear industry is running an all-out public-relations campaign to resuscitate its product. This attempt ignores one crucial fact: Nuclear power already died of an incurable attack of market forces. Once touted as "too cheap to meter," nuclear power, as The Economist recently concluded, now looks "too costly to matter." Overwhelmed by huge construction and repair costs around the world, nuclear plants ended up achieving less than 10% of the capacity and 1% of the new orders (all from countries with centrally planned energy systems) forecast a quarter-century ago. The industry has suffered the greatest collapse of any enterprise in industrial history. Beyond the hard economic facts, about which more later, the nuclear industry is dismissing legitimate public concerns about the risks of a technology so unforgiving that, as Nobel physicist Hannes Alfven wrote, "No acts of God can be permitted." Each nuclear plant, through accident or malice, could release enough radioactivity to hazard a continent. This is presented by the industry as extremely unlikely, but many citizens aren't reassured. They have seen too many highly improbable events, including terrorism. And if nuclear power plants are so safe, why would the industry build and run them only if the federal government passed a law limiting operators' liability in major accidents? Why should the nuclear industry enjoy a liability cap that reduces its incentive for safety, distorts choices with a vast subsidy and is unavailable to any other industry? Why can't nuclear operators self-insure and put their money where their mouths are, or buy insurance at market prices like everyone else? The liability law's expiration in 2002 presents an awkward dilemma for advocates of both nuclear power and free markets. Scientists still haven't developed reliable ways to handle nuclear wastes and decommissioned plants, which remain dangerously radioactive for far longer than societies last or geological foresight extends. And experts feel nuclear power's gravest risk is that power plants can provide ingredients and innocent-seeming civilian cover for the development of nuclear bombs, as was the case in India and elsewhere. Now the White House proposes to revive nuclear-fuel reprocessing after decades of proof that it's unprofitable, unnecessary, a complication to nuclear waste management and a source of vast amounts of bomb material. Market economics provides an even more basic argument: "If a thing is not worth doing," said economist John Maynard Keynes, "it is not worth doing well." Leaving aside bomb-proliferation, waste, sabotage and uninsurable accidents, nuclear power is simply uncompetitive and unnecessary. After a trillion-dollar taxpayer investment, it delivers little more energy in the U.S. than wood. Globally, it produces severalfold less energy than renewable sources. The market prefers other options. In the 1990s, global nuclear capacity rose by 1% a year, compared with 17% for solar cells (24% last year) and 24% for wind power--which has lately added about 5,000 megawatts a year worldwide, as compared with the 3,100 new megawatts nuclear power averaged annually in the 1990s. The decentralized generators California added in the 1990s have more capacity than its two giant nuclear plants--whose debts triggered the restructuring that created the state's current utility mess. Enthusiasts claim new-style reactors might deliver a kilowatt-hour to your meter for 5 cents, compared with 10 to 15 cents for post-1980 nuclear plants worldwide. (Of that, 10 to 15 cents, nearly 3 cents pays for delivery, about 2 cents for running the plant, and the rest for its construction and for occasional major repairs.) But on the same accounting basis, superefficient gas plants or wind farms cost only 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, cogeneration of heat and power often 1 to 5 cents, and efficient lights, motors and other electricity-saving devices under 2 cents, often under 1 cent. Cogeneration and efficiency are especially cheap because they occur at the site where the energy is consumed and thus require no delivery. All these non-nuclear options continue to get cheaper, as do fuel cells and solar cells. Today, a pound of silicon can produce more electricity than a pound of nuclear fuel. Already, Sacramento's municipal utility, which has successfully replaced power from its ailing nuclear plant (shut down by voters) with a portfolio emphasizing efficiency and renewables, has brought the heretofore costliest option, solar cells, down to costs competitive with a new nuclear plant. The PR spinners trumpet that nuclear power costs less than power from gas plants. This is true if you are looking only at the running cost of an average existing nuclear plant , compared with the running costs of an old, inefficient gas-fired plant. It does not include delivery to customers, nor the prohibitive construction costs of a new nuclear plant. Notice, too, the ads don't compare the costs of a new nuclear plant with the new, doubled-efficiency gas plants that are beating the pants off nuclear and coal worldwide. Under such realistic cost comparisons, nuclear power plummets to its actual status as the worst buy available. You didn't understand that from those slick ads? You weren't supposed to. The nuclear industry has a well-earned reputation for breezy mendacity. Lost in the debate over what kind of new plant to build is the best option of all: more efficient use of the electricity we already have. We've been reducing electricity use per dollar of gross domestic product by 1.6% a year nationwide, and in California between 1997 and 2000, by 4.4% a year. California has held its per-capita electricity use essentially flat since the mid-1970s, yet far more savings remain untapped--enough nationally to save four times nuclear power's output, at one-sixth its operating cost. Our personal household electric bill, for example, is $5 a month for a 4,000-square-foot house in the Rocky Mountains. Passive solar design and super-efficient appliances and lighting yielded a 90% savings on electricity and 99% on fuel. The improvements, made in 1983, paid for themselves in 10 months. Today's technologies are far better. An estimated three-fourths of U.S. electricity could now be saved through efficiency techniques that cost less than generating that power, even in existing plants. Nor, finally, do shortages of electricity in California justify more nuclear plants anywhere. California did not have soaring electricity demand during the 1990s, did not stop building power plants and is probably not even short of generating capacity. The system that had rolling blackouts at a 28-gigawatt load last winter is the same one that comfortably delivered 53 gigawatts two summers ago. Half its power plants didn't suddenly evaporate. Rather, there's apparently been adequate generating capacity--if power plants ran as reliably as they did before utilities sold them. But in fact, since utility maintenance contracts expired last fall, many of the sold plants have been calling in sick--often, some evidence suggests, because their new owners earn far more profit by selling less electricity at a higher price rather than more at a lower price. If California does have a serious supply-demand imbalance, it should be resolved in the cheapest, fastest, surest and safest ways. Buying more nuclear plants violates all these criteria. It would buy less solution per dollar, making the problem worse. That's also true of nuclear solutions to climate change. Anyone who doubts the effectiveness of demand-side solutions need only to look to California, where in the first half of this year, with limited formal programs, Californians have decreased their peak demand for electricity by more than 12%, reversing the past 5 to 10 years' growth in demand. After a half-century of nuclear power, the verdict of the marketplace is in. Nuclear power has flunked the market test. Nuclear salesmen scour the world for a single order, while makers of alternatives enjoy brisk business. Let's profit from their experience. Taking markets seriously, not propping up failed technologies at public expense, offers a stable climate, a prosperous economy, and a cleaner and more peaceful world. Amory B. and L. Hunter Lovins, Co-ceos of Rocky Mountain Institute, Advise Energy Companies and Governments Worldwide Copyright © 2001 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 2 Britain Nuclear Accident Probed Today: July 08, 2001 at 12:50:28 PDT LONDON- Spent fuel rods were accidentally dropped onto the reactor floor of a nuclear power plant in Scotland last week, its operator said Sunday. British Nuclear Fuels stressed that the "low-level" incident during refueling Thursday in Chapelcross plant's Reactor No. 3 posed minimal danger. The reactor has been shut down while the company determines how to retrieve the 24 uranium rods, a spokesman said. The government's watchdog agency, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, has launched an investigation. The BNFL spokesman said the rods dropped about 2 feet to the floor during the remote-operated refueling operation. A large cylindrical basket holding the irradiated fuel elements appeared to come loose as it was being lowered to a cooling pond, he said. Emergency workers were called in and carbon dioxide was sprayed over the basket to ensure it did not catch fire. "At no time was there any increase in radiation within the area and no personnel were affected," he said. "There is also no indication that the fuel has been damaged." Refueling has been suspended at all reactors in Chapelcross, just a few miles from Scotland's border with England, and at another British plant that uses an identical system. The spokesman said it was unclear how long it would take to recover the rods and complete the refueling. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 3 Nuclear plant accident probed BBC News | SCOTLAND | Sunday, 8 July, 2001, 09:04 GMT 10:04 UK The incident at the plant was said to be "low level" Investigations are under way after an accident at the Chapelcross nuclear power station near Annan. Twenty four radioactive fuel rods slipped and fell to the floor as they were being transferred. A spokesman for the station said there was never any danger to the public and no leak of radiation. The station is operating as normal, but the use of the equipment involved has been suspended while investigations continue. British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), operators of the Chapelcross nuclear station, near Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, have suspended refuelling at Reactor Number Three as engineers consider how to retrieve the fuel rods, which remain where they fell during the incident on Thursday. At no time was there any increase in radiation within the area and no personnel were affected BNFL spokesman They have also suspended refuelling at their Calder Hall plant in Cumbria, which uses the same refuelling system as Chapelcross, while moving to reassure the public that the incident was a "low level" nuclear incident. Members of the plant's incident team were called to deal with the situation as carbon dioxide was sprayed over the basket to ensure it did not catch fire. The government's watchdog the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) has launched an inquiry alongside that being carried out by BNFL. A BNFL spokesman said: "In the early hours of Thursday July 5, during a routine refuelling operation on Reactor Three at Chapelcross, some used fuel elements became dislodged inside the refuelling machine. "At no time was there any increase in radiation within the area and no personnel were affected. There is also no indication that the fuel has been damaged. "Refuelling has been suspended while the elements are returned to their correct position and the root cause of the event is identified and remedied." A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive said it was aware of the incident and was investigating the matter. ***************************************************************** 4 Nuclear fuel route called safe for Iowa DesMoinesRegister.com | News Rep. Greg Ganske backs plans for hauling plant waste across the state on its way to Nevada. By LYNN OKAMOTO Register Staff Writer 07/07/2001 Palo, Ia. - Nuclear waste can be safely transported through the state to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, U.S. Rep. Greg Ganske said Friday after his first tour of the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant. Ganske, a Des Moines Republican and member of the U.S. House Energy Committee, said he expects the federal Department of Energy to give final approval as early as next month to the first permanent nuclear waste repository. He said Congress will affirm that decision. "In my mind, the safest storage is in the middle of a desert under a mountain," Ganske said. But anti-nuclear groups said Friday there is a real danger in shipping waste across the country. Once the Yucca Mountain repository opens, Duane Arnold and other nuclear plants nationwide will begin taking their spent fuel there on railways and highways. Officials estimate that it will be 2010 before the repository is ready. Meanwhile, plants are running out of space to store their waste. Iowa's only nuclear plant runs out in 2003. "If we don't solve the repository problem, it will be difficult to continue nuclear power," Ganske said. He said spent nuclear fuel is currently being stored at 103 locations nationwide. In a telephone interview, members of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C., said transporting nuclear waste to Nevada will cause thousands of radioactive shipments to be taken through Iowa and will increase risk to communities. "If Yucca Mountain does go forward, Iowa is one of the hardest-hit states in the country," said Kevin Kamps, the group's spokesman. Interstate Highway 80 is one of the likely east-west routes for nuclear plants in the Northeast to ship their waste, environmentalists say. "Even if it has only one reactor, (Iowa) would be receiving waste from dozens of states to the east," Kamps said. Iowa's only nuclear power plant has a 40-foot by 20-foot pool that has stored its used radioactive uranium rods underwater for the past 27 years. The pool will be full in two years. It has 1,950 bundles now - each with 64 spent fuel rods - and has space for 2,618 bundles. Alliant Energy, majority owner and operator of the plant, will soon begin storing some of its spent fuel in casks, or steel containers surrounded by concrete, that will be temporarily stored adjacent to the plant until Yucca Mountain is ready. Eliot Protsch, president of Alliant Energy, said the storage casks are necessary because the government has been slow to approve and build the permanent repository. Under the original legislation, the facility should have been available in 1998. "The government's late," Protsch said. "Had the government been on time with the permanent repository, dry casks would not be necessary." Bruce Lacy, Alliant's manager of nuclear business, said the casks that will store and transport the nuclear waste are safe. They are tested by the federal government and weigh 100 tons when full. They must withstand a vertical drop on an unyielding surface, a 30-minute aviation fuel fire, and submersion underwater for 24 hours without leakage. But Kamps, of the anti-nuclear watchdog group, said the fire test is at a relatively low temperature for a short period of time. He said full-scale tests aren't done, and one 90-minute fire test conducted in the 1970s resulted in the cask cracking and causing steam to escape. That would have been radioactive if it were full, he said. "The nuclear waste should not be transported until there's a responsible management plan that has public confidence and is scientifically credible," said Paul Gunter, director of Reactor Watchdog Project for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "We don't see that right now." Ganske predicted approval of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository by the U.S. Department of Energy this fall, and bipartisan support for the plan by Congress. Once built, the site would accept spent fuel for 50 to 70 years. ON THE WEB: To see the four routes that nuclear waste could take through Iowa on the way to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, go to: www.ymp.gov/timeline/eis/route/routemaps.htm Duane Arnold Energy Center BUILT: 1974 LOCATION: Palo, Ia., near Cedar Rapids POWER GENERATED: Net 535 megawatts, soon to increase to 580 megawatts. This powers about 400,000 homes. OWNERS: Alliant Energy, Central Iowa Power Cooperative, Corn Belt Power Cooperative OPERATOR: Alliant Energy KEY DATES: Increased output expected this fall. Spent-fuel pool fills and begins use of storage casks in 2003. May be able to transport to Yucca Mountain by 2010. LAS VEGAS SUN SALEM, N.J. -- Anti-nuclear activist Kevin Kamps draws curious looks, a few honks and smiles, and the occasional middle finger as he hauls a 1,000-pound mock nuclear waste cask emblazoned with the words "Mobile Chernobyl" across U.S. highways. Kamps rolls the rig to a stop at power plants and protests, town councils and community colleges -- anywhere he can get an audience. His message: In 10 years the federal government plans to ship deadly radioactive nuclear waste through the nation's back yards to Nevada. Kamps was on a New York-to-Wisconsin trip last month when he stopped to speak at a meeting of the township committee in Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., home to three nuclear reactors. Standing in front of the town panel, Kamps outlined the risks of the plan to ship highly radioactive waste from the nearby Salem and Hope Creek reactors nearly 2,500 miles to Yucca Mountain. When Kamps mentioned Nevada's opposition to the plan, one committee member rolled her eyes. "That made me think of the Pledge of Allegiance we said earlier at the meeting, 'One nation, under God, indivisible,' " Kamps said later. "It seems like nuclear waste is very divisive. It's kind of like: Indivisible, except when it comes to nuclear waste. Then it's New Jersey versus Nevada." Welcome to an increasingly hostile front -- America's roadways in faraway cities and states -- in the battle waged by Nevada leaders and environmental groups to stop any plans to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Politicians, led by Gov. Kenny Guinn, teamed with a newly mobilized army of high-finance casino executives and low-budget environmentalists such as Kamps, are now mounting what they say will be an unprecedented public relations offensive to convince "transportation route" states that the Yucca plan is dangerous for everyone -- not just Nevada. "This is going to be a political and marketing campaign unlike any the DOE has ever seen," said Stephen Cloobeck, a Las Vegas executive who is organizing an anti-Yucca campaign among business leaders. Road warriors Nevada has always had a hard time winning sympathy from officials in other states when it comes to the Yucca Mountain. Congress launched the plan in 1987, designating the desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas as the best place to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste. The Energy Department has spent about $7 billion studying the site and is preparing to make a recommendation to President Bush later this year. Leaders in distant states, including their representatives in Congress, are eager to get rid of the highly radioactive spent-uranium fuel rods now piling up at their plants. But one argument sometimes gets their attention: If Yucca opens as scheduled by 2010, highly radioactive nuclear waste will have to be transported to Nevada across 43 states -- roughly 40,000 shipments over 38 years, according to one DOE scenario. "For many people, this is the first time they are hearing that they live on the transportation routes," Kamps said, as he drove along U.S. Highway 9 in New Jersey. "We're doing the federal agencies' job for them." In Las Vegas Cloobeck this year launched the Save Nevada coalition, which he said includes "CEOs from every major company in this town." Cloobeck, Diamond Resorts International president, intends to use the political muscle of the gambling industry to hammer several messages nationwide: Nuclear waste shipments are dangerous, threaten property values and stick taxpayers with accident liability. Save Nevada's first strike could be prominent advertisements in national newspapers this fall, Cloobeck said. High-powered casino executives are ready "at a moment's notice" to launch a lobbying campaign in Congress, governors' mansions and city halls nationwide, he said. "The Hill is going to get absolutely barraged," Cloobeck said. Guinn also plans to be a high-profile spokesman for the dangers of waste shipments. This year the Nevada Legislature gave Guinn money for the first time to fight Yucca, and he plans to use about $1 million on a waste-transportation public relations campaign, Bob Loux, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects director, said. The governor, working with Cloobeck, plans to raise more in private funds, Loux said. Guinn already is bending the ear of other governors, spokesman Jack Finn said. "The word is getting out," Finn said. The transportation issue promises to heat up in Congress, too, as lawmakers continue to mull the Yucca plan. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., last month introduced legislation to pressure the DOE to finalize and publicize the routes. Berkley's amendment failed, despite her plea on the House floor, "This is a right-to-know issue, and the DOE's feet should be held to the fire." But Nevada lawmakers battle influential nuclear-power lobbyists, Berkley said. "If you have a nuclear reactor in your district, you are under a lot of pressure from the nuclear industry," Berkley said in an interview. "If you don't, you come to the realization that nuclear waste will be traveling through your major city, and all of a sudden you have a change of heart." Since the nation began building power plants, roughly 3,000 shipments of high-level nuclear waste, mostly from defense projects and research reactors, have traveled U.S. highways and rails. As of 1996, 72 "incidents" were reported, mostly minor contamination of casks and trucks, according to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. Eight traffic "accidents" have been reported, a DOE spokesman said. None resulted in radiation-related injury, according to the DOE. If Yucca were completed, accident risks would skyrocket with the number of shipments, Kamps argued. Accident-proof But a host of nuclear experts say shipping nuclear waste is safe, mostly because the casks are virtually accident-proof. "People need to look at the scientific facts instead of the conjecture that is put on the table for purely political purposes," said Steve Kerekes, spokesman for the industry's top lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. Edlow International Co., which potentially stands to profit from Yucca Mountain transportation contracts, has safely handled hundreds of high-level shipments since 1963, President Jack Edlow said. Shipping spent nuclear fuel is a careful science, Edlow said. Shipments roll on specially designed trailers pulled by cabs with two drivers to keep the shipment moving at all times. Routes are carefully planned to avoid bad weather and populated areas, and sometimes armed off-duty police or for-hire security companies escort the drivers through urban areas. He added that dispatchers track the trucks with global-positioning systems. "The public should know that this has been going on safely on a monthly basis for 40 years," Edlow said. "We are just as concerned about our families as anyone else. We want the shipments to arrive safely." High-tech steel casks, lined with radiation shields, usually lead, nearly guarantee radiation would not leak in an accident, said nuclear engineer Dale Klein, now an administrator at the University of Texas and a waste-transportation expert. He served on a congressional commission that examined waste-transportation issues in the late 1980s. "These casks are so robust that the only risk that ends up resulting from a (nuclear waste) shipment is that you have another truck on the highway," Klein said. Although critics strongly disagree, pro-Yucca officials say tests conducted at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico proved the casks could survive high-impact crashes, fire, falls, puncture risks and water submersion. Trucks hauling nuclear waste are safer than any other truck on the highway, said Bob Jefferson, a nuclear engineer who oversaw some of the high-profile fire and impact tests conducted at Sandia in the 1970s and 1980s. "You can drive a gas tanker truck in this country that you could poke a hole in with a pick," Jefferson said. 'But the (nuclear waste truck) is the safest thing on the highway. They've paid more attention to its packaging, its driver and its rig than anything else. It has good brakes, good tires and good drivers." Yucca foes often fault several widely publicized Sandia tests, including ones in which casks were burned and struck by trains. But the purpose of the tests was not to prove that the casks were safe, Jefferson said. It was to prove that scientists had the ability to correctly calculate what would happen in an accident. "In each case, the results were precisely what we predicted," Jefferson, now retired in New Mexico, said. That kind of assurance allows scientists to envision countless accident scenarios and test them without full-scale tests, he said. Nuclear waste casks are "the most rigorous containers that exist in the world," said Robert Jones, a nuclear and mechanical engineer who designed casks for General Electric for 13 years and is now an industry consultant in Los Gatos, Calif. Jones objects to the slogan that Kamps has splashed on his mock nuclear waste cask. "The phrase 'Mobile Chernobyl' kind of just rolls off one's tongue, but it's a catch phrase that couldn't be more wrong," said Jones, a nuclear consultant and an expert in complex cask constructions. "With this 'Sky is falling' mentality, our feeling is: Come on out and take a look. We are extremely open to scrutiny." Kamps' crusade Kamps, 32, has seen Chernobyl. He met his wife, Gabriela, 27, on a monthslong anti-nuke march from Belgium to Moscow. In the states, they later spent two years running a small program that brought Chernobyl children to America for medical care. "We met thousands of people whose lives were changed forever by Chernobyl," Kamps said. "When we use the slogan 'Mobile Chernobyl,' it's not done lightly." Kamps runs a low-budget operation. Gabriela, a photography student, travels with him when she can. They munch tortilla chips and eat out of a cooler stocked with fruit, juice and soy milk. The couple gratefully accepts meals and a bed from local activists, or they camp out rather than stay in hotels. After a rainy, mostly sleepless night last month, they stuffed a soggy tent and water-logged anti-nuke literature into the rented Ford Expedition that hauls the cask and its 2,000-pound trailer, plus the 8-by-18 cask. Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based anti-nuclear activist group, pays for Kamps' trips and part of his salary from a $90,000 grant from Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. (The grant money comes to the agency from the state -- not Congress, Loux said.) NIRS stretches the money thin on numerous projects and trips, director Michael Mariotte said. Kamps stopped at both nuclear power plants in New Jersey during his trip through the state. He met with a tough audience -- many people living around nuclear plants rely on plant jobs. At one protest on a busy road near the Oyster Creek plant, which drew four local reporters but few others, local activist Edith Gbur was pelted with an egg from a passing car. "People do not want the waste in their back yard, but they think it's OK to ship it somewhere else," Gbur said. On the other side of the state in Lower Alloways Creek, near the Hope Creek and Salem I and II reactors, local activist Norm Cohen also finds that people know little about Yucca Mountain and the possibility of hauling waste to the desert. "They might think about it a little if you talk to them, and generally their view is: Get the crap out of here," said Cohen, local leader of an anti-plant campaign called Unplug Salem. "Our view is shut the plant down. Don't produce the stuff anymore." That's a tough sell in this area. Public Service Electric and Gas Co.'s three reactors create 2,250 jobs and forked over $37.6 million in taxes in 1998 to local governments, plus $1.3 million in donations to regional charities. Many locals simply don't think about the nearby nuclear plants at all, Lower Alloways Creek, N.J., Township committee member Ellen Pompper said. "We've lived a long time with that plant," Pompper said. "Most of the time we hardly notice it is running. We feel very safe about that (plant)." Plant officials have not yet established a procedure for one day removing spent nuclear fuel from the plant and loading in casks for long-distance shipping, Skip Sindoni, PSEG spokesman, said. "We respect his right to have an opinion," Sindoni said of Kamps' general criticism of nuclear power and the dangers of storing and shipping waste. "We remain confident in the industry's ability to handle waste safely." After the meeting in Lower Alloways Creek, Kamps plopped down behind the wheel of his rental Ford. It was about 9 p.m. and time to seek out the night's crash pad: a Quaker church basement. Kamps plans more trips this summer. First he must return to Michigan this week to face charges for trespassing at a nuclear plant -- his third offense there. Kamps faces a few days in jail, but said he'll milk that for publicity. The Michigan native and a friend built the 8-by-18 cask in 1998 out of scrap metal from a General Motors plant. Kamps hands out literature anywhere, including tollbooths and gasoline stations. He tries out a little nuclear waste humor at one station, asking the attendant to "fill it up" with plutonium. The attendant looks confused. Kamps still loves to watch people's reactions. "It's funny," he said, glancing in the rearview mirror at a passing car as he drove another stretch of Jersey roadway. "First they look at the cask. Then they look at us -- Who are these people?" All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 10 Colo. won't store radioactive waste Denver Post Staff and Wire Reports --> Saturday, July 07, 2001 - URAVAN - Radioactive waste stored on the site of a former chemical plant near downtown Denver will not be stored at a former uranium-processing site in western Colorado. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has decided to ship waste from the Shattuck Chemical Co. site by rail to one of three sites already operating under a federal contract, said EPA project manager James Hanley. Those sites are in Idaho, Utah and Texas. Umetco Minerals Corp.'s proposal to store the waste at Uravan included hauling the waste, now under a clay cap and rocks at the Shattuck site, by truck. The defunct Shattuck processed a number of toxic materials, including radium and uranium, at its Denver plant for about 60 years until it closed in 1984. All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 11 EU's Palacio says phasing out N-power irresponsible BELGIUM: July 6, 2001 BRUSSELS - EU Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio offered her strongest support for nuclear power to date yesterday by saying that countries phasing it out were irresponsible. "It is not responsible... to promote the abandonment of nuclear without explaining to public opinion that, beyond its risks - notably to do with the handling of waste - nuclear presents many advantages in terms of price stability, indigenous supply and CO2 emissions," de Palacio said according to the text of a speech to the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales in Paris. De Palacio has never hidden her support for nuclear power, which produces 35 percent of the EU's electricity without producing carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas targeted by the 1997 Kyoto deal on climate change. Her latest comments are a clear criticism of the policies of a number of EU countries - including Germany, Belgium and Sweden - which have opted to get rid of nuclear power stations largely on environmental grounds. Although the EU Commission has no direct role in determining countries' energy sources, it is currently involved in a major debate on the future of energy supply for the 15-country bloc and is drafting a range of policies aimed at tackling climate change. On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed legislation aiming to double the proportion of renewable power in the EU's energy mix as part of the EU's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 12 E.German nuclear waste site watched by govt GERMANY: July 4, 2001 FRANKFURT - Germany's Saxony Anhalt state said yesterday a media report warning of increased safety risks at the Morsleben nuclear waste dump was a repetition of old news and the situation was under control. "There is no acute danger, and there would not be an acute danger if parts collapsed," a spokeswoman at the Saxony Anhalt's economics ministry in the state capital Magdeburg told Reuters. "There are no new facts...there has been long-term concern about the safety of the site and that is why it is being decommissioned." Earlier, the Halle-based "Mitteldeutsche Zeitung" said parts of the repository presented a greater safety risk than previously thought and needed action to stop them collapsing. It cited unpublished reports it had obtained from the relevant mining authority in Stassfurt between Halle and Magdeburg. The report described a "slowly advancing process of damage to the central part of the site, leading to a progressive decline of safety." Some vaults at the facility needed to be stabilised now, because rock salts in their ceilings were cracked and could otherwide crash down into hollow areas, the experts said. Staff at the Stassfurt authority were not contactable yesterday, but the mininstry spokeswoman said her ministry oversaw the mining bureaux and was fully aware of the situation. The site, an old salt mine, where Communist East Germany had stored nuclear waste since the late 1970s, continued to be used after German unification in 1991. But deliveries to the site, Germany's only final nuclear dump, were stopped in 1998 for safety reasons. The site, which will undergo a proper closing-down process under supervision of the Federal Radiation Protection Agency (BfS) in Salzgitter, has been closely monitored since deliveries were halted. The spokeswoman for the economics ministry said Saxony-Anhalt's environment ministry, which administered the implementation of German nuclear law, was studying whether the decommissioning process needed speeding up. A process already underway of filling the entire site with ash from lignite-burning power plants to stabilise it would take at least 10 years, she said. Morsleben houses 37,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste of which 10,000 cubic metres are in areas threatened by collapsing rock salt, the Stassfurt experts had said in their report. In April, the BfS said two threatened chambers at the site had been filled with ash and more were to follow. Story by Vera Eckert REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 13 Exelon Illinois nuclear unit prepares to restart Friday July 6, 3:08 pm Eastern Time SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 (Reuters) - Exelon Nuclear said on Friday its 800-megawatt Dresden 3 nuclear unit in Morris, Illinois, was preparing to resume power production after being shut down Thursday in a safety alert caused by high pressure in the building housing the nuclear reactor. A spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. (NYSE: - news), said plant operators discovered that a faulty control valve caused the temperature in the building to rise, which led them to shut down the reactor and call the alert. The alert was canceled just under six hours after the unit was shut. The company said in a statement that the plant's reactor cooling systems and radiation levels inside the containment building were normal and there was no release of radioactivity. An alert is the second-lowest level on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's four-level safety scale. An alert signals the actual or potential ``substantial degradation of the safety of a nuclear plant,'' according to the safety code used at the nation's nuclear power stations. On Thursday Exelon Nuclear said the public was in no danger and didn't need to take any special actions. Exelon Nuclear repaired the faculty control valve, and the plant was in the early stages of start-up on Friday, the spokesman said. The company said it expects the unit to connect to the transmission grid late Friday or early Saturday and return to full power production later this weekend. The adjacent 800-megawatt Dresden 2 nuclear unit continued to operate at full power. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 EPA says radioactive waste to be removed from old Shattuck site by rail, not trucks Rocky Mountain News: Local By Berny Morson, News Staff Writer A pile of radioactive waste will leave a South Denver neighborhood by rail rather than by truck, the Environmental Protection Agency has decided. Residents of the Overland Park neighborhood feared more than a dozen truckloads a day of the low-level waste would pass through their neighborhood if the cleanup were carried out by truck. EPA officials had been leaning toward rail earlier for cost reasons. A rail spur runs next to the cleanup site, and licensed waste dumps in Idaho, Texas and Utah also have spurs. The EPA will decide in about six weeks which site will get the waste, said Barry Levene of the EPA's Denver office. The decision means the waste won't go to the Umetco Minerals Corp.'s site at Uravan in Western Colorado. More than 100,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste was left behind by the defunct Shattuck Chemical Co. at its site near Evans Avenue and Santa Fe Drive. In 1992, the EPA allowed the company's parent firm to leave the material on the 5.8-acre site, burying it under a clay cap and a pile of rocks. The EPA reversed the decision in 1999. Jack Unruh, a leader of the residents who called for removing the waste, said he's glad the truck option has been dropped. A Western Slope environmental group hailed the decision not to send the waste to the Umetco site. "I'm really very pleased that the Dolores River and the San Miguel River and the countryside along Colorado Highway 141 are not going to be put in jeopardy by a fancy scheme to truck a lot of waste through that area," said Western Colorado Congress member Neville Woodruff. The Associated Press contributed to this report. ***************************************************************** 15 Anti-nuke tour begins in NSW theage.com.au, Breaking News Source: AAP|Published: Saturday July 7, 10:35 AM Environmental and student groups will today embark on a 10-day radioactive tour starting in Sydney to oppose nuclear dumping. After a protest picnic outside the gates of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor at lunchtime today, the tour will visit Port Augusta and Woomera, in South Australia, and Broken Hill, in NSW. In a statement released by Friends of the Earth today, spokesman Bruce Thompson said the tour was intended to build links between communities opposed to the planned new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, and the associated national nuclear waste dump proposed for South Australia. "Trucking waste across the country and dumping it is a political solution to an environmental problem," he said. "It will not keep nuclear waste out of harm's way and simply imposes a long term environmental problem on another community." Students will meet with local and indigenous communities opposed to the South Australian dump on the tour, and will also visit areas of cultural significance. Copyright © 2001 The Age Company Ltd. Any unauthorised use, ***************************************************************** 16 Environmentalists confront communities with nuclear waste concerns ABC News - 07/07/01 : Environmental activists and student groups are planning to raise awareness of the dangers of transporting nuclear waste to and from Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor. A convoy of minibuses will follow the route that the waste will take from the reactor to the proposed dump site in South Australia, stopping off at local communities along the way. Friends of the Earth's Loretta O'Brien, says trucking nuclear waste through the country is a political solution to an environmental problem. "This student tour will actually take students along the transport route to Woomera to have a look at the waste dump site area and have an opportunity to meet with local community and indigenous people that are opposed to this radioacitve waste along the way," Ms O'Brien said. © 2000 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 17 Dresden reactor shut down 2nd time [The Herald News] By Bob Okon STAFF WRITER Alert issued: Company says no radiation released MORRIS — Exelon Nuclear on Thursday shut down a reactor at the Dresden station for the second time this week. The nature of the shutdown required Exelon to issue an alert to monitoring agencies, although the company said there was no release of radiation or threat to the public. "There's no danger to the public, and no special precautions by the public are needed," said Exelon spokesman Bob Osgood. The alert, first issued at 10:19 a.m., was called off shortly after 4 p.m. after the problem was traced to a temperature control valve. The reactor at Unit Three was shut down when temperatures increased in the dry well that surrounds the reactor, Exelon said. Company officials said they did not know when the reactor would be brought back to power, but said the loss of the reactor would not cause a shortage in electricity for the Chicago area. Unit Three is one of two reactors at Dresden, which is located about seven miles northeast of Morris. The Unit Two reactor continued to run at full power during the incident, Exelon said. On Sunday, the Unit Three reactor was shut down at about 4:30 p.m. to replace a failed motor on a valve. The reactor was brought back in power on Wednesday. That problem did not require any emergency notification. An alert is the second of four levels of notification required at a nuclear plant when a malfunction occurs. During an alert, Dresden officials must notify regulators and local emergency management agencies of the problem. Staff on site also must be put on alert. The next level of notification would be a site emergency, when staff on the site must be brought together and possibly evacuated. The highest level is a general area emergency that would involve communities outside of the plant. ***************************************************************** 18 Imported uranium will now have duty The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Saturday, July 07, 2001 The U.S. Department of Commerce ruled foreign producers are selling uranium at unfairly low prices in the United States. By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant operator USEC Inc. has won another round in its fight to show European competitors are selling enriched uranium at unfairly low prices in the United States. The U.S. Department of Commerce ruled Friday that duties should be imposed on future uranium imports from Eurodif, S.A., a firm controlled by the French government, and the British operation of Urenco Ltd. The ruling estimates duty rates at 17.52 percent for Eurodif and 3.35 percent for Urenco. Friday's ruling applied only to whether European uranium has been sold in the United States at prices below those charged in the producers' home countries or below their cost plus a reasonable profit In May, the Commerce Department ruled on a separate issue, saying the companies had been unfairly subsidized by their governments at rates of 13.94 percent for Eurodif and 3.72 percent for Urenco. After Friday's ruling is published, the department will require the French and British importers to post bond or pay cash deposits equal to the amounts of the duties cited in the May and July orders. "Today's decision is another step toward restoring fair pricing in the U.S. enrichment market," Robert Moore, USEC senior vice president and general counsel said in a news release. "Dumping by Eurodif and Urenco has injured the domestic enrichment industry." Two major legs of the industry are the Paducah plant, which enriches uranium for nuclear fuel, and the Honeywell plant in Metropolis, Ill., which produces raw product for Paducah. Employing more than 1,800 people, they are the only plants of their type in the nation. If the Commerce Department carries the findings to final orders, Moore said, "it will benefit the domestic enrichment industry, the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle and national energy security objectives." Assuming the preliminary rulings stand and are supported by the International Trade Commission, the Commerce Department will impose final duties around the end of the year. Friday's ruling also calculated duty rates of .46 percent for German uranium sold in the U.S., and .55 percent for uranium shipped here from the Netherlands. But because the margins are less than 2 percent, federal law requires those importers to post bonds or pay cash deposits only for duties cited in the May order. ***************************************************************** 19 Action, at last - Chao delivers on promises The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Saturday, July 07, 2001 The cleanup of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is still lagging behind schedule (a fear is that it will always remain behind schedule) but the federal government is proving one thing in Paducah — the bureaucracy can move quickly to help sick plant workers and their families. Paducahans have become accustomed to federal officials breaking promises about the cleanup, so it comes as a major surprise here to learn that one official — Labor Secretary Elaine Chao — actually delivers on her promises. Chao has come to Paducah twice in recent weeks to reassure those who initially doubted her commitment to the compensation program for nuclear workers who contracted serious illnesses as a result of their exposure to hazardous materials. Earlier this year, Chao, worried that the labor department could not get the compensation program off the ground in the time frame established by Congress, sought to shift it to another agency. But as she came to realize the importance of the program to ailing workers who had put their trust in the government, she also found that no other agency could meet the July 31 deadline for accepting claims. At that point Chao put the labor bureaucracy in high gear. Within two months the agency was ready to meet the mid-summer deadline. On Monday Chao came to Paducah for the opening of the first of 10 centers in the nation that will help nuclear workers file claims under the compensation program. It's noteworthy that while Chao attended to ceremonial duties, resource center employees were already at work helping workers fill out application forms for claims. The message here is that the labor secretary doesn't just put on political shows; she backs up her speeches with timely action. That's what plant workers and their families have waited many years for — action from the federal government. ***************************************************************** 20 Letter: Electric utilities could force USEC out of uranium enrichment business The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Saturday, July 07, 2001 EDITOR: Once again, the future of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is in question. This time the "enemy" is a consortium of electric power utilities. If they get their wish from the Bush administration, hundreds of USEC employees here in western Kentucky could find themselves without a job in the very near future. Several years ago USEC was appointed as the exclusive executive agent for the United States with Russia on the "Swords to Plowshares" uranium deal. The federal government required USEC, as part of privatization, to purchase Russian enriched uranium at noncompetitive prices. Although this was good for national security, it greatly hindered USEC's early economic viability. Now USEC has the opportunity to purchase Russian uranium under a new deal at more competitive prices. This deal will help USEC balance out some production costs and remain an economical, domestic source for uranium enrichment. Unfortunately, a group of electric power utilities are asking the administration to appoint another executive agent with Russia. If the administration were to do this, the effect would be devastating to USEC. These utilities could outbid USEC for the Russian material, causing USEC to be forced out of the uranium enrichment business. Ultimately, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant would have to be closed and the employees laid off unless the federal government intervened on behalf of USEC. Furthermore, the administration may be ignoring the effect on national security and the requirements of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. The appointment of a second agent could force the only operating uranium enrichment plant in the United States to shut down. The federal government could allow this to happen all for the sake of improving utility profits. Our elected officials have been unusually quiet about this depressing scenario. The nuclear industry press has reported that the administration is "leaning towards the utilities." If this is the case, it is time that the elected officials from Kentucky start lobbying the Bush administration. I don't think the politicians want to experience what their peers in Ohio went through when the Portsmouth plant was shut down. I call on Sens. Bunning and McConnell and Rep. Whitfield to stop the Bush administration from appointing a second agent for the Russian uranium. If a few utilities have their way, western Kentucky could experience the shutdown of the Paducah plant a lot sooner than expected. STEPHEN COWNE Paducah ***************************************************************** 21 Valve fixed, nuke plant reopens July 8, 2001 BY BRENDA WARNER ROTZOLL STAFF REPORTER A faulty temperature control valve triggered Thursday's alert and shutdown of Unit 3 at the Dresden nuclear power plant near Morris, Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Jan Strasma said Friday. A valve pin was replaced and the unit was started up again at 7:20 a.m. Friday, Exelon Nuclear spokeswoman Ann Mary Carley said. She said Unit 3 should be back at full power early Monday. "The operators made a very good, conservative decision when they brought the unit off line" before attempting repairs, Carley said. There are four categories for trouble at nuclear power plants. An alert, the second-lowest category, means there is a potential for things to get worse and threaten public health and safety, Strasma said. The worst category, general emergency, has been reached only twice in the world, at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania when there was no leakage of radiation, and the explosion and fire at Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986 that sent clouds of radiation across the northern hemisphere. Exelon Nuclear is the plant-operating unit of Exelon, formed by the merger of Commonwealth Edison and Philadelphia-based PICO. ComEd is the transmission portion of the new company. Daily Southtown Pioneer Press Post-Tribune Star Newspapers ***************************************************************** 22 Campus nuclear programs in decline As universities shut down their reactors and students flock to other majors, the field faces personnel shortages July 7, 2001 By MATTHEW L. WALD The New York Times ITHACA, N.Y. -- Off campus, energy shortages may be creating talk of a nuclear-power renaissance. But on campuses around the country, the technology's infrastructure is dying. Here at Cornell, the trustees voted unanimously last month to close the university's research reactor, the only one in New York state and the Ivy League's last. There was a petition drive, a demonstration, even offers by the nuclear staff to have other departments use the reactor, all to no avail. The University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are considering doing the same. Where 40 campuses had reactors in 1988, today there are 28, and only about half of those operate more than a few hours a year. Nuclear departments and programs are disappearing or being merged into electrical or mechanical engineering departments, where they fare worse in the perennial university battles for faculty slots and other resources. The decline in nuclear engineering programs and campus reactors reflects a decline in student interest that has paralleled the industry's decline. "It's a fact of life that kids are pretty practical these days," said Marvin M. Mendonca, who oversees licensing for nuclear reactors other than power reactors for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What they choose to major in, Mendonca said, depends on "what they think they can get for a job." Some question what this will mean for the future of the industry. Nuclear departments like Cornell's have supplied the senior engineering staff and executives at the nation's 103 commercial power reactors, as well as engineers for the regulatory commission. "If we do build new nuclear plants," said William D. Magwood IV, director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology at the U.S. Department of Energy, "we're going to need people who understand the technology and can operate the plants safely, and the places that train those people are beginning to disappear. It's very depressing." Jeffrey Merrifield, one of the five members of the NRC, said one of the agency's problems was its aging staff, with five times more staff members over age 60 than below age 30. The Energy Department counted just 570 students nationwide majoring in nuclear engineering in 1997, down from 1,500 five years earlier. The drop in student interest is somewhat paradoxical, industry experts say, since there is substantial demand for nuclear engineers. Even without new nuclear plants envisioned by the Bush-Cheney energy plan, the applications by dozens of reactors to extend their licenses to 60 years from 40 mean a longer future for the industry. MIT and the University of Michigan face another problem, a need to modernize their aging reactors, requiring an investment that has led administrators to consider shutting down. The Energy Department has promised those two universities and Cornell $250,000 each, and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who is on the Energy Committee, has proposed bigger increases. The aging of those with nuclear expertise is a cause of decline as well as a symptom. Robert C. Richardson, vice provost for research at Cornell, wrote in a letter in April to Cornell's president that the reactor should be closed, in part because "very few if any young faculty are enthusiastic about the science, about devoting their own careers to building or improving the facility, or about utilizing the reactor heavily." This is in part the university's policy; in the mid-1990s it ended its program in nuclear engineering and reassigned the faculty to other departments, virtually ensuring that no new faculty members in the field would be hired. The nuclear staff at Cornell fought hard for survival. They volunteered the reactor as a tool for archaeology, geology and even art history, and students collected more than 1,900 petition signatures from their classmates to keep the place open. Twenty-five people demonstrated outside a faculty senate meeting, surely one of the few pro-nuclear demonstrations on campus in history. But none of this produced sufficient allies. The Orange County Register ***************************************************************** 23 Nuclear power or shortages? Augusta Georgia: Opinions: Web posted Saturday, July 7, 2001 4:57 p.m. Editor, The Chronicle In the Southeast with 10 percent to 20 percent generating margins we have no short-term energy problems. However, if global warming is real and if we are forced to restrict the use of fossil fuels, as the Kyoto Accords would have us do, our only choice is nuclear power or chronic energy shortages, worldwide, over the long haul. Fred Davison, in his excellent June 29 column, appropriately states that we can build and operate safe, clean economical nuclear power plants. We can dispose of nuclear wastes. We can make all the power the world needs, and we can move promptly. Current 10-year reactor construction times are caused by political - not engineering - considerations. Clear the political road, and safe clean economical plants will promptly follow. Administering a world nuclear energy system is not a trivial task. Large nuclear energy centers doing the whole job - reactors, fuel fabrication, waste management, fissile material control and security - all in one location appear attractive. Prudence suggests that such be piloted now. As Mr. Davison writes, our Savannah River Site is a good place to start. Veteran Carolina-Georgia nuclear engineers and managers who have faultlessly produced half of our electric energy for decades might form the SRS team. We could show the world that the entire job can be done cleanly and safely in a nuclear center that could be replicated readily elsewhere. Let the Central Savannah River Area play a major role in solving the world energy problem, as it did in winning the Cold War. Fred Christensen, Aiken, S.C. All contents ©1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights ***************************************************************** 24 Exelon cancels alert at Illinois nuclear unit - 7/6/2001 - ENN.com Friday, July 06, 2001 By Reuters NEW YORK — Exelon Nuclear said Thursday that it canceled a safety alert at an Illinois nuclear power plant that was shut several hours earlier due to high pressure in the building housing the nuclear reactor. The alert at the 800-megawatt Dresden 3 unit in Morris, Ill., was lifted at 4:02 p.m. CDT, just less than six hours after the unit was shut down following what Exelon called "increased pressure in the reactor's containment building." The company said in a statement that the plant's reactor cooling systems and radiation levels inside the containment building were normal. "There was no release of radioactivity associated with the event," the company said. Plant operator Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Exelon Corp., said it was putting the reactor into "cold shutdown" while they investigated what triggered the sudden rise in pressure. Cold shutdown means the temperature of the water in the reactor system is below the boiling point, halting the flow of steam used to spin the plant's electric turbines. The alert was the second-lowest on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's four-level safety scale. An alert signals the actual or potential for "substantial degradation of the safety of a nuclear plant," according to the safety code used at the nation's nuclear power stations. "There is no danger to the public and no special actions by the public are needed," the company said in a statement. The adjoining 800-MW Dresden 2 nuclear unit continued to operate at 100 percent of capacity, the company said. The cause of the pressure problem was being investigated, Exelon Nuclear said. The company did not indicate how long it expected Dresden 3 to be out of service. The Dresden 3 unit had just returned to full power early Thursday after being shut over the weekend for maintenance, the NRC said in its daily plant status report. Copyright 2001, Reuters ***************************************************************** 25 Nuclear-Power Industry Chief to Visit Weapons Site in Georgia Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report Brandon Haddock , The Augusta Chronicle, Ga. ( July 07, 2001 ) Jul. 5--The head of the agency responsible for overseeing the nation's nuclear-power industry is scheduled to visit Savannah River Site next week. Richard Meserve, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plans to visit the federal nuclear-weapons site Tuesday, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the commission's Region II office in Atlanta. "The basic purpose is to familiarize himself with the site," Mr. Hannah said. "He's just going to take a quick tour." The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees civilian nuclear facilities, such as power plants, and has no oversight over current SRS activities. But a proposed mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel fabrication facility would fall under the commission's jurisdiction. The $1.45 billion plant would manufacture fuel for nuclear-power plants using plutonium once intended for nuclear weapons. Dr. Meserve might tour the proposed site for the plant, Mr. Hannah said. The chairman also is set to visit the site's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, a lab official said. Dr. Meserve has served as the regulatory commission's chairman since October 1999. Prior to becoming chairman, he was a partner in the Washington law firm Covington &Burling. He also was legal counsel to the president's science and technology adviser from 1977 to 1981 and worked as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Dr. Meserve holds a bachelor's degree from Tufts University, a law degree from Harvard Law School, and a doctorate in applied physics from Stanford University. To see more of The Augusta Chronicle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://augustachronicle.com (c) 2001, The Augusta Chronicle, Ga. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune ***************************************************************** 26 Tennessee Valley Authority Searches Mississippi for Power Plant Sites Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report Dave Flessner , Chattanooga Times/Free Press Jul. 6--The Tennessee Valley Authority scrapped the only power plant it ever tried to build in Mississippi two decades ago when construction problems forced the cancellation of the proposed Yellow Creek Nuclear Plant in Iuka. But with power demand growing on the western edge of its service territory, TVA is again looking for new power generation in Mississippi. Two of the most promising sources are experimental plants that could ultimately generate benefits far beyond Mississippi. "We need extra power generation in the western parts of the Valley to meet the growing demand for electricity and we think we've identified some promising new ways to meet our load in that area," TVA spokesman John Moulton said. TVA won't be building the new power generating plants itself. The federal utility will contract to either buy the power or the plants from other companies. But as TVA's record at Yellow Creek demonstrated, building a new power plant doesn't always go according to plan. The biggest new source of power for TVA in Mississippi is coming from a power plant in Choctaw County that will burn lignite coal from the surrounding county. Lignite is a form of younger and lower quality coal, but the $500 million plant is designed to mix the lignite with limestone in a high-temperature boiler to produce power within the new air pollution standards for coal plants. "The technology is well founded, but we have struggled quite a bit getting the plant up and running," said Randy Ransdell, director of plant manager for the lignite plant, known as the Red Hills Power Plant. The 440-megawatt plant was originally scheduled to be in commercial operation by the first of this year. Mr. Ransdell said the plant generated some power starting in February, but the date for commercial power generation has been pushed back to August. In the meantime, the developers of the plant -- a subsidiary of Tractabel Power Inc. known as Choctaw Generation Limited Partnership -- are having to buy replacement power for TVA. As a result of the delays, the bond rating agency Standard &Poor's placed the project on its credit watch in February and downgraded the bonds used to finance the project last month. S said the project remains technically viable and the bonds won't be in default unless the project doesn't generate baseline power for TVA until next year. The delay in starting up the plant was caused by everything from late shipments of steel and boiler parts to a small fire that burned several electrical cables. "Whenever you have a new facility you tend to have these type of issues," Mr. Ransdell said. "It's kind of like driving a new car. The things you did on the old car just don't work the same on another car." TVA has contracted to buy all of the power produced by the lignite plant for at least the next 30 years. The plant is the first baseline generation addition for TVA since it started its Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in 1996. TVA also plans to add four combustion turbines in Kemper County, Miss., by next summer, which will collectively generate 340 megawatts. But those units will be fired up only a peak demand periods. To help level its power load, TVA is also preparing plans for the nation's biggest electric "battery" plant to store power for use during peak demands. The Regenesys Energy Storage system uses electrolyte storage tanks to store and retrieve energy as needed. The plant is capable of generating up to 12 megawatts of electricity for 10 hours. The plant is designed by Innogy, a British business of National Power, which operates a similar unit in Cambridge, England. TVA is looking at sites near the Columbia Air Force Base in Mississippi to locate the Regenesys plant. "The Air Force has had a history of not having as good of electricity service as we would like and they need a very reliable source of power," said Mick Ray, project manager for the Regenesys project. "This will provide a highly reliable source of power when it is most needed." The $25 million "battery" plant loses about 35 percent of its power in the recharging and discharging of power. But it allows TVA to store power into the plant during the middle of the night when demand is lowest and discharge the power when it is most needed on cold winter mornings or late afternoon heatwaves. "If this proves successful, this type of facility could be located most anywhere and help us to stabilize our load," Mr. Ray said. To see more of the Chattanooga Times/Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesfreepress.com ***************************************************************** 27 Lin calls for power-plant referendum The Taipei Times Online: 2001-07-08 Sunday, July 8th, 2001 Former DPP chairman Lin Yi-hsiung appeared at the establishment ceremony for the Nuclear-Free Country Association yesterday and said that anyone who opposes a referendum on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is unfit to serve in public office. PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES STAFF WRITER Former DPP chairman Lin Yi-hsiung said yesterday that the fate of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project should be decided by the people of Taiwan, and anyone who is opposed to a referendum on the issue is unsuitable for public office, local media reported. Lin commented on the possibility of a year-end referendum while attending the establishment ceremony for the Nuclear-Free Country Association yesterday morning in Taipei. Anyone who is opposed to the referendum is not qualified to take public office, and they are certainly not qualified to be the president, premier or a legislator in a democratic nation, according to Lin. "To oppose the referendum is completely unreasonable and irrational, and goes against the tide of democracy," Lin added. Lin also showed his dissatisfaction with the DPP's unclear position on the project, saying that he could not understand why the ruling party failed to uphold its long-held position against nuclear energy after coming to power last year. According to the DPP platform, the party is against building new nuclear power plants and seeks to close the three existing nuclear plants in Taiwan within 10 years. On Feb. 14, however, the DPP government announced that it would resume construction of Taiwan's fourth nuclear power plant after the Council of Grand Justices ruled in a constitutional interpretation-judgment that the administration's earlier decision to scrap the project was procedurally flawed. In response to Lin's criticism, DPP legislative caucus convener Tsai Huang-liang yesterday afternoon said that Lin's remarks were "too strong." According to Tsai, since the DPP is the minority in the Legislative Yuan, its priority is to stabilize the current political scene, not to seek a referendum on the power plant issue. However, according to Shih Shin-min, chairman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, holding a referendum during the year-end elections would be the appropriate time as the cost to taxpayers would be minimized. This story has been viewed 83 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/07/08/story/0000093217] ***************************************************************** 28 Armenian Nuclear Power Station to Carry Out Preventative Maintenance Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report ( July 06, 2001 ) Text of report by Armenian news agency Snark Yerevan, 6 July: The reactor of the Armenian nuclear power station is to stop functioning tonight. It is planned to carry out preventative maintenance at the station which will last 45 days. During this period, the international group of companies Itera will supply additional gas to the Armenian thermal electric power stations in order to compensate the shortage of electricity generated by the nuclear power station. The station's management is trying to secure a credit from Russian commercial banks in Moscow to purchase nuclear fuel. The Armenian government earlier provided a 10m-dollar credit for fuel purchase. www.powermarketers.com ***************************************************************** 29 URENCO Response to Commerce Department Determination U.S. Newswire 6 Jul 15:10 To: National and Business desk, Trade and Energy reporters Contact: Maurice Lenders, 44-1628-486941 MARLOW, England, July 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by URENCO: U.S. Department of Commerce Preliminary Anti-Dumping Duty Determination for Imports of Customers' Uranium Enrichment from Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The US Department of Commerce on July 5 preliminarily determined that imports of LEU would be subject to an anti-dumping duty of 0 percent for Germany, 0 percent for The Netherlands and 3.35 percent for the United Kingdom. In its December 2000 petition, USEC had claimed anti-dumping duties at rates between 15 percent and 21 percent. Urenco will now review the detailed calculations which led to this preliminary determination and will continue to defend itself vigorously. The final determination is expected towards the end of this year. Reacting to this preliminary determination, Klaus Messer, chief executive of Urenco, stated "We have always sought to compete fairly in all world markets, including the U.S. We are pleased that the Commerce Department confirmed this with regard to imports from Germany and The Netherlands. We expect that the Department will reach a similar conclusion with respect to the United Kingdom after it reviews our detailed submissions and holds its hearing." Messer also reiterated that "Urenco's position in this investigation continues to be actively supported by the governments of Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, as well as by the European Commission. They share our view that these cases should never have been accepted by the Department of Commerce. Urenco provides services, not goods, and the international trade laws do not apply to services." For earlier press releases and briefing notes on this issue, visit Urenco's Web site at www.urenco.com. For further comment contact: Maurice Lenders at 44-1628-486941 /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Kursk hazards and challenges BBC News | EUROPE | Friday, 6 July, 2001, 20:27 GMT 21:27 UK There is only a short window of opportunity to lift the Kursk nuclear submarine from the bed of the Barents Sea this year. Shortly before the divers set out from Scotland, the region where the submarine lies at a depth of 108m was experiencing its first July storm. It will take 10 says to reach the site The operation must be completed by the end of September, when the the weather turns truly treacherous. There are other hazards too - posed by the submarine's two nuclear reactors and its load of 24 cruise missiles, not to mention unexploded torpedoes inside the vessel and on the sea floor beside it. The lifting operation has three main stages: + preparing the submarine for lifting + fastening cables to the hull + raising it and carrying it to a floating dock After arrival at the scene of the disaster, the divers' first task will be to remove accumulated sand and silt from the severely damaged bow. Chain saw Lift timetable Mid-July: divers arrive 7 August: bow cut off End August - barge sets sail 10 September: grappling starts Mid-September: the big lift They will then prepare to cut off the submarine's nose section, aiming to achieve this by 7 August. The bow is so severely damaged, that it could otherwise fall off as the submarine is lifted. If any unexploded torpedoes lie along the cutting line, they will first have to be removed. There is also a chance that the cutting operation will cause torpedoes to shift position, creating a risk of detonation. We believe that the first compartment still contains several warheads from torpedoes that did not detonate Russian Vice-Admiral Mikhail Barskov The cutting operation itself will be carried out by robots, using a specially designed chain saw made from an scrapped dredger. For safety reasons, no divers will be in the sea at the time. The Russian navy plans to lift the severed nose section at a later date, as part of its effort to identify the cause of the disaster. Bengali sand The team of about 30 divers will also begin work quickly on cutting 26 70cm-diameter holes through the massive structure of the hull. Huge cables will be attached to 26 points on the hull The cutting tool will work by discharging water and sand under extremely high pressure of up to 1,500 atmospheres (1,500kg per square centimetre). According to Russian sources, special quartz-rich sand has to be brought from the Bay of Bengal. At the end of August, or in the first days of September, an enormous barge, named Giant 4, will sail from Amsterdam. The Granit missiles are absolutely safe - all of them are in containers, which are as strong as the sub's hull Vice-Admiral Mikhail Barskov Massive cables attached to the barge at one end, will be attached to the submarine at the 26 points where the holes were cut. This grappling process is planned to begin on 10 September, with lifting beginning five or 10 days later. In total, 23 ships will be involved in the operation, including Russian naval vessels whose goal is to ensure that prying eyes in foreign submarines do not get too close. Radiation checks The actual raising of the submarine - which displaces 18,300 tonnes of water - will take hydraulic lifting systems positioned along the length of the barge 12 to 15 hours to complete. Scale models of the barge and submarine were used for laboratory tests With the submarine clamped underneath it, the slow-moving barge will take a week to reach land, where a floating dock will be waiting at a port near Murmansk. The remains of the 106 sailors still on board will then be removed. Bodies preserved in the cold waters of the Barents Sea will deteriorate quickly on contact with air. Other important tasks will include the removal of 24 Granit cruise missiles situated in sturdy containers in the mid-section of the submarine. Russian officials say that the Kursk's two nuclear reactors switched themselves off at the time of the disaster and represent no threat. However, radiation levels will be monitored throughout the operation. ***************************************************************** 2 Bush hopes nuclear-test treaty dies in Senate Administration hopes to tell other nations that arms ban cannot pass. July 7, 2001 By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER The New York Times WASHINGTON -- In its first six months, the Bush administration has been examining ways to escape permanently from an unratified international agreement banning nuclear tests, just as it has moved to scrap the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty and has rebelled against a global-warming pact that it believes would cripple U.S. industry. But State Department lawyers told the White House that a president cannot withdraw a treaty from the Senate once it has been presented for approval. So, administration officials said, President George W. Bush has resolved to let the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty languish permanently in the Senate, where supporters of the pact concede they do not have the votes to revive it. The effect of the decision is to put the test ban in the same category as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming: By informing the treaty's allies that it has no chance of ratification, Bush is essentially forcing its main European partners to find alternatives more to the administration's liking. Bush has long opposed the treaty, which the Senate rejected 51-48 nearly two years ago in a major defeat for President Clinton. Now, in the next two weeks, Bush hopes to go a step further and persuade the treaty's allies to acknowledge that the pact is effectively dead. The issue may be discussed at the summit meeting of industrialized nations in Genoa, Italy, later this month. But a senior administration official said Friday there was no mention of the treaty in current drafts of the group's final communique. Some administration officials even said the treaty itself might not even come up for discussion for the first time in many years. During the Clinton years, the industrialized nations called on "all those states which have not yet done so to sign and ratify the treaty without delay." Bush's aides have worked to delete that wording from other international communiques, while still calling on nations to abide by a nonbinding moratorium on nuclear testing. Behind the arcane change in wording that is part of a radical change in U.S. arms-control strategy is a concept that could include deep, even unilateral, cuts in the nation's nuclear arsenal, deployment of missile defenses and a new framework to combat proliferation that builds on some current treaties but rejects others. The test ban treaty "does not help our nonproliferation goals," said an administration official who discussed the president's emerging strategy on the condition he not be identified. He said the treaty "is cited as providing a new moral and legal barrier to proliferation." "It is cited as providing a block to the ability of a proliferant to develop a weapon in confidence," the official added. "It is presented as a treaty that is verifiable. And it is presented as something that, in fact, still allows us to maintain our nuclear stockpile in confidence. And I think you'll find that it's wrong on every count, that those contentions are wrong." As of Friday, 161 nations have signed the treaty, and 77 of them have ratified it. Among those 77 nations are 31 of the 44 states required for the treaty to enter into force; among the remaining 13 are the United States, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. Administration officials carefully studied the barriers to pulling the treaty from Senate consideration in order to bury it, as well as the potential outcry here and abroad should the United States abandon the pact. On Friday, administration officials said Bush "has no plans" to do anything with the test-ban treaty, but also "has no plans" to break from the current moratorium on nuclear tests. But treaties do not die at the adjournment of a Congress as bills do and can be taken up again at any time by a subsequent Senate. Thus, once the test-ban treaty was rejected by the Senate, it reverted to the legal property of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Although Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who supports the treaty, became the committee chairman earlier this year when Republicans lost their majority, Senate rules require a two-thirds vote to ratify the treaty, as its proponents desire, or send it back to Bush for disposal, as its opponents want. The mathematics of the current Senate split render either action close to impossible. "There is no excuse for our failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty," Biden said in a speech last month. While agreeing that there are "legitimate concerns" regarding the nation's long-term ability to maintain the nuclear stockpile without nuclear tests and with verification, he said those problems could be resolved before Senate approval. Supporters of the treaty criticized the administration's approach, saying the test ban is a cornerstone of nonproliferation efforts and has overwhelming domestic and international support. "Continued U.S. failure to follow through on its CTBT commitments leaves the door open to a global chain reaction of nuclear testing, instability and confrontation in the future," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers. The Orange County Register ***************************************************************** 3 German nuke waste shipment next week - Greenpeace GERMANY: July 6, 2001 HAMBURG, Germany - Environmental group Greenpeace said yesterday it expected shipments of nuclear waste from north German nuclear power stations to be sent to waste processing plants in France next week. "There will probably be a transport in the early hours of Tuesday morning with altogether five nuclear waste containers from the Stade and Brunsbuettel power plants to the French waste processing storage site in La Hague," a spokeswoman for Greenpeace said. A spokeswoman for the Lower Saxony government said the operator of the Stade plant, Hamburg utiltity HEW , wanted to transport three containers with spent fuel elements. She could not say when the shipment would be made but a spokeman in the Schleswig Holstein energy ministry, which is responsible for Brunsbuettel, said the shipment might take place on Tuesday. After a break of several years, nuclear waste transport from Germany to France resumed last April. Further shipments were made to the waste processing plant at Sellafield in north-west England. The transport was possible again when at the end of March Germany broke a four year long interruption on the return of nuclear waste from La Hague to the temporary storage site in Gorleben, Germany. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 4 Bomb training may rise at Fallon RGJ.com - By Frank X. Mullen Jr. Saturday July 7th, 2001 The Navy is sizing up Fallon Naval Air Station as an alternative combat training area to partially replace a bombing range on a Puerto Rican island if the military is ordered out as expected, Navy officials said Friday. Fallon NAS, already the home of the Navy’s Top Gun and aircraft carrier group training, could be part of a patchwork of bases from California to North Carolina that would replace the Vieques training station on an island near Puerto Rico. The Navy, under pressure from residents and lawmakers concerned about health and environmental problems, might abandon Vieques by 2003. But Nevada environmental groups oppose more bombing and strafing of state land. “Puerto Rico wants the Navy out, so what makes the military think we would want more bombs dropped on Nevada?” asked Kalynda Tilges, Nevada coordinator for Citizen Alert, an environmental organization. “There is a childhood leukemia cluster in Fallon that shows the area obviously has some kind of environmental disaster going on. Once again, the military is being short-sighted and irresponsible.” Fourteen Fallon children have been diagnosed with leukemia since 1997, and one has died of the disease. An environmental cause is suspected but health officials so far have no answers. The Navy has said its activities in the area have nothing to do with the cancer epidemic. In addition, Navy officials say they are striking a good balance between training needs and environmental responsibility. Anne McMillin, spokesman for the Naval Air Station, said there’s a possibility that Fallon would get more training missions if Vieques closes, but nothing is set so far. “(Bombing) ranges are at a premium in the Navy, and right now we’re running at 75 to 80 percent of our range time,” she said. “We already get air wings and squadrons from both coasts.” She said Fallon could accommodate more fighter plane training but “we can’t duplicate everything they do at Vieques.” The island also hosts Marine landings and bombardments from naval warships. Pentagon officials said Friday no satisfactory solution has been found to the almost certain loss of the range on the hilly, 18-mile-long island southeast of Puerto Rico. Navy Secretary Gordon England has defended the decision to look beyond Vieques. He says alternatives must be found in case the Navy loses a scheduled Nov. 6 referendum in which the island’s 9,500 residents will vote on whether the Navy should remain or leave in 2003. Last month, President Bush indicated willingness to end the Vieques live-fire exercises regardless. Without Vieques, the Navy and Marine Corps would be forced to use a hodgepodge of existing ranges and would find it difficult to build new ones in an age of military economizing and ecological sensitivities, military analysts said. Protesters on Vieques say years of live-fire bombing have destroyed their health and their island’s environment. The Navy stopped using live bombs months after two stray ones killed a civilian security guard on the range in 1999, and masses of islanders protested continued exercises. Since then, protesters have taken to invading Navy land to prevent planes from dropping inert bombs of up to 1,000 pounds. Both inert and live ordnance is used at Fallon NAS. Tilges said the Navy already exploits Nevada land for training without considering the long-term environmental consequences of its actions. She said Nevada residents want less, not more, combat training in their state. “The Cold War is over,” she said. “The Navy is ignoring the consequences of its pollution and the nation continues to throw money into a big, black hole.” McMillin said the training pilots receive at Fallon is vitally important to national defense. She said lessons learned at Fallon have saved American lives from the Gulf War to Bosnia. “We can’t maintain readiness without training,” she said. “We balance the need for training with environmental stewardship of the land.” Although Tilges said she fears more training will mean greater use of depleted uranium weapons at Fallon, McMillin said depleted uranium rounds have never been used at the base. © Reno Gazette-Journal ***************************************************************** 5 Bush Wants Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Die Saturday July 7 3:41 PM ET By Deborah Charles KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites), who has often criticized a global nuclear test ban treaty, hopes the treaty will die in the Senate where it was rejected two years ago, White House officials said on Saturday. Officials noted that Bush had repeatedly voiced his opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty during the 2000 presidential campaign, calling it ``fatally flawed.'' The Senate, previously controlled by Republicans, declined to ratify the treaty in 1999, to the dismay of U.S. allies. Now that the Senate is led by Democrats, some analysts say the treaty could be revived. Despite that possibility, Bush will not try to withdraw the CTBT because, as one official said, there was ``little precedent'' for taking a treaty back once it had been sent to the Senate. Before leaving office, former President Bill Clinton had urged the new Senate to take up the treaty again. But the Bush administration disagrees. ``There is little confidence that the treaty can actually be verified,'' a senior administration official said. ``With a treaty flawed in that way, it doesn't further nonproliferation efforts.'' Some analysts had expected Democrats to launch an effort to revive the test ban treaty after they took 50-49 control of the Senate last month. The Bush administration has no desire to see a new debate on the treaty. ``There is no support within the administration for the treaty to be taken up for consideration again,'' the official said. Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden (news - bio- voting record), who replaced North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms (news - bio- voting record) -- an opponent of the treaty -- as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supports the CTBT, but it needs a two-thirds majority to be ratified. In January, just before Bush took office, Gen. John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a report to Clinton urging the United States to ratify the treaty. More than 150 countries have signed the CTBT, but it can come into force only when 44 potentially nuclear-capable countries ratify it. Shalikashvili, who spent 10 months conducting a review of the contents of the treaty by interviewing nuclear experts, weapons designers and senators, concluded that ratifying the CTBT would increase national security, and the security benefits of the treaty would outweigh disadvantages. He had said the Senate's vote not to ratify the treaty raised concern at home and abroad that the United States might be walking away from its traditional leadership of international nonproliferation efforts. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Nuclear workers' lawsuit settled [enquirer.com] Saturday, July 07, 2001 By James Hannah The Associated Press DAYTON, Ohio — A federal judge Friday approved the settlement of a lawsuit filed by former Mound nuclear weapons plant workers who said they lost their jobs because of their age after a change in contractors. The settlement and dismissal of the nearly 3-year-old lawsuit filed against Babcock &Wilcox affects 36 former workers. The workers are all over 40 years old and were employed at the plant between 21 and 31 years. They said they lost their jobs because Babcock &Wilcox refused to hire them when the company took over operation of the plant from EG Mound Applied Technologies in 1997. The lawsuit accused Babcock &Wilcox of obtaining information on worker salaries, ages, years of service and eligibility for retirement benefits, and then hiring younger, less qualified workers to reduce benefits the company was required to pay. Under the settlement, eligible former workers will receive lump-sum retirement benefits based on age and service. They also will get $200-a-month supplemental pension payments up to $23,800 to help pay for health insurance. The workers also will be allowed to buy health insurance at the same lower rates as current Mound workers. In addition, Babcock &Wilcox will place $300,000 in a trust fund to help the workers cover their cost of pursuing the lawsuit. “We believe the settlement is fair and adequate to meet their needs and concerns,” said Daniel Beerck, attorney for the workers. Gary Young, 55, of Germantown, estimated his retirement benefits will be 30 percent lower — or more than $100,000 less — than what they would have been had he been able to keep his job. “I'm not satisfied with it at all,” Mr. Young said. Asked why he agreed to the settlement, Mr. Young replied: “Because we get something.” As part of the settlement, the workers agreed not to pursue any future discrimination claims against the company and to drop the lawsuit without making it a class-action case. In settlement documents, Babcock &Wilcox denied any wrongdoing or liability. The company said studies by statistician Sharon Kelly demonstrated there was no discriminatory impact in its hiring practices. “The settlement, which was for less than the anticipated cost of defending the litigation, demonstrates what we've said all along: Babcock &Wilcox acted properly in its hiring practices when it took over the site,” company President Peyton Bake said. The workers had originally asked the court to allow the lawsuit to represent what they said were more than 100 former workers in a similar situation. The plant in Miamisburg began operation in 1949, producing triggers for nuclear weapons. Weapons work at the plant ended in 1994. The primary work at the 306-acre site now is cleaning up radioactive and other hazardous materials. Copyright1995-2001. The Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett Co. Inc.newspaper. * ***************************************************************** 7 Atomic fallout covered the city The Advertiser: By COLIN JAMES 07jul01 RADIOACTIVE clouds from two atomic tests at Maralinga were swept across the Nullarbor Plain to Adelaide, classified documents have revealed. Despite repeated official denials the fallout was dangerous, levels recorded at secret sampling stations exceeded those now permitted under federal health standards. The Advertiser has obtained classified documents which reveal radioactivity was detected in Adelaide, Woomera, Oodnadatta, Ceduna, Giles, Cook, Cleve, Leigh Creek, Tarcoola, Marree, Port Augusta and Mt Gambier after atomic bombs were exploded at Maralinga in 1956 and 1957. Fallout from the first SA tests at Emu Field, 480km northwest of Woomera, as part of Operation Totem was not officially monitored, but The Advertiser understands air sampling devices in the Adelaide central business district also detected radioactivity. Fallout from the first Totem explosion on October 15, 1953, heavily contaminated nearby cattle stations, particularly Welbourn Hill and Wallatinna, with station owners, their families, workers and desert Aborigines exposed to a mushroom cloud dubbed "The Black Mist". Adelaide was hit by radioactive fallout from the final and biggest explosion of the four-bomb Operation Buffalo series on October 22, 1956, with further fallout detected 12 months later after three bombs exploded during Operation Antler. The contamination occurred when inversion layers either trapped the mushroom clouds and pushed them towards Adelaide or forecast winds changed direction and dispersed the clouds to the east, rather than north as planned. The clouds were tracked across SA, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland by RAAF aircraft, which became so contaminated they had to be cleaned at a special facility. A national monitoring program established by the Menzies government in 1956 detected three nuclear byproducts – strontium 90, caesium 137 and radioactive iodine – in human and sheep bones, air samples, rainwater, soil, cabbages and flour in SA. Similar results were obtained in Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. Strontium 90 is one of the most dangerous nuclear fission byproducts. It has a half-life of 28 years and lodges in bone tissue, causing leukemia and cancer. It was still being detected when the national program of testing the bones of dead children and adults was officially stopped in 1971. The compound continued to be detected in milk samples randomly collected from Adelaide and other capital cities until 1984. No official monitoring for strontium 90 has occurred since then. Caesium 137, which causes cancers and birth defects, was detected in SA children and adults during a Royal Adelaide Hospital study in 1962. The results of the study were secretly presented to the Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee, established to monitor radioactive fallout two years after the first atomic tests were held at Emu Field. The AWTSC assembled official data to deny radioactive fallout was dangerous, leading to a confrontation with Adelaide University biochemist Hedley Marston, who secretly gathered contaminated air samples at Urrbrae and Roseworthy. The committee then tried to stop Dr Marston from publishing a paper detailing how his air samples and contaminated thyroid glands from sheep and cattle proved the SA public had been exposed to strontium 90. Four Adelaide hospitals – the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide Children's Hospital, the RAH and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital – provided bones from dead children, including stillborn babies, for strontium 90 testing for 14 years. AWTSC chairman Sir Ernest Titterton told successive federal governments the levels were so low the radioactive fallout could not have endangered Australians. © 2001 Advertiser Newspapers Ltd ***************************************************************** 8 STEPTOE AND SUB Daily Record Monday, July 09, 2001 EXCLUSIVE: Our pounds 226m nuclear fleet won't fetch a penny in scrap NUCLEAR submarines worth millions of pounds will be worth only pennies to Scottish scrap-merchants. Steptoe and Son firms looking forward to a massive pay-day from the tons of steel used to build the seven-strong nuclear fleet will be disappointed, according to confidential Ministry of Defence documents. Officials admit the return for any scrap metal merchant taking on the job of recovering over 50,000 tons of prime steel will be "negligible." Dr John Large, a leading independent nuclear scientist, said the hulls would have cost millions but were now "virtually worthless". He said: "Not even Albert Steptoe would want this metal. The problem is that a cocktail of metals were used to withstand deep underwater pressure. "To recycle this metal, it either has to be de-alloyed or mixed with a greater volume of pure metal in the smelting process. The Navy has a problem because it never planned for the disposal of these subs." Britain's scrap firms face one of biggest jobs ever when the subs - Renown, Repulse, Revenge, Resolution, Swiftsure, Churchill and Britain's first nuclear-powered sub Dreadnought - are scrapped in the next few years. Four other nuclear subs stored at Devenport are also to be broken up. All 11 will be scrapped once their radioactive compartments are removed. The Warship Support Agency is overseeing the disposal, which will cost millions. It is talking to 20 UK companies to dispose of the vessels, which once formed Britain's front-line defence. A WSA spokesman said: "There is no goldmine to be made from this metal. "Scrapping is not the cheapest option to dispose of these subs. Because of the specialist work needed on cutting them up, the return will be negligible." A spokesman for the Navy said the price of scrap steel fluctuated. "We are not scrapping them to make a profit - it is about finding an acceptable environmental solution," he said. The four Polaris subs, which were replaced by Trident, were built with the finest steel. The hulls are inches thick. The MoD is considering a joint public and private partnership to lessen the cost of scrapping them but will probably not award a contract until next year. But the Interim Storage Of Laid Up Submarines report says dismantling and recycling the hulls must make environmental safeguards a priority. The report says: "Although the process would set a precedent in the UK, in that no nuclear submarine has yet been broken up, the techniques would be no different from those carried out in the course of normal refitting work - they would simply be on a larger scale. "Some cost savings might be achieved by removing the residual hull and structure to a specialist breaker for dismantling and recycling. "Babcock Rosyth Defence Ltd and Devonport Management Ltd reports suggest that the residue would have negligible commercial value to a breaker in this country. "This cannot be confirmed without approaching such breakers directly, but it is consistent with the US report on submarine disposal which advises that the return on recycled scrap amounts to only three per cent of the cost of recycling. "A specialist breaker in the UK, having removed high-value scrap, would be likely to find the break-up of the remaining steelwork uneconomic. "It could be a very protracted operation, which would be undesirable from the public's point of view." The report says that using a foreign breaker could cause security objections. It is possible that, once the reactor compartments are removed, that the two ends of the sub could be welded together and towed to a scrapper or cut up into more manageable sizes. The subs weigh in at 8000 tonnes each. About 7500 tonnes will be left as scrap after radioactive material is removed. But the steel will only be worth pounds 50 per tonne. The scrap will be carefully decontaminated before it is handed to a commercial firm to be recycled. There is a big public consultation exercise under way to help decide the best way to dispose of the radioactive material. The USA has scrapped 80 submarines. In the early 1990s, they considered sinking them at sea. But fears of pollution and the cost of the operation saw the proposal ditched and the scrap sold to private firms instead. ***************************************************************** 9 Pacific Islanders protest treatment by isle hospitals Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News Friday, July 6, 2001 FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM Micronesians and Marshallese say some hospitals are refusing them health care By Rosemarie Bernardo rbernardo@starbulletin.com Nearly 100 Micronesian and Marshallese citizens demonstrated at Queen's Medical Center yesterday protesting what they call unfair treatment from some hospitals in Hawaii. The protesters said Queen's, Straub Clinic &Hospital and Tripler Army Medical Center do not accept patients from their countries because the hospitals are not reimbursed by their governments. Rich Meiers, president and chief executive officer of Healthcare Association of Hawaii, which represents all hospitals in Hawaii and two-thirds of long-term care beds, said the hospitals are not turning people away who need health care, whether they are able to pay or not. But he added, "Our industry is in a very serious financial condition." Dan Jessop, chief operating officer and executive vice president of the Queen's Medical Center, said, "We're trying to straighten out a fiscal problem." Jessop said that in fiscal year 2000, Queen's suffered a loss of $16.5 million. "With containment measures, including closing departments and employee layoffs, the hospital reduced this loss to $8 million for fiscal year 2001," he said. "We will continue to treat emergency patients regardless of ability to pay, but as our debt from Pacific Islands continue to grow, which currently exceeds $3 million, with most of this debt over a year old, we must address this loss," Jessop said. Meiers said, "Our facilities can't afford to see this charity care increase every year." Charity care is provided to those with limited means and last year rose to $75 million, he said. Jessop said, "We are hoping to collect this debt so we can maintain our services first and foremost to the residents of Hawaii." Jessop suggested the Micronesians lobby their concerns to the Micronesian government. He also recommended that the planned appropriation of $5 million for the U.S. Office of Insular Affairs to offset Hawaii's expenses for Micronesians and Marshallese go directly to the hospitals in Hawaii. The appropriation has yet to pass Congress. Julia Estrella, an organizer for the group Island Tenants on the Rise, said the Marshallese government should not have to pay for their medical expenses because of the nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll in 1954 that poisoned some of the islanders. "It's the military who did this," Estrella said. "People are sick." Claire Tong, spokeswoman of Straub &Clinic Hospital, said medical care is provided for the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Guam. Some insurance carriers do require a down payment if the patient has a poor credit history, she said. Overall, "we still provide care," she said. Officials of the Tripler Army Medical Center could not be reached for comment. © 2001 Honolulu Star-Bulletin http://starbulletin.com ***************************************************************** 10 US kills CTBT by not ratifying it -DAWN - Top Stories; 08 July, 2001 By Masood Haider NEW YORK, July 7: The United States, under the leadership of a Republican president and House, has killed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by its unwillingness to ratify the treaty which would undermine the United States' huge nuclear arms industry, reports here say. As against the Clinton administration which had made CTBT a cornerstone of its foreign policy, the Bush administration has abandoned efforts to force countries like India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to sign the test ban treaty. " That means Pakistan and India are off the hook for now until a new Democratic administration steps in," said one Pakistani diplomat here. In fact Pakistan and India were told that the sanctions regime against them would be lifted once they signed the CTBT and signed the nuclear Non-proliferation treaty. President Bush and the Republicans have long opposed the treaty, which the US Senate rejected by 51 to 48 votes nearly two years ago in a major defeat for President Bill Clinton. Now, in the next two weeks, Mr Bush hopes to go a step further and persuade the treaty's allies to acknowledge that the pact is dead. However, the New York Times says that State Department lawyers told the White House that a president could not withdraw a treaty from the Senate once it had been presented for approval. So, administration officials said, President Bush had resolved to let the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty languish in the Senate, where its supporters concede they do not have the votes to revive it. The decision puts the test ban treaty in the same category as the Kyoto protocol on global warning by informing the pact's allies that it has no chance of ratification. Mr Bush was essentially forcing his main European partners to find alternatives more to the administration's liking, the Times said. The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2001 ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************