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                    NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
 
 1  Plans for floating atomic power station approved by Russian 
 2  Putin decree merges uranium mine with nuclear fuel producer 
 3  Austrian president asks Czech power plant not be put into 
 4  NATIONAL NEWS: Green groups plan nuclear plant challenge 
 5  McLeish at centre of nucleur row
 6  Nuclear power: Shouldn't Scotland decide?
 7  30 years on and no end to the great debate
 8  Holyrood's nuclear relations with London
 9  Radioactive waste disposal site to be picked
10  - The European Convention does not fit here  
11  Executive backs new N-power stations
12  Coal and Nuclear Power Are Answer to Future U.S. Energy Needs
13  EU report calls for close look at Czech nuke plant
14  A cacophony of divergent rationales and angst 
15  Stacked Yucca hearing shows game already over and Nevada lost 
16  Reid, Abraham fail to connect on hearings
17  The many little ironies of the nuclear waste debate 
18  IAEA Hosts International Conference on Nuclear Safety
19  Editorial: Nightmare is courtesy of the DOE
20  Letter: DOE ignores opponents at Yucca hearing
21  Duke irregularities investigated
22  Energy department holds public hearings on nuclear dumping site. 
23  Too many nuclear plants are not prepared to prevent attacks 
24  Storage of metal debated 

                    NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
 
 1  Russian TV features former nuclear test ground in western 
 2  Russian radio lists sunken nuclear subs 
 3  Russians flee raising of "radioactive" sub Kursk
 4  FSB-investigator to Court in handcuffs?  
 5  Wildlife refuge plan for Flats nears passage
 6  Kursk Recovery Effort in Final Stages
 7  Iran Radio Denies CIA Weapons Claim
 8  Senators: Bush Plan Shortchanges Downwinders, President seeks 
 9  Iran 'pursuing nuclear programme'
10  New Test Makes Spotting Deadly Beryllium Dust Easier
11  Cleanup Slow, Erratic at Closed U.S. Military Sites
12  Strategists predict major shift away from nuclear weapons
13  Firms Get $5 Billion to Destroy USSR Arms
14  Senate Panel Approves Defense Bill 
15  Fokino: naval base, radiation, baby boom
16  CIA: Iran Has Active Weapon Program
17  Schools in Kursk operation zone practise emergency evacuation 
18  Group aims to cure 'nuclear hangover'
19  Nuclear legacy
20  NUCLEAR STATISTICS IN RUSSIA, U.S. ...
21  Surviving the Shakeup: A decade in Russian science
22  Bush Proposes Rules for Sick Workers
23  Schools in Kursk operation zone practise emergency evacuation 
24  West keen to see Georgia as barrier against drug, nuclear 
25  Armenian minister details Moscow talks on nuclear fuel debt 

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                     NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
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 1 Plans for floating atomic power station approved by Russian 
regional bosses 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 7, 2001

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS 

Petropavlovsk Kamchatskiy, 7 September: A project to build a 
floating nuclear power station by the shore of Kamchatka has been 
approved by the administration of Kamchatka Region. As ITAR-TASS 
was today informed by Aleksandr Markman, head of the 
administration of the town of Vilyuchinsk, the plan is to site 
the 70mw station in the Bay of Avachinsk. It will supply 
Vilyuchinsk with heat and electricity. 

Markman says that the construction of the small power station is 
part of the Russian nuclear energy developmental programme for 
2001-2005. However, the project still needs to receive the 
approval of the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry. 

Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0504 gmt 7 Sep 
01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
Copyright
*****************************************************************
 2  Putin decree merges uranium mine with nuclear fuel producer 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 6, 2001

Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax Moscow, 
5 September: Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree 
on the integration of nuclear fuel cycle organizations under 
which the charter capital of the Tvel company will be increased 
by the issuance of additional shares. 

The goal is to improve the efficiency of state control in this 
kind of organization, making it manageable in the system of the 
country's nuclear energy industry and improving the 
competitiveness of Russian nuclear fuel made by Tvel on the world 
market, the presidential press service reports. 

The additional issuance will be covered with the federally owned 
51 per cent package in the stock of Malyshevskoye Rudoupravleniye 
(MR) company, a producer of uranium concentrate and rare earth 
materials [in Sverdlovsk Region of the Urals]. In this way, MR 
will be incorporated in Tvel. 

Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1606 gmt 5 Sep 
01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
*****************************************************************
 3  Austrian president asks Czech power plant not be put into 
operation 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 7, 2001


After Czech President Vaclav Havel was received by Austrian 
President Thomas Klestil with military honours outside Klestil's 
office - despite pouring rain - the two heads of state retired to 
private talks. Klestil then renewed his appeal not to put the 
Temelin nuclear power plant into operation considering the many 
incidents that already occurred. The fears of people in Austria 
and the Czech Republic had to be taken seriously, Klestil noted. 
He said that the question of safety of the controversial nuclear 
power plant was a "test case for the EU". Both presidents 
supported the continuation of the Melk process of mutual meetings 
and consultations between Austria and the Czech Republic that 
should also include EU representatives... 

The Austrian president strictly rejected any threats to veto the 
accession of new countries to the EU and demands for a referendum 
in Austria on the issue. "Even threats such as 'Hungary yes, 
Czech Republic no" are inappropriate," Klestil said. Havel 
pointed to the historic importance of EU expansion for European 
unity. 

Source: Wiener Zeitung, Vienna, in German 7 Sep 01 p 5 /BBC 
Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
*****************************************************************
 4  NATIONAL NEWS: Green groups plan nuclear plant challenge 

Financial Times; Sep 8, 2001
By ANDREW TAYLOR

Environmental groups are preparing legal action against a 
possible government decision to approve the controversial 
plutonium recycling plant in Sellafield. 

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth fear that pressure from 
Downing Street to help British Nuclear Fuels, the Cumbrian 
complex's public sector owner, will force the project through. 

The outcome for the Pounds 470m mixed oxide plant is due to to be 
announced shortly. The environmental groups confirmed they had 
approached a QC with a view to challenging a government go-ahead 
in the courts. 

Government plans to float 49 per cent of BNFL, which it had 
expected to raise about Pounds 1.5bn, have been postponed due to 
concerns over the future of the mox plant and BNFL's recent poor 
financial performance. 

The new plant would take reprocessed plutonium oxide from BNFL's 
neighbouring Thorpe complex to make new nuclear fuel for power 
stations. Failure to proceed with mox would place the much larger 
Thorpe operations in jeopardy and call BNFL's financial strategy 
into question. 

The mox plant, completed in 1996, has yet to start commercial 
operation. Ministers say they will not give approval unless the 
project can be proved to be economically justified. An 
independent report, commissioned by the government, concluded in 
July that the fuel recycling plant would be cheaper to operate 
than to mothball. The study, by Arthur D. Little, the 
consultants, said the plant would have a net economic benefit of 
more than Pounds 200m if allowed to open compared with a loss of 
Pounds 58m. 

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth argue that the findings do 
not take account of the Pounds 470m spent on the project. They 
claim the report also glossed over opposition to the project in 
Japan, expected to be a big customer. 

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited
*****************************************************************
 5  McLeish at centre of nucleur row

The Scotsman Online - 

Fraser Nelson Westminster Editor 

HENRY McLEISH was at the centre of a new controversy over nuclear 
power last night amid claims he turned down a place on the 
powerful Cabinet Office inquiry that could lead to new reactors 
in Scotland. 

The First Minister’s spokesman said no offer was made, but 
Whitehall ministers told The Scotsman the Scottish executive had 
the opportunity to be represented when the inquiry was set up in 
June. 

The allegation comes as Mr McLeish fights claims he has failed to 
make Scotland’s case to the London-based committee deciding 
the future of Britain’s nuclear power. UK ministers said 
there was never any intention to exclude the Scottish executive 
from the process, especially as 40 per cent of Scotland's 
electricity is nuclear generated. 

"Either the executive or the Scotland Office could have sent 
someone to this committee," the source said. "They agreed amongst 
themselves that George Foulkes would do it. But the committee 
would have been very happy for it to have been someone from the 
executive." 

The First Minister’s spokesman said that was untrue: "We 
were not offered a seat on this committee, and we did not seek 
one. Energy policy is a reserved matter." 

The Energy Policy inquiry is expected to conclude that more 
nuclear energy is the only way to avoid California-style power 
shortages. Its findings will cover Scotland, but the executive 
has the power to veto any new nuclear power station. 

The SNP said Mr McLeish should have demanded that one of his 
ministers join Mr Blair’s inquiry as it is the only way for 
Holyrood to influence the future of the ageing Magnox reactors at 
Chapelcross and Hunterston. 

A Scotland Office spokesman said it would have been unusual for 
an executive minister to join the committee looking at UK policy. 

The SNP is calling on Mr McLeish to veto any new reactors that 
might be planned for Scotland. 
*****************************************************************
 6  Nuclear power: Shouldn't Scotland decide?

The Scotsman Online 

JOHN SWINNEY 

Westminster is set to increase nuclear power production in 
Scotland. Where's the protest? 

THE days when those of us who lived in Scotland were told to shut 
up and wait until Westminster had decided what was good for us 
were supposed to have disappeared with the advent of devolution. 

But the current attempt by the New Labour government in London to 
build more nuclear power stations in Scotland is a clear exercise 
in showing the Scottish parliament who's boss - and it's not 
Henry McLeish. 

The resurrection of the nuclear power debate has been initiated, 
not in Scotland, but by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who has 
set up a group to carry out a review of UK energy policy. The 
group is chaired by a keen advocate of nuclear power, Mr 
McLeish's old friend, Brian Wilson. 

During the last First Minister's Question Time before the summer 
recess, I asked Mr McLeish for his views on the proposed 
expansion of nuclear power in Scotland. In effect he told me he 
didn't have any. More likely he hasn't yet been told what to say 
by Mr Wilson. 

Over the summer, the nuclear plans have gathered pace, using 
classic New Labour tactics. First, there were carefully selected 
leaks in newspapers, followed by a campaign of misinformation. 
Now there are attempts to ridicule those who oppose this 
dangerous proposal. 

Scare stories about Scotland's need for nuclear power in order to 
avoid the electricity shortages suffered by California have been 
peddled by the Scotland Office minister, George Foulkes, and his 
new-found friends in the nuclear industry. The facts, however, 
are rather different: 

Scotland is a net exporter of electricity and does not need to 
expand nuclear power. Scotland is being asked to shoulder the 
nuclear risk to satisfy demand elsewhere in the UK. 

The problems in California were actually caused by an 
over-reliance on nuclear power, which prompted calls for 
de-regulation and the ensuing chaos in the system. 

Nuclear power is ludicrously expensive - plants cost up to £2 
billion to build and even more to decommission. 

Nuclear power is environmentally damaging and no-one has found a 
viable answer to the problem of nuclear waste disposal. 

Scotland should be investing in sustainable, renewable energy, 
instead of a process synonymous with Three Mile Island and 
Chernobyl disasters. 

This issue goes to the heart of the two major themes which will 
dominate Scottish politics in the run up to the 2003 elections: 
whether the current Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition has the 
political will to use the current powers of the Scottish 
parliament without first asking for permission from London, and 
secondly whether the parliament itself has sufficient powers to 
deliver the changes so many Scots want to see. 

Nuclear energy is a clear example of why the parliament needs to 
secure the normal powers enjoyed by all independent countries. 

Under the present Scotland Act, electricity generation and 
nuclear energy are reserved to Westminster. Curiously, however, 
the Scottish executive itself has set targets for the use of 
renewable energy. But its plan for achieving those targets 
appears to be to cross its fingers and hope for the best. 

When I first asked the First Minister if it was right that 
Westminster decides unilaterally whether or not to expand nuclear 
power in Scotland, Mr McLeish told me the Scottish executive 
would be "intimately involved" in the process. 

However, over the summer the SNP revealed that the executive was 
not even represented on the review group which will decide 
whether or not to build new reactors. How can the executive be 
"intimately involved" in a group of which it is not even a 
member? 

Subsequently Mr McLeish wrote to me to say the Scottish executive 
did, in fact, have some powers over this issue. He said: "Any 
application for a new power station in Scotland, whether nuclear 
or not, must be made to Scottish ministers. They have the power 
to call a public inquiry into the application if that is 
appropriate, and they have the power to grant consent or 
otherwise." 

Although Mr McLeish did not say so explicitly, this power appears 
to come from Part 1 of the Electricity Act 1989 - which is still 
devolved. Welcome to the new First Minister of Scotland - "Henry 
the Planner". 

Following this letter, I again raised the issue with Mr McLeish, 
inviting him to stop the Westminster plan to build more reactors 
in Scotland dead in its tracks by using the Electricity Act to 
block any such proposal. He failed to do so. 

The situation is now urgent. A decision is expected within weeks 
and the Scottish parliament has been excluded from the process. 

Independence means, quite simply, that Scotland's energy 
policy would be decided in Scotland. At present, we have a 
parliament which does not have the power to determine the best 
way of meeting Scotland's energy needs and an executive which 
hasn't the will to use even its limited powers to block a 
dangerous and unwelcome proposal. 
*****************************************************************
 7  30 years on and no end to the great debate

The Scotsman Online - 

Jason Beattie Political Correspondent 

IN THE early 1970s a group of protesters gathered outside a 
windswept building site in Torness to chant "Nuclear Power, No 
Thanks" and "Benn the Menace." 

The long-haired and dufflecoated gathering had flocked to East 
Lothian to decry the building of Britain’s latest nuclear reactor, 
an initiative introduced with unashamed alacrity by the then Labour 
Industry Minister Tony Benn. 

Born from the white heat of technology, nuclear power was every 
government’s favourite form of energy. So enamoured were politicians 
with this safe, clean and efficient form of generators that in 1980 
Margaret Thatcher vowed to build a new nuclear power station every 
year until 2000. 

Then came Chernobyl. 

Countries which had raced to become the most nuclear-dependent 
backtracked with equal speed as they discovered the energy of the 
future was dangerous, dirty - and uneconomic. Just before Christmas 
1995 British Energy, the company responsible for running Britain’s 
eight remaining nuclear power stations, announced the completion of 
Sizewell B in Suffolk would be the last plant to be constructed. 

Building new stations was simply not commercially viable, said 
Robert Hawley, the then chief executive. 

As if to confirm the belated victory for the throng who had gathered 
outside Torness, Labour’s 1997 General Election manifesto said there 
was no case for new reactors. 

But before the "Nuclear Power, No Thanks" smiley badges could be 
sold as collectors items the green lobby was beset by an unforeseen 
development: Kyoto. 

Supposedly, the Climate Change agreement hatched at the Japanese 
city and ratified in Bonn this year was the answer to the 
environmentalists’ prayers. Under the terms of the treaty the Labour 
government had agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 23 per cent 
below 1990 levels by 2010 while increasing the amount of power from 
renewable sources - wind, air and solar, etc - by ten per cent 
within the same period. 

But what looked good on paper was horribly messy in practice. At the 
moment, Britain relies for around 75 per cent of its power from gas 
and coal fired stations, 23 per cent from nuclear and just three per 
cent from renewables, including hydro. (The statistics vary in 
Scotland where 40 per cent comes from nuclear, 48 per cent from gas 
and coal and around 12 per cent from renewables). 

Under an obligation to end dramatically its reliance on fossil 
fuels, the main source of CO2s, the government was faced with a 
quandary. It could continue to rely on gas-fired stations, the 
cheapest option, but this would entail being dependent for gas from 
unreliable overseas markets; it could try to increase the amount of 
renewables; or it could, as now seems possible, look once again at 
the nuclear solution. 

With the clock ticking Downing Street charged its Performance and 
Innovation Unit to examine the options. Its conclusions laid the 
ground for the announcement this summer of an Energy Review chaired 
by Brian Wilson, the Energy Minister. In effect the government fired 
the starting gun for a ferocious round of lobbying between the 
environmentalists and the nuclear power industry as to who will be 
charged with filling Britain’s looming "energy gap" once coal-fired 
stations are phased out. The renewables initially took comfort from 
a green-tinged speech by Tony Blair in March when he said he wanted 
Britain "to be a leading player in this coming green industrial 
revolution. 

"We have many strengths to draw on. Some of the best marine 
renewable resources in the world - offshore wind, wave energy and 
tidal power. A strong science base, supporting world-class research 
in biomass generators, microtechnologies such as small wind and gas 
turbines... fuel cells and other technologies for the storage of 
energy," he added. 

Since then the nuclear industry has been making all the running. 
Labour’s 2001 manifesto was much more ambivalent about the use of 
nuclear power and, in a significant move Mr Wilson, a known convert 
to the nuclear cause, replaced the nuclear-sceptic Peter Hain at the 
Department of Trade and Industry. 

"We have noticed a shift in tone in the government" said Kevin 
Dunion of Friends of the Earth Scotland. "I think we are being 
softened up for the possibility of an announcement." 

There is no doubt, noises have been emanating from British Energy 
extolling the values of nuclear power and expressing its interest in 
a new building programme, starting perhaps with a new reactor on its 
site in Hunterston, Ayrshire. 

Opponents claim British Energy is simply trying to justify its 
existence in the throes of its decline. They point out that it would 
be impossible for the company to build a new reactor (current prices 
£5billion upwards) without significant subsidies from the 
government. 

Sources close to the nuclear industry acknowledge this but claim 
they are no different from any other power generator. 

"Any new power station of any kind is probably not sustainable in 
economic terms, not just nuclear but coal or gas as well," said the 
insider. 

"Unless there is a sympathetic market and right political framework 
nobody is going to contemplate building a huge scale nuclear power 
station, but that cannot carry on forever." 

The power industry is almost unique in the time scales under which 
it operates. The decisions made today will affect Britain’s 
electricity supply in 2050 - long after the death of most of the 
Labour frontbench. However, the nuclear industry claims there is 
very little time in which to make these crucial decisions. 

Power stations take about ten years to come on stream and last for 
around 40 to 50 years. With the oldest of British Energy’s reactors 
due to expire in ten years, an agreement must be signed imminently 
for there to be a sufficient number of reactors to generate the 20 
per cent of nuclear energy upon which the country relies. 

The nuclear industry denies gas or renewables offer reasonable 
alternatives. "Gas is cheaper at the moment but prices are running 
steeply and Britain would be reliant on overseas producers from 
unstable countries," said an advocate for the nuclear industry. 

And renewables? "It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at the 
renewables, they will remain uneconomic," he said. 

Nuclear power is by far the most effective way of ensuring Britain 
meetings its Kyoto obligations, the industry argues. 

Unsurprisingly, this propaganda does not wash with Friends of the 
Earth which claims Britain is lagging behind other European 
countries in its ambition to source 10 per cent of its power from 
renewables by 2010. By contrast, the target for France is 21 per 
cent, Sweden’s is 60 per cent and Austria 78 per cent. 

They also point out with glee that the Bonn climate change agreement 
specifically prevents countries from using nuclear power as a means 
of closing its energy shortfall. 

"Scotland is world leader in wave energy and the process from here 
to full scale development is a very short one," says Lorraine Mann, 
a leading anti-nuclear protester. 

If the Government were to invest in wave, wind and solar power its 
problems would be solved, she argues. 

Others beg to differ. 

*****************************************************************
 8  Holyrood's nuclear relations with London

The Scotsman Online - 

Fraser Nelson 

ANYONE looking to create political mischief in Scotland need look 
no further than nuclear power stations. The struggle over their 
future has all the ingredients for a poisonous political cocktail 
- one the nationalists are now trying to serve to Henry McLeish. 

It represents what the SNP loves best: an area where the Scottish 
parliament’s powers run out. Last week’s fracas was 
not just about nuclear power, but Holyrood’s relationship 
with London. 

The debate has survived what should have been a knock-out blow 
from the executive: that it has the power to veto any new 
station. Instead, the First Minister has been left explaining why 
the future of Britain’s, and Scotland’s, nuclear 
energy policy will be decided by a Cabinet Office review 
committee with no-one from the executive. 


The battle is being fought against a strong anti-nuclear 
consensus in Scotland. A generation of politicians was brought up 
protesting against Trident and the plants at Dounreay, 
Chapelcross, Torness and Hunterston. 

When anti-Trident protesters disrupted First Minister’s 
question time this year, several MSPs were rebuked for clapping 
the demonstrators. 

It is this sentiment that John Swinney hopes to reawaken and 
unleash against the First Minister, while proving the parliament 
is incapable of defending Scotland’s interests. 

Mr McLeish says he sent several envoys to the energy review 
committee and will soon submit a document laying out 
Scotland’s position. The executive had the chance to deploy 
one of his ministers to the committee - but agreed George 
Foulkes, the Scotland Office minister, should represent Scottish 
opinion. 

The fracas has also touched a delicate nerve in the Scotland 
Office. Why, Mr Foulkes argues, should the executive be seen to 
hold the monopoly on Scottish political opinion? 

Other Scottish MPs are irritated by the way UK policy is seen as 
English, simply because it comes from Whitehall. Many would like 
to see Mr McLeish make that point more forcefully . 

Meanwhile, Brian Wilson is perplexed to see himself portrayed as 
a villain plotting to shower remote Highland villages with nukes. 
His brief is not to decide which power stations go where, but lay 
out in general terms whether Britain needs more nuclear power. 
His involvement is welcomed by the SNP, as there is no love lost 
between him and the First Minister - who three months ago was 
caught on tape calling Mr Wilson "a liability". 

Mr Wilson is, however, sympathetic to the nuclear industry and 
has admitted he is " in favour of a Hunterston C" being built in 
his constituency. The forces of the Labour party are behind him. 
The party which was once in favour of unilateral disarmament 
dropped anti-nuclear argot at the last election. 

Mr Foulkes, a former protester against nuclear waste, has also 
been swayed by the Californian energy crisis and by learning that 
the soon-to-close Torness generates 25 per cent of 
Scotland’s electricity. 

With two such powerful politicians sympathetic to building 
nuclear reactors, Mr Swinney may well win friends in 
Scotland’s anti-nuclear lobby. No company can build a 
nuclear power station from scratch. It needs substantial subsidy, 
which would be provided by the DTI. This means Whitehall will 
effectively decide where Britain’s new stations are built. 

Mr Wilson will lobby for Hunterston - but if it wins, the DTI and 
the nuclear company must run the gauntlet of MSPs against the 
plans. 


With several other nuclear sites in England to choose from, this 
will create a strong disincentive to locate in Scotland. If 
enough threatening noises come from Holyrood, the DTI and the 
nuclear power companies may decide it is a risk they do not want 
to take. 

*****************************************************************
 9  Radioactive waste disposal site to be picked

KYODO NEWS 
                         
TOKYO, Sept. 8, Kyodo - The science ministry has begun selecting 
a final disposal site for radioactive waste discharged from 
universities and hospitals, ministry sources said Saturday. 

The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry 
plans to select a site within three years and begin burying such 
waste in 2010, according to the sources. 

Currently there are nine temporary storage sites nationwide which 
will overflow if left unattended with the increase in 
radioisotope-related waste from hospitals and universities, the 
sources said. 

The ministry plans to cut the list of possible sites by seeking 
the application to host the final disposal site by local 
governments. Distance from active geological faults would be a 
condition. The process is likely to be difficult due to strong 
local opposition. 

It will become the second final disposal site for radioactive 
waste in Japan, following one for low-level radioactive wastes 
from nuclear power stations which is located in the village of 
Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan. 

The amount to be buried at the new site is likely to be around 
650,000 drum cans over 50 years, the sources said. 

According to the Radioactive Waste Management and Nuclear 
Facility Decommissioning Technology Center, it plans to reduce 
the amount of radioactive waste to be buried by taking extremely 
low-level radioactive waste to general waste disposal sites. 

The final disposal site requires space of 1 square kilometer. 
Once burying begins, its entrance will be restricted for 300 
years until the level of radioactivity is reduced. 

According to the center, two types of methods to bury the waste 
will be used depending on radioactivity levels. In one, waste 
will be disposed as is, and in the other, it will be solidified 
with concrete. 

It will cost several tens of billions of yen before burying 
begins and at least 100 billion yen in total, including 
management costs, the center said. 

The waste to be buried includes radioisotopes as well as waste 
from research furnaces, gloves and other implements contaminated 
with radioactivity. 

Roughly 390,000 drum cans of such waste are currently stored in 
areas including Iwate, Ibaraki, Chiba and Kyoto prefectures, but 
a final disposal site has yet to be chosen. 

      2001 Kyodo News (c) Established 1945.
*****************************************************************
 10  - The European Convention does not fit here  

      Gregory Pasko, an investigative journalist who worked for 
the Pacific Fleet's newspaper, was arrested on 20 November 1997 
by the FSB and charged with high treason for his writing about 
the nuclear safety issues in the Russian Pacific Fleet. 

Pasko prosecutor:

- The European Convention does not fit here (Vladivostok, Far 
East:) The Pasko case is not only a case that concerns the 
destiny of Grigory Pasko. It is also a case that regards whether 
the international treaties ratified by Russia shall apply in the 
Russian Far East or not.

Jon Gauslaa, 2001-09-08 05:07

On September 6, the Pacific Fleet Court touched upon the question 
whether Japanese NHK journalist Takao Dzun would show up in Court 
or not, and on how it would deal with the written records of 
FSB’s interrogation of him if he does not appear. 

No show from Takao Dzun?

Dzun was only interrogated by the FSB once, just after 
Pasko’s arrest in November 1997. Although he did not say 
anything that could justify launching espionage charges against 
Pasko, the charges are to a considerable degree based on what 
Dzun apparently said at the interrogation. Since several of the 
other witnesses that have been interrogated by the Pacific Fleet 
Court these days say that the FSB has twisted their previous 
testimonies, it would have been important for Pasko’s 
defense to cross-examine the Japanese. The Court has summoned 
him, but since he currently stays in Japan it would be a surprise 
if he shows up. 

When the question was brought up in Court, Pasko’s defender 
Ivan Pavlov said that if Dzun does not show up, it would violate 
the European Convention on Human Rights to read the records of 
his police interrogation in Court and use these as evidence. 
Pavlov referred to Article 6 (3) d of the Convention and the 
jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. The European 
Court has in several cases, e.g. the Unterpertinger v. Austria 
case from 1986, ruled that it is a violation of the Convention to 
base convictions on testimonies from witnesses that have not been 
cross-examined by the defense. 

- Vladivostok is a part of the Federation

Pavlov’s reasoning made prosecutor Aleksandr Kondakov break 
out: - The European Convention does not fit here. As most of his 
other ‘evidence’ seems to fall to pieces and Dzun's 
testimony might be the prosecution's last straw, his position may 
be understandable. It is however a fact that Russia ratified the 
European Convention on Human Rights on May 5, 1998. Moreover, 
Article 15 (4) of the Russian Constitution states that if 
internal Russian legislation collides with a rule of 
international treaties ratified by the Russian Federation, the 
rule of the treaty shall apply. 

- Although Vladivostok is a remote place, it is still a part of 
the Federation, said Ivan Pavlov. All other Russian legal acts 
apply here, and so should our Constitution and the European 
Convention. I hope that the Court will acknowledge this, even if 
the prosecutor seems not to. 

Journalist Grigory Pasko was arrested by the Russian Security 
Police on November 21, 1997 and accused with espionage for the 
Japanese TV-company NHK. He was acquitted by the Pacific Fleet 
Court on July 20, 1999, but was in stead convicted for 'abuse of 
official authority' - a crime that he was not accused with. The 
Military Supreme Court cancelled the verdict on November 21, 
2000, and sent the case to a re-trial at the Pacific Fleet Court. 
The re-trial started on July 11, 2001.

      Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge 
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: 
webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Menu 
system java script courtesy of Peter Belesis at the Dynamic HTML 
lab. 
*****************************************************************
 11  Executive backs new N-power stations

Sunday Herald home

Reactors to be fuelled with uranium and deadly plutonium as 
environmental groups fear 'extreme hazards' for Scottish people 
By Rob Edwards Environmental Editor

THE Scottish Executive has signalled its willingness to accept 
new nuclear reactors proposed by the Blair government in London 
and that the new reactors will be fuelled with deadly plutonium, 
as well as uranium.

The argument over whether Scotland needs any new nuclear power 
stations has been steadily escalating ever since the Sunday 
Herald first disclosed that the idea was on the agenda last 
November. Passions rose to a crescendo last week, after a series 
of leaks suggested that the UK government's energy review, 
chaired by its energy minister Brian Wilson, was about to come 
out in favour of nuclear power.

That could lead to one or two new reactors being proposed to 
replace those due to shut down over the next 20 years at Torness 
in East Lothian, Hunterston in Ayrshire and Chapelcross in 
Dumfries and Galloway. But to date the Scottish Executive, 
despite mounting pressure from the Scottish National Party (SNP), 
had stoutly refused to state its position.

Now, however, a statement from the deputy minister for 
environment and rural development, Rhona Brankin, makes it clear 
that the executive is keen to keep the door wide open for new 
nuclear stations in order to combat climate change.

'Scotland is much more dependent on nuclear power than the UK as 
a whole,' she said in a letter to environmental groups.

'The retiral of Hunterston B and Torness will adversely affect 
our objective to reduce carbon emissions, unless a workable low 
carbon alternative is found. Renewable energy will, of course, 
have a part to play but it is critical that the energy review 
considers the full range of options.'

Although not conclusive, this is the clearest statement of the 
exec-utive's position on nuclear power. 'You can only read this 
to mean that new nuclear power is firmly on the table,' according 
to the Friends of the Earth Scotland's head of research, Dr 
Richard Dixon.

'It is the clearest indication so far from the executive that 
nuclear power may be making a comeback.' Dixon also accused 
Brankin of being unduly pessimistic about the prospects for 
renewable energy. 'We are going to leave behind the fossil fuels 
which are causing climate change,' he said, 'but we must make 
sure we replace them with clean, renewable energy from the sun, 
wind, waves and energy crops .'

However, a spokeswoman for the executive denied last week that 
Brankin's remarks represented a 'green light' for new nuclear 
stations. 'The purpose of the energy review is to examine the 
options and to make recommendations,' she said. 'It will be some 
time before decisions are made by government.'

The Sunday Herald was also refused an interview with Brankin, who 
was an anti-nuclear activist in the 1980s, to discuss the issue. 
The executive's formal response to the energy review is due to be 
published in the next few days.

But the executive's explanation was brusquely rejected by the 
SNP's shadow environment minister, Bruce Crawford. 'They are 
preparing the ground for acting in favour of nuclear power when 
Westminster says so ,' he said.

'Instead of prevaricating, the executive could kill off new 
nuclear power stations now. If they do not have the courage to do 
that, they should bring the matter to the whole parliament where 
I am certain there would be a solid majority against any new 
stations.'

The SNP said the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) 
has said it would be 'imprudent to encourage further development 
of new nuclear generation facilities' until there is a clear 
policy on the disposal of nuclear waste. Senior SEPA officials, 
however, are known to favour nuclear power as a way of combating 
climate change. If new reactors are built in Scotland, they will 
end up being fuelled by plutonium, one of the most dangerous 
substances known. The nuclear industry, which is lobbying hard to 
build stations, wants to introduce designs capable of burning 
mixed oxide fuel known as MOX, which contains plutonium, as well 
as uranium.

British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) is expected to get the go-ahead soon 
from the government to open its new MOX fuel fabrication plant at 
Sellafield in Cumbria, which has been delayed by problems for 
five years. Although the company already has orders from abroad, 
it wants to market MOX in the UK too. It has backed a proposal 
put forward by Bill Wilkinson, president of the British Nuclear 
Industry Forum, to build two new plutonium-burning reactors in 
Britain.

Fuelling a new reactor in Scotland would take an initial five 
tonnes of plutonium, which would have to be transported up from 
Sellafield. As well as being intensely toxic if inhaled, just 
five kilograms of the heavy metal is enough to make an atomic 
bomb similar to that which devastated the Japanese city of 
Nagasaki in 1945.

'Any plan to build a new nuclear power station in Scotland will 
be greeted by fierce opposition,' said Shaun Burnie, a Scottish 
anti- nuclear campaigner from Greenpeace International. 'The 
additional and shocking proposal to fuel it with plutonium means 
that Scottish people will have to face extreme hazards.'

 ©2001 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 12  Coal and Nuclear Power Are Answer to Future U.S. Energy Needs
 
     Sunday, September 9, 2001   

BY GARY SANDQUIST

     It is fashionable among some energy and environmental groups 
to declare that natural gas is the bridge to a solar- and 
wind-energy future. 

    Clean-burning natural gas has become the fuel of choice for 
generating electricity in the United States, and now fuels a 
quarter of new electrical plants across the country. But demand 
for this premium fossil fuel is rising so rapidly that we risk 
exhausting our available supply. 

    Fifteen percent of the nation's electricity is produced at 
gas-fired power plants, up from less than 10 percent just a few 
years ago. Until recently, there was little concern about the 
cost and availability of natural gas. But demand for gas is 
outrunning supplies, and there is no surplus capacity in North 
America. Already 16 percent of the U.S. natural gas supply comes 
from Canada and Mexico. 

    The problem originated with a collapse of oil and gas prices 
two years ago that discouraged drilling. The supply cutback, 
aggravated by a shortage of pipeline capacity, is largely 
responsible for the price spiral. Last year, overall consumption 
of natural gas in businesses, industries and households rose 4 
percent over the previous year, but domestic gas production 
increased only 0.2 percent. Only now do gas companies have the 
financial backing they need to expand production. But even with 
accelerated drilling, it will be many years before new gas 
reaches the market. 

    Another factor is that most U.S. natural gas fields are 
mature, shrinking production areas. All major fields in the 
United States are already online, and much of what remains is 
off-limits for environmental reasons. This means more gas must 
imported if it is available. Thus the United States will become 
more dependent upon foreign suppliers for natural gas as we are 
now for oil. 

    That leaves coal and nuclear power, the sources for over 
three-quarters of the nation's electricity. But we haven't built 
a "base-load" coal or nuclear plant in the past decade. The last 
large coal plant went into service in the early 1990s. The last 
order for a nuclear plant was 1978. 

    In the aftermath of the 1970s energy crisis, we developed a 
number of different energy options -- oil, coal, natural gas, 
nuclear power, hydroelectric power and renewables. New emphasis 
was also placed on conservation and improvements in energy 
efficiency. The need for more electricity capacity must not 
destroy this mix and place too much reliance on natural gas. 
Every option has imperfections, but we must have fuel options to 
control prices and avoid excessive dependence on foreign 
suppliers. 

    The basic attractions of coal, the nation's No. 1 power-plant 
fuel, are abundance and low cost. The United States possesses 
more than 240 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, or about 
one-quarter of the world's total. We have a greater share of the 
world's coal than Saudi Arabia does of the world's oil. No longer 
the dirty fuel of the past, coal is being burned much cleaner due 
in part to improved pollution-control technologies. The 
Environmental Protection Agency says that coal-fired plants are 
33 percent less polluting than in 1970, even as coal-based 
electricity has nearly tripled. 

    In the most dramatic development to date in clean-coal 
technology, Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a 
technique to gasify coal into hydrogen for use in fuel cells that 
generate electricity without any emissions. Carbon dioxide is 
captured and solidified into an inert mineral for disposal 
underground. The Zero Emission Coal Alliance, a coalition of U.S. 
and Canadian coal companies and utilities, says this gasification 
process would cost about a cent more per kilowatt-hour than power 
produced by conventional coal-fired plants. The alliance plans to 
build a pilot plant to demonstrate the process within five years. 

    Those who dismiss nuclear power, now safe and reliable, fail 
to recognize that, for the first time in more than a decade, 
production costs at U.S. nuclear plants are lower than production 
costs at coal plants. According to McGraw-Hill's Utility Data 
institute, the average production cost in 1999 at nuclear plants 
was 1.83 cents per kilowatt-hour, lower than coal at 2.07 cents, 
and far lower than oil-fired plants at 3.18 cents and natural gas 
plants at 3.52 cents. Rising oil and gas prices during the past 
year have greatly increased nuclear power's economic advantage. 

    Significantly, the lowest-cost nuclear plants, which provide 
electricity for as little as 1 cent per kilowatt-hour, generally 
boast the highest levels of safety, performance and reliability. 
Also nuclear power produces electricity without any air pollution 
or greenhouse-gas emissions. Even knowledgeable critics of 
nuclear power realize that new and advanced nuclear plants using 
standardized designs should be part of the answer to the nation's 
energy needs. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already 
certified three such designs for these advanced nuclear plants. 

    Electricity consumption is increasing almost 3 percent a 
year, spurred by the growing use of computers, 
telecommunications, and other high-tech equipment. It's now 
estimated that the power used by microprocessors and integrated 
circuits housed in the millions of different systems and settings 
that constitute the information age's tools now amounts to almost 
13 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption, more than the 
steel, pulp and paper, and chemical industries combined. 

    Today there are about 600,000 megawatts of electricity 
produced in the United States. At 3 percent annual growth, almost 
500,000 megawatts, or 500 power plants that produce 1 GW, will 
need to be added by 2020. This requires the construction of a 1 
GW plant every two weeks for the next two decades. California has 
not built a single GW plant in several decades. 

    It may be necessary to use natural gas to meet peak demands 
for power, but we must remove obstacles to the further use of 
coal and nuclear power if we are to have reliable and affordable 
electricity in the years ahead. The time to begin planning and 
construction of both coal and nuclear power plants is now 
combined with improvements in energy efficiency and renewables. 
They must be part of the answer to the need for a balanced and 
sustainable mix of electrical energy sources. _________ 

    Gary Sandquist is a professor of mechanical engineering at 
the University of Utah. 
    
  © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on 
*****************************************************************
 13  EU report calls for close look at Czech nuke plant

FRANCE: September 7, 2001

STRASBOURG - The European Parliament this week called for a 
careful examination of the environmental impact from a 
controversial Czech nuclear plant, potentially paving the way for 
its closure. 

The Temelin plant has been at the centre of a heated debate 
between the Czech Republic and Austria, which opposes nuclear 
power and views the plant - located near its border - as an 
environmental threat.

The Czech Republic is one of the candidate countries keen to join 
the 15-nation European Union. The European Parliament adopted a 
broad report assessing progress made by the Czechs in all fields 
to achieve its candidacy, including a call for a new analysis of 
risks posed by the nuclear plant.

The report suggests that the new analysis, to be conducted by the 
EU, consider closing the plant. The shutdown should be considered 
because of concerns about the safety of its structure and a 
worrying lack of data on its environmental impact.

Green party members who have successfully fought for the 
inclusion of the Temelin issue in the country report, welcomed 
the Parliament's vote.

"Temelin is an EU problem. This is an offer to the Czechs to find 
a EU solution," Austrian parliamentarian Mercedes Echerer told 
Reuters. "One way of doing it could be shutting it down."

The Parliament's vote means that the Czech Republic will have to 
respond to concerns about the safety of the plant when it starts 
incorporating the EU legislation for energy and environment.

The report also calls for an international forum to evaluate the 
price-tag for closing the plant, suggesting it may be possible to 
hold a donors' conference to help the Czech Republic meet the 
costs. The Greens said they hoped the Temelin debate would spark 
a broader discussion on the state of nuclear plants in the 
accession countries, most of which are former Soviet satellites.

Many of the plants were built during the years of communism and 
do not meet strict EU safety standards. Closing them would be 
costly to the 12 countries which are candidates to become EU 
members. 

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
*****************************************************************
 14  A cacophony of divergent rationales and angst 

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: OPINION: COLUMN: Thomas Mitchell
 
Sunday, September 09, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
COLUMN: Thomas Mitchell
 
The lady in the front row turned to me and asked a legitimate 
question: Why do you photograph the people with signs? They are 
not representative of the audience, she suggested, and would 
never be able to seriously discuss the issues. 

At that moment, Review-Journal photographer K.M. Cannon was 
crouching to get a low angle for a shot down the central aisle of 
people carrying crude signs reading, "What does an active volcano 
do??? It erupts!!!" and, "Why screw the Indians again?" 

Outside in the parking lot, there had been a guerrilla theater of 
placards and tie-dye. A guy in black robes and a powdered wig 
accompanied a fellow in a kangaroo suit. There was the obligatory 
bullhorn blaring with rhyming protest chants. 

The Lincoln-Douglas debates, it wasn't. 

It was an irresistible fear colliding with an immoveable 
obliviousness. It was sound bites delivered over the din of angry 
hecklers. 

How does a newspaper cover events like Wednesday night's 
Department of Energy public hearings on whether -- warning: 
standard boilerplate copy to follow -- 77,000 tons of high-level 
nuclear waste can be safely buried for 10,000 years in Yucca 
Mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas? 

Beside me in the second row, typing away on his antique laptop 
computer, was Review-Journal reporter Keith Rogers, who has 
covered this issue for one of the two decades the DOE has been 
studying it. 

I did not envy him. His job this night was to be the surrogate 
for the million-plus residents of Southern Nevada who were not 
among the couple hundred on hand, whose numbers dwindled rapidly 
as the evening progressed. 

How does one objectively report on the discussion of the deadly 
serious topic of nuclear waste transportation and disposal during 
such a ruction? 

Most of the people there would not know a roentgen from a radish 
or Richter from Rickenbacker, but here they were. Set to debate 
the science, the politics, the motivation and probability theory 
for a proposition never before encountered in the 5,000-year 
recorded history of mankind. 

How, even in this day of the short attention-span, was each 
speaker during his allotted five minutes to conclusively 
challenge or support the findings of a 300-page document most had 
never read? And how was reporter Rogers ever going to distill 
this cacophony of divergent rationales and angst into a cogent 
news story on deadline? 

Basically, he grabbed a few representative quotes from various 
speakers and served up a narrative that captured the mood as well 
as the rhetoric. He served his function as a combination 
play-by-play guy and color commentator. 

In the story advancing the meeting, the fact that members of our 
Washington delegation berated Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham 
for not appearing at the hearing was juxtaposed with the fact 
that they would not be there either, but speaking via satellite. 
A bit of irony. 

I couldn't help but note another irony that speaks volumes about 
the essence of debate and decision-making in our representative 
democracy. 

On Wednesday night people argued against a nuke dump in their 
backyards, saying it would interrupt traffic, hurt tourism and 
lower property values. Among those taking the podium to protest 
the Yucca Mountain repository were County Commissioners Myrna 
Williams and Dario Herrera. 

Williams protested that Nevada was being sacrificed for the 
expedient of politics and that the EPA was asking the state to 
tolerate more radiation than 49 other states. 

Herrera complained that the EPA had dismissed the county's 
protestations that studies ignored increasing traffic congestion 
and booming residential development in outlying areas. He said 
the county is dedicating $1 million to legally challenge the DOE 
on anything not based on science. 

A few hours earlier the County Commission -- faced with dozens of 
residents complaining about the potential for increased traffic, 
noise, mischief and graffiti, as well as lower property values -- 
voted unanimously to approve zoning for a new high school at 
Buffalo Drive and Twain Avenue. 

OK, maybe that's like comparing the Blitzkrieg to a 
purse-snatching, but you get the drift. 

Sometimes, the guy in the kangaroo suit is as rational as the one 
in the three-piece suit. 


Thomas Mitchell, editor of the Review-Journal, writes a column on 
the newspaper's functions and role in the community. He may be 
reached at 383-0261 or via e-mail at Thomas_Mitchell@lvrj.com.
 
webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 
*****************************************************************
 15  Stacked Yucca hearing shows game already over and Nevada lost 

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: NEWS: COLUMN: John L. Smith
 
Sunday, September 09, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
COLUMN: John L. Smith
 
I spent a portion of my childhood being dragged from one 
blue-collar political function to the next. 

By age 10, I'd endured enough boring speeches, eaten enough bad 
barbecue and witnessed enough shouting matches -- punctuated by 
the occasional fistfight -- to last a lifetime. In the process, I 
developed a kind of caucus intolerance, which has symptoms akin 
to lactose intolerance. 

As I stepped Wednesday into the muggy room that was the site of a 
political farce that operated under the title of Department of 
Energy hearing on its Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, I 
was transported back in time. 

But this wasn't bare-knuckle democracy in action. This was the 
window dressing on a world-class fix that was as tilted as any 
small-town caucus. 

If the subject weren't so serious, it would have been comical. 
The hearing took place at the DOE offices at 232 Energy Way -- 
not exactly a level playing field -- in an overwhelmed meeting 
room that was perhaps 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the 
building. 

Rather than schedule several meetings in Southern Nevada, the 
state's population center, the DOE chose to hold one in Las Vegas 
at its own headquarters and the rest in the job-hungry 
communities of Pahrump and Amargosa Valley, two spots on the map 
that might benefit economically from Yucca Mountain. 

"This is going to be some event," exasperated moderator Barry 
Lawson said. But Lawson was wrong. It was tense and lasted more 
than eight hours, but it was a nonevent that had no chance of 
persuading the DOE to padlock the gate to Yucca Mountain. 

Eighty percent of Nevadans oppose this project, but 100 percent 
of the DOE isn't listening. The voices of opposition were like 
NFL fans arguing about last year's Super Bowl. All their shouting 
couldn't change the score. 

Those favoring the repository were far more organized than their 
frustrated opposition, which was reduced to heckling like 
barflies. Their outbursts were rude, but their cynicism was 
justified. They knew a dog-and-pony show when they smelled it. 

The DOE and its Yucca Project allies salted the room with 
partisans, who filled so many chairs that the moderator was 
compelled to ask them to leave unless they were scheduled to 
speak. One-fifth of those seated stood and exited. 

The speakers' list was balanced for the prime-time television 
broadcast. During the first three hours, Nevada's political 
contingent was offset by Yucca's advocates. 

Our congressional delegation pitched its tired line of threats 
and facts via satellite from Washington, and Gov. Kenny Guinn and 
Mayor Oscar Goodman unleashed enough rhetorical heat to fry a 
side of beef. 

Bitterness filled the room like smoke. Nevadans had been screwed, 
and now were being asked to describe the experience. 

When finally given the opportunity. 

While the politicians and pro-Yucca plants ranted early, and 
representatives of the Western Shoshone nation were the most 
credible speakers present, dozens of mere citizens were forced to 
wait until late in the evening before receiving their five 
minutes in the main room. 

A priceless moment came when Dario Herrera, who in a few short 
years has skyrocketed through the political ranks from lowly 
state legislator to County Commission chairman and now to an 
expected run for Congress, with a straight face assured all 
present he wasn't there to deliver a political speech. 

Did he know another kind? 

No wonder Herrera has a big future in politics. 

One of the most cogent remarks of the night was made by County 
Commissioner Myrna Williams, who mocked the DOE's scientific 
rhetoric by observing, "Did science demand that the hearings be 
held this way?" 

Science, no. 

Politics, yes. 

I'd like to think there's a chance Nevada's voice will prevail, 
that Sen. Harry Reid's lofty position will hamstring the project, 
or that transporting 77,000 tons of radioactive waste will become 
too controversial. But after more than three hours, I felt that 
same old queasy feeling. 

On the way out, I noticed the hosts of this unholy political 
event didn't even bother to hand out flat draft beer or charred 
spare ribs. 

John L. Smith's column appears Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and 
Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@lvrj.com or call him at 383-0295.
 
*****************************************************************
 16  Reid, Abraham fail to connect on hearings

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: NEWS: 

Saturday, September 08, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 

By KEITH ROGERS 
REVIEW-JOURNAL 

When it comes to high-level conversations between Cabinet members 
and senators in Washington, D.C., communicating by telephone 
doesn't always work when the subject is nuclear waste and the 
parties are Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Sen. Harry Reid, 
D-Nev. 

That was the case Friday when Reid waited until day's end only to 
be stood up by Abraham, who had told him the day before at a 
joint session of Congress that, in Reid's words, "he needed to 
talk to me." The Energy secretary said he would call Reid on 
Friday. 

"He didn't call," Reid said in a telephone interview. "I didn't 
say I want to talk to him. He said he wanted to talk to me. 

"We sent him a letter saying we want a fourth hearing. We need a 
hearing in Las Vegas, where 70 percent of the people live in the 
state of Nevada," Reid said, reiterating his disappointment with 
Wednesday night's nine-hour marathon hearing at the Department of 
Energy's facility in North Las Vegas. 

Many citizens weren't able to comment until after midnight and 
Reid complained that some who came to express their views had to 
leave before their chance to speak. 

Late Friday, Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said at least 
the scheduling coordinators for Abraham and Reid had conversed 
via telephone Friday "and we have asked for time on Tuesday and 
they are getting back to us." 

"They'll get together and discuss the issues when they can both 
coordinate their schedules," Davis said. 

Earlier Friday, Davis said Abraham's staff dialed Reid's office 
to no avail. "We called on Friday several times and they have yet 
to connect." 

Davis said Abraham had meetings most of the day on Friday 
including sessions with governors and the French ambassador. "As 
far as I know he's in Washington," Davis said. 

Reid's spokesman Nathan Naylor confirmed that a letter had been 
drafted asking Abraham to attend next week's Yucca Mountain 
hearings in Amargosa Valley on Wednesday and Pahrump on Thursday 
-- the last scheduled on plans to entomb spent nuclear fuel in 
the volcanic-rock ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

He said the letter suggests that the additional public 
involvement that Abraham had promised in a letter Wednesday to 
Reid should be in the form of a hearing in Las Vegas that 
possibly would extend through a weekend. 

As for the failed effort to link up the two, Naylor said, "I 
think this speaks more to the DOE staff, again just dropping the 
ball. 

"Senator Reid isn't bent out of shape about it. He (Abraham) has 
just given the Bush administration a black eye. His absence has 
been conspicuous, and he's dragging his feet," Naylor said. 

In a letter to President Bush on Thursday, Reid expressed his 
discontent with Abraham not making a commitment to attend Yucca 
Mountain Project hearings in Nevada. "The secretary's personal 
attendance is important to Nevadans and seems reasonable given 
the magnitude of the DOE's proposal and the intense opposition in 
our state," Reid wrote in his letter to Bush. 

Reid voted against Abraham becoming the nation's energy chief, 
citing Abraham's stance on nuclear waste. Abraham staunchly 
supported efforts to bring high-level nuclear waste to Nevada for 
disposal in the six years that he was a Republican senator from 
Michigan. 

Reid chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water, 
which approves funding for the Department of Energy.
 
webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 
*****************************************************************
 17  The many little ironies of the nuclear waste debate 

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: OPINION: COLUMN: Steve Sebelius
 
Sunday, September 09, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
On Wednesday, Nevadans from all walks of life came to the 
National Nuclear Security Administration building in North Las 
Vegas to tell the Energy Department they don't want the deadliest 
substance known to man to be stored in Nevada. And I couldn't 
agree more: The government should never again do biological 
weapons research here! 

Oh, and then there's that whole nuclear waste thing. 

The wrangling over the nuclear waste issue this week has been 
interwoven with irony as deep as the proposed nuclear dump at 
Yucca Mountain and disingenuousness as potent as a used plutonium 
fuel rod. A few examples: 

• No one in Nevada's congressional delegation is opposed to 
nuclear power itself. So long as they can find a safe place to 
store nuclear waste (that isn't at Yucca Mountain) nuclear power 
is keen. Hello! Nuclear power is what got us into this mess in 
the first place. 

• Although U.S. Sen. Harry Reid called for Energy Secretary 
Spencer Abraham personally to attend a trio of hearings in Nevada 
-- the first of which took place Wednesday in North Las Vegas -- 
Reid didn't attend, either. (Odd, however, that those hearings 
were scheduled after Congress went back into session.) Instead, 
Reid testified (along with the rest of Nevada's congressional 
delegation) via video conferencing. Hello! We're sure the boss, 
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., would have given Reid 
the day off, and no voter would ever penalize Reid or any other 
Nevada politician for missing votes in order to come home to 
fight the nuclear dump. 

• While U.S. Sen. John Ensign believes Abraham should attend the 
hearings, and even called the White House to stress the point, he 
balked at signing a letter written by Reid calling on President 
Bush to ask Abraham to go. Hello! It's clear Ensign has to stay 
on Bush's good side -- so as to persuade him not to approve 
sending nuclear waste to Nevada, like that's really going to 
happen -- but he promised to fight his own party and the 
president on the nuclear waste issue. Now's the time! 

• Even though Reid called for the Energy Department to video 
conference the hearings to other Nevada cities, and the 
department agreed, Gov. Kenny Guinn said he was unhappy because 
the department set up the equipment in state government 
buildings. Hello! You either want to give the public a chance to 
participate in the hearings or you don't. This idea that somehow 
Nevada is digging its own grave by using state buildings to hold 
the hearings is, in a word, stupid. 

• Mayor Oscar Goodman gave his usual performance on nuke waste, 
uttering his usual lines, but at least one of those who'd seen 
his act before -- i.e. me -- was secretly hoping and praying that 
he wouldn't pull out the mayoral badge and threaten to arrest 
nuke truck drivers. Alas, he did it. Hello! He may have won over 
the crowd, but he didn't do the cause much good. Later, when he 
said he hoped the Energy Department would get the idea that he 
wasn't crazy, just dangerous, he left out a very real third 
possibility: Circus sideshow! 

• Everyone involved, on both sides, treated the hearings as if 
they would produce this great gem of revelation: Nevadans oppose 
the nuclear dump. No really, they're against it. Seriously, 
hardly anyone in Nevada wants the dump here. No joke: The dump is 
unpopular in the Silver State. Hello! Is there someone, anyone, 
left in America who doesn't know this? The problem is not that 
they don't know, it's that they don't care. 

There were some good points made during the hearing. Guinn said 
you can't trust the Energy Department after it claimed all those 
cancer-causing, above-ground nuclear tests were safe. True. Reid 
and Gibbons said transportation accidents are very real 
possibilities. Also true. Ensign backed transmutation, which 
would radically reduce the amount of waste we're talking about. 
Very true. And Berkley said the government shouldn't hold 
hearings before the final environmental assessment is done, and 
questioned whether the dump could meet strict environmental 
standards. Completely true. 

It's just hard to hear those good points, sometimes, with all the 
noise in the background. 

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His 
column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 
or by e-mail at Steve_Sebelius@lvrj.com.
 
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2001
*****************************************************************
 18  IAEA Hosts International Conference on Nuclear Safety


Opening an International Conference on Topical Issues in Nuclear 
Safety, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei stressed the need 
for universal participation in the Agency's safety conventions 
and universal application of the Agency safety standards. In his 
welcoming remarks to over 230 participants from 53 IAEA Member 
States and five international organizations, he also invited 
Member States to make full use of the broad range of IAEA safety 
services available upon request.

  Dr. ElBaradei   

Noting that substantial progress has been made in enhancing the 
safety of nuclear power plants, he said the four-day conference 
will draw attention to other areas of nuclear safety, such as: 
the influence of external factors on safety; the safety of fuel 
cycle facilities and the safety of research reactors. Other 
sessions will focus on risk-informed decision-making and safety 
performance indicators.
 
In his remarks, the IAEA Director General cited the lack of 
adequate regulatory oversight for research reactors as being "an 
area of major safety weakness". For these facilities, degraded or 
abandoned equipment, inadequate fuel storage and lack of funding 
and political will to decide on the decommissioning are also 
causes for concern.
 
Mr. ElBaradei highlighted a new IAEA initiative to provide 
"Integrated Safety Evaluations" for Member States. This 
evaluation would offer Member States the ability to develop an 
overall Country Nuclear Safety Profile, with one track focusing 
on the national regulatory body, and a second focusing on safety 
of facilities, radiation sources, radiation protection, 
radioactive waste and transport. "This would allow the IAEA to 
establish priority areas for safety improvements," he said, "and 
at the same time enable donors to know where to focus bilateral 
assistance." 

He also commented that the growing decline in the number of young 
people studying nuclear engineering not only has implications for 
the future of nuclear power, but also has "major safety 
implications". Noting that a panel would address this issue 
during the conference, he said that countries should do more to 
encourage study in the field to "keep the nuclear option open." 

IAEA, 05 September 2001 
  
*****************************************************************
 19  Editorial: Nightmare is courtesy of the DOE
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
September 07, 2001 
 
Give the U.S. Department of Energy an important job -- like 
deciding where nuclear waste can be safely stored for the next 
10,000 years -- and the agency will find a way to botch it. Last 
week's public comment hearing in North Las Vegas on the Yucca 
Mountain Project was no exception, with Nevadans once again 
getting shafted by the agency responsible for determining whether 
77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste should be buried in a 
repository 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

 Holding a public meeting isn't exactly teaching a lesson in 
physics or performing some other mind-bending task. It's simple. 
A microphone is rounded up. A hall or auditorium is reserved that 
is large enough so plenty of speakers can be easily accommodated. 
The meeting is publicized well in advance so that everyone knows 
where to go, and then it's set up fairly so that enough time is 
allotted for all sides to speak. But on all counts the DOE failed 
this basic test, which doesn't inspire confidence in the 
department's suitability study of Yucca Mountain nor in its 
ability to build a repository -- if it ever gets approval to do 
so.

 The DOE's public comment hearing originally was supposed to be 
held at a local hotel-casino, but overcrowding concerns caused 
the Suncoast to bow out just days before the meeting scheduled 
for Wednesday. Rather than postponing the meeting for at least 
two weeks to ensure that the word got out about the new location, 
the DOE insisted on holding it on the same day it had been 
planned for. And instead of selecting a neutral location, the DOE 
decided to hold the public hearing at its barbed-wire ringed 
offices in North Las Vegas, which hardly lent a nice, friendly 
touch to the affair. Compounding the mistake, the DOE's public 
notice in the Federal Register included the wrong address for the 
hearing.

 The DOE also showed its inhospitality by waiting until 6 p.m. to 
start the public comment portion of the hearing, a meeting held 
during the work week. And in a slap in the face to the residents 
of Nevada, the DOE rigged it so that six of the first nine 
speakers supported the nuclear power lobby's position, which is 
that a repository should be built at Yucca Mountain come hell or 
high water. The second speaker, Gary Sandquist, wasn't even from 
Nevada, he was from Utah. Sandquist, a Utah professor, had been 
asked to attend the meeting by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the 
nuclear power industry's lobbying arm.

 It wasn't until 9:30 p.m. that the first nine speakers finished 
their testimony. The meeting wasn't supposed to last past 9 p.m. 
By 10 p.m. more than 100 people left the meeting after they 
understandably grew impatient. The meeting didn't conclude until 
after 2 a.m. for the bleary-eyed Nevadans who toughed it out. The 
DOE's crafty scheduling maneuver meant that many Nevadans were 
prevented from making their opinions known on this critical 
matter, one that could imperil Southern Nevada's future.

 This was a public hearing supposedly to get the views of 
Nevadans about the dangers of safely storing high-level nuclear 
waste, deadly garbage that would have to be shipped over crowded 
highways throughout the country into the heart of our city. 
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham -- a noticeable no-show at the 
hearing -- should be ashamed of how this meeting was conducted. 
Senate Assistant Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he is 
asking for additional meetings so that the public actually has a 
chance to be heard, a request that Abraham should honor.

 The DOE's public comment hearing is just one more blunder in a 
long line of failures, including a suitability study of Yucca 
Mountain that has had blinders on when it comes to ignoring 
evidence showing how disastrous it would be to bury nuclear waste 
in Nevada. If President Bush genuinely is concerned about the 
health and safety of this state's residents, he would pull the 
plug on a Yucca Mountain Project that has spun out of control.
 
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 20  Letter: DOE ignores opponents at Yucca hearing
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
September 07, 2001 

The U.S. Department of Energy did a poor job during Wednesday's 
public comment hearing on the Yucca Mountain Project, a meeting 
held inside the DOE's barbed-wire compound in North Las Vegas. 
The symbolism of forcing the meeting to be held there, while 
disregarding Gov. Kenny Guinn's suggestion to use Cashman Field, 
contributed to some raucous behavior.

 The vast majority of the crowd was opposed to Yucca Mountain, 
and some gave studied reasons for their opposition. Nevadans do 
not go to these meetings to vent. They go in the mistaken belief 
that the DOE will "consider" their commentary, but the DOE 
doesn't.

 Nevadans will not accept an inequitable, unfair and political 
DOE decision that isn't scientific and violates our state 
sovereignty and Nevadans' constitutional rights.

 We should ratchet up the fight and join with Stephen Cloobeck, 
who is leading Save Nevada, the grass-roots campaign in 
opposition to the dump, to remind Congress that the flawed 1987 
legislation, which singled out only Yucca Mountain for 
consideration, should be reversed.

 Our message to Congress and the president: Don't dump on us.

 FRANK PERNA
 
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 21  Duke irregularities investigated

NC Business Wire
 
[newsobserver.com, Raleigh, NC]                                         

PAUL NOWELL AP Business 

Writer CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Regulators in North Carolina and 
South Carolina have launched a joint investigation into charges 
of accounting irregularities at Duke Power Co. that might have 
cost ratepayers up to $100 million, authorities said Wednesday.

Gary Walsh, executive director of the South Carolina Public 
Service Commission, said the informant contact him in June. The 
North Carolina Utilities Commission began investigating in July.

"He provided me with documents that he felt like bolstered his 
case," Walsh said. "At that point, I then informed the North 
Carolina Utilities Commission. Once I reviewed the documents, it 
was very clear to me the entries they had made, they made on a 
system basis, so the same accounting irregularities would have 
occurred in North Carolina."

He described the informant as "a current employee ... not a 
disgruntled employee."

Walsh said he has reviewed about 3,500 documents that he got from 
Duke Power, with a primary focus on the utility's nuclear 
insurance. Duke annually pays premiums into a nuclear insurance 
pool, he said, and the company gets an annual refund.

In 1998, the premium was about $24 million, Walsh said. Rather 
than giving that money back to rate payers, they gave it to 
stockholders, he said, estimating the total amount through 2001 
at about $100 million.

"Clearly, Duke has flowed approximately $100 million to its 
stockholders that, in my view, should have gone to the benefit of 
the rate payer," he said.

Jo Anne Sanford, chairman of the North Carolina Utilities 
Commission, said only that Duke Power is cooperating with 
regulators.

Duke Power issued a statement that said its own internal 
investigation of the company's filings with the state commissions 
for 1998 found the issues under investigation "had no material 
effect on the company's reported earnings for 1998, nor did they 
affect electric rates."

The two state commissions will select an independent firm to 
conduct an audit of Duke Power, a subsidiary of Charlotte-based 
Duke Energy. The cost of the audit will be charged to Duke.

According to the North Carolina commission, Duke was notified 
about the investigation Aug. 3. The staffs of both state 
commissions, along with the North Carolina Public Staff, 
interviewed the informant, reviewed documents and met with Duke 
officials, Sanford's office said.

Duke Power conducted its own investigation and provided a report 
to the state commissions Aug. 28.

"One issue under discussion -- how to account for mutual 
insurance distributions -- is subject to different 
interpretations under industry accounting standards," the company 
said. "Duke Power believes it appropriately classified this item 
at the time. However, the company is evaluating its 
classification of this item for future years."

Duke Power said it also reviewed 13 smaller accounting entries 
and concluded that nine were handled correctly. "The four 
remaining items were incorrectly classified in 1998, but did not 
recur thereafter," Duke said.

Duke officials said the company takes the allegations very 
seriously.

"When these accounting issues were brought to our attention, we 
immediately launched a comprehensive internal review," said Duke 
Power president Bill Coley. "The results of our review, including 
the four incorrect accounting entries, are described in our 
report to the commissions."

Duke Power, one of the nation's largest investor-owned utilities, 
provides electricity to about 2 million customers in a 
20,000-square-mile service area in North Carolina and South 
Carolina.

© Copyright 2001, The News & Observer. All material found on 
*****************************************************************
 22  Energy department holds public hearings on nuclear dumping site. 
By Austin Ripley
 
The Earth Times/ENVIRONMENT: 

Where is the best place to dump 77,000 tons of nuclear waste? The 
US Department of Energy (DOE) says it may have the answer: Yucca 
Mountain, Nevada.

 The DOE is examining whether the small city 100 miles northwest 
of Las Vegas should receive radioactive waste from all over the 
country. The city generates no nuclear waste of its own. The DOE 
is holding a series of public meetings in Las Vegas this month on 
the sensative issue.

 The story began in 1982, when the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 
targeted the need for a geological depository for high-level 
waste. This waste consists of radiator fuel rods and liquids from 
commercial experiments that will be dangerously reactive for a 
quarter of a million years. Containing this waste is of primary 
importance until safer methods to neutralize the highly 
radioactive waste is found.

 Congress passed a bill in 1987 picking Nevada as the dumping 
site. The bill, which was amended by Congress later, was labeled 
the "Screw Nevada" bill by opponents. The waste will have to pass 
through 43 states with populated districts in order to reach 
Yucca. There are 103 operating nuclear reactors in the country.

 The nuclear energy lobby "has a lot of money and is a very 
important force in Congress," said Lisa Gue, spokesperson for 
Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader. 
Congress appears to be willing to settle for what Gue calls an 
"out of sight out of mind" solution to the problem. The dilemma 
has developed interesting relationships between Republicans and 
Democrats in Nevada, who are both opposed to the bill, and formed 
a coalition in order to veto the bill in Congress.

 Congress stated that the hearings must be held on site of the 
proposed dumping ground, with the supposed intention of allowing 
the public to be involved. 

Copyright © 2001 The Earth Times All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 23  Too many nuclear plants are not prepared to prevent attacks 

(9/17/01)

U.S. News: 

A nuclear nightmare 

They look tough, but some plants are easy marks for terrorists
 
BY DOUGLAS PASTERNAK
 
He called it Project Worst Nightmare. And in the twisted mind of 
Donald Beauregard, commander of the 77th Regiment Militia in St. 
Petersburg, Fla., it surely was. Beauregard's plan was 
simple–disable the electric power grid feeding the nearby Crystal 
River nuclear power plant with explosives stolen from a National 
Guard armory. That would shut down the plant, blacking out St. 
Petersburg. This was no idle fantasy. When the cops finally 
caught up with him, Beauregard and his "strike team" had a 20-mm 
cannon, a .50-caliber machine gun, and a few pipe bombs primed to 
blow. 


Beauregard might have succeeded if an informant hadn't tipped the 
police. He was prosecuted and clapped off to prison last year. 
But the FBI took Beauregard's plan seriously enough to 
incorporate it into a test it ran last May against the Palo Verde 
nuclear generating station in Arizona.
 
And here lies the rub. In the past decade, nearly half the 
nation's 103 power plants have failed mock terrorist attacks 
against them. The plants that failed, in other words, would not 
have stopped the Donald Beauregards of the world.
 

In the parlance of counterterrorism, nuclear power plants are 
among the world's most "hardened" targets. Barbed wire, 
surveillance cameras, motion sensors, armed response teams–all 
are designed to make the plants impenetrable to even the most 
determined saboteur. But interviews with current and former 
Nuclear Regula- tory Commission inspectors, security experts, and 
plant guards paint a very different picture. Often, security 
measures at nuclear plants don't work as they should or don't 
work at all. A re- view of recent incidents by U.S. News reveals 
numerous breakdowns in plant security, from criminals being 
granted access to sensitive areas to inadequate security that 
places vital equipment within easy reach of an attacker who never 
even enters the plant's perimeter.
 

Security experts say a terrorist is far more likely to attack a 
so-called soft target– such as a government building–than a 
nuclear power plant. Indeed, argues Lynnette Hendricks of the 
Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear power trade group: "We 
believe the plants are overly defended at a level that is not at 
all commensurate with the risk." But in light of attacks against 
fortified targets such as U.S. embassies, threats against nuclear 
plants are now considered very real. And concerns about security 
are likely to mount as the Bush administration calls for greater 
use of nuclear power. Last year, for instance, Japanese police 
arrested a man with seven pipe bombs who was planning to blow up 
a uranium processing plant. Last September, Ukrainian police 
arrested a group planning to sabotage the Chernobyl reactor. And 
in the United States, officials list at least 30 threats against 
nuclear plants since 1978. Most have been hoaxes, but in the 
mid-1980s, for instance, three of four power lines leading to the 
Palo Verde plant were sabotaged. And in 1989 four members of 
Earth First!, a radical environmental group, were charged with 
conspiring to disable three nuclear power plants in the 
Southwest. 


Rating risks. Despite the threats and the documented security 
flaws, the nuclear industry has convinced the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission–the federal agency that oversees nuclear power 
plants–that security at these sites would function better with 
less federal oversight. So starting this fall, the NRC will 
launch a pilot program allowing the power companies to design 
their own security exercises–a function formerly performed by 
federal terrorism experts. The industry says the new program will 
cost the plants less, yet allow for more frequent tests. But 
opponents, including many within the NRC, say the industry's 
track record has hardly earned it the right to looser regulation. 
In the past year alone, NRC inspectors have discovered alarms and 
video surveillance cameras that don't work, guards who can't 
operate their weapons, and guns that don't shoot. "I am very 
skeptical about the nuclear industry's ability to regulate 
itself," says Rep. Edward J. Markey, a vocal critic of nuclear 
security. 


High on critics' lists of concerns is the failure rate in the 
NRC-run mock terrorist assaults–attacks that, if real, could have 
released radiation more lethal than the 1986 Chernobyl accident 
that resulted in an estimated 32,000 deaths. These exercises, 
called Operational Safeguards Response Evaluations, or OSREs, 
have been run by an outspoken former U.S. Navy SEAL captain named 
David Orrick. In a typical exercise, a team of three "terrorists" 
armed with small weapons and basic knowledge of how a plant works 
attempts to penetrate the facility. They evade or disable 
security equipment and destroy a set of targets in an effort to 
damage the plant's nuclear core, causing a radioactive release. 
In some cases, the mock terrorists make it all the way to the 
sensitive control room–even though they give plant operators 
ample advance notice of when they intend to strike.
 

Proponents of the NRC's mock attacks say they teach valuable 
lessons. In 1999, the Waterford 3 Nuclear Plant in Taft, La., 
failed a preliminary mock attack, but the plant's managers said 
that the exercise did not reflect the plant's true capability. So 
Orrick's team returned last year to conduct a more rigorous 
exercise against the plant. "We [the NRC team] just ate them 
alive," says one NRC inspector. The Waterford 3 site then hired 
more guards, improved training, and fortified physical barriers. 
They finally passed an NRC exercise last January. And in May, 
security guards easily apprehended a man with a history of mental 
illness who scaled a 10-foot, barbed-wire fence surrounding the 
site.
 

Still, critics charge that even the NRC's mock terrorist attacks 
do not reflect today's real-world scenarios. "There is nothing 
about protecting against a helicopter assault or a missile taking 
out one of our positions," says one plant security guard. Last 
September, for instance, an anti-nuclear demonstrator landed a 
motorized parafoil on the roof of a nuclear reactor in Bern, 
Switzerland, before being apprehended by security guards. 


While nuclear plant operators design much of their security to 
prevent attacks from the outside, the record suggests that the 
greater danger lies within. "If somebody got a job as a janitor 
and got access to the plant, that's the real threat," says Erik 
Pakieser, former nuclear security officer at the Prairie Island 
nuclear generating plant in Minnesota. For instance, at the same 
time Donald Beauregard was cooking up his Project Worst 
Nightmare, a maintenance technician at the Crystal River site 
discovered that someone had intentional- ly disabled one of the 
plant's |emergency diesel generators. Some nuclear security 
experts also believe that sabotage should not have been ruled out 
so quickly as a possible cause of the 1979 accident at the Three 
Mile Island nuclear plant. Scientists at the Los Alamos National 
Laboratory found striking similarities between the incident and a 
computer-generated sabotage scenario they had run several months 
earlier.
 

Two decades later, critics remain troubled by the sorts of 
individuals who can gain access to a nuclear plant. In the early 
1990s, a carpenter named Carl Drega got jobs at three nuclear 
power plants in the Northeast despite an arrest record and a job 
reference that described him as "volatile." Two months after 
Drega left the third plant, in 1997, he shot four people to 
death, including two state troopers, a judge, and a newspaper 
editor. An NRC investigation of the incident found that none of 
the three plants had violated their regulations by hiring him.
 

Easy access. Another insider, a computer programmer who once 
worked in the control room at the Maine Yankee nuclear power 
plant, goes to trial next year for murdering seven of his 
coworkers at a small Massachusetts technology company. Plant 
coworkers said the programmer, Michael McDermott, slept in a 
coffin and told a colleague he was sometimes so angry he felt 
like killing someone. In 1998, a worker at the Turkey Point 
nuclear plant in Florida had free access to critical areas of the 
plant for more than a month before officials learned of his 14 
arrests. And at the Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland, officials 
took eight months to learn that a worker was an illegal Mexican 
immigrant with fake identification papers and an arrest record. 
"Charles Manson could get access to a nuclear power plant," says 
former nuclear security officer Richard Kester.
 

But some experts worry that attackers can succeed even without 
getting inside. Classified reports from Sandia National 
Laboratories show that a well-placed truck bomb would not even 
have to enter a site's property to destroy vital equipment, 
leading to a possible release of radiation. In addition, experts 
say, the water-intake systems at some plants are particularly 
vulnerable to sabotage by either cutting off the water supply by 
clogging the intake valve or introducing volatile chemicals into 
the reactor's cooling system. 


An even more accessible target may be spent nuclear material 
piling up at these plants. Large cooling pools inside reactor 
containment buildings were designed to store this fuel, but 
several years ago the pools began to fill up. Now, at many 
plants, the highly radioactive fuel is stored in cooling pools 
outside the containment building. "A lot of the spent nuclear 
fuel casks can be hit with a shoulder-fired missile by someone 
standing outside the fence," says Dave Lochbaum, nuclear safety 
engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Yet at plants that 
are being decommissioned, the nuclear fuel is even less closely 
guarded. The Maine Yankee plant, which has stored 700 tons of 
spent fuel in outside cooling pools, has removed all of its vehi- 
cle barriers and received the NRC's permission to eliminate its 
armed guard force once the fuel is placed into dry casks.
 

The chairman of the NRC, Richard Meserve, says that no matter who 
runs the security drills, the plants remain among the world's 
most heavily guarded sites. And he says that the NRC mock attacks 
are expensive for both the commission to run and the plants to 
prepare for. "The reason we are making a big deal about this," 
says the Nuclear Energy Institute's Hendricks, is that the 
corrective actions resulting from these exercises " can have a 
tremendous impact" on a plant owner. "It can cost a million 
dollars to make these upgrades [of plant security]," she says. In 
any case, says Meserve, the new self-assessment pro- gram is only 
a trial: If it doesn't work, he says, it will be scrapped. 


But the chorus of nuclear industry critics continues to grow. 
"The overall focus [at these sites] is not to protect the public 
but to get the NRC's blessing and ensure profits," says one 
nuclear security officer. Starting next week, the Waterford 3 
plant, which had boosted security to pass the NRC's terrorist 
exercise, will begin to reduce its training programs and its 
guard force. "As soon as the NRC leaves," says one guard, "they 
downgrade security."
 
            © 2001 U.S.News &World Report Inc. All rights 
*****************************************************************
 24  Storage of metal debated 

Augusta Georgia: Technology:
 
Web posted Sunday, September 9, 2001
 
By 
Staff Writer 

While politicians debate whether Savannah River Site should 
receive more plutonium, SRS officials are deciding what to do 
with some of the plutonium that's already there.
 
The U.S. Department of Energy is mulling a proposal to use the 
federal nuclear-weapons site's FB Line facility to put the 
radioactive metal into a form stable enough for long-term 
storage.

 The idea is a reversal of plans pursued in the mid-1990s, when 
the site was building a $300 million plant to do the work.

 The decision, SRS administrator Allen Gunter said, is driven by 
''cost and schedule.'' Using FB Line would save millions and 
enable the site to treat the plutonium years faster than it would 
have before, site officials said.

 But some observers worry the line is too old to perform the work 
safely and the site still won't have a place to store the 
plutonium once it's treated.

 ''It's rather troubling that they keep adding new missions to 
these old facilities,'' said Tom Clements, the executive director 
of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. ''They can't 
identify when they're actually going to proceed with shutdown and 
decommissioning.

 ''Adding new missions to these old facilities certainly raises a 
host of environmental questions.''

 A site official said FB Line could be used safely, although he 
acknowledged that it wouldn't have the safety measures of a 
newer, more modern facility.

 ''It is our assessment that we have adequate safeguards in 
place, because we handle plutonium right now, to provide the 
safety and security needed for the material,'' said Mr. Gunter, 
the Energy Department's plutonium program manager at SRS.

 Preparing FB Line to do the work could cost anywhere from $13.5 
million to $29 million, compared with $300 million to build the 
once-heralded ''Actinide Packaging and Storage Facility.'' That 
plant's high price tag was one reason the Energy Department 
suspended its construction in 1999.

 The agency also considered spending up to $260 million to 
renovate the site's ''235-F'' building to treat the plutonium. 
That plan was abandoned in June, Mr. Gunter said.

 Besides being cheaper, using FB Line would be faster, Mr. Gunter 
said. The line could begin treating plutonium in 2003, compared 
with 2007 or later for the other proposals, he said.

 ''It would allow us to complete our stabilization on an 
accelerated schedule,'' he said.

 FB Line, located in the site's massive F-Canyon plant, began 
operating in 1997. In recent years, a number of mishaps have 
occurred in the line, including a Sept. 1, 2000, incident that 
exposed seven employees to plutonium. The metal can cause cancer 
if inhaled or ingested even in small amounts.

 Several upgrades would be made before FB Line would be used for 
the new work, Mr. Gunter said. Two new furnaces would be added, 
as would a new welder to seal cans of newly treated plutonium.

 F-Canyon's ventilation also is new, Mr. Gunter said.

 ''The infrastructure is up to the task of completing this 
mission,'' he said.

 But once FB Line completes the task, it wouldn't be able to 
store the 1,000 cans of plutonium, Mr. Gunter said. A new 
facility, or even a renovated 235-F building, would have to 
provide that storage.

 The Energy Department might renovate 235-F, on a smaller scale, 
for use as a storage area, Mr. Gunter said.

 Some critics say storage should be the first item on the Energy 
Department's to-do list.

 ''From our perspective, the biggest issue is that the Energy 
Department has to provide long-term storage before they do 
anything,'' said Don Moniak, an Aiken resident and community 
organizer for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. ''They 
haven't.''

 Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or .

 SUBHEAD:''It is our assessment that we have adequate safeguards 
in place, because we handle plutonium right now, to provide the 
safety and security needed for the material.''

 - Allen Gunter, the Energy Department's plutonium program 
manager at SRS, on storing radioactive metal
 
All contents 1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
                     NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
 1 Russian TV features former nuclear test ground in western 
Kazakhstan 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 6, 2001


Text of report by Russia TV on 6 September 

[Presenter Aleksey Frolov] In northern [as received] Kazakhstan, 
environmentalists have completed the storage of the radioactive 
soil collected at the former testing ground near the settlement 
of Azgir [in the western Atyrau Region]. Seventeen nuclear 
explosions were staged there by the military for the 13 years the 
testing ground was in use. Six years ago the Azgir testing ground 
was closed. However, local residents still feel the aftermath of 
the nuclear tests. 

[Correspondent Vladimir Kulguzskin] This lake has been formed in 
the place of the underground nuclear blast. Azgir residents do 
not consider it to be dead, but never use its water or fish here. 
The soil around the reservoir is covered by deep gaps and cracks. 
In order to restrict unauthorized entry to the dangerous area, 
the the territory of the former testing ground is being 
surrounded by the barbed wire and guards are being posted. 

[Yuriy Lyalin, captioned as chief specialist of the ecological 
service of Kurmangazin District] The radiation spots are being 
eliminated at present. However, there is no guarantee that they 
will not appear tomorrow. 

[Correspondent] Seventeen nuclear explosions were carried out at 
the testing range over 13 years. As a result, thirteen 
underground cavities have formed deep inside, with a volume up to 
1m cu.m. They were supposed to be used for storing crude oil or 
nuclear waste. However, six years ago the Azgir testing ground 
was closed. The Southern Seismic Expedition, being a part of the 
Arzamas-16 [currently Sarov, established in 1946 as Russia's 
first nuclear weapons design centre], has quit the experiment and 
left the area. 

The last nuclear test was carried here 22 years ago. 
Nevertheless, up to now radioactive spots appear on the ground. 
If the situation on the surface can be monitored, nobody knows 
what is going on deep inside. 

By now, only 6 tonnes of radioactive soil were collected at the 
testing ground and stored in this burial ground. Specialists from 
the [Kazakh National] Nuclear Centre say that the testing ground 
does not pose a threat to the health of the people. However, they 
cannot say what may happen here in a year or two, and whether 
radiation spots will reappear or not. 

The village is just a stone's throw away from the testing range. 
Some 100 families are residing now in Azgir. There is no water 
supply here and they use the water from the well. It is salty and 
muddy. Locals suspect that the level of radiation in subsoil 
waters is far above the accepted level. 

[Over a clip of an unidentified man speaking to camera in Kazakh] 
This man says that all Azgir residents are ill without exception. 
It is women who are most badly affected. Babies are born sick and 
men do not live to their 50s. 

[Correspondent] A study of Azgir subsoil waters will start next 
year only. However, environmentalists doubt that the amount 
allocated will be sufficient enough to complete the study. 
Vladimir Kulguzskin and Viktor Tkachenko, Vesti, western 
Kazakhstan. 

[1640-1845, video shows the steppe of the testing ground without 
any identifiable structures but for some metal tanks, fence being 
erected, and local village well] 

Source: Russia TV, Moscow, in Russian 0700 gmt 6 Sep 01 /BBC 
Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
*****************************************************************
 2  Russian radio lists sunken nuclear subs 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 5, 2001

Text of report by Russian Ekho Moskvy radio on 5 September 

[Presenter] [Ekho Moskvy correspondent] Natalya Ivanova will 
tells us about submarines which are still on the seabed and about 
examples of raising submarines. 

[Correspondent] At the present time, there are six nuclear 
submarines on the ocean floor, Two of them are American, a 
Thresher and a Scorpion, and there are four Soviet ones - a K 8, 
K 219, K 278, that is the Komsomolets, K 27 and finally K 141, 
that is the Kursk, whose fate is still vague, whether it will 
remain on the sea floor, or whether it will be raised. Three of 
the submarines of the Soviet period sank because of an accident. 
Another one was scuppered in the Karsk Sea on the decision of 
responsible state departments owing to the fact that its 
long-term utilization could not be restored. It is noteworthy 
that all the submarines belonged to the Northern Fleet. 

As far as attempts to raise submarines in the Soviet period are 
concerned, there were several incidents, one of which applies 
precisely to a nuclear submarine. This was the K 429, which sank 
in 1983. The details of the operation were not reported, but it 
is known that the submarine was raised from a shallow depth, 35 
metres. 

In 1969, attempts were made to raise an (?F 80) diesel-powered 
submarine from the seabed at a depth of 196 metres. To begin 
with, it was raised from the seabed and suspended on an 
under-keel cable contraption, after which the recovery vessel 
raised the submarine to a depth of 70 metres and towed it to an 
area along the shore. Then it was placed in a bay and the 
submarine was brought to the surface from a depth of 51 metres. I 
note that the entire operation took 34 days. 

Source: Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow, in Russian 1400 gmt 5 Sep 01 
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
*****************************************************************
 3  Russians flee raising of "radioactive" sub Kursk

Planet Ark Environmental News: 

RUSSIA: September 7, 2001

ROSLYAKOVO, Russia - Russian naval officer Alexei Zaishely picks 
up a bag and walks with his wife and baby to the bus stop in 
their remote Arctic village, where the Kursk submarine will be 
hauled into dry dock later this month. 

Zaishely is one of several men sending their families away from 
run-down Roslyakovo on the Barents Sea, to escape the radiation 
risk they fear from the return of the 18,000-tonne wreck from the 
seabed. "I'm not afraid for myself, you see," said Zaishely's 
wife Nina, as she left to stay with relatives in central Russia. 
"I fear for my baby, who has his whole life ahead of him and I'm 
responsible for his health.

"That is why we decided to leave this place and stay away until 
the situation becomes clear."

President Vladimir Putin has pledged to raise the Kursk to allow 
decent burials for the 118 crewmen who died on board and to try 
to find out what sank one of the Russia's most advanced 
submarines last August.

He also says Russia has an obligation to get the Kursk's two 
nuclear reactors off the seabed and out of busy fishing lanes 
used by Russia and its Scandinavian neighbours.

But the people of tiny Roslyakovo and many of the 380,000 
residents along the coast in Murmansk - the largest city above 
the Arctic Circle - say the salvage jeopardises their future.

"There have been several emergency situations during ordinary 
repair work on ships and submarines in dock," Zaishely said. "But 
to move a submarine with such damage to the dock safely... well, 
I think it could be dangerous."

Officials insist the project is safe and have erected an 
electronic sign in Roslyakovo to display radiation levels. They 
say they have a contingency plan to bus residents to Murmansk 
should any radiation problems arise.

But the locals are unconvinced.

"What that electronic board shows is rubbish," said local man 
Edik Kononchuk. "The real levels are different."

RELATIVES WANT ACTION ON BOTCHED RESCUE

Russia has promised to make the salvage a model of media 
openness, after facing withering criticism last year for its 
confused handling of the nation's worst submarine disaster.

The navy initially took two days to reveal a "malfunction" on 
board Kursk, then delivered a rash of contradictory statements 
while refusing to accept foreign help in the attempted rescue of 
any surviving crew.

A note found on the body of Dmitry Kolesnikov, one of a dozen men 
whose bodies were brought to the surface last autumn, showed that 
some of the crew had survived for at least a few hours after two 
explosions in the Kursk's torpedo bay.

"The people guilty of not saving them should be punished," 

Kolesnikov's father Roman told Ekho Moskvy radio this week, 
adding that many victims' relatives had signed a letter to Putin 
and the Prosecutor General asking them to open a criminal case 
over the matter.

Some in Roslyakovo said the authorities were taking more risks to 
try to atone for last year's mistakes.

"We fear for our kids but where could we go?" said resident Anna 
Zvezdina, adding that not everyone could afford to leave town 
like the Zaishely family.

Olga Lapina, another local woman, said the future was bleak. 
"Soon people in this town will start dying off like flies and no 
one will tell us the reason." 

Story by Konstantin Kozyr 

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE 
*****************************************************************
 4  FSB-investigator to Court in handcuffs?  

      Gregory Pasko, an investigative journalist who worked for 
the Pacific Fleet's newspaper, was arrested on 20 November 1997 
by the FSB and charged with high treason for his writing about 
the nuclear safety issues in the Russian Pacific Fleet.


(Vladivostok, Far East:) As the proceedings in the Pacific Fleet 
courthouse continues, more of the Kafkaesque nature of the 
process against Grigory Pasko is being revealed. The Court is 
however ready to question the methods of the FSB-investigators.

Jon Gauslaa, 2001-09-09 06:09

Among the witnesses interrogated by the Pacific Fleet Court last 
week were Officer Mizyulchenko, head of the missile department of 
the Pacific Fleet’s headquarters. –- Mr. Mizyulchenko 
was interrogated about the questionnaire Pasko had used while 
interviewing various navy officers, told defender Anatoly 
Pyshkin. 

The experts of the 8th Department of the General Staff have 
previously concluded that if concrete and detailed answers are 
given to the questions brought up in the questionnaire, state 
secrets could be released. 

The main legislative basis for this conclusion is the secret 
Decree No. 055 issued by the Russian Ministry of Defence in 
August 1996. 

- Kafka would have been proud

The case files are however, not even close to prove that any such 
detailed answers actually were given. Moreover, neither the 
‘experts’ of the 8th Department or the 
FSB-investigators have made any conclusion on who the state 
secrets would have been released by if such detailed answers 
actually had been given. 

Nevertheless, Pasko is charged with having collected state 
secrets with the purpose of a subsequent transfer to Japan, only 
for having brought the questionnaire with him to the interviews. 
– This is just one of the many episodes in this case that 
would have made Kafka proud if he had thought of them, commented 
Aleksandr Tkachenko of the Russian Pen Club. 

When being interrogated by the Pacific Fleet Court, Mizyulchenko 
told that the conversation he had had with Pasko when the latter 
brought the questionnaire had been of general character. They had 
not touched any technical details regarding the rockets and 
missiles on the base. Besides, the questions are no longer actual 
after the enforcement of the Start-II treaty, said the officer. 
All the data about missile decommissioning is presented to the 
USA, whose representatives also visit the base regularly. 

FSB-investigator to Court in handcuffs?

Among the witnesses that were summoned for interrogation in Court 
last week were also former FSB investigator Izotov who took part 
in the search of Pasko’s flat on November 20, 1997. Mr. 
Izotov did however, not show up. 

The Court then issued an order to the police to bring the witness 
to Court on September 10, if necessary by force. Whether the 
police will have to use handcuffs to carry out the said operation 
remains to be seen. 

Still more experts

According to defender Ivan Pavlov the Court has now interrogated 
almost 50 of the +60 witnesses that have been summoned. –- 
In addition to the remaining witnesses, we are also waiting for 
the evaluation from the experts on the question whether there are 
state secrets or not in the materials that allegedly were 
confiscated at the search of Pasko’s flat, he said. 

-- Then there are also the experts who will evaluate whether the 
voice on the tapes from the tapping of Pasko’s telephone 
actually belongs to him. Although Grigory has confirmed that it 
is he who is talking, still an expert evaluation has to be 
carried out according to our Criminal Procedural Code, and 
recently the experts notified the Court that their conclusions 
would not be ready before late October, Pavlov said. –- The 
Court has requested the experts to speed up, but at the time 
being it is not possible to say when the trial is over. 

Grigory Pasko was arrested in November 1997 on charges of 
espionage on behalf of the Japanese TV-station 'NHK'. He was 
acquitted of espionage in July 1999, but convicted of abuse of 
his official authority and freed under a general amnesty. Seeking 
a full acquittal, Pasko appealed the verdict, but so did the 
prosecution, insisting he was a spy. The Military Collegium of 
the Russian Supreme Court cancelled the verdict in November 2000, 
and sent the case back to Vladivostok for a re-trial. After 
several postponements, the re-trial started on July 11, 2001



      Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge 
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: 
webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Menu 
system java script courtesy of Peter Belesis at the Dynamic HTML 
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 5  Wildlife refuge plan for Flats nears passage

Denver Post.com
 
<B>The Denver Post Washington Bureau</B></FONT>         
 	 	
--> Saturday, September 08, 2001 - WASHINGTON - A bipartisan 
effort to turn more than 6,000 acres of Colorado's old Rocky 
Flats nuclear weapons plant into a national wildlife refuge took 
a major step Friday. 

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland, successfully attached the proposal 
to the 2002 Defense Authorization Bill at a meeting of the Senate 
Armed Service Committee. Barring unexpected opposition in the 
House, that should assure passage this year. 

"We have scored a big victory in our effort to turn weapons into 
wildlife," Allard said in a statement. "I saw an opportunity to 
move the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge Bill along in the 
legislative proces and took advantage of that opportunity." 

Allard, up for re-election next year, had reintroduced the bill 
this year with Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, whose district 
includes the former weapons plant. 

Their legislation would turn one of the most polluted government 
facilities in the country into a refuge only after the cleanup is 
finished, expected to happen sometime after 2007. 

The refuge would be an important victory for Allard, who has been 
under fire from environmental groups. 

The refuge proposal has the support of the entire Colorado 
delegation, Gov. Bill Owens and the Rocky Flats Coalition of 
Local Governments. The refuge would be the second established in 
the Denver area around a polluted former weapons site. In 1992, 
the 27-square mile Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical weapons and 
pesticide manufacturing site, became a refuge.
 	 

 All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright 
*****************************************************************
 6  Kursk Recovery Effort in Final Stages
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
September 08, 2001 
 
SEVERODVINSK, Russia (AP) - With pride, Timur Amirov pointed at 
the giant hall at the Arctic Sevmash shipyard where workers 
assembled a pontoon to help lift the wrecked nuclear submarine 
Kursk from the sea. 

"We launched the Kursk along the same rails here, and I was in 
charge of its construction," said Amirov, a senior engineer at 
the yard. "It was a real beauty, a state-of-the-art submarine 
packed with sophisticated equipment." He squinted at the cold 
northern sun, and his voice grew tight. "For us, it was like a 
child, and its sinking was a personal tragedy." 

The Kursk, one of Russia's largest and most modern submarines, 
sank when explosions shattered its front section during naval 
maneuvers in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12, 2000. 

All 118 crew members died, most of them instantly, but some 
survived a few hours in sealed-off compartments, knowing as their 
air ran out that rescue was impossible as the sub lay on the 
ocean floor in frigid waters 356 feet below the surface. 

The catastrophe shook the nation and dented the prestige of 
President Vladimir Putin's new government, which refused foreign 
aid for days while bungling its own rescue effort. 

Seeking to soothe public anger over the loss, to solve the 
mystery of what caused the sinking and to remove a potential 
radiation threat from Arctic waters, Russia is conducting a 
costly and precarious effort to hoist the 18,000-ton submarine to 
the surface. The target for bringing the sub up is next Saturday, 
but officials indicated Friday that the operation could take 
longer. The salvage effort being conducted by two Dutch companies 
is pressed for time because the weather will worsen, making the 
sea increasingly rough. Some foreign experts are skeptical the 
operation can be completed this year. "We are asking the Almighty 
for good weather," said the Russian navy chief, Adm. Vladimir 
Kuroyedov. 

Shortly after the disaster, Putin promised the victims' families 
that the submarine would be raised this year, but it took the 
government until May to negotiate a contract with the Dutch 
company Mammoet. 

Mammoet, a specialist in heavy lifting equipment with no 
experience in sea salvage operations, later formed a joint 
venture with another Dutch firm, Smit International. The two 
started work in July to prepare for the lifting, an operation 
estimated to cost around $65 million. 

The Kursk's mangled front section is now being cut away because 
of worries that it could break off during the raising and 
jeopardize the operation. The Russian navy was also concerned the 
bow might contain unexploded torpedoes that could be a hazard to 
the salvage effort. 

Once the nose section is cut loose, the plan calls for the rest 
of the Kursk to be raised by steel cables attached to 26 holes 
that divers drilled in the submarine's double hull. 

The Kursk sank deep into the silt, and engineers say the most 
challenging part of the effort may be tearing the boat from the 
mud - a process they say could take up to five hours. Once the 
suction is overcome, it will take eight hours to lift the sub to 
the surface in a computer-controlled operation that will require 
calm seas. 

Attached to a barge, the submarine will be towed to a dry dock 
near the Russian port of Murmansk, where officials will remove 
its 22 Granite cruise missiles and crew remains. 

Experts insist that neither the missiles nor the Kursk's two 
nuclear reactors could threaten the rescue effort. The reactors 
automatically shut down when the submarine exploded and constant 
monitoring by Russian and foreign experts has detected no 
radiation leak. 

"Even if we make a fantastic assumption that the submarine 
overturns during the lifting, the reactors would pose no danger," 
said Igor Spassky, chief of the Rubin submarine design bureau. 

According to the official investigation, the Kursk sank because a 
practice torpedo exploded, triggering the detonation of regular 
torpedoes in the bow. The blast sent a fireball through the 
submarine's pressurized hull. All but a few crewmen died 
instantly, according to letters found when divers entered the sub 
last fall and recovered 12 bodies. 

The government says it remains unclear whether the explosion was 
caused by a flaw in the practice torpedo - the theory shared by 
most independent experts - or a collision with another vessel, 
possibly a Western submarine, as the Russian navy claimed after 
the disaster. 

Amirov, the Kursk's builder, scoffs at the latter theory, saying 
such a collision would have left a foreign submarine on the 
seabed because the Kursk had a much greater weight and a far 
stronger, double hull. 

"All this talk about collision is utter nonsense," he said. 

Many experts predict the cause will remain a mystery because the 
answers can be found only in the shattered front section that is 
being left on the sea bottom. --- EDITOR'S NOTE: A presentation 
on raising the Kursk is available at the AP's news Web site, 
http://www.wire.ap.org. 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 7  Iran Radio Denies CIA Weapons Claim
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
September 08, 2001 
 
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian state radio broadcast a report 
Saturday denying the CIA's claim that it is seeking to develop 
weapons of mass destruction. In a report to Congress on Friday, 
the CIA said Iran maintains one of the world's most active 
programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction and long-range 
missiles to deliver them. 

The state radio broadcast called the CIA claim "baseless." It 
said Iran had "voluntarily decided not to produce or deploy 
biological or chemical weapons," according to a British 
Broadcasting Corp. translation. 

The broadcast, a political commentary, accused the United States 
of using the claim to justify its program to build a missile 
defense shield and to break Iranian defense ties with North 
Korea. 

It said Iran suffered chemical weapon attacks during its 1980-88 
war with Iraq but "never used these weapons against its 
adversary." 

The CIA reiterated U.S. concern that help from Russia in building 
a nuclear power plant in the city of Bushehr could be used to 
advance an Iranian nuclear weapons program. 

Iran repeated its denial on that score, saying the nuclear 
project had "completely peaceful and scientific aims" and that 
this had been confirmed by the International Atomic Energy 
Agency. 

The CIA report, issued every six months, tracks several 
countries' efforts to obtain nuclear, chemical, biological and 
high-tech conventional weapons. Friday's report covered the 
second half of 2000. 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 8  Senators: Bush Plan Shortchanges Downwinders, President seeks 
year-to-year funds for ailing workers
 
     Saturday, September 8, 2001   

BY ROBERT GEHRKE
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

   WASHINGTON -- A shift by the Bush administration could leave a 
program to compensate miners and others sickened by radiation in 
Cold War weapons programs broke by Christmas, according to two 
Senate Democrats. 

    The administration had supported making the compensation 
payments an entitlement similar to Social Security or Medicare 
payments, meaning qualifying claimants would get paid regardless 
of the cost. 

    But a dwindling budget surplus forced the White House to 
backtrack and propose funding the program on a year-to-year 
basis. 

    "This dramatic reversal is unfortunate and tragic," Sen. Jeff 
Bingaman wrote in a letter to the president on Friday. "While we 
cannot reverse the progress of the diseases many of these workers 
suffer . . . the federal government can and must live up to its 
commitment to provide a compassionate program of compensation." 

    The letter also was signed by Assistant Senate Majority 
Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. 

    The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed in 
1990 to make lump payments to uranium miners and those known as 
"Downwinders" who were exposed to fallout from nuclear weapons 
tests and contracted cancer and other illnesses because of the 
exposure. 

    The program offers $100,000 checks for miners and $50,000 for 
Downwinders. 

    But for the past several years, the program has been 
underfunded. Beginning in May 2000, the Justice Department, which 
administers the program, was forced to issue IOUs to qualifying 
claimants. 

    Many died while awaiting payment. 

    A one-time infusion of money earlier this year will pay off 
outstanding IOUs. But by not making the program mandatory, the 
program could again run out of money. 

    The House has approved $10.7 million for RECA next year, and 
a Senate bill scheduled for debate Monday includes the same 
amount. That is also the same amount dedicated to the program 
last year. It was quickly used up and left $84 million in unpaid 
IOUs. 

    Bingaman said that next year the program will be $110 million 
short if the $10.7 million figure survives. The only reason RECA 
supporters agreed to having the low figure in the bill was 
because of the understanding that the program would be made 
mandatory, Bingaman said. 

    Hazel Merritt, president of the Utah Navajo Downwinders, 
criticized the Bush administration's stance. 

    "Our compassionate conservative is delaying legislation to 
constituents least able to fight back," she said in a statement. 
"I guess this compassion is only reserved for the corporations." 
    
  © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on 
*****************************************************************
 9  Iran 'pursuing nuclear programme'

BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | 
                         
Saturday, 8 September, 2001, 06:02 

[guided missile]                        

Iran is accused of stockpiling weapons

A report by the American Central Intelligence Agency has accused 
Iran of having one of the world's most active programmes to 
acquire nuclear weapons. The CIA Director, George Tenet, told the 
United States Congress that Iran was seeking missile-related 
technology from a number of countries including Russia and China. 

The report says Tehran is trying to develop the capability to 
build nuclear weapons and delivery systems. 
  
Tehran is attempting to develop a domestic capability to produce 
various types of weapons... and their delivery systems
   	 		
CIA report                        

The report highlights the help given by Russia in the building of 
a nuclear reactor at Bushehr, which the CIA says could be used to 
advance Iran's nuclear weapons programme. 

The report also alleges that Iran, which Washington accuses of 
sponsoring international terrorism, is stockpiling chemical and 
biological weapons. 

Developing technology 

The report, issued every six months, tracks the proliferation of 
nuclear, chemical, biological and high-tech conventional weapons. 

"Tehran is attempting to develop a domestic capability to produce 
various types of weapons... and their delivery systems," it says. 

According to Mr Tenet, during the second half of 2000 "entities 
in Russia, North Korea and China continued to supply crucial 
ballistic missile-related equipment, technology and expertise to 
Iran". 

Iran also has stocks of chemical weapons and is seeking more, as 
well as the ability to make their own from "entities in Russia 
and China". 

Nuclear reactor 

During the six-month period that the report focuses on, Russia 
continued to help Iran build a 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor at 
Bushehr. 

The report says that the expertise and technology gained from 
this enterprise could also "be used to advance Iran's nuclear 
weapons research and development programme". 

The US intelligence community predicts that within the next 15 
years, the US will most likely face intercontinental ballistic 
missile threats from North Korea, probably from Iran and possibly 
from Iraq. 

*****************************************************************
 10  New Test Makes Spotting Deadly Beryllium Dust Easier

 Environment News Service: 

 LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, September 7, 2001 (ENS) - Detecting 
hazardous beryllium on surfaces is now as simple as testing the 
acidity of a swimming pool, due to the work of scientists at the 
Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New 
Mexico. 

Beryllium is a rare element that is extracted from the earth, 
refined and reduced to a very fine powder. Because of the dangers 
associated with inhaling beryllium dust, the Department of Energy 
(DOE) has adopted a limit for workplace beryllium exposure. 

Los Alamos researchers Tammy Taylor and Nan Sauer have developed 
a test for beryllium that compares a color change to known 
standards, similar to the common litmus test for measuring the 
acidity of a water solution. The test allows real-time detection 
of beryllium contamination on surfaces. 

The new beryllium detection technique involves wiping the 
surfaces of the lab with a prepared pad and then adding a 
solution. If the pad turns blue, beryllium is present; if it 
remains orange, then the surface is free of significant 
contamination. 

[swipe] Worker holds up a swipe that is free of beryllium 
contamination. (Photo courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory) 
Keeping workplace surfaces clean helps minimize the potential for 
worker exposure. People exposed to beryllium dust or fumes can 
develop chronic beryllium disease, an incurable lung ailment. 

Taylor presented details of the new swipe detection method at the 
222nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in 
Chicago late last month. Beryllium is widely used in aerospace, 
computer, sporting goods, electronics and in nuclear weapons 
applications because of its unique materials properties.

The metal is lighter than aluminum, stiffer than steel, remains 
solid at high temperatures and can absorb large amounts of heat. 

Breathing fine particulate beryllium triggers an autoimmune 
response in an estimated one to six percent of exposed 
individuals that can result in chronic beryllium disease (CBD), a 
debilitating and sometimes fatal disease. Currently there is no 
cure for CBD. The dust is generated from the handling of 
beryllium powder or from the grinding of beryllium ceramics. 

There is no known safe level of beryllium exposure and minimal 
exposures to beryllium have been shown to cause chronic beryllium 
disease in susceptible individuals. Even household family members 
of individuals who work with beryllium can develop CBD from 
exposure to dust on a worker's clothing. So people working with 
beryllium must minimize exposure and establish rigorous 
housekeeping practices. 

Taylor and Sauer realized in order to do their research 
efficiently and with the highest degree of safety they needed to 
develop a rapid test to assess beryllium contamination. 

"When we began working with beryllium in our labs, we wanted to 
take every safety precaution because of the risks associated with 
beryllium work," said Taylor, who developed the beryllium swipe 
technique. "We wanted to develop a quick test to say whether our 
area was clean and it was safe to perform experiments. The 
beryllium swipe technique will permit beryllium workers to 
monitor surfaces in their work environment thoroughly on a 
regular basis at minimal expense and without delays or excessive 
lost work time due to waiting for test results." 

[clubs] Beryllium copper and beryllium nickel golf clubs (Photo 
courtesy ) The present method for detecting beryllium in the 
workplace is costly and time consuming. It may take days or weeks 
to obtain results of laboratory analysis. In many cases work 
cannot be performed until results come back indicating beryllium 
levels are below the acceptable surface contamination limit. 

Taylor's beryllium colorimetric test is not meant to replace the 
existing method that can quantify the amount of beryllium on a 
surface, but to allow a worker to get a quick, qualitative result 
indicating the effectiveness of housekeeping efforts and 
contamination control. The new method is expected to cut down on 
the number of samples sent for costly quantitative analysis. 

Gary Whitney, an industrial hygienist at Los Alamos who conducts 
beryllium monitoring, said, "This test has the potential to give 
us preliminary information very quickly and at low cost. We are 
in the process of seeing if this could be developed into a more 
quantitative method and not just a quick screening method. I have 
conducted some preliminary side-by-side tests using Taylor's 
technique and the quantitative analytical technique. The initial 
results look promising." 

Preparing the pads and performing the detection test for 
beryllium are simple tasks. The pads are soaked in two solutions, 
dried and then used to wipe the potentially contaminated surface. 
After wiping, the pad is treated with another solution and 
formation of a blue color indicates beryllium. The whole process 
takes less than an hour and the materials for each test cost less 
than a dollar. 

"We've conducted this test with a variety of potential 
interferences like cutting fluids [used in machining metals], 
mineral oil, common household cleansers and dust to see if they 
interact with the beryllium and give a false negative," said 
Taylor. "We've also done the test with other metals that may be 
present in the machine shops or at beryllium contaminated sites 
to make sure that the pads don't register false positives." 

The beryllium test developed at Los Alamos builds upon an earlier 
beryllium measuring technique developed by Russian scientists. 

[electronics] Electronics components containing beryllium (Photo 
courtesy Leader Tech) Department of Energy rules on beryllium 
have established surface contamination limits for beryllium work 
areas and equipment. The detection technique developed by Taylor 
is sensitive enough to allow detection of beryllium on surfaces 
within these limits. 

The test may also save the government money that might otherwise 
have to be paid to workers exposed to beryllium under The Energy 
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act signed 
into law last year. The program, established after the Energy 
Department accepted responsibility for exposing thousands of 
workers to radioactive materials during the Cold War, covers 
workers who came in contact with beryllium. 

The program offers one time $150,000 payments and lifetime 
medical coverage to nuclear workers and others made ill by the 
government's nuclear weapons program. Any workers who developed 
chronic beryllium disease after working at any Energy Department 
sites where beryllium was used will get coverage if they died or 
were disabled. Those found to have beryllium sensitivity will be 
covered for regular medical screenings, but not for the $150,000 
pay out. Eligible to apply for benefits are workers at Department 
of Energy facilities; atomic weapons employers involved in the 
production of nuclear weapons under contract to the Energy 
Department or its predecessor agencies; and beryllium vendors, 
companies that sold beryllium metal or parts to the Department of 
Energy or its predecessor agencies. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of 
California for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear 
Security Administration. DOE Chronic Beryllium Disease Prevention 
Program: http://www.tis.eh.doe.gov/be/index.html-ssi DOE Office 
of Worker Advocacy: http://www.eh.doe.gov/advocacy/ Beryllium 
Support Group: http://www.dimensional.com/%7Emhj/index.html


*****************************************************************
 11  Cleanup Slow, Erratic at Closed U.S. Military Sites

 Environment News Service: 

 By Cat Lazaroff

 WASHINGTON, DC, September 7, 2001 (ENS) - The United States is 
making poor progress at cleaning up contaminated former military 
sites, a new Congressional report reveals. The year long study, 
requested by two Democratic Representatives, found that the Army 
Corps of Engineers' goal of cleaning up contaminated munitions 
sites by 2014 will fall short by more than 50 years. 

[Plum Brook] Groundwater investigations are still underway at the 
Plum Brook Ordnance Works in Ohio, which produced TNT, DNT and 
nitric and sulfuric acids during World War II (Four photos 
courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) The General Accounting 
Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, spent a year 
investigating efforts to clean up so called "Formerly Utilized 
Defense Sites" (FUDS) contaminated by toxic, hazardous, and 
radioactive wastes. The Army Corps is charged with cleaning up 
the FUDS, at a cost of about $200 million per year, by 2014. 

The Corps will fall decades short of that goal, the GAO learned. 
In fact, it may take up to 70 years longer, and cost billions 
more, than the Defense Department has projected. 

The report contradicts a recent Pentagon review of the cleanup 
program, which concluded that more than half of the needed 
cleanup work had already been completed. In fact, only about a 
third of the work has been done, the GAO said. 

The Pentagon's "misleading" report relied on inflated Corps 
figures, in which the agency listed as "completed" hundreds of 
projects on which no cleanup work was ever performed - either 
because no such work was needed, or because a study or other 
administrative action determined that cleanup was not warranted. 

[ordinance] Some of the munitions retrieved by the Army Corps 
from the Badlands Bombing Range in South Dakota (Photo by Robert 
Etzel) "As a result, it appears that after 15 years and 
expenditures of $2.6 billion, over 50 percent of the FUDS 
projects have been completed," the GAO said. "In reality, only 
about 32 percent of those projects that required actual cleanup 
actions have been completed, and those are the cheapest and least 
technologically challenging." 

The GAO also reported that the Corps cost estimate of $13 billion 
to complete the cleanup of all FUDS properties does not account 
for cleanup of unexploded ordinance on these properties, which 
the Corps estimates will cost more than an additional $5 billion. 

"The Corps estimates that the remaining projects will cost over 
$13 billion and take more than 70 years to complete," the GAO 
added. 

Representatives John Dingell of Michigan and Tom Sawyer of Ohio 
requested the GAO report due to their concerns about ongoing 
contamination of former munitions dumps and other military sites 
which are no longer under military control. 

[Dolly Sods] The Corps is responsible for removing unsafe 
buildings and other hazards from former military sites, like the 
Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia, which was used as a 
bombing range during World War II "The Corps' work to date has 
principally focused on the 'cheapest and least technologically 
challenging' work such as tearing down buildings and pulling 
tanks while many high and medium risk properties with toxic 
groundwater contamination or unexploded ordinance have been left 
to percolate," Dingell said on releasing the GAO report. "These 
seriously contaminated sites must be addressed in a timely manner 
before this dangerous brew threatens public health and safety." 

The properties may contain contaminated soil and water, or hold 
hazardous wastes in containers such as underground storage tanks. 
Other hazards, including unexploded ordnance and unsafe 
buildings, may need to be removed from the properties or 
demolished. 

As of October 1, 2000, the Corps, states and other parties had 
identified 9,171 properties as potential candidates for the FUDS 
cleanup program, the GAO reported. The Corps has determined that 
about 2,700 of those properties are actually eligible for 
cleanup, with one or more areas containing environmental hazards. 

"According to the Corps' database, 2,382 of these projects were 
considered complete as of the end of fiscal year 2000," the GAO 
reported. "However, over 57 percent of the projects reported as 
complete were closed as a result of a study or administrative 
action without performing any actual cleanup action." 

[Power House] This building in Point Pleasant, West Virginia was 
used to manufacture TNT during World War II "In fact, nearly 800 
of these projects were ones that the Corps initially thought were 
eligible but later determined were ineligible, usually because 
the contamination was caused by other parties after DOD 
relinquished control of the properties," the GAO said. "The Corps 
classified these projects as complete as a way of closing them 
out." 

In some cases, the Corps may have been wrong about the presence 
of contamination on sites the agency listed as ineligible for 
cleanup. The GAO found that the Corps did not seek input from 
state or federal regulatory agencies, which may not agree with 
the Corps' conclusions. 

In December 1998, the Association of State and Territorial Solid 
Waste Management Officials conducted a survey of 39 states and 
found that "over half indicated that they had reason to believe 
that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not made sound 
environmental decisions regarding no further action 
determinations at FUDS." 

The GAO is conducting a separate investigation of 4,070 sites at 
the request of Representatives Dingell and Sawyer. 

[Dingell] Representative John Dingell is the ranking Democrat on 
the House Energy and Commerce Committee (Photo courtesy Office of 
the Representative) "As evidenced by the notorious Spring Valley 
site in Washington, D.C., the Corps' determination can be very 
wrong," Representative Dingell noted. "I hope a similar mistake 
is not played out on a national scale." 

The GAO recommended that the Department of Defense separate 
projects that did not require cleanup from those projects where 
actual cleanup actions were required in its annual reports to 
Congress. 

In oral comments to the GAO, the Defense Department "generally 
agreed with the need to clarify reporting on the status of the 
FUDS program," but "did not agree with the need to exclude from 
the list of completed projects those projects closed either as 
the result of a study or because they were determined to be 
ineligible," the GAO said. 

*****************************************************************
 12  Strategists predict major shift away from nuclear weapons

 By SCOTT CANON - The Kansas City Star
 Date: 09/08/01 22:15

 To reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, it would help first to
count them. 

Take Missouri's own B-2 stealth bombers. Each can stuff 16 
nuclear bombs into its belly. 

Under one arms-cutting deal, each bomber counted as just one 
bomb. Under terms of the next treaty, 16. Now, a third pact might 
return to counting each B-2 as one weapon. 

Such is the curious calculus of nuclear disarmament more than a 
half-century after the blinding dawn of the atomic age. 

Now President Bush has called for scrapping more warheads, even 
unilaterally, largely to calm Russian nerves jangled by his 
dreams of a missile shield. He must win over the Pentagon and 
Capitol Hill first. 

Still, even as it concedes the complications, America's small 
fraternity of nuclear strategists sees a real chance for a 
radical shift in the way the country arms itself. 

The Bush administration, in fact, has voiced an attitude about 
nuclear weapons that would have been unthinkable not so long ago. 

"Bush and (Vice President Dick) Cheney are essentially 
anti-nuclear people. They're pro-high-tech and pro-Star Wars 
people," said Ray Kidder, a retired physicist who designed 
nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 
Livermore, Calif. 

"We're getting away from nuclear weapons and pretty much agreeing 
that they're not usable," he said. "Instead, we're going toward 
precision weapons and high-tech. The only unknown is how quickly 
the new will replace the old." 

I I I 

"A lot of people have reasons to make changes," said Andrew 
Krepinevich, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for 
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a research institute that 
focuses on defense planning and investment. 

Start with the president. 

Bush ran for office pledging to shrink U.S. nuclear forces. Once 
he was in office, over the protests of congressional Republicans, 
he quickly slated the silo-based MX missile for the junk pile. 

Money saved could free dollars for the national missile defense, 
which carries a price tag estimated to be between $35 billion and 
$100 billion. 

Think next of the Russians. 

They loathe Bush's national missile defense. Even though it is 
sold as a backstop against lesser powers tossing missiles at the 
United States, Moscow sees it as a step toward a larger shield 
that could neutralize its weapons. The Kremlin also has bills it 
cannot pay, aircraft it cannot afford to build, submarines it no 
longer can safely keep at sea. The White House is banking that in 
the end, President Vladimir Putin will excuse Bush his missile 
shield -- and its snubbing of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile 
Treaty -- in return for a deal to thin both countries' arsenals 
significantly. 

Finally comes America's generals and politicians. 

Already pained by cutbacks, the Air Force is reluctant to give up 
its nuclear bomber and missile crews, and the Navy treasures its 
strategic submarine forces. A nuclear assignment brings status to 
a military branch.

 But if Bush orders the target list shaved, it would mean the 
military could carry on with fewer nuclear weapons. That, in 
turn, could free money to update the military inventory with such 
items as new destroyers and fighter jets. 

The savings are only a slight incentive, however. Experts say 
that even drastic warhead cuts might save only $1 billion to $2 
billion out of a defense budget topping $300 billion. 

Congress only grudgingly gives up even the oldest Navy bases or 
defense assembly lines. And Capitol Hill remains a roost for 
defense hawks who say stability comes from convincing enemies 
that they can be wiped off the map.

 "It's easier for a Republican president to make those deep 
cuts," said Jim Wurst, program director for the Lawyers' 
Committee on Nuclear Policy, which promotes peace and disarmament 
through the use of law. "He isn't going to get the criticism from 
other Republicans the way a Democrat would." 

Wurst is fond of saying "the first President Bush did more for 
arms control in one year than (former President Bill) Clinton did 
in eight." Now, he said, it's up to the second President Bush to 
follow through on campaign promises to slash the nuclear arsenal 
and to take thousands of weapons off quick-launch alert. 

Early analyses suggest Bush has taken vital steps toward moving 
in that direction. 

The administration has sent key diplomatic signals to the 
Russians and the Chinese. Bush even suggested that he would not 
crab at Beijing for mustering more missiles that can reach U.S. 
soil -- as long as Beijing stops carping about his missile 
defense. 

In Donald Rumsfeld, he chose a defense secretary determined to 
reform the military and deploy a missile defense. And, in 
contrast to Clinton, Bush put the task of studying the country's 
nuclear war plan into the hands of a relatively small group of 
influential advisers. 

I I I 

The nuclear arms race peaked in 1986, when an estimated 70,000 
nuclear warheads worldwide were loaded in submarines, silos or 
aircraft. 

Their targets included not only enemies' nuclear weapons, army 
bases and the bunkers of political leaders, but also small 
machine shops that supplied steel plants that fed tank assembly 
plants. And so on. 

Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and its corroding nuclear forces 
retreated into Russia. So scores of targets in the Ukraine, for 
instance, were targets no more. 

Then-President George Bush, with Cheney as his defense secretary, 
made several moves. Bush halted the constant cruising of 
nuke-loaded bombers. He killed missile development programs and a 
plan to put the multiwarhead MX into a game of rail-based 
hide-and-seek. He ordered nuclear warheads off surface ships and 
out of artillery units. 

In 1993 he inked a START II deal with then-Russian President 
Boris Yeltsin to bring both sides down to 3,500 warheads by 2007. 
Clinton followed by teaming with Yeltsin for START III talks, 
with a goal of lowering the stakes to 2,500 nuclear weapons per 
side. 

Both nations remain on course to meet by Dec. 5 the final stages 
of the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty -- first 
negotiated in the Reagan years, signed by then-President George 
Bush and taking effect in the Clinton administration. In the 
mid-1990s that same treaty yanked Minuteman missiles from the 
silos that pockmarked Missouri and South Dakota. 

START II lacks full ratification from the U.S. Senate, however, 
and START III talks stalled. 

So America's arsenal still holds upward of 6,500 warheads on 
missiles and airplanes capable of reaching Russia. Russia has a 
corresponding batch of more than 5,500. Both must scale down to 
6,000 by year's end. 

Moscow has called for U.S. and Russian forces to drop to 1,500 or 
even 1,000 nuclear weapons each. Bush has pledged to "cut to the 
lowest possible number" without suggesting he yet knows what that 
number is. 

Counting warheads always makes for tricky math. 

For example, the 6,000-warhead limit applies only to nuclear 
explosives the United States has matched with a submarine or 
bomber or intercontinental ballistic missile. It does not cover 
the 10,000 other nuclear bombs in bunkers

-- there, in part, so that the United States would have something 
to deter another enemy after a shootout with Russia. 

America's Minuteman and its Russian equivalent are loaded with 
one warhead but can easily be converted to carry two more. 

How to count reusable bombers has always been a problem. 

If the United States should decide to build more B-2s for 
non-nuclear work, as some have suggested, the Russians might 
wonder what's to keep them from loading nukes in an emergency. 

I I I 

The B-2 represents another wrinkle -- high technology. Even if 
the Air Force eventually dedicates all of its B-2 force to 
conventional bombs, it still could enter the calculations. 

Plans in the 1970s and '80s might have required a nuclear bomb to 
knock out a hardened bunker or counted on a hydrogen bomb blast 
to make up for a lack of precision. Today, satellite-guided 
cruise missiles or laser-steered bombs can achieve with 
relatively tame explosives what once demanded the splitting of 
atoms. 

"The Russians I talk to are genuinely concerned about this," said 
nuclear policy analyst Steve Fetter. 

Now teaching public policy at the University of Maryland, in 1993 
and 1994 Fetter worked in the Clinton Defense Department on the 
nation's last Nuclear Posture Review. 

The discussions can seem crazy, Fetter said, in the way they 
contemplate how many hydrogen bombs must be dropped on various 
parts of the Russian industrial complex to gut the country's 
military power. A recent analysis by the Natural Resources 
Defense Council, which advocates protection of the environment 
and wildlife, called the U.S. nuclear war plan overkill that 
could easily lead to the death and injury of 50 million Russians. 

With the Clinton administration, Fetter said, the study grew to 
include large numbers of people scattered in several committees 
passing one consensus after another up the line. 

"The result was very much status quo," he said. "It was a lost 
opportunity." Now Bush is repeating that process of trying to 
weigh the nuclear needs. A key committee has an October deadline 
for suggesting to Bush how low he can go. In contrast to Clinton, 
Bush set out a charter that repeatedly calls for a plan to find 
the deterrence "with the lowest nuclear force level compatible 
with security requirements." He has given that task to a small 
group, including former CIA chief R. James Woolsey, made up of 
people sympathetic to national missile defense and warhead 
reduction. 

America's problems with Russian nukes, Woolsey wrote in July, 
have "nothing to do with the number of their strategic warheads." 

Rather, he and others worry about the rickety command and control 
system of the Russian forces. A 1995 launch of a scientific 
satellite from Norway, for instance, was mistaken for a few 
uneasy moments as Americans firing the opening salvo of World War 
III. 

So hawks find common ground with doves such as Thomas B. Cochran, 
the director of nuclear programs for the Natural Resources 
Defense Council. 

Cochran worries Bush will lead the country to a solo path of arms 
cutbacks. The cash-strapped Russians might follow, but neither 
side could count on the nuclear numbers to stay low if they 
abandon explicit deal-making, he said. 

Putin has sworn to forget all arms deals if Bush walks away from 
the ABM pact. Cochran and other doves want Bush to stick to 
existing deals and still go lower, even to an arsenal measured in 
hundreds instead of thousands. But that is so low, critics 
contend, that smaller countries might be tempted to jump into the 
nuclear game. 

Yet in the new dynamic of American nuclear policy, Cochran and 
Woolsey agree that Cold War notions tying firepower to security 
have gone stale. "What we worry about today is the accidents," 
Cochran said. "Us having more nuclear warheads is not going to 
reduce the chances of the Russians making a mistake." 

The Defense Department is waiting for Bush to say that nuclear 
weapons mean less than they once did, said Owen Cote, associate 
director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. 

"If Bush does, that will kick up a storm in Congress," Cote said. 
"The right wing won't like it. But if he says the world is 
different, that the mission has changed, then that opens things 
up for the (warhead) numbers to go way down." 

To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 
or send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com. 

All content © 2001 The Kansas City Star   
*****************************************************************
 13  Firms Get $5 Billion to Destroy USSR Arms
                                        
                                        
Friday September 7 8:19 PM ET 
 
By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five U.S. engineering and management firms 
have been awarded a defense contract totaling $5 billion to 
eliminate Russian nuclear and other arms and protect nuclear 
warheads, the Pentagon said on Friday.

The contract, which will run through 2006, is part of a 
decade-old effort authorized and financed by Congress to help 
safely destroy former Soviet weapons of mass destruction in 
Russia and assure that they are not stolen. The latest step to 
eliminate such weapons under arms treaties comes as the United 
States and Russia are embroiled in a bitter dispute over 
President Bush's plan to develop a controversial U.S. defense 
against missile attack.

The Pentagon said the new contract work will be shared by Brown 
and Root Services Division of Halliburton International Co., 
Raytheon Co., Bechtel National Inc., Parsons Delaware Inc., and 
Washington Group International Inc. The last three are 
privately-owned companies.

The work will include elimination of Russian missiles, bombers, 
and submarines, most of the designated for destruction under 
treaties, as well as accounting for and safely storing of 
dangerous byproducts such as nuclear warheads.

The Pentagon said the work, part of the Nunn-Lugar law authorized 
by Congress, will also include efforts to eliminate facilities in 
Russia used to produce and store chemical and biological weapons.

NON-PROLIFERATION EFFORTS

The firms will help coordinate collaborative efforts between 
experts in the two countries aimed at non-proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has about 7,000 nuclear warheads and Russia has 
some 6,000. But those totals are supposed to be brought down to 
about 3,500 each under the planned START-2 strategic arms 
reduction treaty.

Moscow, however, has warned that arms reduction treaties between 
Moscow and Washington could be in danger if the Bush 
administration goes ahead with a threat to withdraw from the 1972 
anti-ballistic missile treaty so that it can move ahead on 
missile defense.

The Bush administration wants Russia to agree to jointly ''move 
beyond'' the ABM treaty, which forbids deployment of a national 
missile defense by either country, but Moscow has so far refused.

Senior officials from the two countries have been discussing the 
issue and Presidents Bush and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin 
agreed at a meeting this summer to link talks on missile defense 
with further deep nuclear arms cuts.

Russia cannot afford to maintain its massive nuclear arsenal and 
Putin wants to cuts the number of warheads to 1,500 on each side.

Bush has vowed to make deep cuts in U.S. nuclear weapons, but no 
decision has been made on a new number while the Pentagon 
conducts a major review of the American nuclear arsenal and how 
it fits into the nation's strategic planning. 
 
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 14  Senate Panel Approves Defense Bill 
                                        
Saturday September 8 1:38 AM ET 

         WASHINGTON (AP) - In a party-line vote, the 
Democratic-run Senate Armed Services Committee ( - ) sliced $1.3 
billion from President Bush ( - )'s request for his missile 
defense program and put curbs on testing it. 

         By a 13-12 vote, with all Republicans in opposition, the 
panel approved legislation authorizing defense spending of $343 
billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. 

         The bill also would authorize another round of base 
closings, unpopular in Congress where lawmakers fear the economic 
and political fallout from losing a base in their district. 

         It was the restrictions on Bush's ability to conduct 
missile defense activities that would violate the 1972 
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia that prompted Friday's 
party-line vote by the normally bipartisan committee. 

         ``The intensity of the feeling among the Republicans was 
so great that we voted unanimously not to report the bill out,'' 
Sen. John Warner ( - - ) of Virginia, the committee's senior 
Republican, said after the closed-door drafting session 

         Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he was 
``somewhat disappointed'' at the partisan vote, saying there was 
bipartisan agreement on much of the bill. 

         The restrictions the Republicans oppose would require a 
special vote by Congress before any money could be spent on an 
activity that the president tells Congress would violate the ABM 
treaty, even if the United States is no longer a party to that 
treaty. That vote would occur within 30 days of notification of 
the upcoming violation. 

         Some Republicans said the language would give the 
Russians control over development of a missile defense system, 
since they could refuse to amend the ABM treaty to accommodate 
some activities and thus force a vote by Congress. 

         Bush is trying to strike a deal with the Russians to 
replace the ABM treaty with an arrangement that allows for 
national missile defense. 

         Levin said the provision was a last resort given the 
administration's failure to tell Congress - despite repeated 
requests - which planned missile defense activities would 
conflict with the treaty. 

         ``This does not give the Russians leverage,'' he said. 
``It gives Congress a voice to act responsibly,'' enabling 
lawmakers to know whether they were supporting treaty violations. 

         The $343 billion measure would cover both the Defense 
Department and nuclear weapons programs of the Energy Department 
for the 2002 fiscal year. 

         On missile defense, the bill would cut $1.3 billion from 
Bush's request to increase funding by $3 billion, to $8.3 
billion. Another party-line vote rejected Warner's attempt to 
restore $1 billion. 

         Despite the cut, Levin said, ``We're giving him the 
largest increase of probably any program in the defense budget.'' 

         The House Armed Services Committee last month voted to 
trim $135 million from the missile defense request. 

         In many areas, the Senate panel provided more money than 
Bush requested, including $700 million to improve compensation 
and quality of life for service members and their families and 
$800 million to advance the transformation to lighter, more 
lethal and capable forces. 

         Such additions would be paid for with budget reductions 
of $1.3 billion from missile defense, $592 million from the 
troubled V-22 Osprey ( - ) aircraft program, $247 million from 
the Joint Strike Fighter and $1.6 billion in savings from better 
commercial practices. 

         As for base closings, the committee approved a round 
that would begin in 2003. The procedures would be the same as 
previous ones, with a special panel selecting the bases to be 
closed and up-or-down decisions by Congress and the president on 
the entire list. 

         Pentagon ( - ) officials say up to 25 percent of 
facilities are not needed and billions could be saved by closing 
them. 

	 On the Net: 

         Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization at 
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/ -   |  
*****************************************************************
 15  Fokino: naval base, radiation, baby boom

VLADIVOSTOK NEWS ONLINE :: VN.VLADNEWS.RU  
    
September 7, 2001
 
By Anatoly Medetsky 

Photo by Vyacheslav Voyakin Warships dominate Fokino harbor  

 In Fokino, a closed Russian naval base on the Pacific, radiation 
threats abound, warships spend years waiting for repairs, 
unemployment is soaring, but the birth rate beats the national 
levels.

 Seeking publicity for its woes and achievements, the city hall 
of this one of Russia's 90 closed cities issued a statement and 
organized a press tour last month. (Reporters from 
foreign-language media, including the Vladivostok News, were 
banned from the tour by security agents.)

 The August 29 statement said a sizeable area of the forest 
outside the city was contaminated by radiation from a site where 
nuclear waste used to be buried. The waste had been removed but 
radiation remained.

 Another contaminated area has lain near the Chazhma Bay since a 
nuclear submarine exploded there in 1985.

 The statement said radiation levels in the two areas, as gauged 
in the past two years, is up to 130 micro roentgens per hour 
while the highest allowable reading is 20 micro roentgens.

 Fokino's 40,000 residents, mostly Navy personnel, have to live 
in dangerous proximity to other highly potential radiation 
threats - decommissioned nuclear submarines and their reactors.

 

  [ border=] Photo by Vyacheslav Voyakin Gaping windows indicate 
abandoned apartments as many residents fled Fokino and 
surrounding settlements as living conditions deteriorated  

 The Pavlovskogo Bay has long been home to three nuclear 
submarines floated there after they were put out of combat order 
by reactor accidents.

 "It is impossible to scrap these submarines using the existing 
methods because of their high radioactivity," the statement said. 
"And the main ballast tanks have rotted through and do not 
provide the necessary floatation."

 Their sinking would give highly corrosive sea water access to 
the reactors.

 Also, any extended power outage in winter time will cause the 
protective shields of the reactors to freeze, releasing lots of 
harmful rays into the environment. The threat is of special 
concern in a region that has for many winters suffered from a 
precarious power supply.

 Nearby Razboinik Bay also has potential floating sources of 
radiation - a few submarine hull sections containing reactors 
(the exact number was not reported.)

 City hall complained that the military allocates sparse funding 
to maintain the submarines in the two bays properly.

 There are other signs of the military lacking finance, the 
Vladivostok reported. 


  [ border=] Photo by Vyacheslav Voyakin One of the well kept 
streets in town  

 Fokino sits on a bay that is ideal for a naval harbor, shielded 
from storms by surrounding hills, and that was once crammed full 
of warships - the striking force of the Pacific Fleet.

 Now it's not that striking. The destroyer Bezboyaznenny 
(Fearless) equipped with guided missiles, has been idle and in 
need of repair for the last three years, a third of its 10-year 
service.

 Waiting for repair is also the missile cruiser the Admiral 
Lazarev.

 According to the city hall statement, maintenance of submarine 
shelters dug out in the 1970s inside hills descending into the 
sea has been poor or non-existent. They cost the Soviet Union 
14.5 billion rubles, equaling billions of U.S. dollars at that 
time, but some of them have been flooded by water that used to be 
pumped out.

 Apart from its military-related problems, the city appears to be 
hit by unemployment more than other Russian cities. While 
Russia's average unemployment rate is 13 percent, only 9,000 
people of Fokino's 23,000 potential workers have a job, the 
Vladivostok reported.

 But the ratio of children to adults in Fokino is probably one of 
the highest in Russia, with its aging population. As a city of 
young officers and sailors, with few retirees, it has a birth 
rate above the death rate, contrary to the nationwide trend, 
officials said proudly.


Copyright c 2001 "Vladivostok Novosti" 13 Narodny Prospect 
Vladivostok, 690014 Russia Phone: 7 (4232) 415-592, Fax: 7 (4232) 
415-615 Published by Vladivostok Novosti, Ltd. 
*****************************************************************
 16  CIA: Iran Has Active Weapon Program
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
September 07, 2001 
 
WASHINGTON (AP) - Iran maintains one of the world's most active 
programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction and long-range 
missiles to deliver them, a CIA report says. 

Last year, Iran sought help from Russia, China, North Korea and 
countries in Western Europe, says the report, which the CIA 
delivered to Congress on Friday. "Tehran is attempting to develop 
a domestic capability to produce various types of weapons ... and 
their delivery systems," the CIA says. 

The report, issued every six months, tracks several countries' 
efforts to obtain nuclear, chemical, biological and high-tech 
conventional weapons. Friday's report covers proliferation of 
those weapons during the second half of 2000. 

During that time, Russia continued to help Iran build a 
1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor at Bushehr. The assistance gives 
Iran more nuclear know-how, the report says. 

"The expertise and technology gained, along with the commercial 
channels and contacts established - particularly through the 
Bushehr nuclear power plant project - could be used to advance 
Iran's nuclear weapons research and development program," it 
says. 

Iran already has stocks of chemical weapons and was seeking more, 
as well as the ability to make their own, from "entities in 
Russia and China," the report says. The "entities" are 
unidentified. 

The country may also have a few biological weapons, and it sought 
"dual-use" biological technology from Russia and Western Europe. 
Such technology may have benign purposes but could also be used 
in weapons. 

The report describes the efforts of other countries to obtain 
weapons of mass destruction. Iraq may again be producing 
biological warfare agents, the report says, although confirming 
this is difficult without United Nations weapons inspectors. 

Iraq was also working on an unmanned drone, called the L-29, that 
could deliver biological or chemical weapons, it says. Concerns 
about a rejuvenated Iraqi nuclear program have increased since 
Iraq President Saddam Hussein in September 2000 "exhorted his 
'nuclear mujahidin' to 'defeat the enemy,'" the report says. 

Libya, Syria and Sudan also worked to obtain the ability to 
produce weapons of mass destruction, the report says. India and 
Pakistan continued to upgrade their ballistic missiles, enabling 
them to deliver their nuclear weapons at greater distances. 
Russia and some Western European nations helped India; China 
aided Pakistan. 

India is looking to buy, lease or build fighter jets, tanks, 
bombers, airborne radar, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and 
an aircraft carrier, the report says. 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 17    Schools in Kursk operation zone practise emergency evacuation 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 8, 2001
 
Schools in the Russian town of Roslyakovo, where the stricken 
Kursk nuclear submarine is due to be brought after it is raised, 
held emergency evacuation drills on Saturday, Russian TV6 
reported. 

The Kursk is expected to arrive by barge, whereupon a "complex 
operation" will take place to separate the nuclear reactor 
section and take out the missiles, the report stated. 

"It seems the training exercises were supposed to be secret and 
no-one apart from the heads of the schools and kindergartens 
involved knew about them," the TV added. 

About 1,300 schoolchildren practiced donning protective masks and 
clothing, and getting into buses and other means of transport to 
take them to various other towns, the report said. 

Source: TV6, Moscow, in Russian 1100 gmt 8 Sep 01 /BBC 
Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
*****************************************************************
 18  Group aims to cure 'nuclear hangover'
 
ContraCostaTimes.com 
   
Published Friday, September 7, 2001 

+ Ted Turner-funded program intends to turn swords into 
plowshares and address biological, chemical weapon issues 

By Andrea Widener CONTRA COSTA TIMES 

Ted Turner has turned the savvy that made CNN as well-known as 
Coca-Cola toward fighting the threat of nuclear war.

 In January, the media tycoon pledged $250 million to find ways 
to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. 
More countries than ever have the weapons, and governments have 
had little success in eliminating their large stockpiles.

 "The progress we have made in the last 10 years has been 
marginal at best," Turner said in announcing the Nuclear Threat 
Initiative (NTI).

 When U.S. and international nonproliferation efforts began, they 
were designed to stabilize a volatile political and financial 
situation, not to convert Russia's weapons complex to peaceful 
uses. Some programs -- such as the Nuclear Cities Initiative -- 
focus on that goal, but their small steps aren't successful on a 
large scale.

 "When you change the goals, you have to change the tools," said 
Laura Holgate, NTI vice president for Soviet nuclear programs.

 NTI will focus on programs to cure "the nuclear hangover," she 
said: the legacy of excess weapons-making materials, abandoned 
but functional weapons-manufacturing facilities, and thousands of 
underemployed workers. That could mean boosting existing programs 
or creating new ones.

 NTI's directors are studying ways to attract investment in the 
weapons complex despite the difficult business conditions. They 
may look at intensive job mentorship programs or venture capital 
to help scientists turn inventions into products. Other ideas 
include providing retirement packages for older researchers with 
small pensions, or buyouts for young scientists looking to change 
careers.

 "They are a diverse set of people; they have a diverse set of 
needs," Holgate said. "There is no one size fits all."

 While the nuclear threat has been analyzed for decades, few 
people understand the scope of biological weapons problems or how 
to combat them, said Dr. Peggy Hamburg, vice president of NTI's 
biological program.

 Unlike with nuclear weapons, most microbiology graduate students 
could produce biological weapons with common lab equipment. It 
would take very little of a pathogen, dropped in an air duct or 
water supply, to devastate a city or spread quickly worldwide.

 "For whatever reason, people have not taken this issue as 
seriously as they should here," she said. "We want to offer 
really important and useful strategies for how to address it."
 
ContraCostaTimes.com
*****************************************************************
 19  Nuclear legacy
 
ContraCostaTimes.com 
   
Published Sunday, September 9, 2001 

Proliferation worries persist 

By Andrea Widener
 CONTRA COSTA TIMES 

AKADEMGORODOK, Russia -- To uncover the impact of nuclear 
nonproliferation programs here, drive south past solitary 
ice-fishers, empty bus stops and leafless Siberian birch forests 
to a muddy field where rusting metal machines lie like old 
Datsuns in a mechanic's back yard.

 Then wait for the shaking to begin.

 Amid the thick mud and slush-filled puddles typical of April in 
southwest Siberia, Boris Glinsky said he and fellow researchers 
could build machines 10 times the size of the large one now 
rumbling like a small, nonstop earthquake.

 All they need is a sponsor, said the project's patriarch, with 
his spiky shock of thick, white hair and ready smile, maybe 
someone from the West to fund their ideas. 

Here at the Bystrovka Vibroseismic Test Site, of more than 30 
machines that shake the earth to map its surface and test 
detectors for nuclear test ban treaties, only a dozen still work. 
The money to maintain them ran out first, followed closely by 
funds for scientists' wages, now less than $56 a month on 
average.

 "Everything was much easier under the Soviet power," Glinsky 
said.

 While crumbling infrastructure and below-poverty salaries are 
prevalent throughout Russian science, 21 of the 31 scientists 
working on these massive machines are former weapons scientists. 
That makes their future a global concern.

 The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 left a political and 
financial maelstrom that surged over the country's colossal 
nuclear weapons industry. Never before had a world power, 
bolstered by a 35,000-strong nuclear weapon stockpile and unknown 
stores of chemical and biological weapons, been forced by 
withering federal coffers to abandon its weapons development work 
force.

 At the time of the breakup, 100,000 Russian scientists, 
engineers and other officials had access to nuclear weapons 
information.

 Panicked world observers feared the worst: desperate weapons 
scientists taking their knowledge to aspiring weapons nations 
such as Iran or Iraq, unpaid guards stealing from the untallied 
stores of uranium and plutonium, entire nuclear weapons cities 
collapsing as financial support disappeared. What keeps these 
vibrating machines running is international funding, first 
envisioned during those frightening years after the crash, that 
turns weapons researchers such as these Siberian geologists to 
basic science and trains them in Western grant-writing and 
entrepreneurship. It is one of a half dozen U.S.-supported 
efforts that protect nuclear materials and prop up Russian 
weapons designers. 

Although small compared to other defense initiatives, with $1 
billion in U.S. spending a year, these cooperative programs have 
been the bedrock of efforts to prevent the spread of chemical, 
biological and nuclear weapons and technologies.

 Nearly a decade after the breakup of the Soviet Union left 
weapons programs in limbo, the Russian economy and U.S.-Russian 
relations continue to sputter. That has left the U.S. struggling 
to define its role in rescuing Russian weapons scientists and 
halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

 "It is much easier when you have a hostile relationship," said 
Kenneth Luongo, director of the Russian American Nuclear Security 
Advisory Council, a joint nonprofit nuclear think tank. "When you 
are trying to help nurse a wounded country back to health, it is 
not so easy."

 In most of Russia, the infamous bread lines or empty shelves in 
stores are no longer common, but most citizens have little or no 
money. In 1999, Russia's gross domestic product had shrunk 45 
percent from 1991 levels, and is now smaller than that of Los 
Angeles County. Even at 12.4 percent, Russia's unemployment rate 
is largely believed to be unrealistically low because of 
underemployment.

 Those economic problems -- as well as rampant health problems 
reflected in a death rate almost double the birth rate, in part 
because of widespread alcoholism -- have impacted weapons 
scientists, who once held an elite status in society. 

Cooperative program supporters -- including some U.S. and Russian 
nonproliferation experts, U.S. nuclear scientists, and former and 
current members of Congress -- say these programs are the only 
serious effort to fight what may be the most menacing national 
security threat: the spread of weapons to rogue nations and 
terrorists.

 Opposition often comes down to a matter of trust. Most 
congressional opponents fear any aid will free Russia to spend 
its own meager resources on developing weapons of mass 
destruction, while others fight any U.S. money going overseas. 
Russian critics doubt U.S. motives, saying their goal is to 
gather intelligence and steal the country's best minds. 

From both sides, the most outwardly successful programs are those 
dealing with tangibles: cutting up submarines, transforming 
weapons-ready fuel into less dangerous material, and securing 
Russian weapons storage and design areas. Pushes to prevent 
weapon makers from taking their knowledge to developing-weapons 
states are more controversial, and their success is harder to 
prove.

 "We won, but we are not the only treasure trove of secrets," 
said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, who has been an outspoken 
supporter of these programs.

 Despite this support, President Bush's proposed budget cut 
nonproliferation programs by $100 million. Hardest hit is money 
for Russian weapons scientists. While Congress has restored much 
of that, annual fluctuations in budgets and plans have some 
Russian officials wondering if they should continue to open 
weapons facilities to U.S. scientists.

 There is no disagreement, however, that the security threat 
remains unresolved.

 "We need to get out and tell people that the work of dealing 
with the legacy of the Cold War is not done. It simply is not 
done," said Jesse James, a senior associate at the Stimson 
Center, a Washington, D.C.-based arms-control research group.
 
A nuclear history
 
At the entrance to Russia's founding nuclear laboratory stands a 
somewhat startling 10-foot-tall likeness of Igor Kurchatov's 
head, complete with his distinctive long, rectangular beard. The 
Soviet nuclear program began in earnest at this institute named 
for Kurchatov, the father of Russia's weapons program, whose 
presence looms as large as the statue in what was once the 
birch-forested outskirts of Moscow.

 "Everything that turned out to be a massive nuclear industry 
started here," said Victor Tufyaev, a technician in a tight white 
lab coat.

 The lab's control room has been preserved since the moment of 
that first chain reaction, down to the notebooks on the tables, 
the chair where Kurchatov sat, the black-and-white wall clock, 
which still marks 6 p.m. Even the reactor is still running 54 
years later. 

"You'll have to help us get this in the Guinness Book," joked 
V.S. Dikazev, the lab's head of nuclear safety.

 In 1946, a year after two nuclear bombs devastated Japanese 
cities, Russia created its first plutonium here in the country's 
first nuclear reactor. Fed by the best of Russia's scientists, 
generous funding and help from U.S.-based spies, the Russian 
program soon caught up with the United States'. It even surpassed 
the United States in the total number of people working on 
weapons projects, and the number of bombs created.

 "During 10 years, we finished research from the nuclear bomb to 
the hydrogen bomb. It is one example of bad competition," said 
Dikazev, who wore a green and white pin with Lawrence Livermore 
Laboratory's logo, a gift from a previous lab visitor. "Now we 
are collaborators."

 Once the Soviet Union collapsed, many Americans, hearing stories 
of bread lines and worthless rubles, assumed the nuclear threat 
had disappeared. But American experts knew the Soviet security 
system relied on guards and gates, keeping both scientists and 
weapons behind closed doors. That system faltered when guards 
weren't paid and gates weren't maintained. The country didn't 
have a system to track the amount or movement of nuclear 
materials or protect them adequately.

 Amid this chaos, some U.S. leaders quickly established a 
connection with Russian weapons scientists. U.S. and Soviet 
scientists first met as technical advisers to arms control talks.

 In February 1992, directors of U.S. weapons labs visited two 
secret Russian cities known only by their post box numbers in 
nearby towns: Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70. Few, if any, 
Americans had visited these remote Russian weapons lab cities.

 "There was a lot of the feeling, at the end of the Cold War, 
that we could all work together," remembered John Nuckolls, then 
director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, who visited both 
historical and scientific sites during that frigid winter.

 That same year, then-Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. Richard 
Lugar, R-Ind., sponsored legislation creating the Cooperative 
Threat Reduction programs to address the basics: dismantling 
weapons and protecting and storing nuclear materials. It later 
expanded to include conversion of military and nuclear facilities 
and other efforts from the departments of Defense, State, 
Commerce and Energy.

 Supporting weapons scientists was then, and remains now, a small 
part of this monumental task. But as U.S. scientists learned that 
their Russian colleagues were not being paid for months at a 
time, fear grew that these scientists could be wooed by 
high-paying jobs in rogue nations.

 The first real effort to address this threat was the 
International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), a 
collaboration between the United States, the European Commission, 
Japan and other nations that fund science projects in Russia and 
other former Soviet countries. ISTC money from the United States 
supports the Siberian geologists in their shaking research on the 
rolling plains. A sister project operates in Ukraine.

 Since then, other civilian science programs have been started. 
The Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention aim to make applied 
science projects attractive for Western business investment. It 
then hands projects over to the U.S. Industry Coalition, a U.S. 
government-funded nonprofit group that helps businesses work in 
Russia.

 A Department of Energy program to help Russia's 10 closed 
nuclear weapons cities turn to civilian endeavors has come under 
the most criticism by both Russians and Americans. This 
3-year-old effort, called the Nuclear Cities Initiative, has gone 
through multiple reviews and has seen its budget swing 
drastically -- from $6 million to $30 million -- during its short 
lifetime because critics say it is ineffective and its funds go 
to U.S. labs rather than Russian researchers. 

After a rocky start, ISTC is now the most accepted of these 
programs, which says a lot in light of touchy U.S.-Russia 
relations.

 "When the Russian government for several months failed to pay 
the salaries of its nuclear scientists, for several months they 
survived on ISTC grants," said Alexander Pikayev, who studies the 
nuclear threat at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
 
Weapons scientists
 
ISTC provides links with leading Western scientists and 
conferences on how to apply for grants, said Anatoli Iskra, a 
leader in a project to compile radioactive waste data from former 
Soviet sites. The salary system sends money directly to 
scientists rather than to federal bureaucracies. Unlike Russian 
research grants, ISTC salaries are not taxed at the typical 40 
percent.

 "Our projects are a very good model of living in the real market 
economy," Russian executive director Sergey Zykov said, 
explaining many weapons scientists never faced the kind of 
scrutiny typical of Western grant-making agencies and businesses. 
"There is a sort of teaching by real work." However, ISTC faces 
the same criticism as other scientist assistance programs. It 
must prove its salary supplements are not furthering weapons 
research, something ISTC officials say they prevent with 
hands-on, highly accountable management.

 "We can honestly say we are not proposing to do enormous 
things," said Peter Falatyn, who for three years has been an ISTC 
senior adviser. "It is still on a person-by-person-by-person 
basis."

 And that's a good thing. In the decade since the Soviet Union 
fell, relations between the U.S. and Russian governments have 
gone up and down like dot-com stock prices. And if news of 
National Missile Defense and FBI spies is any indication, that 
won't change anytime soon.

 Meanwhile, the long-hoped-for comeback of the Russian economy 
has not materialized, leaving once-hopeful scientists -- 
especially weapons specialists, who were well off during the Cold 
War -- pushing for a return to the good old days of designing new 
weapons.

 All of this has an impact on nuclear nonproliferation programs. 
U.S. lab scientists who once had access to Russian closed cities 
now have to cancel trips or put them off for months. However, 
officials at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow point out that the most 
tense time in recent relations, the war in Kosovo, had little 
impact on nonproliferation efforts.

 Nonproliferation problems were much more complicated than anyone 
suspected 10 years ago. More nuclear materials are in more 
abysmal security and storage conditions than was predicted. The 
expected threat from rogue nations has intermingled with threats 
from terrorists.

 But the doomsday predictions have not yet come true. Some 
Russian weapons scientists have tried to flee for better-paying 
jobs in rogue nations, as documented by nuclear think tanks, but 
they are few and far between.

 Experts now understand, however, that Russians don't have to 
leave their labs to work for those nations. U.S. and European 
visitors have seen business cards of scientists from Iran and 
Iraq inside Russia's closed nuclear cities. And conditions have 
not improved much for weapons scientists, especially in those 
neglected weapons cities that are home to 760,000 residents.

 "There is a dangerous gap between this threat and our response," 
said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Energy official and analyst at 
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Most of today's 
threats can only be met by cooperation with Russia."

 In some ways, that makes nonproliferation programs more 
important.

 "Above all, it is in the U.S. interests, the shrinking of the 
Russian complex," said Pikayev of the Carnegie Moscow Center. "If 
Russia changes its policy to anti-American, it would have less 
chances to reconstitute its nuclear capabilities."

 The question of whether these programs, designed as short-term 
fixes, are good for long-term problems also must be addressed. 
The Bush administration is re-evaluating nonproliferation 
efforts, and preliminary reports say that review suggests at 
least two programs, including the Nuclear Cities Initiative, be 
eliminated.

 "You have to ask yourself, what signal are we sending to the 
Russians?" said James, the Stimson Center analyst. "If you think 
that spending money to address these dangers is a good thing, why 
are we cutting back money on it?"

 At least some Russian experts realize the threat and say they 
are working to do something about it. Officials at the Russian 
Ministry of Atomic Energy say they are putting money earned by 
converting weapons-grade uranium to nuclear power-plant fuel back 
into transforming their weapons complex. They also are looking to 
two highly controversial plans to raise money: Selling a nuclear 
power plant to Iran and importing the world's nuclear waste for 
storage in Russia.

 "From the Russian side, we have to solve this," said Alexander 
Antonov, head of conversion for the Ministry of Atomic Energy, 
the Russian equivalent of the Department of Energy. He said the 
question for the United States is, "Will it take a long time to 
develop this (conversion), or can we speed it up?"
 
To hope
 
Back at the Siberian test site, a mere 52-hour train ride 
southeast of the power players in Moscow, the geologists are 
celebrating the present with an elaborate meal of butter-soaked 
Russian dumplings, known as "pilminy," red caviar on dark brown 
bread and, of course, vodka toasts all around.

 "Perestroika was not good for science," said Victor Soloviov, 
another researcher at the test site, as he stood, glass raised, 
to make his ritual toast.

 He spoke of days when money flowed, when machines ran and twice 
as many scientists were seated at the long food-filled table in 
the bunkhouse here. But he is hopeful for the future of Russian 
science and the test site, he said, because the research is 
strong and has support from the West.

 Everyone raised their glasses as his voice crescendoed to the 
final words:

 "To the ISTC."
 

ContraCostaTimes.com
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 20  NUCLEAR STATISTICS IN RUSSIA, U.S. ...
 
Published Sunday, September 9, 2001 

NUCLEAR STATISTICS IN RUSSIA, U.S.

 NUMBER OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN 1991 Russia: 35,000       U.S.: 20,121 
 NUMBER OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, CURRENT Russia: 25,000      U.S.: 13,000 
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, YEAR Russia: 45,000 in 1986 U.S.: 32,193 
in 1966 DEPLOYED NUCLEAR WEAPONS (STRATEGIC WEAPONS) Russia: 6,000 
U.S.: 7,200 

NUMBER ON HAIR-TRIGGER ALERT Russia: 2,600 or more     U.S.: 2,600 

NUCLEAR WARHEADS THAT CAN BE PRODUCED
WITH AVAILABLE PLUTONIUM Russia: 46,000 U.S.: 28,000 

NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN WEAPONS COMPLEX IN 1985 Russia: 75,000  U.S.: 62,000 
CURRENT NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES IN WEAPONS COMPLEX Russia: 75,000 U.S.: 24,000 
PROJECTED NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES IN WEAPONS COMPLEX IN 2005 
Russia: 32,200  U.S.: 24,000 

AVERAGE SALARY OF SCIENTIST
IN WEAPONS COMPLEX, CURRENT Russia: $1,090	U.S.: $88,000 


ContraCostaTimes.com
*****************************************************************
 21   Surviving the Shakeup: A decade in Russian science

ContraCostaTimes.com 
   
Published Sunday, September 9, 2001 

ABOUT THE SERIES

 Ten years after the end of the Cold War, the status of Russia's 
once-mighty nuclear industry has become a global concern. The 
United States has stepped up funding to redirect the work of 
Russian scientists. U.S. supporters argue that these programs are 
the only real effort to fight what some say is America's most 
menacing national security threat: the spread of weapons to rogue 
nations and terrorists. Times reporter Andrea Widener and 
photographer Jim Ketsdever traveled to Russia in March and April 
to learn more. In five Russian cities, they talked to nearly 100 
people -- students, secretaries, researchers and government 
officials -- about how their lives and work have changed. 
Widener's trip was funded through the Pew Fellowships in 
International Journalism. More information, including links and 
additional profiles of Russian scientists, is available on the 
Web at . Let us know what you think. Contact Widener at 
925-847-2158 or . 

ContraCostaTimes.com
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 22  Bush Proposes Rules for Sick Workers
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
September 07, 2001 
 
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration proposed rules Friday 
to help sick Cold War-era nuclear weapons workers get help 
through state workers' compensation programs, but critics say the 
regulations fall short of what's needed and rely too heavily on 
state standards. 

The draft regulations are designed to help workers who were 
exposed to toxic substances, such as harsh chemicals, while 
employed by contractors at Energy Department facilities around 
the country. 

Those workers were not given direct assistance in a compensation 
bill passed last year that provided medical care and $150,000 to 
sick workers exposed to cancer-causing radiation and silica or 
beryllium. 

But the bill did instruct the Energy Department to help workers 
suffering from toxic exposures file claims under state 
compensation systems. That reversed a decades-old policy in which 
the agency fought such claims. 

The Energy Department is supposed to turn to medical panels for 
assistance in deciding whether workers who say they are suffering 
from toxic exposures got sick on the job. 

If a panel says a worker did get sick that way, and the agency 
agrees, the agency has to help the worker file the claim and can 
direct its contractors not to contest it. 

But worker advocates say they are upset the draft regulations do 
not set a federal standard for determining which workers should 
qualify for compensation because of job-related sicknesses. 
Instead, the regulations defer to worker compensation laws in 
each state. 

David Michaels, an assistant secretary at the Energy Department 
under the Clinton administration who helped craft the law, said 
workers' compensation laws vary by state and often have high 
burdens of proof and strict statutes of limitations. 

That causes problems for people with slow-developing diseases and 
for those who have trouble gathering evidence showing the 
sickness was work-related, Michaels said. 

"Specifically, the legislation intended that the department 
establish one national standard and not defer to state worker 
compensation policies that in the past have contributed to 
workers being unable to receive benefits," Michaels said. 

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the agency did not 
think Congress gave it the authority to trump state requirements. 

"We don't interpret that law Congress passed as calling for 
federalization of a standard," he said. 

Richard Miller followed the bill's progress for the Paper, 
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union. He agrees 
with Michaels and says he also is upset the proposed rules say 
physician panels should weigh whether "it is more likely than 
not" an exposure to a toxic substance on the job made someone 
sick. "It's going to be hard to build a case that it is more 
probable than not,"

Miller said, adding the agency has a poor track record of 
evaluating workers and keeping documentation. 

Davis said critics should attend a hearing on the proposed rules 
Sept. 24 in Washington. 

"What we have certainly outlined here is draft regulations that 
we would love to have comments on," Davis said. 

On the Net: U.S. Department of Energy: http://www.energy.gov/

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 23  Schools in Kursk operation zone practise emergency evacuation 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 8, 2001

Schools in the Russian town of Roslyakovo, where the stricken 
Kursk nuclear submarine is due to be brought after it is raised, 
held emergency evacuation drills on Saturday, Russian TV6 
reported. 

The Kursk is expected to arrive by barge, whereupon a "complex 
operation" will take place to separate the nuclear reactor 
section and take out the missiles, the report stated. 

"It seems the training exercises were supposed to be secret and 
no-one apart from the heads of the schools and kindergartens 
involved knew about them," the TV added. 

About 1,300 schoolchildren practiced donning protective masks and 
clothing, and getting into buses and other means of transport to 
take them to various other towns, the report said. 

Source: TV6, Moscow, in Russian 1100 gmt 8 Sep 01 /BBC 
Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
*****************************************************************
 24  West keen to see Georgia as barrier against drug, nuclear 
transit - border chief 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 7, 2001


Text of report by Georgian news agency Prime-News 

Tbilisi, 7 September: Europe is keen to see Georgia as a barrier 
against the narcotics and nuclear waste transit as well as 
illegal migration, Chairman of the Georgian State Department for 
Border Protection Valeri Chkheidze asserts. 

Chkheidze has told Prime-News that European countries understand 
full well that the Eurasian corridor, which is under construction 
with an active help form Georgia, is attractive for international 
crime also, therefore, Western states are rendering considerable 
assistance to Georgian border guards. 

According to Chkheidze, this year the USA has allocated 12.5m 
dollars to the border department and will allocate similar funds 
next year. 

Chkheidze noted that Russia, too, was concerned about illegal 
migration and criminal transit and was helping Georgian border 
guards best to its ability. He said that Russia had handed 
engineering equipment to Georgian border guards. 

In the meantime, Chkheidze criticized Russia for leaving the 
border sections along Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region 
practically open after the introduction of a visa regime with 
Georgia last year. Recently, two attempts of transporting nuclear 
waste across Georgia from the Tskhinvali region [South Ossetia] 
have been prevented, Chkheidze said. 

He said that, all in all, not a single terrorist had been 
arrested since the introduction of the visa regime, thus, this 
measure had proved to be ineffective from the point of view of 
combating international terrorism. "Terrorists do not go through 
border checkpoints," Valeri Chkheidze said. According to him, 
Russia has treated Georgia disrespectfully when it left "holes" 
along the Abkhaz and Tskhinvali sections of the Georgian-Russian 
state border. 

Source: Prime-News news agency, Tbilisi, in Georgian 1040 gmt 7 
Sep 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material 
*****************************************************************
 25  Armenian minister details Moscow talks on nuclear fuel debt 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Sep 7, 2001

Text of report by Armenian news agency Mediamax 

Yerevan, 6 September: Armenia's current debt to Russia for 
nuclear fuel consists of two parts - an old debt of 16.9m dollars 
and a debt for fresh fuel worth 13.8m dollars, Armenian Energy 
Minister Karen Galustyan said today in Yerevan. 

Galustyan said that he had constructive talks in Moscow. As a 
result of these talks, agreement was reached that supplies of 
fresh fuel for the Armenian nuclear power station and repayment 
of the previous debt would take place simultaneously. The 
repayment of the debt planned for 2002 is to be carried out not 
only as currency payment but also through delivery of goods. 

Armenia initially has to pay 30 per cent of the previous debt 
because this is in line with Russian legislation. Galustyan said 
that relevant work was already being done in this respect by the 
[Armenian] Finance and Economy Ministry and Armimpeksbank. The 
remaining 70 per cent of the debt must be paid in the next 90 
days. 

Galustyan promised that the fuel would arrive in Armenia this 
month. 

Source: Mediamax news agency, Yerevan, in Russian 1300 gmt 6 Sep 
01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to 
    
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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: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
*****************************************************************