***************************************************************** 08/10/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.193 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Setback for SA nuclear industry 2 Yuri Solomatin: The truth about Chernobyl problem concealed 3 Taiwan scraps nuclear referendum plan 4 Australia, Argentina Sign Legally Unstable Nuclear Waste Pact 5 Plans for wind power are raising a storm 6 Corps: Work will go on 7 IEER: The Cheney Energy Plan: Technically Unsound and Unsustainable 8 IEER: Cheney Energy Plan and Spin-off House Bill Are Not Based on 9 Commentary: Fossil fuel, nuclear power plants too risky - 10 The refit of a Plymouth-based submarine is delayed after reactor 11 Report says plant cost is up 12 Russians blame sea pollution on Sellafield 13 NRC Comments on GAO Report on Indian Point 2 Emergency 14 NRC Introduces New Version of Adams Based on Public Comment, NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 ITN - Kursk salvage plans worry residents 2 Plutonium Plan Faces Overhaul 3 Russia Shows Footage of Kursk 4 Kentucky woman receives first check for sick nuclear workers 5 Chao Holds Compensation Ceremony in Paducah, KY 6 And Horror Cuts Our Souls in Two 7 Kursk lifting 'on course' 8 Nuclear blunder delays sub refit 9 Nagasaki vows to push for nuclear-free nation 10 Nagasaki man recalls deaths of siblings in A-bomb horror 11 Nuclear-exposure compensation starts 12 DOE delays waste plan 13 Plan Revised For Disposal Of Plutonium 14 2 atomic bomb survivors tell N.J. group of ordeals 15 Comments on the History of Permissable Dose Standards 16 Uranium settlement 17 Eight more will hook up to rural water 18 Three firms vie for DOE contract 19 Cleanup review could end Sept. 30 20 Couple settles Pantex suit 21 McConnell upbeat about U.S. uranium enrichment 22 PACE negotiations discontinue for now - 23 Nagasaki folk remember bombing 24 Closer U.S. Ties Sought on Nuclear Disaster Plans 25 Kursk Secrets Still Buried One Year On **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Setback for SA nuclear industry Business Day US watchdog rejects application that is ridden with inconsistencies' WASHINGTON In a major embarrassment and a potential threat to SA's effort to sell revolutionary nuclear technology to the world, the US nuclear watchdog has refused to approve containers made by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of SA for transporting hazardous material. The rejection by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which one industry source called "spectacular", is a potentially grave embarrassment for SA's otherwise highly regarded nuclear regulator, which licensed the containers for domestic use in 1999. Observers said SA could ill afford the erosion of the credibility of its nuclear regulator as it would play a key role in vouching for the safety of the revolutionary pebble bed modular reactor that Eskom is developing for export with US and British partners. The corporation also stands to forfeit much of its investment in the containers unless its differences with regulators are settled. The containers heavily shielded seven-ton units, technically known as ZA/CNS1006 packages are designed for carrying Cobalt-60 "pencils" whose applications include cancer treatment and the sterilisation of food and medical products. SA's National Nuclear Regulator rated the package, one of the largest of its kind and a potentially significant source of export revenue, as robust enough to transport pencils producing up to 340000 curies of radiation. But in a May 25 letter to the US transportation department, William Brach of the US commission said the commission would not "validate" SA's approval of the package for use in the US. This was because the application the SA licence and the design and test data on the basis of which it was granted was ridden with "inconsistencies". "The package does not appear to have been fabricated in compliance with the drawings submitted . The testing descriptions and results are incomplete or missing, and do not appear to comply with the (International Atomic Energy Agency's) safety criteria," he wrote. Rod Fisk, CE of Transport Logistics International, a Washington-based nuclear materials shipping firm, said such rejections were almost unheard of. Responding to questions from Business Day, the SA corporation initially denied any connection with the application. The company said it had supplied the containers to an organisation, which it declined to identify, "involved in the supply of Cobalt-60 pencil sources to the gamma irradiation industry. Under the terms (of the contract), the responsibility for licensing the container in countries other than SA is that of the customer or end user." It has been established the customer was Reviss, a UK-based company that markets Cobalt-60, and other radionuclides produced in Russian power reactors, to the US and elsewhere. David Rogers, the Reviss official who handled the licence application, denied his firm was to blame for the rejection. "As far as the paperwork goes, we acted as little more than the postman. We presented the (corporation's) safety case to (the US authorities) with a covering letter." The corporation said Nuclear Technology Products, a division of the corporation's commercial group, Pelindaba Technology, began making containers "out of the strategic necessity to control the distribution of radioactive products it produces at Pelindaba and which are exported widely". "There is a growing export market, and transport containers capable of carrying large quantities of Cobalt-60 are essential." The corporation declined to provide figures, saying only that the containers were a "small but significant part of Nuclear Technology Products' portfolio". If its customer did not have alternative containers for shipments, "the financial and business credibility implications would be grave. Reliable and timeous supplies are watchwords in the radio-isotope business." Aug 10 2001 12:00:00:000AM Simon Barber Business Day 1st Edition © BDFM Publishers 2001 ***************************************************************** 2 Yuri Solomatin: The truth about Chernobyl problem concealed Pravda.RU Aug, 08 2001 Bitter truth about the situation with the nuclear power in Ukraine which was expressed in the interview from the Ukrainian academician Viktor Baryakhtar (The Mirror of the Week, #29, August 4, 2001) made me write more on the subject. Here is an excerpt of the mentioned interview: “It is sad that we did not finish the power-generating units at the Rivnensky and Khmelnitsky nuclear power plants on time. They were 95% ready, we could have put them in operation in 1992. The units could produce 7bn kwh of electric power each for 8 years now! This is $1bn of the lost income. 2 most perfect and safe power-generating units of the Ukrainian nuclear power field were shut down under comrade Yavorivsky’s direction…Moreover, it was even refused to receive the fuel for them back in 1991! This is the brightest example of strategic blindness – inability to realize what the country really needs for its development”. Yavorivsky became a complete blunderer in the Chernobyl matter. This is the subject of the given article. The materials of the document pertaining the radiation caused by the Chernobyl tragedy, its influence on the population in the settlements of Ukraine were unclaimed. The document was prepared by Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences, approved by academician Grodzinsky and by Ukraine’s Healthcare Minister Mr.Serdyukov. And this means that the document has the official effect and was mandatory to be used by all Chernobyl-related bodies since 1999. However the problem remained where it was. Why is that? One of the information laws says the amount of the news that can be learned (understood, perceived) by a human being directly depends on the amount of the information a human being knew at the moment when the news came. If there is enough of the acquired information at that moment then there is the interest in the news. Otherwise the news is like a seed on bad soil – it would not grow. This is of special importance to journalists. A qualified journalist has 2 higher education as a rule: journalist education and the one in which a particular journalist works. So in some European countries the journalists working in the field of the nuclear power have this education. They take part in different scientific seminars which gives them a right to throw light on the modern problems of the nuclear power. Unfortunately the situation is different in our country. Each journalist or deputy thinks he or she is a super pro in the nuclear field. The absolute majority of those journalists writing on the Chernobyl theme seems to be blind to me. Many of them are not educated enough, moreover they do not want to hear anything about their own ignorance. The official information pertaining the radiation caused by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was exposed by the official authorities of Ukraine. The bills connected with the Chernobyl tragedy were passed in 1991. Mr.Yavorivsky (the chairman of the parliamentary commission for Chernobyl) said: “The people living in our zones can get the maximum of 111 rem and the minimum 53 rem for their entire life. And now compare it with the 35-rem Ilyin’s concept we were struggling with!”. The sense of the concept is as follows: the population living on radiation-contamination territories is not supposed to get the extra radioactive dose – more than 7 rem within 70 years of life – not more than 0.1 rem annually. The radioactive level before the tragedy was 35 rem over 70 years of life. In other words, the extra dose because of Chernobyl must not exceed 20% of the level before the explosion took place. This was back in 1991. The radiation level started going down several years after the explosion. Scientists said the population got up to 80% of the extra dose during the first 2 post-tragedy years - for 70 years of life that is. The truth is as follows. Exceeding the dose limit of 7 rem of 70 years of life is forecasted only for 30 settlements out of 2161, referred to different zones of radioactive contamination. This makes up 2% of the amount of settlements. These 30 settlements are located in 2 most contaminated regions: in the Zhitomyr region (15 settlements in 5 districts) and in the Rovensk region (15 settlements in 4 districts). The forecasted doses for those settlements (within 70 years of life) amount to the average 10 rem, not higher than 26 rem. Comparing this to Mr.Yavorivsky’s words it is clear the dose announced in the session hall of the parliament was 5 times as much and even higher! But this bitter truth is still unclaimed. Even the environmental prosecuting bodies did not need it. Why did it happen that way? No answer is needed. Acknowledging the truth about Chernobyl would be the acknowledgement of the incredible incompetence of many well-known politicians, of professional failure of scientists working for them. It would be a moral sentence to those people without a right to be forgiven till the rest of their lives. In the meantime Mr.Yavorivsky has already conquered the National Radio and does his political preaches weekly. By the way Chernobyl costs Ukraine about 6bn hryvnas annually and the funding as provided in the budget is only 26% of the need – 1.8bn hryvnas. The government does not want to take on the burden of responsibility for that years-old deceit! Chernobyl is funded in the smaller volume actually – 1.5bn hryvnas a year (88% to the approved state budget). Yuri Solomatin Especially for PRAVDA.Ru Kiev RIA 'Novosti' Copyright ©1999 by "Pravda.RU". When reproducing our materials ***************************************************************** 3 Taiwan scraps nuclear referendum plan BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Friday, 10 August, 2001, 09:51 The Taiwanese Government has dropped plans to hold a referendum over the fate of a controversial nuclear power project. The government had promised to hold the vote after anti-nuclear groups held demonstrations against the $5.5bn power plant scheme earlier this year. The government said it had scrapped the referendum plan because it would create too much political and economic uncertainty. Taiwan's government had originally vetoed the power plant project, but was forced to resume construction work after protests from the opposition-controlled parliament. Opposition groups argued that the government's anti-nuclear policy would seriously harm the island's economy. From the newsroom of the BBC World Service ***************************************************************** 4 Australia, Argentina Sign Legally Unstable Nuclear Waste Pact Environment News Service: Bob Burton CANBERRA, Australia, August 9, 2001 (ENS) - Argentine environment groups are considering the possibility of legal action against the Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade after he signed an agreement Wednesday with the Australian Government allowing nuclear waste to be imported into Argentina for processing. Environmental groups in both Argentina and Australia argue the shipments would be in breach of the anti-nuclear provisions of the Argentine Constitution. [Giavarini] Dr. Adalberto Rodríguez Giavarini, Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade of Argentina (Photo courtesy Mivoto.com) Argentina's Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Dr. Adalberto Rodríguez Giavarini, co-signed the Nuclear Co-operation in Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy agreement in Canberra on Wednesday with the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, in an event that was not open to the media. The president of the Environmental Defence Foundation of Argentina (FUNAM), Dr. Raul Montenegro, told ENS he was "astonished" that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Argentina had signed the agreement. "They are violating the law and ignoring deliberately previous judiciary verdicts. Early this year the Argentine Court of Justice ordered the government to forbid the passage of the cargo Pacific Swan which was transporting radioactive waste from France to Japan," Montenegro said. The Court of Justice verdict handed down on January 10 upheld the validity of a statute known as Article 41 and ordered "the competent agencies ... to forbid the entrance of the ship Pacific Swan into the national territory and the waters of its jurisdiction." "There are no doubts. Any shipment of radioactive waste from Australia to Argentina is illegal. Like the Pacific Swan shipment. Both INVAP and ANSTO cannot argue that this radioactive waste it is not radioactive waste," Montenegro said. [Downer] Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer (Photo courtesy Office of the Minister) In July last year, the Australian government entered into a $US163 million contract with the Argentine company, INVAP, for the construction of a new reactor at the research facilities of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisations (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights, in Sydney's southern suburbs. Faced with strong public opposition to the development of a nuclear waste dump in Australia and with low level storage facilities full, ANSTO pushed bidders to propose measures they would take to handle the radioactive wastes created by the new reactor. INVAP volunteered to accept nuclear waste from the reactor back in Argentina for processing and re-export to Australia if required. Earlier this year, a French court ruled that nuclear waste from ANSTO could not be unloaded on the docks of Cherbourg for processing at the state owned Cogema nuclear facility. While the decision was later overturned, it prompted the Australian government to search for alternatives as Australia only has contracts in place to handle a few more shipments of spent fuel rods. "While the government's spent fuel and waste management strategy provides for all irradiated fuel to be reprocessed in France under ANSTO's contract with Cogema, processing facilities in Argentina might be utilised in the event that processing in France was unavailable," the Australian government assessment of the agreement states. Now that the binational agreement is signed, FUNAM is considering the option of taking legal action before the Federal Court of Justice. "This agreement and the contract signed last year by INVAP and ANSTO is illegal and null. Illegal because they violate Article 41 of Argentina, and null according article 1207 of our Civil Code," Montenegro said. [ship] The freighter Bouguenais at the dock in Cherbourg, France carrying a shipment of spent nuclear fuel from Australia for reprocessing at the French facility Cogema. March 23, 2001 (Photo courtesy Greenpeace) A document tabled in the Australian Senate by the government argues the agreement binds the Argentine government to support what was previously only a contract between two commercial parties. "It would ensure that this aspect [processing nuclear waste in Argentina] of the Australian Government's strategy for the management of spent fuel already provided for in commercial arrangements is supported by obligations at governmental level," the national interest analysis bluntly states. The Australian government cited economic self-interest as a spin-off effect of the agreement. "The proposed agreement will also allow Australian uranium producers to seek contracts to export uranium to Argentina when opportunities arise, and can be expected to facilitate other commercial spin-offs which will bring trade and investment benefits to Australia," the national interest analysis explained. While the project may have economic benefits for Australian companies, Argentine environmentalists argue the project has the potential to drain scarce government funds from Argentina's budget. On August 1, 2000, Miguel Ricardo from the Ministry of Economy of Argentina wrote to the executive director of ANSTO, Helen Garnett, reassuring her of his "official endorsement of INVAP" and promising the government would financially support INVAP if necessary. Montenegro considers the offer to underwrite any losses on INVAP contract to build a nuclear reactor in Australia as ludicrous. "We are in the middle of one of our most serious economic crises. The budgets of the nuclear agencies have been reduced, and the high salaries of their top officials diminished. The government cannot guarantee a contract, an illegal contract," he told ENS. While the proposed reactor is subject to gaining final approvals from Australian authorities, INVAP is scheduled to begin construction of the Lucas Heights replacement reactor in 2002. But FUNAM has warned that if there is an attempt to import nuclear waste from Australia, they are confident that protests by thousands of people will prevent the nuclear waste from being landed. Environmental Press Releases ***************************************************************** 5 Plans for wind power are raising a storm Las Vegas SUN August 10, 2001 Electricity might go to California By Mary Manning Local power companies can't make a deal to buy electricity from a proposed wind farm until the state issues definitive rules, officials say. MNS, a conglomeration that includes Global Renewable Energy Partnership and German electronics giant Siemens, has plans to build two wind farms -- at the Nevada Test Site and at Table Mountain south of Las Vegas, MNS consultant Tim Carlson said. The wind turbines could generate enough electricity to power 130,000 Las Vegas homes during a typical summer month. Each turbine -- there will be about 230 -- could cost from $750,000 to $1.25 million to install, depending on how many roads are needed and how many environmental issues must be addressed, he said. "They're putting a lot of money in the ground," Carlson said of the wind company. MNS will be ready to sell power when the first turbines are operating, possibly by the end of next year, he said. Problem is, the company is threatening to sell to California the electricity it generates in Nevada. A new law passed by the Legislature this year requires that 5 percent of electricity sold to its customers be produced from wind, solar or other renewable energy sources. The law goes into effect in 2003. But there are no rules to guide the utility, Barbara Allen, Nevada Power's resource planning and forecasting manager, said Thursday. The state Public Utilities Commission this fall is expected to adopt rules defining the process in which utilities can buy 5 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2003. The PUC must first approve Nevada Power's utilities resource plan, Allen said. The resource plan is a document used to forecast Nevada's future power needs. A hearing to determine how much energy the company needs to buy from power generators is slated Sept. 5, Allen said. "Then we can get the ball rolling," she said. The law is not clear on the amount of electricity Sierra Pacific and Nevada Power has to buy from renewable resources in Nevada, Allen said. "I'm going to buy some renewables, but it is not clear if it has to be homegrown or not," she said. If Nevada Power doesn't buy electricity generated by the wind farm, Carlson said, the company plans to sell all of its power to California. Carlson intimated that, within weeks, an energy consultant to California's Gov. Gray Davis could be ready to enter into a memorandum of understanding regarding the purchase of wind power. Nevertheless, Carlson said, MNS remains interested in selling power in Nevada, Carlson said. "We don't want to sell the power to California," he said. "But it is a business issue." Said Nevada Power spokeswoman Sonya Headen, "It seems as if the company is trying to negotiate a contract in the media. Right now, we can't go forward. Our hands are tied." All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 6 Corps: Work will go on The Sun Chronicle Newspaper BY SUSAN LAHOUD / SUN CHRONICLE NORTON -- The Army Corps of Engineers fully expects legislation to be passed by Congress and signed by the president to allow it to complete work on radioactive wastes at the Shpack dump. But even if for some reason the measure is unsuccessful, cleanup at the site will be done, says a spokesman for the Corps. Larry Rosenberg, chief of public relations for the Corps, says if his agency doesn't get the authority to continue work on the site, then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will finish the job. Dave Lederer of the EPA said he could not comment on Rosenberg's statements, but that `` we have no reason to believe this legislation will not go through.'' Lawmakers from the area say they expect the enabling legislation to be introduced around Labor Day, after Congress returns to session. A public meeting in Norton has been scheduled for Sept. 11, by which time the legislation should have passed, said Rosenberg. The time and place of the meeting have yet to be finalized. He said agency representatives want to inform the public first-hand about what has transpired on the project. Three weeks ago they announced they no longer had the authority to proceed after taking it on from the Department of Energy about three years ago. Rosenberg maintained that awaiting the enabling legislation merely represents a `` pause'' in the project, which has been a Superfund site for more than two decades. `` Work has been paused as a result of the Corps living right up to the letter of the law, but it has not stopped,'' he said. He claims work is continuing on remediation plans and the schedule is being adjusted for work on site. `` You might not see somebody in a hard hat on the site, but work is still going on,'' he said. The Corps of Engineers is following a finding by consultants hired for the project that the government has no liability for waste being dumped at the 8-acre Shpack site on the Attleboro line. Heather Graf of Norton, head of the citizens advisory committee for the project, said no one outside of the Corps of Engineers has seen the report by the consultants. She is also skeptical about the Corps' claims that work is still being done on the cleanup plans and that legislation will be passed quickly enough to make up for the more-than-month-long hiatus. Lederer of the EPA said the so-called potentially responsible parties are also expected to present work plans for remediation of non-radioactive wastes at the site at the Sept. 11 meeting. `` We're hoping to get them in the field this fall,'' he said of the work to `` characterize'' the site's contaminants other than the radioactive waste. ***************************************************************** 7 IEER: The Cheney Energy Plan: Technically Unsound and Unsustainable The Cheney Energy Plan: Technically Unsound and Unsustainable by Arjun Makhijani1 In May 2001, a task force led by United States Vice-president Dick Cheney issued a report entitled National Energy Policy: Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group. An alternative title is provided inside: Reliable, Affordable, Environmentally Sound Energy for America's Future. The report is often called the Cheney Plan for short. It is on the Internet at http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/. It has unleashed a flood of debate on energy policy questions. This debate has been needed for some time for a number of reasons: + U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, are at record highs and rising, in contrast to those of the European Union and, in recent years, even China. + The rising world demand for oil and growing U.S. oil imports are occurring in the context of a renewed political-military crisis in the Middle East, both as regards Israel-Palestine and Iraq. There is also an emerging competition between the United States, Russia, and possibly China over the oil and gas resources of the Caspian-Central Asian region (including Iran)2. The U.S. imports about 55 percent of its oil requirements. At about 11 million barrels a day imports, it is, by far, the world's largest oil importer. + Utility deregulation has produced chaotic conditions, including electricity prices in California, that were literally unthinkable at the start of the year 2000. The highest reported price was $3,880 per megawatt-hour. That is almost 40 times the peak price of about $100 per megawatt-hour considered appropriate as the upper limit for peak electricity power charges prior to deregulation. Even at the extremely high price of natural gas at $10 per million Btu, which prevailed briefly last winter (it is just over $3 at the time of this writing, July 2001, and was $2 in early 2000), a reasonable maximum price of peaking power would be about $200 per megawatt-hour. A good deal of peaking power can be generated for much less. While the Cheney Plan devotes a substantial proportion of its pages to renewable energy sources, efficiency, equity, and environment, the recommended actions in these areas are minor, and place all of these issues at the margins of energy policy. Reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide is not a part of the plan, which mentions voluntary measures by corporations in this regard. The National Energy Policy does not mention the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,3 which the United States has signed but which the Bush administration has rejected. The United States is responsible for about 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. The central focus of the plan (to be found in Chapter 5) is increasing energy supply using coal, oil, gas, and nuclear energy. Complementing that supply focus, in the related chapters 7 and 8, are infrastructure developments and foreign policy measures. The following are some of the practical highlights of the National Energy Policy: + Oil and natural gas: The proposed policy would (i) open up federal lands to drilling for oil and gas, notably by reducing "restrictions" currently placed on such drilling; (ii) open a part of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas drilling (the U.S. Geological Survey estimates oil reserves there to be between 5 and 15 billion barrels of oil); (iii) encourage drilling in offshore Arctic areas off Alaska; (iv) consider measures for reducing "risk associated with production [of oil and gas] in frontier areas," and "incentives" such as reduction of royalty payments to the government from new offshore oil and gas production; (v) promote "enhanced oil and gas recovery from existing wells through new technology." + Coal: The proposed policy would provide $2 billion for research on clean coal technologies and "provide regulatory certainty" that would make it easier to invest in coal burning for electricity generation. This appears to be an implicit reference to potential regulations on carbon dioxide emissions that have been a source of concern to the coal industry. + Nuclear power: The proposed policy would "support the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States as a major component of our national energy policy." This support would include (i) easier re-licensing of existing nuclear power plants beyond their design lifetimes, (ii) encouragement of new nuclear power plants at existing nuclear power plant sites, possibly without any new environmental impact statement process, (iii) encouragement of research in a new form of reprocessing called pyroprocessing, in order to promote development of "advanced nuclear fuel cycles and next generation technologies for nuclear energy" (p. 5-17). This is an implicit reference to the Integral Fast Reactor, which is a sodium-cooled breeder reactor with a pyroprocessing plant attached to it. The plan also advocates foreign collaboration on commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing, with countries such as France. The nuclear energy part of Chapter 5 also states that a new reactor type called the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor has "inherent safety features" (p. 5-16), but does not mention any of its safety vulnerabilities. (An article discussing PBMRsis available from IEER upon request.) + Electric power plants: The plan advocates that the United States should build between 1,300 and 1,900 new electric power plants by the year 2020 based on projected demand. (The standard power plant size assumed appears to be 300 megawatts.) + Infrastructure: New natural gas and electricity transmission lines would be encouraged by granting rights of way on federal lands and by new "legislation to grant rights-of-way for electricity transmission lines, with the goal of creating a national transmission grid." This would create federal power to acquire land for interstate commerce on a basis similar to current law for natural gas pipelines (pp. 7-7 and 7-8). One overall provision would tilt the entire federal decision-making process towards energy supply. In the supply measures portion of the summary, the plan recommends that the president "[i]ssue an executive order directing all federal agencies to include in any regulatory action that could significantly and adversely affect energy supplies a detailed statement on the energy impact of the proposed action." (p. xiv). For example, if a new national park is to be created, then its energy impact will have to be examined. There is no corresponding provision on the energy demand, or efficiency, side of the equation. The plan falls far short in regard to renewables, efficiency, distributed grids, and decentralized combined generation of heat and electricity (called cogeneration, which is often far more efficient than producing heat and electricity separately), even though these measures could increase energy efficiency by the criterion of the second law of thermodynamics. (For a description, see the accompanying document, titled "Second Law of Thermodynamics.") For instance, while the Cheney plan goes into detail about reducing regulatory and institutional blocks for oil, gas, and nuclear energy, it does not make a single recommendation in this regard for distributed grids. It completely ignores an excellent study produced by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the Department of Energy, published in July 2000,4 which provides extensive documentation of such regulatory and institutional barriers to cogeneration, renewable energy generation, and other decentralized power plants that would fit into distributed grids. The resistance of major power generating companies to such projects, expressed in the form of unreasonable charges for backup power supply for instance, continues to be a major problem, as it has been for decades. The Cheney Plan would provide tax credits and subsidies for certain efficiency improvements and renewable energy sources. It would: + Enact new legislation to provide a tax credit for cogeneration. + Continue the 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour subsidy for wind-generated electricity. + Provide a tax credit for hybrid cars and fuel cell cars, both of which are more efficient than standard gasoline vehicles. Hybrid cars, which use gasoline as a fuel, run part of the time on batteries charged by energy recovered, for instance, during braking. + Allocate $1.2 billion of the money that the U.S. government would get from leasing ANWR to oil companies toward research and development funds for renewables. This money would not be available if ANWR is not leased. + Provide some modest tax breaks and credits in other areas, such as solar energy. + Continue certain information programs to encourage greater energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources. The plan also recommends that the Secretary of Transportation recommend whether and what mileage standards for vehicles (known as Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency, or CAFE, standards) might be established after taking into account a new study by the National Academy of Sciences. The study, released on July 31, 2001, suggested a number of measures to increase efficiency standards but made no firm recommendations.5 The CAFE standard for passenger cars is currently 27.5 miles per gallon (mpg) and has not been tightened since model year 1985,6 even though gasoline fueled cars using hybrid technology that get 60 mpg are now commercially available. Diesel hybrids can reach up to 100 mpg with current technology. The CAFE standard for light trucks (a category that includes sport utility vehicles, cargo vans, minivans, and pickups) has increased only gradually since the mid-1980s and is now only 20.7 miles per gallon. Overall evaluation of the plan The most notable accomplishment of the plan is that it has made energy into a central topic of national discussion at a time when such debate is urgently needed. The topic has been sorely neglected on a bipartisan basis for the last two decades. But the substance of the plan is technically unsound and unsustainable. It neglects the fact that the energy system consists of complex interactions between the aspects of supply, distribution, conversion (from fuel to electricity), and utilization system. It would considerably increase carbon dioxide emissions, when large decreases are needed. Specifically, the plan takes no account of the fact that the efficiency of energy use in the United States is still very low, despite some improvement over the past 25 years. By measures related to the second law of thermodynamics, the efficiency of many parts of the energy system, such as lighting and heating, and cars and sport utility vehicles (if just the human loads are taken into account), is in the one to ten percent range. Some criteria by which to evaluate the Cheney Plan or any other energy plan are shown below.7 Sustainable Energy System Criteria The following criteria, if met simultaneously, could result in an environmentally sustainable and economically viable energy system for the United States. 1. It must be reliable. 2. Its cost should be reasonable. 3. It should not produce routine severe pollution. 4. It should be possible to almost wholly confine the environmental and security costs of the energy system to the generations benefiting from it. In other words the system should be amenable to cost internalization. 5. Its core functions should be resilient to supply, transportation, transmission, and economic shocks. 6. It should not add matter or energy flows to natural systems to an extent that is comparable to pre-existing natural levels, or large-scale fluctuations in those levels. It is difficult to match the last three criteria, as a group, to the first three. For instance, nuclear energy creates large quantities of plutonium and relies on reactors that can have catastrophic accidents that would pollute the land for uncounted generations. As another example, the present global energy system emits more than 6 billion metric tons of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere), but the natural absorption capacity is about half that. Both these systems fail the sustainability test. Currently, the world's reliance on the Persian Gulf region has created a vulnerability to shocks and is also unsustainable. The region has been a major flash point for global conflict for over half a century and remains so. The addition of the Caspian region to this mix, which is also part of U.S. oil policy, will not alleviate the problem, but rather introduce nuclear weapons into the mix, due to the added potential for U.S.-Russian confrontation. Recently, the U.S. energy system, which had historically met the first two criteria - reliability and reasonable cost - seems increasingly unable to do so, as witness the wild swings in natural gas prices and the extremely unreasonable electricity prices that most Californians have had to pay over the past year. The Cheney Plan will not solve these major problems. For instance, creating a national electricity grid to facilitate the transmission of electricity by large-scale generators will not necessarily address reliability problems and may aggravate them. Low reliability arising from a lack of reserve capacity was the main reason for the power problems in California. Deregulation created a situation in which power producers had no responsibility to maintain reserve capacity, and the regulators had no resources to do so either. A completely unfettered electricity generation sector that has no responsibility for transmission or for reserve capacity would increase costs and be prone to unanticipated breakdowns. It would also increase transmission losses and will likely be less energy efficient. Reliability requires that large-scale private (and public) power producers have a responsibility for providing or paying for the maintenance of reserve capacity and for channeling power along efficient, relatively predictable routes. A free-for-all in generation on a large scale, across the continental United States, is a recipe for continued economic and technical problems. The Cheney Plan does not propose to impose any rules of good behavior on large-scale generators. Therefore, it is unlikely to create a reliable system that will have reasonable and predictable costs. Transmission capacity and location, reserve capacity, and the consuming system need to be coordinated with generation in order to get a reliable system overall. It would be far better to mix small-scale plants that are close to the consumer or are on the consumer's premises and interconnect them to regional grids, which also have large-scale plants on them. Such systems are called distributed grids. These can be connected to regional grid systems, which already exist and only need modest improvement, as for instance between southern and northern California. Such a system of regional hybrid grids can be joined with regional renewable energy sources on a large scale. It would be far more reliable and environmentally sound than creating a national grid. The Cheney plan opens up the questions of resuming reprocessing, establishing plutonium-fuelled reactors, and building new reactors in the United States after a hiatus of a quarter of a century. Reprocessing and plutonium fuelled reactors would throw overboard, without serious national debate, non-proliferation policy that has been sustained on a bipartisan basis through five presidents. Moreover, nuclear energy is a poor choice for the future for reasons that have been discussed at length in IEER publications and prior newsletters. For instance, in Science for Democratic Action vol. 6 no. 3(March 1998), IEER published a comparison between nuclear power and natural gas as ways of reducing greenhouse gases by replacing coal-fired power plants. This comparison shows that moderate natural gas prices and an adequate natural gas supply are important in the transition period to a long-term sustainable energy system based only on renewable energy sources. Hence considerable increases in the efficiency of natural gas are essential. It is also likely that some added production of natural gas will be required. This can come from (i) a reduction of natural gas flaring abroad and imports of liquid natural gas, (ii) added domestic production from wells not associated with petroleum, and (iii) added imports from Canada and Mexico. The Cheney Plan would greatly increase oil drilling, but it would not effectively address oil supply vulnerabilities. Even if all potential new reserves that are now economical at about 15 dollars a barrel of oil are added to USA reserves, U.S. oil reserves would remain well under 50 billion barrels (current proven reserves are 21 billion barrels and ANWR may add at most 5 and 15 billion at most to this total; some estimates are considerably lower). Middle Eastern proven oil reserves are well over 600 billion barrels. Even more important, the cost of oil production is very different in different parts of the world and a central part of the inflexibility of the current systems. It costs only about one dollar per barrel (42 gallons) to get oil out the ground in Saudi Arabia, compared to between 10 and 15 dollars per barrel in many other regions (including the United States). The flexibility of this system to economic shocks cannot be increased by increasing supplies of relatively high cost domestic oil, since downward price shocks can occur through simple increases in production in low cost areas. However, opening up ANWR will likely achieve one goal - up to as much as $100 billion in total profit for oil companies.8 Nor will energy security increase measurably. U.S. oil consumption is currently about 7.5 billion barrels per year (20 million barrels a day). If demand continues to increase at somewhat over one percent per year, the United States will be importing about three-fourths of its oil in twenty years, even if ANWR is opened up and supplies as much as one million barrels a day. This will put a strain on the global oil supply systems economically, politically, and militarily. It will also increase carbon dioxide emissions. This is not only unsustainable, it is a recipe for conflict. In other words, this policy would mean that the many conflicts that are, in fact, already going on in the Middle East-Persian Gulf-Caspian-Central Asian region would likely worsen.9 As noted above, technology to increase efficiency to between 60 and 100 miles per gallon for cars is available today. Annual consumption of gasoline can be reduced to less than four million barrels per day, over the next forty years compared to the present 8.5 million barrels per day, if progressively stringent standards are set on a schedule compatible with capabilities of manufacturers to install new technologies. This possible reduction takes into account a doubling of car-miles. Mandating CAFE standards for cars and light trucks together is preferable to taxing gasoline and diesel, since fuel represents a relatively small part of the overall cost of operating a car (though the most visible on a day-to-day basis). Taxing gasoline is also regressive because it most affects middle income and poor people adversely. For these reasons, it is more efficient and equitable to achieve efficiency by requiring manufacturers adopt efficient technology. Historical experience shows that car makers seem to remember safety when the issue of mileage standards is raised and seem to remember mileage when the issue of reducing emissions of noxious gases, like nitrogen oxides or hydrocarbons, is raised. In practice they have needed government action to set standards for all three - emissions (other than carbon dioxide), mileage, and safety. All three can and should be simultaneously mandated by the government. Setting achievable standards well in advance also encourages research and development on new technologies, such as new strong materials to reduce the weight of cars and increase safety at the same time.10 CAFE standards are needed to force manufacturers to use the best available technology for whatever cars or light trucks they make and sell in the same manner that laws were needed for seat belts and airbags. Standards should be set simultaneously for efficiency and safety since the track record of manufacturers shows that they are reluctant to incorporate either without government pressure. They seem to worry about safety most when the issue of efficiency standards is raised. Their current resistance to mileage standards is a case in point. Reasonable costs for environmentally sound technologies requires that the cost of many new technologies be reduced. The traditional approach in the United States and in some other countries has been to provide subsidies and tax breaks to alternative energy sources. This approach is also favored in the Cheney Plan. However, tax breaks and subsidies are a poor way to achieve a sustained increase in renewable energy sources and highly efficient technologies, since they tend to lock in higher cost technologies and provide insufficient incentive for investment in technology development. Further, tax breaks are too uncertain and politically vulnerable, which is a source of uncertainty for investors. IEER therefore recommends that instead of tax breaks and subsidies for new renewable energy development and efficient technologies, the government's resources should be directed to the establishment of appropriate procurement policies.11 If the government provides a steady market for wind generated electricity, solar electricity, cars meeting efficiency standards, and for distributed generation in federal buildings with interconnection obtained at reasonable prices, then the overall nature of the marketplace will be affected positively. Open bid each year for such commodities would also encourage private sector research and development investments to reduce costs. The federal government can also provide grants to states and local governments designated for such purposes, as it does for a variety of other purposes, for instance sewage treatment plant construction and educational programs. The Baker's Dozen: IEER Energy Policy Recommendations 1. Adopt sustainable energy system criteria, including the goals of phasing out nuclear power plants as their licensed lifetimes end, unless safety dictates a faster shutdown of specific plants, and reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent over the next forty years. 2. Request the National Academy of Sciences to establish a standing committee on the second law of thermodynamics that would recommend what fundamental research needs to be done to develop new energy-related technologies with far greater efficiency. For instance, this committee would recommend what materials research is needed to improve the efficiency of heat exchangers under conditions of small temperature differences. 3. Mandate stringent fuel efficiency standards increasing progressively to the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon for a CAFE standard that includes all passenger vehicles (including light trucks) by 2040. Stringent safety standards should be simultaneously mandated. 4. Establish stringent efficiency standards for appliances. 5. Dedicate about $5 billion per year for federal purchases of renewable energy, efficient vehicles, and advanced energy conversion technologies (such as fuel cells) for federal use and resale and provide a similar sum annually to states and local governments for the same purposes. 6. Re-establish federal and state regulation of generation requiring reasonable rules for small power generators to connect to the grid. Severe financial penalties should be assessed for failure to comply and especially for any deliberate subversion of the regulations, since the damage to society from continued institutional resistance to the establishment of a distributed electricity grid would be great. The roadblocks to distributed grids, identified in the July 2000 report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, should be expeditiously removed by a combination of local, state and federal government action and vigilant enforcement. 7. All major residential and commercial real-estate developers as well as major industrial projects should be required to assess the energy impact of their projects and to consider developing their own local generation systems that would be connected to the grid. 8. The Bush administration should ask the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to do a detailed study of how large-scale wind resources can be brought to play a major role in the electricity system in the next 20 years and in the overall energy system (via hydrogen production) in the two decades after that. (See appendix for IEER's description of wind energy potential.) This study should also address the potential of offshore wind energy in the United States. 9. Ask the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to design a pilot program for hydrogen generation and use that would enable a realistic evaluation of the methods by which a transition to a hydrogen economy based on renewable energy sources can be made. 10. The U.S. government should re-affirm its policy of no reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and adopt a policy of phasing out nuclear power plants at the end of their licensed lifetimes, unless safety dictates a faster shutdown of specific plants. 11. Establish a task force that would study the potential need for natural gas to be a fuel that would enable the United States and the world to transition to a sustainable energy system by 2050. This task force would look at places where natural gas not associated with oil may be produced in an environmentally safe way and how such gas would best be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and phase out nuclear power at the same time. (See Science for Democratic Action vol. 6 no. 3, March 1998). 12. The United States should take the lead in urging major oil companies to completely end the flaring of natural gas in oil-exporting developing countries such as Nigeria within the next three years. Instead of being wasted by flaring, this resource should be used domestically in those countries and possibly also exported for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 13. All local, state and federal jurisdictions should require utilities to establish just-in-time electricity efficiency plans. Appendix: Large scale wind energy development in the United States The Cheney Plan goes into great detail about oil and gas, as well as electricity transmission infrastructure that would make it easier for large companies to generate anywhere and sell anyplace. However, it provides no quantitative analysis of the enormous wind energy potential of the United States. The top twelve states in terms of wind energy potential after land use exclusions, such as national parks or areas with dense populations, is shown in the table below. The wind potential of many other states is considerable, but is lower than the ones listed below due to a combination of factors such as wind speed, population density, and/or other land use restrictions. Wind Energy Potential, Top Twelve States (land use exclusions accounted for) State Annual electricity generation potential, billion kWhe Percent of total U.S. electricity generation, 1999a North Dakota 1,210 32.8 Texas 1,190 32.2 Kansas 1,070 29.0 South Dakota 1,030 27.9 Montana 1,020 27.6 Nebraska 868 23.5 Wyoming 747 20.2 Oklahoma 725 19.6 Minnesota 657 17.8 Iowa 551 14.9 Colorado 481 13.0 New Mexico 435 11.8 Total, top twelve 9,984 271 Total ERCOT (Texas) ~1,000b Total Western Interconnect (up to approximately the Montana-New Mexico North-South line) ~2,700b Total Eastern Interconnect (rest of the lower 48 states) ~6,000b Source: An Assessment of the Available Windy Land Area and Wind Energy Potential in the Contiguous United States, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, 1991, as cited in American Wind Energy Association, "The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Wind Energy," accessed via http://www.awea.org. Notes in table: a. Electricity generation in 1999= 3,690 billion kWhe (kilowatt-hour electric) b. The totals for the interconnected regions are approximate since the regions do not correspond exactly to state borders. ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) includes most of Texas, but excludes a part of the Texas panhandle. Transmission is currently coordinated within the Interconnect regions. Wind energy totals include only the wind potential for the listed states. Actual totals would be higher if the potential of the states not listed is included. Offshore wind potential would boost totals in all three regions. Only about one-and-a-half percent of the potential wind resources in these top twelve states would, over 40 years, be equivalent to the entire oil reserves of ANWR (assuming they are 10 billion barrels). Of course, the wind energy potential would still be available after that, while the oil reserves would be exhausted. A development of the wind energy potential on a significant scale would require the development of transmission infrastructure to feed wind generated electricity into high voltage transmission lines and the infrastructure of some new transmission line corridors in some states. The most expedient approaches in the short term may be to connect Wyoming, Montana, and New Mexico westward, and the Midwestern states with high wind potential to the east. For more information on wind energy, see IEER's 1999 report, Wind Power Versus Plutonium: An Examination of Wind Energy Potential and a Comparison of Offshore Wind Energy to Plutonium Use in Japan. A summary of this report can be found in Science for Democratic Action vol. 8 no. 1(November 1999). Available on this web site + Accompanying documents to IEER's critique of the Cheney energy plan: The Second Law of Thermodynamics Pebble Bed Modular Reactors + Press releaseon IEER's critique of the Cheney energy plan IEER Homepage Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA Posted August 9, 2001 Endnotes 1. Arjun Makhijani is the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. This is an advance copy of article that will appear in Science for Democratic Action vol. 9 no. 4 (August 2001). 2. Michael Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001). 3. See Science for Democratic Action vol. 6 no. 3(March 1998) for a discussion of the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol. See also the article by Kevin Gurney in that issue for a discussion of the greenhouse gas problem. 4. R. Brent Alderfer, M. Monika Eldridge, and Thomas J. Starrs, Making Connections: Case Studies of Interconnection Barriers and their Impact on Distributed Power Projects, NREL SR-200-28053 (Golden, Colorado: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, May 2000, as revised in July 2000). 5. Committee on the Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards (Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 2001). 6. U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics 2000, BTS01-01 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 2001), table 4-23, accessed via http://www.bts.gov/ntda/nts/NTS99/data/Chapter4/4-23.htmlon 1 August 2001. 7. The sustainable energy criteria are drawn from Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska, Nuclear Power Deception(New York: Apex Press, 1999), Chapter 9. 8. This assumes a 10 billion barrel reserve, a $15 per barrel cost of production, and a price of $25 per barrel (the current price, which is also in the middle of OPEC's target range). 9. Klare, 2001, op. cit. 10. For information on efficient cars, safety, and latest technical developments see, for instance, the web site of the Rocky Mountain Institute. 11. However, subsidies for existing renewable energy and energy efficiency installations, which was factored into the design of the projects, should be continued to prevent these projects from being shut. ***************************************************************** 8 IEER: Cheney Energy Plan and Spin-off House Bill Are Not Based on Sound Science, press release For Immediate Release, 9 August 2001 For further information contact: Arjun Makhijaniat (301) 270-5500 or Bob Schaefferat (941) 395-6773 Cheney Energy Plan and Spin-off House Bill Are Not Based on Sound Science Independent Institute Proposes Solutions, Including Distributed Grids, Scrapping Tax Breaks, Mandating Tighter Vehicle Safety and Mileage Standards Simultaneously Fifty percent carbon dioxide emissions cut possible by 2040 Takoma Park, Maryland: An independent research institute says that the proposed U.S. energy blueprint, introduced by the White House in May, and largely adopted last week by the U.S. House of Representatives, is scientifically flawed, economically inefficient, and proliferation prone. The Bush administration's "National Energy Policy," also known as the Cheney Plan, was developed by a task force led by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. In an advance copy of an articlethat will be published in the organization's newsletter, Science for Democratic Action, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) criticizes several aspects of the Cheney Plan, and suggests solutions. "The efficiency of energy use in the United States is still appallingly low, despite some improvement over the past 25 years," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of IEER, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Takoma Park, Maryland, which has published many studies on energy, nuclear, and environmental issues. "The plan is scientifically unsound and pays no attention to fundamental energy system issues. We think we are living in a high-tech society," said Makhijani. "Yet the efficiency of the major parts of the energy system, measured by strict physics criteria, is appallingly low, often in the one to ten percent range. " One of IEER's recommendations is that the federal government should establish a standing committee of the National Academy of Sciences that would report to the country each year on the state of the energy system, including changes in its efficiency, reliability, and sustainability. For instance, the Cheney Plan (available on-line at www.whitehouse.gov/energy) discusses the many advantages of distributed electricity generation which consists of small-scale power generation at locations at or near electricity consumers in contrast to central power stations, which are often hundreds or thousands of miles away. Decentralized power units can be connected to the grid, to create a more reliable system for consumers and a more efficient system overall. The resulting grid, called a "distributed grid," will have lower transmission losses and permit higher efficiency systems, such as cogeneration of heat and electricity to be used in more locations. Yet the Cheney plan does not propose to remove the many institutional and industry barriers to distributed grids. It does not even cite an excellent government study published just one year ago on the subject. Instead of distributed grids, the Cheney Plan advocates a national energy grid. "A national grid would mainly serve the interests of large energy traders and generators, like Enron and Duke Energy," said Makhijani, "but it would make the electricity system more cumbersome and possibly less reliable. It would also increase transmission losses compared to a distributed grid." IEER contends that the present energy production and consumption pattern is environmentally and politically unsustainable. For instance, IEER estimates that if the use of oil continues to grow at the current rate of just above one percent per year, "the United States will be importing about three-fourths of its oil in twenty years, even if the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is opened up." Dr. Makhijani noted that "Neither the Cheney plan nor the House bill even mention the Kyoto Protocol," the international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which the United States has signed but which the Bush administration has rejected. Meanwhile, the Administration is under pressure from Europe and now a U.S. Senate committee to come up with a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and take part in international negotiations on global warming. Of the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is the biggest contributor to global warming and it is the main gas emitted when oil and coal are burned. The U.S. is responsible for about 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. According to the IEER paper, the world will need to make a 50 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions to make a real dent in the global warming problem. "The technology is basically already there to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent over the next forty years," said Makhijani. "For instance, if the government mandated corporate average fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards equivalent to 100 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks combined by 2040, consumption of gasoline in the U.S. by that time would be reduced to less than half of today's rate, even if automobile use doubles in terms of miles driven. This can and should be made compatible with safety." "Car makers seem to remember safety when the issue of mileage standards is raised and they seem to remember mileage when the issue of reducing emissions of noxious gases is raised," said Makhijani. "In practice they have needed a government prod on safety, mileage, and emissions standards. All of them should be simultaneously mandated." An Audi giving 100 miles per gallon on diesel has recently been demonstrated in Germany and gasoline cars getting over 60 miles per gallon are currently commercially available in the U.S. In an unusual twist, IEER recommends that there be no tax breaks or subsidies for energy supply or efficiency. "Tax breaks and subsidies simply lock in high costs. It is unfortunate that they have been the traditional policy vehicle of choice for renewables and efficiency," said Makhijani. Instead of tax breaks and subsidies, IEER recommends that the government institute a purchasing program to bring efficient technologies, like hybrid cars, and renewable energy sources to the market, dedicating $5 billion per year for federal purchases and a similar sum for state and local government purchases of renewable energy, efficient vehicles, and advanced energy conversion technologies, like fuel cells. "This may look like far more money than the House has allocated for tax breaks and subsidies, but it is not. The net expenditure will be far lower that $10 billion per year, since the government will be eventually reduce its energy costs by billions of dollars a year," said Makhijani. Nuclear energy and especially reprocessing are poor energy choices since they do not meet sustainability criteria, according to IEER. "There is no such thing as an inherently safe reactor," said Makhijani. "And it is unfortunate that the Bush administration proposes to abandon a quarter century of non-proliferation policy in regard to reprocessing and of caution in regard to new reactors when safer options are available." IEER advocates a far more efficient energy system in which natural gas would be the major transition fuel. The IEER plan recognizes that even with greater efficiency of natural gas use and elimination of venting worldwide, some new natural gas supplies will probably be needed in North America. IEER also advocates a large-scale wind energy initiative focused in the middle section of the country. Published data show that the wind energy potential of just 12 states far exceeds the entire U.S. electricity generation from all sources. IEER's analysis of nuclear energy's proliferation, safety, and waste management problems, along with other factors, have been discussed at length in IEER publications, many of which may be accessed via its web site at http://www.ieer.org/webindex.html#power. --30--- Available on this web site: IEER's critique of the Cheney energy plan: "The Cheney Energy Plan: Technically Unsound and Unsustainable," and its accompanying documents: The Second Law of Thermodynamics Pebble Bed Modular Reactors IEER Homepage Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA Posted August 9, 2001 ***************************************************************** 9 Commentary: Fossil fuel, nuclear power plants too risky - The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, USA August 8, 2001 By A. STANLEY THOMPSON PRESIDENT BUSH'S energy plan, recently approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, is an attack on all future generations: my grandchildren and yours. Southern California has experienced recent "rolling blackouts" of power. To prevent this from happening again, in California and elsewhere, our president and his advisers propose building many new fossil-fuel plants. They, and the nuclear power industry, also want to build a new generation of nuclear plants. Some of us are appalled at the prospect of their entering either line of venture. Most of our electrical energy is still generated by the consumption of fossil fuels. The burning of these fuels for space heating, generation of electricity and propulsion of vehicles generates massive amounts of carbon dioxide, trapping heat from the sun in the Earth's atmosphere, leading to catastrophic global warming. Among other harmful effects, the world's glaciers will melt, raising the level of the surface of the sea, perhaps flooding low-lying areas such as Florida. The world's supply of fossil fuels, including coal and petroleum products, was built up over millions of years of evolution. Energy curves show our use of petroleum products continuing to rise steeply while the rate of discovery appears to have passed its peak. The ready supply of petroleum products will have been exhausted in the period of one lifetime, depriving all future generations of its many benefits. The nuclear power business is an economic failure, dependent for its continuance on subsidies from governments desiring plutonium and tritium for nuclear bombs. All nuclear plants ordered by U.S. utilities since 1973 were subsequently canceled. In the U.S., there are a collection of more than 100 aging nuclear power plants, generating perhaps 20 percent of our electrical energy. Nuclear promoters claim falsely that the nuclear business does not generate carbon dioxide. Among other requirements, power reactors generally demand "enriched" fuel, having a higher ratio of fissionable uranium-235 to nonfissionable uranium-238 than the 140th fraction provided in natural uranium. The enrichment is done in vast "diffusion plants" that use great amounts of fossil energy, thereby generating carbon dioxide. Nuclear reactors manufacture tons of plutonium and other lethal radioactive materials. The Earth is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years, a short time compared with the age of the Earth but forever compared with a human lifetime. Naturally occurring plutonium has now become almost nonexistent. Because of the virtual disappearance of many such radioactive perils, life forms on Earth had become marginally safe from radiative destruction. But now reactors have made more than 1,000 tons of plutonium, plus other devastating radioactive materials, and are still producing. This represents a reversal of part of the beneficial effects of evolution. There is no method for eliminating or storing these dangerous residues of reactor operation safe from future contact with living beings. All engineering creations are subject to failure. Nuclear power plants are particularly vulnerable because they are too complicated for complete analysis. Reactor failures are unacceptable, as demonstrated by Chernobyl. After that plant's catastrophic failure, reindeer meat was discarded in Lapland and milk in Italy. Birds died in a sanctuary in California and elsewhere where rain brought down the radioactive cloud encircling the world. Ukrainian children suffering from leukemia and thyroid difficulties were given relief in camps in New Zealand and elsewhere. But American reactor designers and builders believe that they are smarter than the Russians. In their arrogance, they have now designed "inherently safe" reactors with which to replace the present fallible versions. There is no way to check the validity of their claims but to build thousands of nuclear power plants. They really ask: "How can we be certain that fossil and nuclear power ventures will ruin the Earth's atmosphere for all future generations unless we build them?" The public has in the past too readily accepted assurances concerning "safe" reactors. I mention here only two, SL-1 and Fort St. Vrain. SL-1 (stationary low-power reactor), a very small, water-moderated-and-cooled reactor, was designed to be so simple and "inherently safe" that it could operate unattended on the polar ice caps. On Jan. 3, 1961, at the Reactor Test Station in Idaho, its test version was shut down for routine maintenance by a three-man night crew. A nuclear explosion contaminated the reactor building and killed the three men, leaving one of them hanging from the ceiling, impaled on a control rod. More recently, a high temperature gas-cooled power reactor built for the Colorado Public Service at Fort St. Vrain, could not be brought to power because of excessive power oscillations that worsened as power was increased. This reactor, like some newly proposed versions of the "inherently safe" pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR), was composed of graphite spheres containing the reactor fuel. It appears that some members of the International Atomic Energy Agency fear that "inherent safety" of proposed PBMRs may be too quickly assumed. Must we allow our president and his "experts" to carry out their ventures? We should moderate our greed for energy while we investigate the development of "softer" sources, including solar energy. Dr. A. Stanley Thompson of Eugene retired after a career in academia and industry, working on aviation projects, thermal power plants and nuclear reactors. In his last position, he was a professor of mechanical engineering at Howard University in Washington, D.C. ***************************************************************** 10 The refit of a Plymouth-based submarine is delayed after reactor fault is found BBC Online - Devon - News - August 2001 Submarine refit delay after new reactor fault [HMS Torbay in drydock] Repair Delay: HMS Torbay's refit has been put back by three months after a fault was found in a vital part of its nuclear reactor There has been another embarrassing incident for the Royal Navy's nuclear submarine fleet. The refit of HMS Torbay, which was nearing completion at Devonport Dockyard, has been put back by three months after a fault was found in a vital part of its nuclear reactor. HMS Torbay has been undergoing refit at Devonport Dockyard since 1998. She had been due to return to operational duties following a rededication ceremony back in June. But tests have uncovered a fault with one of the control rods in the submarine's nuclear reactor. [HMS Torbay] On Duty : the Navy says HMS Torbay will return to active service this year Independent nuclear consultant John Large said: "The control drives are absolutely key safety components and this problem was discovered before reactor start-up. But, that said, this is rather embarrassing, egg on the face almost, for the Navy and DML that such a problem has been discovered after the boat has been finished, ready for commissioning." DML issued a statement this morning stating that a minor problem had been identified during testing: "Safety is paramount in all our operations," it said. "The fault is being investigated and will be fully amended before work proceeds." [submarine] Refit Delay: experts say the work is likely to take at least three months The Navy also stressed that there was no threat to safety and said discussions with DML and the reactor design authority, Rolls Royce, continue. HMS Torbay was one of six hunter killer submarines found to be suffering from a design fault discovered on HMS Tireless in Gibraltar in May last year. It resulted in all of the Navy's hunter killer submarines being recalled for repair. The defect has now been rectified, but this latest setback means just three T-class boats, Triumph, Tireless and Trafalgar are currently operational. The Royal Navy has stressed that the fault poses no danger to safety. It says discussions with DML and the reactor design authority, Rolls Royce, are continuing. Experts say the work is likely to take at least three months. The Navy admits the refit will be delayed, but said HMS Torbay would still return to active service this year. ***************************************************************** 11 Report says plant cost is up Augusta Georgia: Technology: 08/10/01 Watchdog group says it is concerned about high expense, potential hazards of proposed plutonium-disposal site Web posted Friday, August 10, 2001 By Brandon Haddock Staff Writer Cost estimates for a proposed plutonium-fuel plant at Savannah River Site have risen from $1.4 billion to $2.46 billion, according to a federal report leaked Thursday. The price of a mixed-oxide fuel-fabrication facility at SRS could rise even higher, said the National Nuclear Security Administration report. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said that he had not studied the report but that he wasn't sure he agreed with its conclusions. The proposed plant would use weapons-grade plutonium in fuel for nuclear-power plants. The plan is part of a U.S. Department of Energy plan to dispose of 55 tons of plutonium. The radioactive metal, used in nuclear weapons, can cause cancer if inhaled or ingested in even relatively small amounts. The report, dated March 30, was due by law to Congress on Feb. 15 but had not been published by the administration. Instead, the document, which is labeled ''distribution draft'' and is marked ''Do not cite or quote,'' was released by a watchdog group called the Nuclear Control Institute. The institute is one of several organizations pushing for a different plutonium facility, called an immobilization plant, to be built at SRS. Those observers consider the immobilization plant, which would bake plutonium into ceramic pucks suitable for long-term burial, to be a safer, more effective option for plutonium disposal than the proposed fuel plant. But the Energy Department has suspended work on the immobilization project, which has an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. Department officials have said the agency can't afford to design and build the immobilization plant and the fuel plant at the same time. ''They are not choosing the cheapest option,'' Tom Clements, executive director of the Nuclear Control Institute, said Thursday. Concern about the plutonium program at SRS has been rising for months. Last week, the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives passed a proposal that would prevent the Energy Department from shipping plutonium to SRS until it has clarified its plans for ultimately removing the radioactive metal from the site. The measure was proposed by U.S. Reps.John Spratt and Lindsey Graham. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges wrote the congressmen July 31, asking for their support in making sure that plutonium slated for SRS had a clear path out of South Carolina. ''The Energy Department's recent behavior reflects a profound lack of respect for South Carolina and our past contributions to the nation's security and well-being,'' Mr. Hodges wrote. The letter followed several that the governor had written to Mr. Abraham. In those letters, Mr. Hodges criticized the decision to stop work on the immobilization plant, and threatened to block shipments of plutonium to SRS if the state's concerns weren't addressed. Mr. Abraham met Mr. Hodges Monday at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Providence, R.I. The secretary said Thursday that the talk was ''a positive start'' and that he believed the two parties could resolve their differences. ''The legacy of this facility is one of working together,'' Mr. Abraham said. ''That's what I want to do. We can work together and get things done.'' Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com. All contents ©1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights ***************************************************************** 12 Russians blame sea pollution on Sellafield Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search Ian Traynor in Moscow August 9, 2001 The Russian authorities yesterday blamed Britain's Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant for the worst radioactive pollution in the Arctic and the Barents sea where the Kursk, the Russian nuclear-powered submarine, sank a year ago. Launching a campaign to win over public opinion in the west in the run-up to the ambitious operation to lift the Kursk next month, a Kremlin-sponsored website reported that Russian researchers had proved that the British Nuclear Fuels plant in Cumbria was by far the biggest source of radioactive contamination of the northern seas. Russian experts at meteorological agencies and a St Petersburg research institute had "evidence that the main source of pollution in the North and Norwegian seas comes from a British nuclear waste recycling enterprise in Sellafield", the Kursk141 website, launched by the Russian government yesterday, reported. Research by the St Petersburg institute "has helped to disperse the myth about the Russian origin of most of the radioactive pollution in the European Arctic seas", the website says. "The scientists have established that the 'British track' [radioactive signature] can be found in at least half of the radioactive plutonium sediment at the bottom of the Barents and Norwegian seas. The liquid radioactive wasteflow that comes from the Sellafield plant is one of the main sources of plutonium of these sea beds." The launch of the English-language website in London is part of a propaganda offensive in anticipation of any pollution risk from the Kursk, which sank last year after two explosions during an exercise. Most of the contamination was discharged in the 1950s when Sellafield was known as Windscale, and currents had gradually shifted the toxins to the Arctic, the website added. The Foreign Office last night said it had not received any representations from Moscow. Ireland and Norway have repeatedly complained to Britain about radioactive discharges from Sellafield. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 13 NRC Comments on GAO Report on Indian Point 2 Emergency Preparedness Press Release - 2001 - 99 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: Web Site: No. 01-099 August 9, 2001 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been working with the General Accounting Office (GAO) for some time with regard to its report released today on Emergency Preparedness at Indian Point 2 (IP2) nuclear power plant, located 30 miles north of New York City. The GAO recommends increased direct interaction between Federal agencies and State and local governments, on the basis that these contacts are now limited. The NRC recognizes the value of effective communication between Federal agencies and State and local governments in developing and implementing radiological emergency response plans for nuclear plants. In fact, the NRC already interacts with State and local governments through emergency exercises, outreach training and planning meetings. For the IP2 site, the NRC staff has interacted with New York State and local government representatives over the past five years approximately a half a dozen times through emergency exercises and outreach training. Nonetheless, we are taking the GAO's recommendations under advisement and will look for opportunities for improvement in communicating with State and local officials. ### ***************************************************************** 14 NRC Introduces New Version of Adams Based on Public Comment, Operational Experience Press Release - 2001 - 100 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov Web Site: http://www.nrc.gov/OPA No. 01-100 August 10, 2001 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has enhanced its Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) to better meet the requirements of the public as well as to incorporate the benefits of the operational experience it has gained. The new software, ADAMS 3.3, provides system users with several new features and upgrades. These include simplified on-line ordering, which allows members of the public to mark documents from a search, select either a paper or CD-ROM format and then send their request via e-mail to the agency's Public Document Room copy service. Other system enhancements are increased printing speed for members of the public who download documents from ADAMS at home or the office, a single print icon for PDF files, and a procedure for public users to choose different "Report" formats for lists of ADAMS documents that include "packages," which are comprised of cover or transmittal letters with attachments. For more information on the new ADAMS enhancements, please contact Thomas Smith at 301-415-7204, or toll-free at 1-800-368-5642, e-mail TES@nrc.gov. ### ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 ITN - Kursk salvage plans worry residents "But to risk the lives of our people and children, our future, I think this is simply a crime" - Roslyakovo resident Olga Lapina Final preparations are being made to bring he Russian submarine Kursk back to the surface a year after an explosion tore through it killing more than 100 men. But plans to tow the Kursk into a Russian port are causing some residents to fear for their safety. The Russian Navy has designated the small port city of Roslyakovo as the Kursk's final resting place. It insists the plan is safe and that it will bring the vessel, which is more than twice the length of a jumbo jet, into port. But the the 5000 people who live there are wondering what secrets and dangers the submarine's two nuclear reactors and missile bay really hold. Irina Matushenko said people were scared about possible health hazards, especially the effects on children. "We have a small child and we are worried about how dangerous it is to place the Kursk by us," she said. "Maybe there will be some radiation or something. This is frightening and we are scared for our child." Olga Lapina said it was a "crime" for the navy to risk the future of the city's children. "Perhaps they could find some solution by finding an abandoned dock and placing the ship there," she said. "But to risk the lives of our people and children, our future, I think this is simply a crime. "That's my opinion, and I think it is shared by many residents of our town." The cause of Russia's worst nuclear submarine accident is still subject of continued speculation countless conspiracy theories. Mistrust of government statements on Kursk runs high among ordinary Russians after a series of contradictory statements and backtracking following the accident. Officials hinted at a collision with a NATO vessel, they said the crew was tapping SOS messages on the hull, then they announced the crew had died minutes after the blasts. [Email to a friend] KURSK:The Russian Government has launched an English-language website to cover next month's bid to raise the Kursk submarine. The site will carry live news on the salvage attempt in the Barents sea. It also shows computer simulations of how the operation will be carried out. ***************************************************************** 2 Plutonium Plan Faces Overhaul Las Vegas SUN August 09, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) - The Energy Department is revamping a Clinton-era plan to dispose of 50 metric tons of surplus plutonium amid cost overruns, prompting threats from South Carolina's governor to block shipments into the state. An Energy Department report, made public Thursday by a private group, concludes that the cost of disposing of the plutonium will be at least $6.6 billion over 22 years, about 50 percent more than estimated two years ago. At the same time, the Bush administration has put on hold part of the program that called for some of the plutonium to be put in glass logs for eventual burial at the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada, once that facility is approved. That decision has brought complaints from South Carolina officials who are concerned that the department will ship tons of plutonium from its weapons facilities into the state for processing with no assurance the material will ever leave the state. "When South Carolina agreed to accept plutonium ... DOE agreed that there would a clear exit strategy," South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges said recently. Hodges, a Democrat, said the "shifting nature" of the government's plutonium disposition strategy suggests that the Energy Department "plans to renege on many of its prior commitments" to the state. Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who talked with Hodges earlier this week, is eager to resolve the dispute. In 1999, the Clinton administration announced a "dual strategy" for getting rid of the excess plutonium from Cold War-era warheads and plutonium found at various weapons facilities. Under the plan, 33 metric tons would be converted into a mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel for burning in civilian power reactors. Another 17 metric tons, thought too impure for conversion would be immobilized in glass containers and eventually buried in Nevada. But earlier this year, the administration stopped funding the immobilization program and announced the entire plutonium disposal plan was being reviewed. Abraham said that it was too expensive to pursue both programs and that the department would focus for now on building the MOX conversion facilities at the Savannah River complex. He suggested that the immobilization track would be resumed later. But South Carolina officials fear that might never happen. "The dual track was an essential component of our agreement," insists Hodges, pledging that if he is not assured of a "timely exit strategy" he would block shipments into the state - raising the specter of a standoff with federal officials. Years ago, Idaho's governor dispatched the highway patrol and set up roadblocks to keep nuclear spent fuel shipments out of that state until a settlement was reached with the Energy Department. Meanwhile, an Energy Department report released Thursday by the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group involved in nuclear nonproliferation issues, showed the cost of the program has grown from about $4.4 billion in 1999 to $6.6 billion over its 22-year life. "This shows a massive cost escalation," said Tom Clements, the group's executive director, adding it calls into question the MOX option which represents most of the increase. The institute opposes using plutonium for civilian reactors and argues all of it should be put in glass to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 3 Russia Shows Footage of Kursk Las Vegas SUN August 09, 2001 MOSCOW (AP) - Divers using special drills and chains will start slicing off the mangled front section of the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk on Aug. 12, exactly one year after the disaster that destroyed the huge vessel and killed 118 Russian seamen, officials said Thursday. The Russian Navy released video footage of the underwater preparations to lift the Kursk from the Barents Sea floor next month. The video, shot Aug. 2 and shown on Russian television stations Thursday, showed divers' hands maneuvering outside the stricken submarine and amid a mass of wires and pipes between its inner and outer hulls. It also showed the process of removing pieces of hull, as well as cables and systems that Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said were in the fifth compartment, which contains the Kursk's nuclear reactors. Russian officials insist there is no risk that the reactors will be damaged in the risky operation to raise the vessel, scheduled for mid-September. Before the submarine is lifted, divers will cut off the front section, which Russian officials say may contain unexploded torpedoes. That section will be left on the sea floor, though Russian officials say they may raise it later. Dygalo said divers will start the cutting Aug. 12, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The Kursk plunged to the sea bottom after explosions during exercises on Aug. 12, 2000. All 118 men aboard were killed. A memorial service is to be held on the anniversary Sunday at the Kursk's home base in the port of Vidyayevo. On Thursday, divers continued cutting holes the Kursk's double hull, to which steel cables will be attached to raise the submarine. The cables will be connected to hydraulic lifting devices anchored to a giant barge, which is to bring the Kursk to the Arctic port of Murmansk. The cause of the explosions remains unclear. Russian officials say it could have been prompted by a collision with a World War II mine or a Western submarine, though outside experts believe it was likely an internal malfunction. On the Net: Kursk salvage operation site: http://www.kursk141.org All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 4 Kentucky woman receives first check for sick nuclear workers Las Vegas SUN August 09, 2001 PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - With knees trembling, Clara Harding clutched a $150,000 benefit check Thursday as U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao presented the first payment from a compensation program for sick nuclear workers. "I haven't slept in three days, and I was up at 4 a.m. this morning," Harding, 78, said. Her husband, Joe, died more than 20 years ago after being exposed to toxic levels of uranium at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The Department of Labor began accepting claims on July 31. The $150,000 lump-sum payments will go to former workers who have certain types of cancer and who worked at the plant before 1992. If the worker has died, the money will go to a surviving spouse, and, in some cases, to surviving children. "There is no more poignant example of how people can transform their trials into triumphs than the tender story of Joe and Clara Harding," Chao said after the presentation. David Fuller, president of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Local 5-550, said it was gratifying. "Joe Harding was a member of our union and a co-worker of mine. It's been a long and frustrating battle to get to this day," Fuller said. Before Joe Harding died of cancer in 1980, his bones were found to contain up to 34,000 times the expected concentration of uranium. Yet while he lived, he was denied compensation because official records showed he was only exposed to small levels of radiation. However, his widow and daughter, Martha Alls, continued to fight after his death. Clara Harding said she will continue to work for sick workers. "I'm going to help anyone who needs it so their families can be compensated for what has happened," she said. "But at least the pressure is off of me now." The Energy Department has identified 317 sites that employed more than 600,000 people in 37 states, Washington D.C., the Marshall Islands and Puerto Rico for nuclear weapons-related work during the Cold War. Sick workers employed at those facilities might qualify for compensation under the program, which is estimated to cost $1.9 billion over a decade. On the Net: Labor Department Office of Workers' Compensation Programs: http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/owcp-org.htm Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov/ All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 Chao Holds Compensation Ceremony in Paducah, KY U.S. Newswire 9 Aug 14:11 Chao Holds Compensation Ceremony; Program Clara Harding Helped Create Awards Her the First Compensation To: National Desk Contact: Stuart Roy, 202-693-4650 Web site: www.dol.gov WASHINGTON, Aug. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao presented the first compensation check under a new program for sick nuclear weapons employees, former employees and survivors in Paducah, Kentucky today. Clara Harding, the widow of former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant employee Joe T. Harding, was the first person to receive compensation under this new program. "Today we celebrate something more than just the successful beginning of a new program," said Chao. "We celebrate the triumph of the human spirit, the ability to overcome difficulty and even tragedy to bring about something that is of great value." Joe Harding died at age 58 in March 1980 of abdominal cancer. He worked at the Paducah plant for nearly 20 years, from 1952 until 1971. Clara Harding has been a vocal advocate for recognition and compensation of nuclear workers who became ill while working at the Paducah Plant. "Out of personal tragedy, Joe and Clara Harding fought for and won an amazing victory, not just for themselves alone, but for thousands and thousands of workers in America's nuclear weapons industry," Chao said. On October 30, 2000, two decades after Harding's death and a month after Mrs. Harding testified at a Washington hearing on the proposed bill, Congress passed the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. In addition to the lump-sum compensation for employees or their survivors, the law pays medical expenses for covered illnesses. The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act went into effect July 31, 2001. Congress passed the new law to compensate nuclear weapons employees of the Department of Energy and its contractors or subcontractors who became seriously ill because of exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica on the job. It also compensates some surviving family members. The U.S. Labor Department, which administers compensation and medical benefits under the new law, has received thousands of claim forms since June, when it launched a series of town hall meetings to explain the law and claims process. Details about the law are available on the Internet at www.dol.gov or by calling, toll-free, 1-866-888-3322. --- U.S. Labor Department news releases are accessible on the Internet at www.dol.gov. The information in this release will be made available in alternative format upon request (large print, Braille, audio tape or disc) from the COAST office. Please specify which news release when placing your request. Call 202-693-7773 or TTY 202-693-7755. /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ***************************************************************** 6 And Horror Cuts Our Souls in Two Friday, Aug. 10, 2001. Page V By Juliet Butler Olga Kolesnikova, widow of Lieutenant Commander Dmitry Kolesnikov, holding a copy of the letter he wrote to her in the darkness shortly before his death aboard the Kursk nuclear submarine last August. One year ago, on Sunday, Aug. 13, 26-year-old Natasha Loginova walked out to the town square in the northern garrison town of Vidyayevo with a bunch of wild flowers she had picked along the way. She was going to meet the bus that would be bringing her fiancï, Lieutenant Commander Sergei Loginov, and the rest of the Kursk nuclear submarine crew back from the dock. No bus came. She went out again on Monday morning, thinking the boat must have been delayed, and waited all day. While Natasha was sitting quietly on the square, the rest of the world was listening in stunned horror to the news that the Kursk, the pride of the Russian navy's Northern Fleet, was lying crippled at the bottom of the Barents Sea. Though she lived on the little naval base that housed the entire Kursk crew, Natasha was among the last to know that Sergei's boat had been ripped open by an explosion on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 12. The Russian authorities finally admitted the incident on Monday at noon and only then after repeated Western reports of two underwater blasts. "The other women [on the base] had heard the news," Natasha said. "But since I was six months pregnant, no one could bring themselves to tell me. They thought everything would be alright." They were wrong. Russian officials turned down offers of help from Britain and the United States, claiming their own rescue effort was well under way, but repeatedly failed to attach a rescue bell to the Kursk's escape hatch. On Tuesday they reported that at least some of the 118 crew members were alive and communicating in code by tapping on the hull — yet they only accepted help from Norway and Britain on Thursday. "The women were out on the street in Vidyayevo and you could tell who had husbands on board because they were weeping," Natasha said. While the 10-day rescue operation held the entire world in thrall, the wives and mothers watching the news bulletins every half hour were being slowly driven out of their minds with anxiety. "They tore our hearts apart piece by piece with their news reports," said Lyudmila Safonova, mother of Lieutenant Commander Maxim Safonov, who served in the second compartment. "They made a daily soap opera out of our pain." At a meeting with navy officials on the Saturday, women were shrieking, fainting and weeping. One mother tried to strangle the deputy prime minister and another screamed that the navy brass should all shoot themselves. She was forcibly sedated. On Monday, Aug. 21, Norwegian divers finally managed to open the rear hatch only to find the entire submarine flooded and no signs of life. The majority of the crew had probably been killed instantly — either by the blast, flooding or fire — and the remaining 23, who were trapped in the eighth and ninth compartments, could only have survived until Saturday afternoon. The tragedy has affected the Kursk women in different ways, and now one year on, on Aug. 12, the relatives of the submariners are converging on the Arctic garrison for what is being called a memorial. But the families are unlikely to forgive and forget both the tragedy and the way it was handled by the authorities. Twelve months later, the true cause of the accident has still to be made public, though a long-awaited effort to raise the submarine is now under way. Natasha, who still lives in Vidyayevo with her baby daughter, was a victim of the lies and has since met with cold bureaucratic indifference in the face of her sorrow. The closest relatives to the Kursk sailors received $20,000 in compensation (a previously unheard-of sum in a country where the average monthly wage is $120), but Natasha was refused even the smallest widow's pension despite having lived with Sergei for two years as his fiancïe. The money all went to his parents. Some relatives, such as Lyudmila Safonova, refuse to touch the compensation, calling it dirty money, while others have gladly accepted the offers of apartments and financial aid, believing that it is the least the navy can do. Natasha, however, is now fighting a court battle to receive a $15-a-month grant for her baby daughter as the child of one of the Kursk sailors. Tears welled up in her eyes as she recalled their parting. "He came home for lunch that Friday and then he lay down for a nap. When I woke him to tell him it was time to go to sea for the 3-day training mission, he said: 'Natasha! I had such a terrible nightmare about the boat.' He didn't want to describe it to me, he just said that he'd seen me running and crying in the streets looking for him and not being able to find him. And that's exactly what happened," Natasha said. Nadezhda Tylik, mother of 24-year-old Sergei Tylik, a senior lieutenant in the control room, has also taken to the courts in her fight for justice: She is suing Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov for what she considers to be the murder of her son. "He knew it was a dangerous mission but he sent them out. Then when Captain [Gennady] Lyachin [of the Kursk] radioed to say the torpedo was about to explode and had to be fired, the top brass never responded. [Kuroyedov] killed my son, he killed him." Natalya Loginova, fiance of Sergei Loginov, with their baby daughter, born after Sergei's death. This radio transmission was never officially reported or confirmed, but it was considered a matter of fact by the families of the Kursk sailors. Many of the fathers are themselves former submariners who still have contacts in the active forces, perhaps allowing them to glean information, then pass it along through the network of Kursk relatives. Seven days after the boat went down the spiky blonde-haired Nadezhda made worldwide headlines when she stood up at a press conference in Vidyayevo and screamed abuse at navy commanders. She called them bastards and said that they should take off their epaulets and shoot themselves, then she was forcibly sedated by a doctor and carried away. "I don't know what that jab contained but my legs buckled and I only came to at home," Nadezhda said. "Then I had such hysterics I had to be taken to a local hospital and put on a drip. I know I shouldn't have screamed at them like that, but losing my son in that way was terrible. I was in the hospital for a month. I lost 20 kilos and threw up every time I tried to eat." According to Nadezhda, the sedative was not unusual. Immediately following the disaster, all the female relatives were regularly rounded up by doctors and given obligatory "heart" injections. "What they were injecting into us, God knows — one can only guess," Nadezhda said. She was the only woman to mention these injections, and no official confirmation has been offered. "They did it so there would be no uprising, so that we'd all restrain ourselves, weep quietly and keep our mouths shut. They didn't want an international scandal. But it didn't work. After I was taken out, one mother ran up and tried to strangle [Deputy Prime Minister] Ilya Klebanov. It was a natural maternal reaction, because her boy was killed and no one was admitting to the murder." For the first few days following the accident the panic and desperation of family members were compounded when their telephone lines went dead, said Nadezhda, whose husband is a retired submarine commander. Then they were restored but tapped. Their letters were opened and vetted, she said. No journalists were permitted into Vidyayevo, and Western journalists were falsely told that Nadezhda was in a psychiatric hospital in St. Petersburg. "The silence from our own officers was deafening," she said, her eyes burning angrily as she paced about her home in Anapa, a sleepy Black Sea coastal town. The Tyliks live on a quiet street lined with plane trees. They share half a house with another family. Their quarters are sparsely decorated, but in typical navy fashion, they are spick and span. "They were scared," she said. "If any one of them opened their mouths to talk they were fired. The authorities don't value people, they don't value life. All they were worried about was covering their own backs and averting a scandal. It's been like that since time immemorial in Russia. The people are the masses. Cattle. So what if our sons died yesterday? So what? The Russian woman is strong, she'll produce more sons to serve the motherland." Like Natasha Loginova, Nadezhda Tylik also received no compensation, but she doesn't want hush money — she wants revenge. Six days before he left on that fatal mission, her son Sergei told her, "We are carrying death on board." She wants to know why. She is now spearheading a movement to allow relatives access to military information regarding the cause of the accident, and she blames navy chief Kuroyedov. "He was tearing our hearts apart with his tales of a two week oxygen supply. American analysts said straight away that the crew must have died in the first day or so. It was never a rescue operation. And he knew the torpedo had misfired because the captain [Lyachin] radioed to headquarters reporting a problem. Kuroyedov is responsible for the murder of our children and he must be brought to justice." Another militant woman — she is fighting the Russian tabloid press that ran spurious stories about the Kursk crew — is Olga Kolesnikova, who was married to Lieutenant Commander Dmitry Kolesnikov, in charge of the Kursk's engine room. As her husband (nicknamed Mitya) sat awaiting death in the dark, cold depths of the Barents Sea he penned her a note. It begins in even, firm handwriting across the top of a page torn out of the log book. "Little Olga! I love you. Don't be too upset. Say hello to G.N. (Olga's mother) and to mine. Mitya. 12th August, 2001, 15.15." The rest is scrawled and uneven, running off the burnt page. "It's dark in here, but I'll try to write blind. Seems there's no chance — 10-20%. We hope that at least someone will read this. I've written here a list of the crew members who are in the ninth compartment and who will try to get out. Say hello to everyone. There's no need to despair. Kolesnikov." Another letter, which was apparently written by Lieutenant Commander Rashid Aryapov — Dmitry's friend who served in the sixth compartment — has not been made public or given to Rashid's young wife despite her pleas to see his last words. A navy spokesman paraphrased the contents: "Feel bad. The air pressure is rising. We couldn't survive the decompression if we did get out. We're weakened by the carbon monoxide. Won't last more than a day. There are 23 people here and we're trying to get out through the emergency hatch in the ninth compartment but so far we can't. Perhaps it's full of water." Olga, sitting in her apartment in a bleak new development in the St. Petersburg suburbs, shook her head in disbelief. "I sometimes try to imagine what those last hours were like and I can't. I can't think about it. I'm amazed when I read Dmitry's letter. Amazed that he had the courage, knowing that he was dying, to calmly write and tell me: 'there's no need to despair.'" Twenty-nine-year-old Olga, a schoolteacher, had a whirlwind romance with the big, red-haired officer who was three years her junior, and married him just three months before the tragedy. "He would meet me by the school gates every day and we drowned in our love for each other. We had a greedy desire for one another and didn't want to be apart for one minute. Perhaps we realized it was fated to be short — it was a mad, bright flare," she said. Dmitry took Olga on board his beloved Kursk and she was staggered at how they could live in such cramped quarters for three months at a time and still love their work — and the boat. "The word boat [lodka] is feminine and he would say: 'Look at her, look how beautiful she is, look how she moves!' At home he'd watch videos of her and make me watch and talked about her as if she were a real living, breathing being. I was madly jealous and when he went to sea, I reacted to the Kursk as if it were a woman taking him away from me. The last time I saw him he hugged me tightly and burst into tears. That wasn't like him at all. He was a very strong, brave man. But he had a premonition." Lyudmila and Anatoly Safonov, parents of Lieutenant Commander Maxim Safonov, killed on the Kursk. The men were sworn to secrecy regarding their work on the nuclear submarine, but rumor had it on the women's grapevine that tests were to be carried out on the torpedoes. This theory appeared to be confirmed when it was found that the boat was carrying civilian representatives from Dagestan's Dagdizel plant when it went down. Dagdizel designed and manufactured the propulsion system for the Shkval class torpedoes that were to have been test fired from the Kursk. A few weeks before the tragedy, Dmitry wrote Olga a poem. The last line reads: "When the time comes to die, though I drive away such thoughts, all I ask is that time whisper: 'Darling, I love you.'" Dmitry was given that time. "I would have preferred not to have gotten that last letter," Olga said. "I would have preferred him to die straight away because this love letter is cruel." The tragedy has affected the Kursk women in different, sometimes extraordinary ways. Olga believes that Mitya's spirit lives with her. She is convinced that he comes to her at night and lies next to her. "I feel his warmth," she said. "He touches me, holds me, kisses me and loves me. I close my eyes tight so as not to wake up, and then in the morning I feel physically and emotionally satisfied." Lyudmila Safonova has no ghost to comfort her and no grave to visit. She sits at home and nurses her grief and anger in a three-room apartment in the naval barracks, where she lives with her husband and their daughter, Olga. A flower-laden plaque in Maxim's memory hangs outside their stairwell. Her room is a shrine to her dead son, filled with portraits, a photograph of the Kursk and a brass clock that he brought back from the boat one day. She can scarcely speak of him for weeping. A daughter doesn't replace a son, she says, and the pain doesn't get better, it gets deeper. Lyudmila, too, was eligible for compensation, but refused on principle to touch it. "It's painful to go near it. It's dirty money," she said sadly. As she leafed through a photo album showing Maxim as a baby, a chubby toddler and then a skinny 10 year old, the tears flowed freely. "I have no future," she choked, "no future. I can't make any plans. I just exist. My only hope is that we'll meet again in death because there's no happiness in life." Lyudmila and her husband went to see the divers ("because they were the first people at Maxim's grave"), but though they sat and drank vodka with them, they heard nothing new. "They ran through the official version of the disaster," said Anatoly Safonov, Lyudmila's husband and a retired navy captain. "They'd been told to keep their mouths shut." Lyudmila blames President Vladimir Putin for the bungling and coverup. "It's painful to remember what Putin did," she said. "There's this tragedy which is shaking the world and he's in the south playing tennis for five days. For him it was an insignificant event. If it weren't for stupid Soviet pride they might have saved someone, but human life means nothing to them — why bother to save 118 men when there are 150 million more where they came from? Perhaps they didn't want to save them. Perhaps they were scared of what they might say. I can't rid myself of that thought." Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the Russian military has been chronically under-funded. Naval officers receive a miserly wage — $100 a month on average — and live in small, cramped quarters in crumbling, peeling garrisons, often with no central heating, erratic electricity supplies and scarce hot water. The cuts have inevitably taken their toll on military hardware, resulting in numerous accidents. Anastasia, mother of Senior Warrant Officer Andrei Borisov, recalls how her son lived on bread and water because his salary was not paid for months at a time. She lives with her husband in a ramshackle log cabin in a village north of Moscow. Chickens wander about the yard and a cow lows in the shed. The couple subsist on her husband's $25-a-month pension. A candle burns day and night in front of a framed photo of Andrei in uniform — a gift from the navy. His body was recovered on Oct. 26, 2000, and was brought back to the village where his mother and his wife Natalya live, for burial. Despite having been three months under the water the body was carried through the village in an open coffin. Anastasia tortures herself by sorting through macabre photographs of the body. "I had to see how he died, I had to see his face," she said, convulsed with uncontrollable fits of weeping. "The freezing water preserved him, and look, he had four days' stubble. Does that mean he lived four days?" Andrei served in the eighth compartment but they found him in a thermal diving suit in the ninth by the escape hatch with two other divers. "They'd taken their hammers out — it was him who was knocking, him! He died of asphyxiation. Oh Andrei, my darling Andrei! You were so good, so kind, but they didn't want to save you, they didn't want you to tell." The suffering in these homes is a physical presence, but every family searches for their own way to deal with the pain. Anastasia weeps and Lyudmila Safonova grieves. Others, like Andrei Borisov's wife Natalya, who lives a few doors down from Anastasia, have come to terms with the loss and put it behind them. She is busy cooking up meat and potatoes for their 3-year-old son, Sasha. She blames no one for the accident and plans to use the compensation to move with her mother to a flat in a nearby town, where Sasha can go to a good kindergarten. She does not talk of Andrei to her son and will not be going to the Vidyayevo memorial. "Why live in the past?" she said with a shrug. "What's done is done, we can't bring Andrei back." Little Sasha, who had been chasing their cat around the garden, suddenly looked up at the mention of his father. "Is daddy coming back?" he asked. His mother shook her head. "Yes he is," the boy insisted. "Daddy's at sea." But there are others like Nadezhda Tylik who refuse to abandon their fight for justice. They will converge on Vidyayevo on the anniversary of the tragedy, doing everything in their power, at whatever cost, to seek the truth. If the Russian courts refuse to take up their case then they will appeal to a European court. They are fighting not only for the sake of the men they lost, but to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again to other husbands, fathers and sons. Juliet Butler is a freelance journalist working in London and Moscow. http://www.themoscowtimes.com ***************************************************************** 7 Kursk lifting 'on course' BBC News | EUROPE | Friday, 10 August, 2001, The first anniversary of the sinking is on Sunday The Russian Navy says divers have cut 10 of the 26 holes needed in the hull of the Kursk ahead of the operation to lift the wreck. Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said that engineers would begin cutting off the front section of the submarine containing its nuclear torpedoes on Sunday - the first anniversary of the Kursk's sinking. The anniversary will be marked by a memorial service and wreath laying at the submarine's home port of Vidyayevo. The wreck is due to be lifted in September, allowing relatives to bury their loved ones. Cutting operation Preparatory work for the lifting hit a snag earlier in the month when divers discovered that the holes would have to be cut by hand instead of by robots as planned. [Wreath laying] The anniversary will be marked by a wreath laying The robots could not be used because the space between the hulls was filled with pipes, air-pressure canisters and supports. Video footage of the operation released by the navy shows divers manoeuvring outside the wreck amid a mass of wires and pipes. The holes are required for the 26 massive cables which will lift the submarine. Before the lifting can take place, divers will cut off the front section of the submarine which the navy fears may contain unexploded torpedoes. The nose will be left on the seabed, though it may be lifted later. The cause of the sinking which killed all 118 crew on board is still unknown. Russian officials have suggested the submarine may have collided with another vessel or object, but outsiders have blamed an internal malfunction. ***************************************************************** 8 Nuclear blunder delays sub refit BBC News | UK | 10 August, 2001, [Dry dock ] HMS Torbay is been in for refit since 1998 Naval dockyard operators have admitted an embarrassing blunder during the rebuilding of a submarine's nuclear reactor. A fault in the heart of HMS Torbay's reactor has been discovered only at the end of the three-year refit. The entire reactor must be dismantled and rebuilt, causing a three-month hold-up at Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth. The submarine had already been given a rededication ceremoney ready for a return to service, when the blunder emerged. The fault should have been detected during rigorous tests that take place at every stage of a refit, which involves fitting a new core in the nuclear reactor and any other work that is needed. Safety concern The delay in completion will create a backlog of work on other vessels at Devonport Dockyard. DML, the private company that runs the Royal Navy dockyard, said: "The fault is being investigated and will be fully amended before work proceeds. "Safety is paramount in all our operations." [HMS Torbay ] HMS Torbay had already been rededicated for service The problem is understood to involve a faulty control rod drive in the reactor. Once the rods and metal fuel plates have been inserted, the reactor is sealed and the rest of the submarine's power system built around it. The flaw was discovered only when the reactor was ready for final sea tests. Independent nuclear expert John Large said: "It's egg on the face for the navy that such a problem has been discovered after the boat has been finished. Hunter-killer "Someone does a test and says one of the control rods isn't working, and they have to take it all to pieces again. "It's not only HMS Torbay that is taken out of action - it also takes up that dry dock and shunts the entire refit programme back." [Devonport Dockyard] Devonport Dockyard is run by a private company HMS Torbay was one of four Trafalgar class hunter-killer sumbarines found to have faults in their reactor cooling systems. The same fault controversially stranded HMS Tireless in Gibraltar last year. Mr Large said: "When HMS Tireless came up it affected not only all the other boats with the same problem, but every boat waiting for a refit. "They all got knocked back." He said the oversight was extraordinary. Rigorous checks "With nuclear power, every single action is completely supervised and scrutinised. "If you changed a nut and bolt, there would be several checks. "If a defective piece of kit has got through, particularly in the reactor, it's very embarrassing." The refit began in 1998 and the rededication ceremony took place in June. The Royal Navy admitted that the refit had been delayed, but insisted that HMS Torbay would return to active service this year. ***************************************************************** 9 Nagasaki vows to push for nuclear-free nation Daily Yomiuri On-Line Yomiuri Shimbun Reaffirming anew its strong wishes to make it the last place on the Earth subjected to a nuclear assault, the city of Nagasaki on Thursday observed the 56th anniversary of its atomic bombing in 1945. About 20,000 people attended the city's annual peace ceremony marking the world's second nuclear bombing. Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito stated in his peace declaration, "We, the citizens of Nagasaki, hereby pledge to exert every possible effort to ensure that the 21st century is an age of peace, free from nuclear weapoons and from war itself." The city government-sponsored ceremony was held, as usual, in front of the 10-meter-high Peace Statue in the city's Peace Park located near the bomb's hypocenter. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after a nuclear attack on Hiroshima, took the lives of an estimated 74,000 people, while the Hiroshima bombing killed about 140,000 people. These numbers include those who were either killed instantly in the blasts or by radiation poisoning by the end of 1945. The nation surrendered on Aug. 15 of that year, six days after the Nagasaki bombing, bringing World War II to an end. The ceremony, which was marked by heavy rain and peals of thunder, started at the park at 10:45 a.m. with the tolling of the Bell of Nagasaki. Ito and representatives of the families of atomic bomb victims and survivors placed three volumes bearing the names of those who died in a box on a platform set up for the ceremony in front of the Peace Statue. The volumes contained the names of 2,439 people who have been recognized by the Nagasaki municipal government as bomb victims in the past year, bringing to 126,630 the number of Nagasaki's victims of the atomic bombing who have passed away. In mourning for the bomb victims who reportedly died thirsting for water after the bombing, Isao Yoshida, 60, and four other A-bomb survivors dedicated cups of water to the souls of the deceased. Copyright The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 10 Nagasaki man recalls deaths of siblings in A-bomb horror Daily Yomiuri On-Line Yomiuri Shimbun Sanae Ikeda, a 68-year-old survivor of the atomic bomb attack in Nagasaki, saw his 6-year-old sister burn to death in the explosion on Aug. 9 1945, and four more siblings die within the week. He recounted his experience Thursday at a peace memorial ceremony in Nagasaki, which marked the 56th anniversary of the attack. He pledged to work harder to promote peace and nuclear disarmament worldwide. "I remember the strong blue lights I saw that day. It was an amazing color," Ikeda said in his speech as representative of families whose members died in the explosion. Ikeda, who still lives in Nagasaki, was walking to a shop with his mother when the bomb exploded. His right hand, which he used to protect his eyes from the bright lights, was completely skinned by radiation. Six months later he had purulent sores all over his body. Within a week of the explosion, Ikeda's family of eight was reduced to just three, himself and his parents. He graduated from middle school at the age of 15 and worked at an ironworks and later at a soy-sauce factory. His mother died in 1955, and his father died the following year, leaving him alone. After he turned 20, he got involved with promoting peace. "Talking with my pals about peace gave me the strength to live," Ikeda said. His friends included the late Sumako Fukuda, a poet who wrote about her experience of the atomic bomb attack. He now speaks about his experience to students from primary school to university level. He has no hearing in his right ear, an aftereffect of radiation exposure. At times, an incessant buzzing noise in his ear makes it painful for him to talk. Last year, he was impressed when he spoke to a gathering of high school students by the student's many questions and eagerness to learn about the attack. "I have to keep telling people about my experience to let them know what the atomic bomb attack was like," he said, renewing his pledge to hand down his story. Full text of Nagasaki's Peace Declaration The following is the full text of the peace declaration delivered Thursday by Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito at a peace memorial ceremony marking the 56th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city. Having entered a new century, we offer heartfelt prayers for the repose of the souls of those who died in the atomic bombings and for all the victims of war in every country, calling to the world for peace from the atom-bombed city of Nagasaki. We the citizens of Nagasaki have continuously appealed for the realization of the 21st century as an era free from nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding, no fewer than 30,000 nuclear warheads remain in existence on the surface of our planet, and the nuclear threat is now on the verge of expanding into space. Fifty-six years ago, it required only a single and relatively primitive atomic bomb to instantly transform our city into hell on Earth. The 20th century was an age of great progress for humankind in terms of science and technology, as well as awareness of human rights. At the same time, however, the 20th century gave birth to nuclear weapons, instruments capable of destroying all of humanity. The nuclear weapons states have refused to give up these instruments, even with the passing of the Cold War, and a nuclear superpower is now insinuating that it may renege on international commitments in the area of nuclear disarmament. We are vigorously opposed to these movements, which could negate previous efforts for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The agreement on "an unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals..." expressed in May of last year at the 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons should not be allowed to become an empty promise. We shall continue to raise our voices in unison with the peoples of the world so as to actualize this undertaking. We urge the Japanese government, representing a nation that has suffered nuclear attack, to play an active and befitting role in the elimination of nuclear weapons, and to call for the convening of an international assembly to enact a treaty for their prohibition. Japan must uphold the peaceful ideals of its Constitution, build relations of trust with neighboring countries by squarely facing its history of aggression, and work for the establishment of a Northeast Asian nuclear weapon-free zone that will enable Japan's withdrawal from the "nuclear umbrella." Accordingly, the threefold nonnuclear principle must be drafted into law. We also urge greater levels of care and assistance for all of the atomic bomb survivors, both in Japan and abroad. The passage of 56 years has not at all alleviated the physical and mental anguish of the atomic bomb survivors, who are growing increasingly elderly. In fact, their anxiety and discomfort are mounting year by year. At the same time, the Japanese government must not forget those who suffer similarly, despite residing in districts in and around Nagasaki that have not been officially designated as being affected by the atomic bombing. It is heartening that young people in Nagasaki are voluntarily devising peace-related programs, and are engaged in various efforts and activities. For example, a group of high school students is now undertaking a petition drive seeking 10,000 signatures in support of the elimination of nuclear weapons, and we are proud to think that a new generation of youth is rising up to take action and initiative. Also, the city of Nagasaki is creating the Nagasaki Peace Education Program, which encourages young people to discuss and learn about the atomic bombings, peace, and human rights in a cross-generational context. In this way, we are working to develop human resources for the active pursuit of peace. In November of last year, Nagasaki hosted Japan's first-ever event linking local governments and NGOs, the Nagasaki Global Citizens' Assembly for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This event confirmed our belief that the united action of ordinary citizens can indeed move the world. Recalling that worldwide grassroots activities brought about a treaty for the international prohibition of antipersonnel land mines, we shall further strengthen our links with NGOs and municipalities around the globe, standing at the forefront of efforts to abolish nuclear weapons. Nagasaki must forever remain the last place ever to have suffered nuclear attack. We, the citizens of Nagasaki, hereby pledge to exert every possible effort to ensure that the 21st century is an age of peace, free from nuclear weapons, and from war itself. Copyright The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 11 Nuclear-exposure compensation starts By Peter Eisler USA TODAY The Bush administration began issuing checks Thursday under a new program to compensate nuclear weapons workers who were sickened from exposure to radioactive and toxic materials. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao traveled to Paducah, Ky., to present the first $150,000 check to Clara Harding, whose husband, Joe, died more than 20 years ago after being exposed to toxic levels of uranium at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Harding, who spent years campaigning for reparations, is one of thousands of workers or their survivors who are expected to receive payments. The compensation program was created by Congress late last year amid findings that workers at Paducah and other plants and labs routinely handled radioactive and toxic material without proper protection. The Labor Department program will provide checks for $150,000 or lost wages, as well as medical benefits, for workers with cancers and other illnesses linked to their jobs. ''It's difficult to accept the fact that the illnesses which claimed the lives and best years of workers like Joe Harding were the result of carelessness, inaction, and even duplicity at the hands of our government,'' Chao said. Last fall, USA TODAY reported that the government secretly hired hundreds of private companies to process radioactive and toxic material for nuclear weapons production in the 1940s and '50s. Thousands of unwitting workers were exposed to radiation and chemicals. Workers from the private contracting firms were made eligible for the compensation program. © Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 DOE delays waste plan Las Vegas SUN August 10, 2001 Cost overruns hurt plutonium project, federal report says By Mary Manning Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has delayed a plan to turn tons of plutonium into glass logs destined for a proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository because the cost of a conversion program exploded by $2 billion. An Energy Department report, revealed Thursday by a private research group, concluded that the cost of disposing of the plutonium will be at least $6.6 billion over 22 years, roughly 50 percent more than estimated two years ago. The Clinton administration had planned to handle 50 metric tons of surplus plutonium by converting 33 metric tons into a mixed-oxide, called MOX, fuel for burning in civilian power reactors. Another 17 metric tons, considered too impure for using in reactors, would be formed into glass blocks to be buried 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas in Yucca Mountain. But the repository has not passed scientific tests and would not open until 2010 at the earliest. Abraham delayed the glass block conversion to help control costs of the cleanup program, the report said. Yucca is the only site under study by the DOE as a high-level nuclear waste repository for an estimated 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from commercial reactors and weapons production. The DOE has spent $7 billion over 20 years to study the mountain and expects to recommend the site later this year. The Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington-based group that advocates nuclear non-proliferation, disclosed the 65-page DOE report, which was completed for Congress in March but never released. The report details why the plutonium conversion project's costs ballooned. In 1996 the DOE estimated the entire plutonium program would cost $2.4 billion. By 1999 the expenses had jumped to $4.15 billion, a 73 percent increase, the report says. The latest estimate is $6.6 billion. DOE's report blamed most of the increases on stricter measures needed to protect a reprocessing plant for the plutonium at Savannah River, S.C. The DOE said more steel for reinforcing the flooring against earthquakes, tighter security and better safeguards to contain radiation are necessary. "This shows a massive cost escalation," Tom Clements, the institute's executive director, said. Since the MOX conversion is driving up the price, the DOE should put all the plutonium into glass logs to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation, he said. The institute opposes using plutonium as fuel in civilian nuclear reactors. Abraham said that it was too expensive to pursue both programs and that DOE would focus for now on building the MOX conversion facilities at the Savannah River complex. He suggested the program to immobilize the plutonium in glass blocks would resume later. Meanwhile South Carolina officials are complaining that the DOE will ship tons of plutonium from its weapons facilities nationwide to the Savannah River facility without assurances the material will ever be removed from the state. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges said recently he fears that the DOE "plans to renege on many of its prior commitments" to the state. DOE spokesman Joe Davis said that Abraham talked to Hodges last week and is eager to solve the dispute. Converting the plutonium into glass blocks is expected to resume in the next decade. And they would eventually be shipped to Yucca Mountain, if the repository opens. Hodges has threatened to block plutonium shipments into South Carolina unless there is an exit strategy guaranteed by the DOE. Former Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus set up roadblocks years ago to keep spent-fuel shipments out of that state until the DOE agreed to a 30-year temporary storage contract. The Associated Press All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 13 Plan Revised For Disposal Of Plutonium (washingtonpost.com) Associated Press Friday, August 10, 2001; Page A06 The Energy Department is revamping a Clinton-era plan to dispose of 50 metric tons of surplus plutonium amid cost overruns, prompting threats from South Carolina's governor to block shipments into the state. An Energy Department report, made public yesterday by a private group, concludes that the cost of disposing of the plutonium will be at least $6.6 billion over 22 years, about 50 percent more than estimated two years ago. At the same time, the Bush administration has put on hold part of the program that called for some plutonium to be put in glass logs for burial at the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada, once that facility is approved. That decision has brought complaints from South Carolina officials. They are concerned that the department will ship tons of plutonium from its weapons facilities into the state for processing, with no assurance the material will leave the state. "When South Carolina agreed to accept plutonium . . . DOE agreed that there would be a clear exit strategy," South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges (D) said recently. Hodges said the "shifting nature" of the government's plutonium disposition strategy suggests that the Energy Department "plans to renege on many of its prior commitments" to the state. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham talked with Hodges this week, and department spokesman Joe Davis said Abraham is eager to resolve the dispute. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 14 2 atomic bomb survivors tell N.J. group of ordeals Friday, August 10, 2001 By PETER J. SAMPSON Staff Writer -- MONTCLAIR Hideo Tose was playing with his older brother and sister in a garden in the suburbs of Nagasaki when the United States dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan 56 years ago. Only 3 years old at the time, Tose remembers a sudden "bright light running through the sky and a thundering sound." The startled children ran into their house. "Thankfully, I was about six kilometers from where the bomb fell, with mountains in between, so as of right now I have no physical ailments," Tose told a gathering of nuclear weapons opponents Thursday on the 56th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. But his grandmother and her sister were incinerated in the conflagration, and another of his sisters, who was working in a military factory, succumbed 11 years later at age 30 -- bald from the radiation exposure and with glass shards "still coming out of her body until her dying day." Shigeyuki Yama was 15 years old and a second-year cadet at the Hiroshima military preparatory school when the first atomic bomb, with more power than 20,000 tons of TNT, detonated over that city several days earlier on Aug. 6, 1945. He learned of the horror and devastation from fleeing survivors when his train was halted outside the city. Making his way on foot to the ruins of the school 24 hours after the inferno, he saw half-naked bodies piled in the streets, melted asphalt, and telegraph poles broken off and still smoldering. "The neighborhood was filled with a terrible stench. Dead bodies where floating in the river. Many people who had come to the river in search of water died at the water's edge. Other injured people were lying on the side of the road . . . groaning and crying with unbearable pain. It was nothing but a living hell and pandemonium," he said. Yama, now 71, a retired ore carrier captain and shipping agent, and Tose, 59, who formerly worked for Japan's national telephone company, are visiting New Jersey and Pennsylvania on a weeklong tour that ends Saturday. Both are officers of the Hibakusha, an association of Japanese atomic bomb survivors. They recounted their stories Thursday at the headquarters of NJ Peace Action, one of the tour's sponsors, in the hope that a nuclear weapon will never be used again. The Hiroshima bomb, which was dropped at 8:15 a.m. from a B-29 bomber, instantly leveled about five square miles of the city, killing an estimated 70,000-100,000 people and injuring 69,000. Three days later, at 11:02 a.m., another B-29 dropped the second bomb on the industrial section of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 and injuring 40,000. Days later, the Japanese government agreed to surrender. Both men, who were speaking through translators, said they believe the United States, as the world's lone superpower, must take the lead in pushing for peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons. "The biggest obstacle to world peace is the United States," said Tose, citing its stockpile of nuclear weapons and the fear it causes, and its attempts "to force their thinking or their way on other nations." Yama agreed and said that although the United States fears Russia and China, both with nuclear stockpiles of their own, it should lead the world in abolishing nuclear weapons. "Looking back on those days, I earnestly desire peace without war and a nuclear-free world," Yama said. Staff Writer Peter Sampson's e-mail address is Copyright © 2001 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 15 Comments on the History of Permissable Dose Standards by Dr. Rosalie Bertell In October 1945, after the US Occupation Force had taken over Japan, it was officially announced that there would be no more deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the atomic bombs. Under the Occupation Force direction, no Japanese physicians or scientists were allowed to study the atomic bomb survivors, and no reporting about the survivors was allowed until the 1951 treaty was drawn up and signed in Tokyo. In spite of these prohibitions and difficult circumstances, a Japanese Haematologist discovered the increase in leukemia among the survivors. It began within a year of the bombing. He reported this at a professional meeting and was roundly denounced by the US researchers in Hiroshima and Atomic Bomb Casualty Commissiion (now called the Radiation Effects Research Foundation). The physician was sure he was right, and he persuaded a medical student to take two years off from his studies and document all of the atomic bomb victims with leukemia. This was a difficult job since they were being treated at many different hospitals. The student obtained blood slides for each patient and also verified where they were when the bombs were dropped. After two years of study, it was about five years after the boming at that time, the results of this study were released. The US researchers could no longer deny the fact, and they turned around and claimed credit for the research. When the atomic bomb studies were actually set up, using persons identified in the1950 Japanese census, they omitted counting these early, significantly increased number of cases. The Atomic bomb studies were not actually published with dose information until after the1965 doses were devised by John Auxier of Oak Ridge Labs. These doses were, in 1980, denounced as wrong, and a new set of doses constructed in 1986. Although the justification for the new doses was improvement of the science, the journal Science gave a wonderful description of John Auxier's inability to produce the worksheets which showed the derivation of the dose estimates he had assigned. It seems that he lost these work sheets accidently to a shredder when he moved offices. This lead to the unanimous recommendation to lower permissible doses of radiation by the ICRP in 1990. The US has still not lowered the permissible doses, and it also claims wrongly that its radiation protection standards, set in 1952, were based on Atomic bomb studies. This is, of couse absurd. Most people in the nuclear industry equate "legal" with "safe", and if you try to explain that even within permissible levels of exposure there is significant risk of radiation damage, they think you are "emotional" and "unscientific". The US appears to have used its 1952 estimates of permissible doses for nuclear workers for the DU exposure in the Gulf War. More about this history can be found in my book: "No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth". The Women's Press, London UK, 1985. There are still copies around in libraries, but it was taken off of seller's shelves in 1995 because I hope to update it. I have copies available for $12.50 US if anyone would like one. Dr. Rosalie Bertell Mothers' Alert ***************************************************************** 16 Uranium settlement Daily news from Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana from courier-journal.com August 10, 2001 U.S. gives first check in compensation program for nuclear workers, families By Sara Shipley The Courier-Journal Clara Harding held the $150,000 check she received from the federal nuclear workers' compensation program. Photo By: JIM ROSHAN PADUCAH, Ky. -- Yesterday, at long last, the federal government paid Clara Harding back a fraction of what she lost. Harding, whose husband, Joe, died in 1980 after working 18 years at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, received a $150,000 check. It was the first payment under a new $1.9 billion nuclear workers' compensation program that grew, in part, from her long, lonely fight for justice. Harding watched her cancerstricken husband die -- odd fingernail-like protrusions growing from his joints -- while the federal government denied that his illnesses were caused by radiation exposure. She fought for two decades to make the government admit that hundreds of workers at the Paducah plant were being sickened by their unknowing exposure to highly toxic bomb-making materials. And she didn't give up, even when the government spent $1.5 million in legal fees to deny her $50,000 in survivor's benefits. Now 78, Harding did not speak during a standing-room-only ceremony held yesterday to kick off the program. But when asked afterward what her deceased husband would think of the award, she replied, ''He'd be grateful that we got this, but he'd also tell 'em it wasn't enough.'' The Hardings were the face of a movement that forced the federal government to admit its carelessness, inaction and duplicity regarding health effects from on-the-job radiation exposure. Clara Harding's emotional testimony before Congress last year is credited with securing the vote for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. As a result, up to 700,000 Cold Warera workers or their survivors will receive medical care and financial help. ''Out of personal tragedy, Joe and Clara Harding fought for and won an amazing victory, not just for themselves alone, but for thousands and thousands of workers in America's nuclear-weapons industry,'' said U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, whose department administers the program. Chao and her husband, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, presented Harding with the check and a framed letter of commendation during an emotional ceremony at the new Energy Workers Compensation Resource Center office in Paducah. ''Today, we celebrate a bit of redemption for the government that once turned its back on these workers and has now turned around to offer them a helping hand,'' Chao said. The Hardings' daughter, Martha Alls, said perhaps now her mother can relax and enjoy her senior years. ''I just want to say on behalf of Mother and Daddy . . . we're grateful this has finally been resolved,'' Alls told the audience. ''It took a long time.'' But Alls said in an interview that the payments don't even cover her father's medical bills, much less compensate them for what happened. ''This is a drop in the bucket compared to what it should be,'' she said. The program, which took effect July 31, will cost $1.9 billion over 10 years. About 700,000 employees at 300 sites may be eligible, said Shelby Hallmark, who directs the Department of Labor's workers' compensation office. The program provides a $150,000 lump sum payment and medical care to workers who developed cancer or other serious illnesses from exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica. Spouses or children who were dependents at the time of a worker's death are also eligible. Kentucky's congressional delegation, led by Republican Sens. McConnell and Jim Bunning, and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, helped shepherd the bill through hearings. ''For a long time, it seemed that there was not going to be any way to get this legislation passed,'' McConnell said. But getting the law passed was merely one stage in the Hardings' struggle. Joe Harding, a high school valedictorian who attended only one year of college, showed signs of illness within two years of starting at the plant. Harding said he breathed radioactive dust laced with plutonium, a highly toxic element. He started to develop skin lesions and stomach problems. And he documented cancers and illnesses among his co-workers. Later, the government blamed Harding's cancer on smoking and eating country ham. But an exhumation of his body in 1983 showed the level of radiation in his bones was an estimated 1,700 to 34,000 times greater than normal during his years at the plant. Clara Harding and her daughter carried on despite financial and personal trials. Just this week, Harding finally resolved her husband's 30-year-old disability pension dispute, said family attorney Jackie Kittrell. ''It's just time for this to end,'' Kittrell said. Copyright 2001 The Courier-Journal. ***************************************************************** 17 Eight more will hook up to rural water The Hawk Eye Newspaper August 10, 2001 Iowa Time: 12:23 AM By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye • Survey: Eight out of 10 won't use IAAP contaminated water. The Army will connect at least eight more households to the Rathbun water system in an area where drinking wells have been contaminated by explosives from the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, an IAAP spokesman said Thursday. Larry Johnson said the Army recently sent letters to 33 homeowners southeast of the Middletown plant offering to pay to hook them up to the Rathbun Rural Water Association. Ten responded, eight of them indicating they want to be connected, Johnson said. About 30 property owners declined or failed to respond to a 1993 offer by the Army to be connected to Rathbun. About 160 accepted that offer. The recent survey was an attempt to ensure all those who wanted the Rathbun service will be connected. The Army has said it will pay the construction costs of hooking up to Rathbun and service membership fees, but residents remain responsible for monthly water bills and maintenance of the connections. In addition, the Army's offer does not cover commercial or agricultural water sources. IAAP's environmental projects manager Rodger Allison has said the area of concern is generally south of the plant and north of the South Skunk River between Spring Creek on the southeast corner of the plant and the small stream on the southwest corner. The worst contamination appears to be between 20 and 60 feet below the surface. Officials believe the contamination is not recent, but flowed down Brush Creek as long as 40 years ago. They have long advised residents in the area not to use water from their wells. In a related matter, the Army also recently contacted about 348 residents in the same area in an attempt to discover any wells that cleanup crews may not be aware of. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency are attempting to establish the boundaries of the contamination plume. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk · 319-754-6824 FAX · 1-800-397-1708 Toll Free ***************************************************************** 18 Three firms vie for DOE contract Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:22 a.m. on Thursday, August 9, 2001 Winner to work with depleted uranium hexafluoride by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Three teams are vying for a contract to convert the Department of Energy's inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride to a more stable form for beneficial reuse and/or disposal. According to DOE, the teams, which all reportedly have Oak Ridge offices, are as follows: + American Conversion Services LLC -- formed by CH2M Hill and United States Enrichment Corp. + Jacobs COGEMA LLC -- composed of Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and COGEMA LLC; and + Uranium Disposition Services LLC -- formed by Framatome ANP Richland Inc., Duratek Federal Services Inc. and Burns and Roe Enterprises Inc. The two other groups that submitted proposals for the contract but won't continue in the competition are General Atomics and a team known as Foster Wheeler Environmental Conversion Services LLC -- formed by BWXT Services Inc., BNFL Inc. and Foster Wheeler Environmental Corp. DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office is expected to award the contract in October, according to Walter Perry, a spokesman for the federal agency. The contractor will be responsible for the design, construction and operation of conversion facilities to be constructed in Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio. Depleted uranium hexafluoride, a product of the uranium enrichment process, is typically stored in large steel cylinders. Perry said 4,683 cylinders of this material are stored at the Oak Ridge K-25 site and must be moved by Dec. 31, 2009, to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 19 Cleanup review could end Sept. 30 Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:23 a.m. on Thursday, August 9, 2001 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy hopes to have a comprehensive review of its environmental management program finished by Sept. 30, a federal official says. In the meantime, Joe Davis, a spokesman for DOE headquarters, says the agency has responded to concerns expressed recently by Gov. Don Sundquist's office over cuts in cleanup funding for fiscal year 2002. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced the environmental management review in April in order to determine more effective cleanup methods that could be accomplished in shorter time frames and to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent efficiently. Davis said Thursday that the target end date for the review is Sept. 30. "That's certainly the date we're shooting for," he said. However, while DOE is trying to improve its environmental management program, the agency's cleanup efforts in Oak Ridge are in jeopardy. Concern has been expressed by community members that funding for these efforts could be cut by $70 million to $90 million. Davis said he did not know offhand what impact the budget may have on Oak Ridge. The DOE spokesman said Thursday he would look into the matter, but as of this morning, he had not provided any information to The Oak Ridger. Justin Wilson, deputy for policy in Gov. Sundquist's office, sent a letter dated July 25 to Jessie Roberson, the newly appointed assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, indicating the state's dissatisfaction over DOE's proposed FY 2002 cleanup budget. Davis said a representative from DOE's environmental management program contacted Wilson this week about the matter but that he does not know what was said during that conversation. Wilson was unavailable for comment this morning. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 20 Couple settles Pantex suit Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: 08/10/01 2001 Amarillo Globe-News Dispute came from 1995 test blast near couple's home By Jim McBride
A Carson County couple and the federal government have settled a lawsuit over claims that a 1995 Pantex explosive test damaged the family's home.

The dispute arose out of an Oct. 4, 1995, test blast at Pantex.

On that day, Pantex officials conducted an emergency preparedness drill to simulate an accidental high-explosive accident at the nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant.

The blast took place at a Pantex firing site about a half-mile from Jeri and Jim Osborne's home.

"All that it's amounted to is we have settled and they wouldn't go any more than $10,000," said Jeri Osborne. "It cost us a heck of a lot more than that. We decided maybe it wasn't worth pursuing it anymore."

Gordon Bryant, an assistant U.S. attorney in Amarillo, confirmed that the government and the Osbornes reached a settlement after mediation.

The test, which was part of a extensive Pantex drill, used high explosives to simulate an accidental blast in a weapons assembly cell.

Plant officials said they used 78 pounds of high explosives in the test.

But the Osbornes contended that 110 pounds of high explosives were used in the test and that the blast was much larger that Pantex officials said.

In 1997, a DOE spokesman said Pantex has conducted tests using up to 100 pounds of high explosives. In the 1960s, a 60-pound chunk of shrapnel from a Pantex blast landed on the Osborne's property.

Shortly after the 1995 blast, Jeri Osborne notified plant officials that she thought the explosion damaged her home, cracking walls, concrete and causing plumbing leaks. About a year after the tests, the Osbornes sent a detailed claim of $96,948 to Pantex officials.

Pantex officials earlier had denied the claim.

"It was one of the biggest ones I'd ever experienced," Jeri Osborne said in 1997. "It was just sheer negligence for blowing one that big."

***************************************************************** 21 McConnell upbeat about U.S. uranium enrichment The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Friday, August 10, 2001 As Bush and his cabinet members debate the domestic production of nuclear fuel, McConnell speculates they will support the industry. By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 The future of the uranium enrichment industry in the United States is being debated at the highest levels of government, and a decision should be made by the end of September, according to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. President Bush's top cabinet members — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice — are debating the pros and cons of the domestic production of nuclear fuel, Kentucky's senior senator said. McConnell said he hasn't been involved in the discussion, but he speculated the decision will be to continue to support the industry because 22 percent of the nation's electricity is produced with nuclear fuel, and because of the importance of having nuclear weapons-producing capability. "Once that decision is made, they'll take a look at the issue of the Russian uranium," he said in reference to the debate over who should be the agent for reprocessing and selling fuel that was once used in Russia's nuclear weapons. The issues are important to Paducah, site of the nation's only plant to enrich uranium for use as nuclear fuel. The plant is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and run by the U.S. Enrichment Corp. About 1,500 people work at the plant. Without a domestic production facility, the United States would be dependent on other countries for nuclear fuel. McConnell said he doesn't think that is a wise idea. The White House debate also should include discussion of options on how to keep the industry viable, such as development and implementation of new enrichment technologies, McConnell said. The United States has a contract to buy $8 billion worth of uranium from Russia that was once used in 25,000 nuclear weapons. USEC currently holds an exclusive contract to process the Russian uranium and sell it as fuel for nuclear power generating plants. However, the contract expires at the end of the year and the Bush administration is debating whether to renew the contract or add a second agent. USEC says it is important it remains the sole agent in order to stay competitive in the world enrichment market. USEC also wants Russia to reduce its prices for the uranium. McConnell would not express his view on whether the deal with USEC should be continued. "I have decided that before I pick sides, I want to hear the results of the internal review by the Bush administration," he said. Union workers at the USEC plant soundly rejected a new contract offer because it was tied to the future of the Russian uranium deal. Union leaders say they wouldn't agree to that because it was an issue they do not control. McConnell said he wouldn't take sides in the contract issue: "I'm not going to offer advice to either side on how to negotiate a contract." A decision on the Russian uranium issue should be made be the end of the year, prior to the expiration of the contract with USEC, he said. On other issues during a meeting with the Paducah Sun editorial board, McConnell said the patients' bill of rights that defines how health management organizations can operate is not as important to Americans as the issue of prescription drug benefits. He said most of the disagreement over the patients' bill of rights has involved limiting the amount of liability HMOs have for making wrong decisions. "The debate is over how rich we want to make lawyers," he said. McConnell said he would encourage President Bush to veto the Patients' Bill of Rights "if he doesn't feel it is in the best interest of the country." Politically, he said, Bush could survive a veto if he did a good job of explaining the veto was driven by the litigation issue, not the direct benefits to consumers. "A prescription drug benefit is the big issue that people care about," McConnell said. "It is just as important in health care as benefits for doctors and hospitals have been in the past." He predicted some form of benefit plan will be added to the Medicare program before the end of the year. He favors using it as leverage to do a complete reform of the Medicare system. ***************************************************************** 22 PACE negotiations discontinue for now - The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Friday, August 10, 2001 PACE President David Fuller accuses USEC of using Paducah's situation as a bargaining token for Russian uranium issues in Washington. By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 With contract negotiations broken off, union officials have accused the U.S. Enrichment Corp. of using labor tactics to try to force federal action aiding the company's purchase of Russian uranium. The company says the Russian issue should have been resolved before contract talks began and it has tried hard to appease the major union at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. USEC wants a proposed five-year contract with the union to expire after a year if goals regarding the uranium are not met. The objectives heavily depend on whether the Bush administration allows USEC to remain sole agent for the uranium and get lower prices. Opposing the contract language and considering wage-benefit provisions substandard, the union voted overwhelmingly against the offer Aug. 2. When talks resumed Wednesday, the union offered to renegotiate wages and benefits after a year if the Russian deal dictated, said David Fuller, president of Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Local 5-550. "They had absolutely no interest in that," he said of USEC officials. "Based on that, in my judgment, they're wanting to foment a crisis at Paducah in hopes of leveraging a decision in Washington. I think that's short-sighted, ill-advised and if I were a legislator from this area, I'd take exception to it." USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said the firm reached an agreement with Russia in May 2000 for better prices, but federal approval has not yet come. "USEC has done everything in its power to try and expedite approval of the Russian deal," she said. "We have sought to obtain the support of business leaders, labor leaders and politicians to expedite approval of this deal that is so vitally important to the Paducah community. "It was never USEC's intention to see this matter delayed to the point where it of necessity becomes an issue in our relationship with our bargaining unit employees." The union represents about 700 of 1,500 workers at the plant, which enriches uranium for use in nuclear fuel. Fuller said members have no plans to strike, but could do so with a day's notice to the company. Their old contract expired July 31. No new talks were set after bargainers left the table about 10 p.m. Wednesday, ending about 12 hours of meetings and deliberations. Fuller said there was some discussion about resuming bargaining next week, but nothing was finalized. However, Stuckle said discussions were expected to resume the week of Aug. 20 because a union negotiator is unavailable next week. USEC says that for a new contract to last longer than a year, it must accomplish three goals: remain sole agent for buying $8 billion in enriched uranium taken from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads; obtain a revised Russian contract for better prices; and get federal approval to buy commercial uranium from Russia. USEC Senior Vice President Philip Sewell said earlier that Russian uranium is priced below the plant's enrichment costs. The goals are essential for USEC to control the flow of uranium into the United States, hold down expenses by "blending" the costs of Russian and Paducah material, and thus help preserve the plant, he said. Some nuclear industry experts say having a second agent for the Russian uranium would spur competition and lower prices for U.S. nuclear plants that buy material from USEC. The Bush administration is reviewing the matter as part of a broader look at the U.S. role in nuclear energy. USEC wants decisions before Jan. 1, when its contract with Russia expires. The energy workers union has tried and failed to get USEC to promise to run the plant at specified production levels in return for support of the Russian deal, Fuller said. "Without those enforceable guarantees and commitments, we will assume that a letter and a handshake means exactly the same thing as it did for Portsmouth," he said. USEC closed its plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, in June, leaving Paducah as the only facility in the nation that enriches uranium. But Stuckle painted a different picture. When it became apparent the Russian deal would not be approved before contract talks began, USEC tried to get the union to agree to a short contract extension to provide time for approval, she said. "It was USEC's position that if the previous contract were extended, any increased benefits that would be finally negotiated would be retroactive to July 31," she said. Stuckle said USEC has offered in writing to include contract language guaranteeing minimum plant production "as long as the Russian deal is in force or until a new technology enrichment plant is in operation several years from now." She said USEC still wants "an amicable way" to resolve the contract issue pending a Russian decision, and is acting in the best interests of the community and all plant employees. ***************************************************************** 23 Nagasaki folk remember bombing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi carries a wreath during a ceremony to commemorate the 56th atomic bombing anniversary at the Peace Park in Nagasaki. AFP Posted: 10:30 PM (Manila Time) | August 09, 2001 By Jonathan Annells Agence France-Presse TOKYO – Nagasaki officials Thursday criticized moves by the United States that could undermine a nuclear test ban treaty as the city marked the 56th anniversary of its atomic bombing with a minute's silence. Thousands turned out in pouring rain to remember the estimated 74,000 people killed when a plutonium-239 bomb named "Fat Man" flattened Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The number of dead has since risen to 126,630 according to the city's estimate, as others have succumbed to their exposure to radiation. The crowd, officially put at 4,750, including some elderly bomb survivors, bereaved families, schoolchildren and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, stood in solemn silence at 11:02 am (0202 GMT), as the Peace Bell rang out at the exact minute a US plane dropped the bomb on the port city. A Nagasaki Peace Declaration read by mayor Itcho Ito did not name names, but there was no doubt the United States was singled out for criticism for risking turning the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has yet to come into force, into "an empty promise." "The nuclear weapons states have refused to give up these instruments, even with the passing of the Cold War, and a nuclear superpower is now insinuating that it may renege on international commitments in the area of nuclear disarmament," said the declaration. "We are vigorously opposed to these movements, which could negate previous efforts for the elimination of nuclear weapons," the declaration continued. The statement came hours after the US and Russia resumed talks on missile defense and nuclear arms in the wake of the US proposal to replace the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty with a looser set of security arrangements. Washington wants an accommodation with Moscow since its plans to test a missile defense shield intended to protect the US from "rogue states" will run up against ABM Treaty limits as early as February. Critics have charged Washington's move could lead to an accelerated nuclear arms race. In his speech, Koizumi pledged his government's utmost efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons and achieve permanent peace, and said modern Japan owed a debt of gratitude to those who had died that August morning 56 years ago. ©2001 www.inq7.net all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 24 Closer U.S. Ties Sought on Nuclear Disaster Plans AUG 10, 2001 Closer U.S. Ties Sought on Nuclear Disaster Plans By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD HITE PLAINS, Aug. 9 — Two federal agencies responsible for ensuring the public's safety in the event of a radioactive accident at the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant need to coordinate better with local officials drawing up emergency plans, the federal General Accounting Office has concluded. The G.A.O., in a report made public today, said that bureaucratic entanglements had kept officials in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange Counties from direct contact with the federal agencies as they prepared disaster drills and the like for any emergencies at the plant. Instead, the agencies — the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — tend to share information on training and technical matters with the state's Emergency Management Office, which in turn passes it on to the county governments. As a result, the report said, some county officials were unaware of new federal regulations used as a guide. Westchester County officials say they cannot call the Federal Emergency Management Agency directly to consult on plans for evacuation exercises. The agency, a spokeswoman for the county government said, insists that the county relay questions through the Emergency Management Office. "It's ridiculous," said Susan Tolchin, the spokeswoman. Mike Beeman, a spokesman for FEMA, said the agency was reviewing the report and was open to improving communications. A spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that communication with the counties had already been stepped up, and that she had met several times with officials in Westchester County, where the plant is situated. Ms. Tolchin agreed that there were improvements. The General Accounting Office report was requested by Representatives Benjamin A. Gilman of Rockland County and Sue W. Kelly and Nita M. Lowey, both of Westchester. They asked for it because of communication gaps found to exist between Con Edison, which operates the plant, the N.R.C. and the county after a February 2000 accident that caused a small radioactive leak. The leak did not pose a health risk to the public, federal officials said. But in the hours after the accident, conflicting reports were issued by the utility and the nuclear commission about the severity of the problem, the G.A.O. said, suggesting a broader communications problem. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 25 Kursk Secrets Still Buried One Year On www.themoscowtimes.com Friday, Aug. 10, 2001. Page 1 By Oksana Yablokova Staff Writer A year after the Kursk nuclear submarine crashed to the floor of the Barents Sea, leaving 118 crewmen dead, millions of dollars have been spent on the operation to raise it, 40 tons of fragments from its mangled bow and hull have been retrieved, and dozens of experts have scrutinized the evidence. But Russian investigators still have no official explanation for the accident and continue to put forth the same three versions they proposed shortly after the Aug. 12, 2000, disaster that kept the nation riveted for months afterward. The investigation has been extended every two months since the sinking and could last indefinitely if the sub's front section — where its weapons were located and the blast took place — is not lifted from the seabed for examination, said Andrei Luchenkov, a spokesman for the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office, which is one of the agencies responsible for the probe. "It's impossible to complete the investigation without lifting and examining all parts of the submarine," Luchenkov said in a telephone interview Thursday. Deputy navy commander Mikhail Barskov told a news conference in London on Wednesday that the front torpedo compartment would be lifted no earlier than next summer. Military prosecutors investigating the accident jointly with Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov's government commission have confirmed that they are still looking into three possibilities that they consider equally feasible: a collision with another submarine, a collision with a World War II mine and an onboard explosion in the torpedo compartment. On Thursday, navy chief Vladimir Kuroyedov voiced a new theory, effectively fusing two of the original ones: Interfax quoted the admiral as saying it was possible that the unidentified object with which the Kursk collided may have been obliterated by a torpedo triggered by the collision, leaving no evidence. But many experts, both Russian and Western, have lent more credence to the idea of a torpedo malfunction. One of the most detailed explanations thus far appeared this week in the British media. Maurice Stradling, a retired torpedo designer and former lecturer at the Royal Naval Engineering College in Plymouth, told the weekly Observer that the explosion aboard the Kursk could have been set off by a malfunction in a torpedo propelled with concentrated hydrogen peroxide fuel, or HTP. Stradling's theory was spurred by a recent BBC report revealing new information about a deadly blast on a British Sidon submarine that killed 13 crewmen in June 1955. The report cited the previously unpublicized findings of a board of inquiry, which said that a stainless steel pipe carrying the HTP to the torpedo engine had burst. The Observer report explained that when HTP comes in contact with certain metals, such as silver — which is often present in the alloys used to make submarines — the hydrogen peroxide breaks down into water vapor and oxygen, which helps power the engine and expands in volume by 5,000 times. However, if the chemical reaction occurs at the wrong time, the vapor, pure oxygen and pressurized hydrogen peroxide have nowhere to go and the result could be a violent explosion. After a series of unexplained accidents, the British rejected the substance as unstable and dangerous almost half a century ago, but it is still used in most Russian torpedoes, experts said. Stradling believes a similar scenario may have happened on the Kursk, saying an experimental torpedo could have set off a chain reaction in the sub's weapons compartment, causing the massive explosion that sent the Kursk to the sea bottom. Russian officials have also considered this version. The navy's Barskov said Wednesday that a possible hydrogen peroxide leak was one of the causes considered at the start of the investigation. "Certain conditions are necessary to provoke a blast, and we are determining whether such conditions were present in the submarine at the time of the disaster," Barskov said. The torpedo malfunction theory has surfaced on numerous occasions. Igor Spassky, a member of the investigative commission and head of the Rubin design bureau, which designed Kursk, first suggested it in January. And just days after the accident, the Defense Ministry's official mouthpiece, the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper, reported that the Kursk was re-fitted to carry new torpedoes, which "were difficult to store and dangerous to handle because the propulsion of the new torpedoes did not use expensive batteries containing silver but cheap liquid fuel." Igor Kurdin, chairman of the St. Petersburg Submarine Seamen's Club who spent seven years as captain of a similar submarine, said the hulls of most Russian torpedoes are made of an alloy containing silver and cheap hydrogen peroxide fuel is widely used to propel them. "Hydrogen peroxide-fueled torpedoes have been in use since 1976 and never caused any trouble," Kurdin said. "But we don't know what could have gone wrong with the torpedo that exploded [aboard the Kursk]." The operation to lift the 18,000-ton Kursk is being headed by Dutch heavy transport company Mammoet with help from the Netherlands' Smit Internationale and Norway's Norsk Cutting and Abandonment. Mammoet took over the operation — believed to have a price tag of about $65 million — when an international consortium pulled out of the project after more than six months of talks, saying it could not guarantee the safety of the lift on such a tight schedule. Moscow, however, refused to postpone the operation. Speaking at a news conference last month, President Vladimir Putin — whose refusal to cut short a vacation at the time of the accident shocked observers — said the sunken submarine must be raised because he had promised it would be to the relatives of the killed crewmen. "One of our problems … is no trust for what the leadership does. This trust can be restored only when what we say or promise is carried out," Putin said. Putin also cited the importance of environmental concerns and obtaining clues to the causes of the blast. The operation is now approaching its most critical phase. As early as Sunday, workers plan to cut the mangled torpedo compartment apart from the hull, which is set to be raised in mid-September. The cutting operation has provoked controversy, with some experts saying the process could further damage the front section, thus depriving investigators of important evidence. Russian officials have made contradicting statements about the presence of live ammunition in and around the sub. Although several navy officials denied this month that there were undetonated weapons among the wreckage, Admiral Kuroyedov said in May that all of the Kursk's 24 Granit cruise missiles and "50 percent or more" of its unspecified smaller number of torpedoes survived the two blasts that sank the sub. Ahead of this risky stage of the operation, Barskov, Spassky and presidential spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky visited a shipyard in Amsterdam where the Dutch Giant 4 barge, which will lift the sunken sub next month, is being fitted with the necessary equipment. The government was fiercely criticized for the shroud of secrecy that surrounded the accident after it happened; now, to offset the damage, officials regularly arrange tours of the accident site for journalists and have launched an English web site (www.kursk141.org) dedicated to the Kursk operation. A large press center has been set up in Murmansk to cover the lift. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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