***************************************************************** 02/11/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.38 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Officials eager for waste issue to be buried 2 NUCLEAR POWER 3 Tokyo Electric Power mothballs 12 power stations 4 Don't let `nuclear' capitalism bully Chen 5 Most Utahns say they don't trust federal government on toxic waste 6 Sellafield ignored blast alert 7 Wanted: Windfall In Nuclear Waste 8 Shipment Of MOX Nuclear Fuel Nears S Africa Coast - Group 9 Radioactive waste deposited in Town 10 Energy Bill Doles Out Billions To Companies With Record Profits 11 Cramer says TVA should complete nuclear plant 12 Nuclear waste decision too hot before election 13 Aussies protest entrance of nuclear waste shipment 14 Hallam Nuclear Plant aftermath 15 Experts Dispute Nuclear Dump Data NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 South Carolina, Georgia senators want money for SRS Infrastructure 2 Living on contaminated ground 3 Forces failing soldiers: report 4 Artists unite in bid to free Vanunu 5 Utah House approves fallout committee 6 263 tons of uranium slated to be gone in weeks 7 Nuclear Sites Could Be In Your Backyard 8 N-activist's career began with a light in the sky 9 Contaminated worker loses part of thumb 10 Leaders seek aid for SRS 11 Bush administration to examine decision on uranium deal 12 President considers halving US nuclear arsenal 13 Australia 'campaigned for own atomic bomb' 14 Whitehall is shaken by Gibraltar broadside 15 DOE puts off review of ignition laser job 16 Filters from bomb plant greatest potential for trouble 17 Anchorage Daily News - Scientists to watch for radiation leaks 18 U.S. Stockpile Size Affects Lab Workload ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Officials eager for waste issue to be buried MyWestTexas By Richard Acosta Staff Writer During the last legislative session, two companies jockeyed for position in the race to win a license to ship, treat and bury low level radioactive waste in West Texas. This time around it is a one-horse race that has area state representatives hoping to lay this 20-year-old matter to rest. Envirocare of Texas, a spinoff of the radioactive waste company Envirocare of Utah, has folded its tent and gone back to Utah, leaving only Waste Control Specialists in the game. WCS is located in Andrews County on the Texas-New Mexico border along State Highway 176. During the last Texas Legislative session, a number of bills which would have licensed the disposal of radioactive waste were presented, but all died in committee. This term, legislators hope for a different outcome. "This is a tough issue, but it's an important one," said state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock. "It's important we come up with legislation that will regulate the disposal of low-level radioactive waste and to better manage the compact between Texas, Maine and Vermont. It's my goal to pass this legislation." State Rep. Gary Walker, R-Plains, whose district includes Andrews County, which is home of WCS, said he is glad only WCS remains because, in his opinion, WCS has always had the best location. "I certainly hope it (Envirocare withdrawing) will uncomplicate things some," Walker said. "I think Andrews is such a perfect place for the waste. It's probably the best site in the U.S. and the people there want it. I think Envirocare saw the light and just realized Andrews was the better site." The radioactive waste issue began about 20 years ago, when Texas entered an agreement with Maine and Vermont stating low-level radioactive waste from the three states would be disposed of in Texas. According to state law, "disposing" of low-level radioactive waste means, ultimately, putting it in a big hole and burying it. WCS is already operating a facility that meets the requirements to treat and dispose of low-level radioactive waste in accordance to the three-state compact, in Andrews. State Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, said having only one company showing interest in the waste helps focus the matter on the issues rather than the companies. "When you have only one company things are far less complicated," Craddick said. "Something needs to be done. It's been 20 years." In addition to there being only one company competing for radioactive waste disposal rights, the organization responsible for issuing the license, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, is up for the sunset review process. The TNRCC, "strives to protect our state's human and natural resources consistent with sustainable economic development. Our goal is clean air, clean water and the safe management of waste," according to the TNRCC mission statement. Being under sunset review process means the TNRCC must go before the Sunset Advisory Commission. The commission decides if an organization will still be around next year and, if it is, what, if any, changes will be made. Craddick said he thinks with the TNRCC restructuring and only one company in the running for the waste license, there is a good chance something could be done soon. "I don't think there is any doubt that both issues weigh favorably for the issue to come to an end," Craddick said. However, the game of politics is about as predictable as West Texas weather, a point stressed by State Sen. Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, who represents Midland in Austin. "It could be, but there is no way to know for sure," Bivins said. "Radioactive waste is a very emotional issue. We'll have to make a good decision based on science." 2/11/2001 * MyWestTexas.comm | of Use Copyright © 2001 Midland Reporter-Telegram. All rights ***************************************************************** 2 NUCLEAR POWER Chicago Tribune | Print Edition -- NUCLEAR POWER Chuck Kuecker, President, C K Enterprises Inc.. February 10, 2001 * CARY -- David A. Kraft writes deprecatingly about nuclear power in Illinois ("Nuclear power," Voice of the people, Feb. 3). I would like to rebut some of his outlandish statements. First, the cost of nuclear power is almost entirely due to governmental regulations, paperwork and the hugely inflated costs of dealing with nuclear wastes. If the industry had been allowed by the feds to develop solutions to these problems, rather than having to use rules laid down by bureaucrats, the costs would be much lower. Nuclear power produces no CO2. None. Fossil fuel plants, particularly coal and oil-fired plants, produce thousands of tons of fly ash and other wastes every day. All the nuclear plants on this continent produce hundreds of pounds of nuclear waste, most of which can be reprocessed into fresh fuel using existing technology. Removing CO2 emissions by "conservation" is just doublespeak for trying to return our civilization to a point before widespread use of electricity existed. California is a case in point--it got rid of its nukes and its "dirty" coal plants, and switched to "clean" natural gas. The price of gas has skyrocketed, and electric demand has risen as the population has grown, despite quantum leaps in appliance and computer energy efficiency. To "conserve" will require a drop in the standard of living of millions of people. Nuclear power is favored by intelligent planners because it produces so little in the way of pollution compared to traditional sources of power, requires much less in the way of fuel transport and is altogether much cleaner. Compare the hundreds of hundred-car coal trains that travel to a typical coal-fired plant to the one or two trucks filled with safe, contained and--due to regulations--highly guarded nuclear fuel. Just the diesel fuel required to move the trains will produce more pollution than all the nukes we have. Renewable energy requires huge government subsidies to be cost-effective. Translation? Huge tax increases, and another drop in living standard for millions. Money wasted by an admittedly inept Commonwealth Edison hardly condemns an entire industry, no more than the actions of one person condemn an entire race or nationality. As far as "threatening the entire planet" with nuclear wastes, coal plants continuously spew thousands of pounds of radium, uranium, mercury and other toxins found in the native rock inevitably dug up and burned with the coal. When President Clinton took office eight years ago, one of the first things his administration did was to destroy the Argonne Lab's IFR research program. This program was within reaching distance of demonstrating a commercial nuclear reactor system that would be intrinsically safe--no possibility of a meltdown, ever--and would also be completely sealed on commissioning. The plant would breed new fuel internally, process the fuel internally and, most importantly, destroy its own high level nuclear wastes on site. The reactor's useful life of 30 years would end with the sealing of the reactor chamber at decommissioning. No wastes would ever be transported from the site. To solve our current energy woes requires forceful action and leadership. We need to restart the Argonne IFR program and re-examine federal laws on nuclear power to remove the senseless roadblocks to building clean, efficient power plants, so we can shut down the horribly wasteful fossil plants still running and increase research into the ultimate clean energy sources--fusion and solar power from orbiting power plants beamed to Earth. The uninformed environmentalists have led us to the present debacle. If we don't do something in Illinois to plan for the future, we will see the same kinds of problems that California is suffering here in the next few years. ***************************************************************** 3 Tokyo Electric Power mothballs 12 power stations Yahoo! Singapore News] Friday, February 9 3:07 PM SGT TOKYO, Feb 9 (AFP) - The world's largest private electric power company The Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc. is considering mothballing 12 planned power stations because of lack of demand amid Japan's sluggish economy, officials said Friday. Four of the 12 power stations are nuclear, raising the prospect that Japan will struggle to meet its greenhouse gas emission commitments. "We are considering freezing 27 generating units at 12 power stations for three to five years or more," said TEPCO spokesman Toru Ueno. "The plants we are looking at are those under construction and the new ones planned so far," he said, adding that a final decision would be taken by the end of March. The power stations under review would have added an extra 18.7 million kilowatts to TEPCO's current total output of 57.9 million kilowatts, according to the company, but the level of electricity demand in recent years has challenged assumptions about future needs. Demand peaked in July 1996 at 59.4 million kilowatts. It is the first time that demand has failed to set a new record for four years, Ueno said. "If new power plants are built, supply will exceed demand and now there are newcomers (competing) for the power business," he said. Since 1996, demand has hovered around 59.3 million kilowatts, and TEPCO has made up for the marginal shortfall in its own capacity by buying power from regional producers, the spokesman said. The construction programme for the 12 power stations was initially given the go-ahead on the basis of likely power needs over the next 10 years, but it pre-supposed a rosier economic outlook. The failure of the Japanese economy to pull out of a decade-long slump has forced TEPCO to trim its estimates. "We forecast the annual growth rate at one to two percent for the next ten years, which is the lowest ever," Ueno said. If TEPCO does decide to mothball some or all of the four nuclear plants, it could throw Japan's plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into disarray, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry admitted. "It is true that cancellation of the nuclear power plants makes it hard for Japan to attain its greenhouse gas reduction goal," said Takashi Shibuya, director of Meti's environmental policy division. "Nuclear power generation does not burn any fossil fuel, but if we rely more on thermal power, more carbon dioxide will be emitted," he said. Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, Japan is committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by an average of six percent for the five years from 2008 to 2012, compared with the 1990-level. TEPCO operates 160 hydropower plants, 25 thermal, three nuclear, and one wind-energy power station. Copyright © 2000 AFP. All rights ***************************************************************** 4 Don't let `nuclear' capitalism bully Chen The Taipei Times Online: 2001-02-11 Sunday, February 11th, 2001 By Hideyuki Ban Chen and the DPP government should once again reflect on the fact why the leading nuclear reactor manufacturers are Toshiba and Hitachi, instead of GE. In the US, no order has been placed for new nuclear reactors since 1979 and it is fair to say that the American nuclear industry has declined to such an extent that it is no longer capable of exporting nuclear reactors. This is not the only reason, however, why Toshiba and Hitachi are involved in the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project; the Japanese nuclear industry, too, is suffering setbacks. Although Japan is planning to build an additional 20 reactors in the coming 10 years, no one believes residents will allow this expansion. The Japanese nuclear industry, therefore, is looking overseas. Apart from Taiwan, it has attempted to advance its business to other Asian countries. But so far it has all been in vain. The Japanese tried to export reactors to Indonesia, but this was halted by the Jakarta government. They also tried to do business in Turkey but gave up when the Turkish government wisely stopped the construction of new nuclear plants in July 2000, after a terrible earthquake. Now the industry is aiming at Vietnam. Facing difficulty in finding a domestic solution for nuclear waste, Taipower (¥x¹q) has been negotiating with North Korea to ship its low-level radioactive waste there. The company is also looking into the possibility of transferring its spent nuclear fuel to Russia for final storage (meaning disposal). The export of radioactive contamination is, however, against humanity -- moreover it is internationally acknowledged as an impermissible activity. For example, the South East Asia Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty bans the transfer and disposal of radioactive waste beyond national boundaries, since it is a selfish rationale to allow other countries to be contaminated in efforts to avoid contaminating one's own country. The DPP, which has long fought for the people against the oppression of the KMT must not allow such discreditable behavior. When I had a chance to meet residents of Kungliao, they assured to me that Chen would never break his promise. If the DDP turns its back to the people and goes ahead with the construction of the power plant, then it would inevitably lead to the decline of the party. On the day when the decision to stop it was announced, I was actually visiting in Taipei and deeply impressed. Germany's decision for a specific nuclear phase-out plan established the path for nuclear phase-out in Europe. I believe the path for nuclear phase-out in Asia will be set by Taiwan. The nuclear age in essence was concluded in the 20th century. Chen and the DPP government absolutely must not bend to the pressure of the KMT and the nuclear industry, and instead must lead Asia into a nuclear-free age. *Hideyuki Ban is co-director of the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Tokyo, Japan.* This story has been viewed 245 times. Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 Most Utahns say they don't trust federal government on toxic waste Sunday, February 11, 2001 By Jerry Spangler Marriage counselors are quick to point out that a good relationship is based on mutual trust nurtured over time. But if that's indeed the case, then the marriage between Utah and the federal government is in serious trouble, at least when it comes to trusting the government on things like the effects of above-ground nuclear testing and storage of high-level nuclear waste. According to a Deseret News-KSL TV poll, Utahns simply don't believe the federal government has been — or is now being — honest with them. And they are none too happy with the state's toxic legacy that includes hazardous and radioactive waste dumps, as well as incinerators that burn a plethora of dangerous chemicals and wastes. When asked how honest the U.S. government has been with the state about the effects of radiation, military weapons testing, hazardous chemicals and nuclear waste on Utah's environment, only 20 percent responded the government had been very or somewhat honest. In contrast, 75 percent of those polled said the U.S. government had been somewhat or very dishonest with the state. Utah's top elected officials still find political fodder in the 50-year legacy of government deception, pointing not only to tragedies occurring long ago but to recent events like President Bill Clinton's secretive creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the ongoing predisposition of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow high-level nuclear waste to be shipped to the state. And that begs the question: Can the federal government ever be trusted on anything? "I don't know that trust is right word," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "But we should be skeptical of government all the time. It is skepticism that makes better government." Hatch said he witnessed first-hand government deception during Senate committee hearings on his legislation to compensate those sickened and killed by exposure to radiation from Cold War nuclear testing and uranium mining. "The government did lie to them and frankly we proved it," said Hatch, who fought the government 10 years before compensation legislation was finally passed in 1990 that formally acknowledged the government made mistakes. "I remember tough hearings where the government denied everything. And we took them apart, we kicked their tails." But Hatch said he is not out to find criminality or great fault in what happened in the past. "Let's face it. This was a price we paid to end the Cold War, and it was a war," he said. Utahns overwhelmingly support Hatch's efforts to win compensation for victims of nuclear testing and uranium mining, not only those in Utah who suffered disproportionately but those in surrounding states like Nevada, Arizona and Colorado. Some 87 percent of those polled said they strongly or somewhat support such compensation, while only 8 percent somewhat or strongly opposed it. Distrust of the U.S. government appears to have carried over to ongoing efforts by a consortium of mostly Eastern nuclear power utilities to store 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods on Goshute Indian lands west of Salt Lake City. Supporters say it is safe and will provide economic development to impoverished Goshutes, while opponents say the temporary storage will become permanent and that storage of nuclear waste is lethally dangerous to Utah's residents and image. The consortium currently has a license application pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Gov. Mike Leavitt says he has no doubt the NRC will approve the license despite fierce state opposition. Utahns are unequivocal in their opposition. When asked how they feel about the proposal, only 8 percent of those polled strongly or somewhat supported it. On the other side, 78 percent either strongly or somewhat opposed it. Utahns are also distrustful of the government. When asked if they believed the federal government when it says storage of nuclear waste in above-ground cannisters is safe, 77 percent said they definitely or probably did not believe the government. On the other hand, 18 percent said they definitely or probably believed the government. That opposition reflects Utahns' general disdain for waste storage of any kind. When asked how concerned they were about Utah being home to hazardous waste and military disposal plants, 79 percent were very concerned or somewhat concerned, while only 19 percent were not concerned much or not concerned at all. While trust in the federal government appears to be nearing rock bottom, state regulators fared somewhat better although there is room for improvement. About 44 percent said state regulation of waste industries is too lax, slightly more than the 39 percent that said it was about right. Only 3 percent said it was too strict. The poll of 413 Utahns was conducted Nov. 18 to Dec. 2. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent. *E-mail: spang@desnews.com* Front Page © 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 6 Sellafield ignored blast alert Guardian Unlimited Observer | UK News | [UP] Nick Paton Walsh Sunday Feb A major disaster was narrowly averted at Sellafield's nuclear waste plant in Cumbria when more than 2,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste almost exploded, The Observer can reveal. Safety procedures were so lax at one of the plant's waste storage facilities last month that workers ignored alarm warnings of a build-up of explosive gases for nearly three hours. The gases were accumulating in the 21 tanks that each store 100 tonnes of deadly waste. Ten hours longer, experts say, and the tanks would have been explosive. Ministers were briefed last Tuesday about the incident, the worst in a long line of safety scandals at the plant. Peter Hain, the Minister for Energy, was informed by the Government's nuclear safety team, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), that an incident had occurred at the plant on 26 January. The NII has launched a major investigation, sending four inspectors to the plant and requesting that the owner of the plant, British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), report on safety procedures within four weeks. 'This is an extremely alarming situation,' said Andrew Stunnel, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on energy. 'It shows the cavalier attitude that has dogged the nuclear industry for 50 years.' Martin Forewood, a campaign co-ordinator for the local activist group Core, who has lived in the area for 25 years, said:'We're constantly reassured by the Government and BNFL that we have nothing to worry about. This incident shows how close we can come to a catastrophic incident.' BNFL admitted its staff ignored alarms for two-and-a-half hours, and said the situation was 'inadequate'. It said it would take a lot longer than 10 hours for the situation to become critical and risk an explosion. It confirmed that the reprocessing plant at Thorp had been shut down as a result of the incident. 'Those 21 tanks of waste contain huge quantities of the most hazardous materials on the nuclear site, if not the planet' said John Large, one of the world's leading nuclear engineers. 'A similarly sized tank blew up in the Russian area of Chelyabinsk in 1957 and on its own devastated an area the size of central London. 'The only other time something like this has happened in Europe was in France in the Seventies when they rushed to use emergency military generators to cool the tanks and prevent an explosion.' The incident happened at 8.30pm when engineers were carrying out improvements on the ventilation systems that stop the explosive gases from building up inside the tanks. The engineers incorrectly wired the circuits in the ventilators. nick.walsh@observer.co.uk [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 7 Wanted: Windfall In Nuclear Waste (The Washington Post, Feb. 11, 2001) *By Susan B. Glasser* MUSLYUMOVO, Russia -- Nikolai Gidenko is one of the last of the "liquidators." He earned the title as a Red Army draftee in the 1950s, building a dam on the Techa River, sometimes immersed up to his knees in water. What Gidenko didn't know then was that the Techa River was a nuclear waste dump, a river of radioactivity carrying contamination from the top-secret nuclear facility down the road. Today, Gidenko receives 200 rubles a month -- less than $8 -- as compensation for the radiation to which he was exposed. In his dying village of 4,500 people, there are six cemeteries, five of them already full. Which makes it all the more surprising when Gidenko answers with an unhesitating yes when asked if he favors the latest plan of Russia's cash-poor leaders: creating a haven for the world's nuclear leftovers. In exchange for what the government estimates could be a $21 billion windfall, the Russians intend to open their doors to more than 20,000 tons of spent fuel from foreign nuclear reactors for storage and possible reprocessing. Some of it is likely to end up in Gidenko's back yard. Nationwide, the proposal has spurred the biggest grass-roots opposition movement in Russia's 10 years of democracy. But here in this region of the Ural Mountains almost 1,000 miles east of Moscow that environmentalists call "the most polluted place on Earth," with more radioactive waste than 20 Chernobyls, local leaders are lobbying heavily to make sure they receive their share of the radioactive paycheck. "I am in favor of importing the nuclear waste," Gidenko said last week in his wooden cottage as the temperature outside hit 20 degrees below zero. "They will reprocess it into fuel, and it will be cheaper for the population. They claim that electricity will be free." As Russia ventures into nuclear capitalism, Gidenko is not the only one dreaming of the benefits that foreign waste will bring. With the apparent support of President Vladimir Putin, the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, gave preliminary approval to the nuclear imports in December. Despite public opinion polls that show more than 90 percent of Russians oppose the plan, more than 90 percent of the lawmakers voted for it. "They have dollar signs in their eyes," said activist Natalya Mironova, who belongs to an environmental movement that gathered an unprecedented 2 1/2 million signatures for a national referendum to block the foreign waste, only to see the Central Election Commission invalidate just enough signatures to throw it off the ballot. To opponents of the plan, the fight is a morality tale about a country whose leaders are so cynical they would mortgage their land's health for some ready cash. It is also a political puzzle of sorts: In the increasingly authoritarian politics of the Putin era, no one is sure whether, or how, public pressure can influence the small group of policymakers that will decide the matter. At the same time, experts on both sides of the debate agree that Russia's stated reason for getting into the nuclear-waste business is legitimate: Nearly 60 years into the Atomic Age, Russia has found itself with a huge stockpile of nuclear waste from its own reactors and insufficient funds to handle it. Even without importing waste, some experts say, Russia's current storage facility near Krasnoyarsk could be full in a few years. On the scale of environmental outrages in this already polluted country, several nuclear specialists argued, adding foreign spent fuel to that stockpile might not be as bad as the alternative: a nuclear waste storage crisis and no resources to deal with it. "Our problem is we have no money," said Nikolai Ponomarev-Stepnoi, deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute, the leading Russian state nuclear research facility on the outskirts of Moscow where still more nuclear waste awaits a permanent home. A Profitable Enterprise Taking in spent fuel from abroad is the only commercially sensible way to proceed, he said. "There is a market, and those countries that will be the first to step into this market will be the ones to get the most profit. Considering that these services fetch high prices, if we react quickly we can earn such money as will help us deal with our spent fuel, as well as accepting somebody else's spent fuel." There are, however, numerous logistical -- and diplomatic -- problems with Russia's entry into this business. Most significant is whether Russia intends to recycle the fuel for use in nuclear power stations or simply store it. The United States is adamantly opposed to reprocessing spent fuel because the process extracts plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons. As much as 70 percent of the world's spent nuclear fuel originated in U.S.-designed reactors, so even though it sits at nuclear power plants from Asia to Western Europe, the contracts give the United States final say on where it ends up. If Washington doesn't approve, Russia's $21 billion dream will go unrealized. In Russia, however, the Atomic Energy Ministry and its backers have talked almost exclusively about reprocessing the spent fuel, not about storing it. "The Russians seem completely blind to this issue," said a former Clinton administration official who handled the talks. Even so, the official said, U.S. policymakers have been sharply divided, with the Energy Department looking on Russia's import scheme favorably and the State Department insisting that it is "crazy to take more nuclear matter into a country still unable to deal with nuclear waste it already has." Added the official: "The storage crisis is real. The only question is whether Russia should be the site." The United States stores spent fuel on-site at nuclear reactors, many of which are expected to run out of storage space within 10 years. Congress is considering a proposal to establish a permanent nuclear waste repository in the Nevada desert. In Moscow, critics say the Atomic Energy Ministry's plan is to use the foreign funds not for storage, or even to clean up existing environmental disaster zones like the one in Muslyumovo, but to finance nuclear empire-building. Already, the ministry has announced plans to finish 10 new nuclear reactors over the next decade -- without specifying where the funds will come from. "The atomic ministry is acquiring the power it had in Soviet days, when it was an empire inside the empire, untouchable by anyone," said Alexei Yablokov, a founder of Russia's modern-day environmental movement. "But in reality, the ministry lacks money to finance its grand plans. To get the money, they will have to store this nuclear waste. Of course, it's very difficult for them to explain to people that we are taking for storage everybody's waste. So they pretend they will be reprocessing it and gaining valuable resources." The government's nuclear safety commission has publicly feuded with the ministry in hopes of blocking the foreign-waste proposal. "They use the seemingly noble explanation that Russia is unable to resolve our situation with nuclear wastes without receiving this money. We don't mind this in principle. But the true object is to use these funds from the import of spent fuel from abroad to continue developing nuclear energy," said Andrei Kislov, head of the commission's department of nuclear fuel cycle enterprises. Optimistic Forecasts Such policy nuances are lost here in the Urals, where nuclear pork-barrel politics has taken hold in anticipation that Mayak, the secret nuclear facility up the river from the tainted village of Muslyumovo, will be the recipient of the foreign spent fuel. Indeed, a paycheck that may never come has already been spent hundreds of times over in the course of this public relations campaign. In the local capital of Chelyabinsk, a government-run newspaper proclaimed that "billions of dollars for the region" await only State Duma approval. The article even divvied up the area's supposed winnings: $3.8 billion for "ecological rehabilitation projects," $2.6 billion for modernizing the Mayak complex and $3.6 billion for "the region's needs." By this accounting, the government would spend $10 billion of the $21 billion windfall here -- a highly unrealistic scenario. But that doesn't stop Chelyabinsk Deputy Gov. Gennady Podtyosov from reeling off a list of still more specific benefits for his region. In an interview, he offered a dizzying array of ways to spend the foreign proceeds: rehabilitating the land, building housing for evacuees from the Techa River area, building hospitals and schools, paving roads and laying gas pipes. Wages Worth the Risk Two hours north of Chelyabinsk, in the closed city of Ozersk, the same argument is being made to the 10,000-plus workers at the Mayak nuclear plant. Mayak produced the plutonium for the first Soviet nuclear bomb and is still Russia's most important nuclear facility. It houses the country's only factory for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel -- though it is equipped to work only with fuel from Soviet-built reactors. Accepting spent fuel from other countries will require a major upgrade that Mayak cannot afford. "They say, 'It is necessary to do this. Then everyone will live here like in a fairy tale,' " said Nadezhda Kutepova, a sociologist in Ozersk. Her father came here to clean up a 1957 explosion that was the second-largest nuclear accident in history; he died 20 years later of colon cancer. Inside the city of more than 80,000 residents, she said, nostalgia flourishes for Soviet times, when the dangers of working at the nuclear plant were accompanied by higher wages, unrationed food and such luxuries as candy. In the poor neighboring villages, they had a name for the Mayak workers:* chocoladniki*. "In Ozersk, people think those golden times will return," she said. "No one is thinking about the ecological damage; no one is thinking about nuclear weapons. We are only interested in our wages." In a rare interview, Mayak General Director Vitaly Sadovnikov portrayed the proposal as a matter of economic survival for his underemployed plant. "Mayak is definitely interested in such an activity, as any enterprise is interested in work," he said. Mayak's nuclear catastrophes -- the 1949-56 dumping in the Techa River, the 1957 explosion and a 1967 cloud of radioactive dust from a nuclear waste-filled lake -- have exposed more than 450,000 people to dangerously high levels of radiation, according to scientists who have studied them. The environmental disasters were a state secret until the waning days of communism, but today Sadovnikov insists that safety is no longer an issue at his plant. Instead, he spoke only of "certain errors" and "certain consequences of the previous work of Mayak." Critics of the proposal to import spent nuclear fuel, he said, are guilty of "radiophobia." But there are indications of such radiophobia even among Mayak's relatively privileged workers. In a survey Kutepova conducted of 700 Ozersk residents last fall, 64 percent said they were against the proposal. "But they will not speak up," she said. "There is a code of silence. Yes, my father died. Yes, my relatives are ill. But I'll be paid my wages and I'll be silent." Ramses Faizullin decided not to be silent. The 16-year-old lives in one of the villages near Mayak that was relocated -- all 750 people -- from the banks of the Techa River years before he was born. Even so, Faizullin was born with radiation disease; his head is abnormally large and he coughs incessantly. Three times last year he was so sick he had to be hospitalized. His mother said she didn't even know the word "radiation" until after he was born. In December, Faizullin wrote a letter to Putin and the State Duma pleading with them to block the import of spent fuel. "I do not want to have children like myself," he wrote. "We have suffered our fill from this radiation as it is; every week, they bury somebody in our village." © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 8 Shipment Of MOX Nuclear Fuel Nears S Africa Coast - Group Sunday, February 11 1:31 AM SGT CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP)--Two ships transporting controversial payloads of nuclear fuel from France to Japan were located several hundred miles off the coast of South Africa on Saturday, according to Greenpeace. The Pacific Pintail and the Pacific Teal, which left the French port of Cherbourg Jan. 19, were spotted about 315 nautical miles west of South Africa, off the coast of Cape Town, Greenpeace said. The Pacific Pintail, a specially-equipped armed ship, is carrying a load of MOX fuel, a mixture of uranium oxide and plutonium. The Pacific Teal is escorting the Pintail on its two-month journey. The cargo has caused protests by environmentalists, decrying the danger of pollution, accidents or even attacks on the ship. Greenpeace activists in rubber dinghies and canoes tried to block the vessel from leaving its harbor in France. "It is very deadly cargo," Greenpeace spokesman Mike Townsley said by telephone from London on Saturday. "It has the potential to devastate the South African coastline in the event of an accident and cost thousands of cancer deaths." An accident would also destroy South Africa's fishing and tourism industries, he said. After passing the Cape of Good Hope, the ships will head toward New Zealand. New Zealand has said it will lodge formal protests with Japan, France and Britain over the passage of the ships near its territorial waters. ***************************************************************** 9 Radioactive waste deposited in Town [Cheektowaga Times] Nearly 25 tons of the remants of a building that contained low-level radioactive debris were deposited at the Schultz Landfill near Indian Road in September 1998 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, according to State Department of Environmental Conservation documents. In a letter dated February 2, DEC official Paul J. Merges wrote that the US ACOE Project Completion Report for Building 30 at the Linde Air site in Tonawanda stated ‘that 24.92 tons of debris from the North Bay of the building had been disposed at the Schultz Landfill in Cheektowaga.’ Samples of material from Building 30 detected traces of uranium, thorium, and radium. Building 30 at the Linde Air site was demolished in September 1998, according to Merges’s letter. Jennifer Post of the DEC stated the department believes "because of the relatively low radioactive material and the small amount of the material, we don’t believe it poses any threat to the public health." However, "I’m concerned until someone shows me there’s (no reason for concern)," said Town councilmember Thomas Johnson. In addition, Johnson expressed displeasure that the ACOE did not inform the DEC that it deposited the debris at the Schultz Landfill until February 2000, and that the Town was not informed until late last week. "I’m extremely, personally angry over the matter, and it hurts the credibility of government dramatically," said Johnson. Merges, the DEC’s Bureau of Radiation & Hazardous Site Management Director, contended in his letter that the ACOE’s actions were not a violation of State law at the time. The ACOE agreed with Merges, issuing the following statement through Arleen Kreusch, contract public affairs specialist with the ACOE’s Buffalo District, "The material was disposed of in an appropriate manner in a permitted landfill." In addition, Merges said the DEC took steps to prevent a similar situation from occurring again without local government’s consent. Samples collected from the North Bay of Building 30 were analyzed for radium, two types of thorium, and uranium. All three samples showed traces of all the radioactive elements. One sample was found to contain 36.9 picocuries per gram of uranium, significantly lower than other samples from the building, which produced results as high as 325 picocuries per gram. Such information sounds familiar to a section of Town already battered by environmental concerns. Since the summer of 2000, nearby residents have expressed concern over seemingly high cancer rates in the area. The Buffalo Crushed Stone rock quarry and several landfills are spread through the vicinity, which some activists dubbed the ‘Toxic Triangle.’ "I would like to make sure that the landfill is sealed, so (radioactive debris) can’t get into the air, and I would like to see the material transported and removed out of state," said Johnson. The ACOE typically ships radioactive debris out of New York State, according to Merges’s letter. Calls placed to the DEC had not been returned as the Times went to press. ***************************************************************** 10 Energy Bill Doles Out Billions To Companies With Record Profits WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As early as next Tuesday, Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Ark.) is expected to introduce an energy bill that will direct billions of dollars in subsidies to some of the most profitable companies in the nation, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a leading opponent of corporate welfare. "This bill is 21st Century trickle-down economics -- it gives billions of dollars to energy corporations, while taxpayers don't get anything," said Cena Swisher, program director at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It looks like the political contributions of these companies have greased the wheels of the corporate welfare machine." For example, in the last election cycle, the oil and gas industry gave more than $29 million in campaign contributions and is awarded generous tax breaks and subsidies in Murkowski's legislation, according to the group. The bill will focus on subsidies for oil, gas, coal and nuclear power industries. Some estimates put the total price tag at least $20 billion over the next 10 years. It also includes a provision for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). "While ANWR may be in big dog in this fight, collectively these subsidies and tax breaks will take a bigger bite out of taxpayers," continued Swisher. The effectiveness of subsidies contained within the bill is questionable, according to TCS. "This bill simply will not reverse our current energy crisis," stated Swisher, "These subsidies have proven to be expensive anachronisms, yet we continue to throw billions of dollars at them." This bill is being proposed at a time when the oil industry is seeing record profits. Last year, Exxon-Mobil reported profits of $17 billion -- the most ever earned by the company. Chevron and Texaco have also reported sharp profit increases. Swisher concluded, "Why allow these companies to take billions from the taxpayer pump, when they are seeing record profits?" Highlights of the bill include: -- Requiring the federal government to pay half the cost for installing new coal technology in power plants. -- Paying nuclear power plants $500 million over 10 years to produce more electricity. -- Expanding a program to recover oil from low-producing wells that will cost taxpayers $300 million over five years. -- Reducing oil royalty payments for deep-water oil and gas developments. -- Reduction of the Alternative Minimum Tax for oil and gas producers. -- Providing a tax credit for non-conventional sources of energy. ------ For a copy of the TCS analysis of the bill, call 202-546-8500, ext. 110, or go to Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) is a non-partisan voice for American taxpayers. TCS is dedicated to cutting wasteful spending and subsidies in order to achieve a responsible and efficient government that lives within its means. *Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved.* Cop ***************************************************************** 11 Cramer says TVA should complete nuclear plant Area economic growth shows Bellefonte is needed, he says © 2001 Alabama Live, LLC [The Huntsville Times] 02/10/01 By DAVID BREW SCOTTSBORO - U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer said he hopes the California power shortage will move the Tennessee Valley Authority to complete the Bellefonte nuclear plant near Hollywood. The Huntsville Democrat met Friday with TVA board member Skila Harris in Washington to discuss the importance of the twin-reactor plant as a safe and reliable source of energy. Economic growth Cramer said economic growth in the Tennessee Valley has shown how much Bellefonte is needed for meeting an increased demand for electricity. ''Utility rates have skyrocketed this winter, and there aren't any signs the demand . . . will decrease any time soon,'' he said. ''TVA has already invested billions of dollars in (Bellefonte). I believe it's common sense to get this facility up and running, especially when the demand for power is so great.'' TVA stopped construction at Bellefonte in 1988 because of unexpected safety-related costs at its Brown Ferry and Watts Bar nuclear plants. The agency also said the demand for electricity was not expected to be as much as it had projected. But that has changed, Cramer said. California woes ''I would hate to see us get in the situation that California has found itself in this year,'' he said. Cramer said TVA has done a good job of reducing its debt over the last several years. He said it's time now for the agency to finish Bellefonte. ''It's the fiscally responsible thing to do," he said. "And it would create hundreds of jobs for this area.'' © The Huntsville Times. Used with permission. ***************************************************************** 12 Nuclear waste decision too hot before election - smh.com.au - National February 10, 2001 By Andrew Clennell *Australia's site for the storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste will not be announced until after the next Federal election, the Science Minister, Senator Minchin, said yesterday. He also indicated it may not be in his home state of South Australia. The Government must build an "intermediate-level" radioactive waste dump as part of the conditions to build the replacement research reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney's south. Senator Minchin said the facility would be built on Commonwealth land because of resistance from the States and Territories. He said it would not be placed with a low-level waste site, which is to be based in remote South Australia. The Government is not ruling out any State or Territory for the site. Opposition in South Australia to the dump has been strong and generated protests and much press. "Despite the endorsement of co-location by the Consultative Committee of Commonwealth and State Officials in 1997 ... this is an entirely separate process to the search for the low-level repository," Senator Minchin said. He has set up a committee to find the preferred site and said "the earliest the site for a national store could be announced would be late 2002". The South Australian Premier, Mr Olsen, welcomed the decision yesterday. But the Federal Opposition's environment spokesman, Senator Bolkus, said the "timing had changed but Minchin's intention hasn't. No-one will believe him when he says no co-location ... he was on the record in support of it [before]. "We will play it hard in the electorate and the fact is Minchin's so closely linked to [the campaign for] two marginal seats in South Australia - Makin and Hindmarsh." Yesterday, the Senate inquiry into the new reactor at Lucas Heights and the contract with controversial Argentinian company INVAP heard from a Labor senator that court action in Argentina may decide whether the Government will be able to carry through a key part of the reactor plan. INVAP has guaranteed the Government body which runs the site, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), that if it cannot get the spent fuel reprocessed in France it will export some of it to Argentina for "conditioning" before sending it back to Australia for storage. But a section of the Argentinian Constitution forbids the importation of nuclear waste. And environmental group FUNAM recently used that section to win a case against a ship carrying highly radioactive nuclear waste entering Argentinian waters. At the Senate inquiry, Labor Senator Jan McLucas asked ANSTO's chief executive, Professor Helen Garnett: "[Isn't there] the potential for us having to go through a legal process in Argentina if this option is XXX pursued?" Professor Garnett said that would not be the case as the advice ANSTO had was that the official definition of the material travelling to Argentina would be "spent fuel". It would only become "waste" once it was conditioned and sent back to Australia for storage. ***************************************************************** 13 Aussies protest entrance of nuclear waste shipment The Earth Times/ENVIRONMENT: By Mark Schulman SYDNEY--Hundreds of anti-nuclear protesters blocked the entrance to Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear last week in an attempt to stop a shipment of nuclear waste. Four Greenpeace activists chained themselves to a trailer blocking the entrance after erecting a banner that read: "Nuclear reactors waste the planet." Several other activists used neck locks to attach themselves to the facility's front gate. Seven activists were arrested. Two police officers were slightly injured during the demonstration. Despite the protest, authorities managed to transport over 300 spent nuclear fuel rods to an awaiting cargo vessel at Port Botany in south Sydney. The nuclear waste was then shipped to France for reprocessing, only to be returned to Australia for disposal in the near future. "Greenpeace has taken action to stop this dangerous nuclear waste from being transported through the streets of Sydney," said Stephen Campbell, a nuclear campaigner with the international environmental organization. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO), which is responsible for running the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, confirmed in a statement that a shipment of 360 of these used fuel elements were loaded at Port Botany onto a special purpose vessel for transportation to COGEMA (la Compagnie Générale des Matières Nucléaire), a nuclear waste reprocessing plant in La Hague, France. Environment Australia, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, and Australia's nuclear regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, each approved arrangements for the shipment. "This transport is part of the increasing traffic of nuclear materials that is being facilitated and condoned by the Australian government," Campbell said. In addition to the shipment of fuel rods, Greenpeace has received information that two vessels carrying plutonium fuel will travel this month from Europe to Japan via southern Australia, the Tasman Sea and the South Pacific. According to ANSTO Chief Executive Officer Helen Garnett this was the fifth shipment of spent fuel from Lucas Heights and the third since September 1997, when the Australian government announced it would provide funding to ANSTO to ship overseas its inventory of spent fuel. "It's important to understand that the shipment is part of a planned process aimed at meeting the expressed desires of the local community for the reduction in spent fuel stored at the Lucas Heights site," Garnett said. "The shipments are safe," she reassured the press. "You're handling solid material in very solid containers inside shipping containers." Built in 1958 as a research reactor to produce medical radioisotopes, Lucas Heights is Australia's only nuclear reactor. The aging facility has produced more than 1,800 spent fuel rods. Most nuclear reactors are powered by fuel rods that contain uranium-238 and uranium-235. The spent rods are highly radioactive and can have extremely long half-lives. If not stored properly, they can be detrimental to human health and the environment. Despite calls from environmental groups to close down the reactor and to prevent the further transportation of spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste, the Australian government has recently approved the construction of a new, $250 million reactor to replace the old facility. "These transports will be repeated many times over the next 40 years if Australia is bloody-minded enough to build a new reactor at Lucas Heights," Stephen Campbell said. "These are all situations Greenpeace and the community aim to prevent," he added. "The object of our campaign is to alter Australian investment in nuclear technology. We would like to see Australia nuclear-free." Copyright © 2000 The Earth Times All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 14 Hallam Nuclear Plant aftermath Journalstar.com: Nebraska KEVIN ABOUREZK Lincoln Journal Star ROBERT BECKER/Lincoln Journal Star Marge Etherton lost her husband, Hu*­bert Franklin, to leukemia at age 33. Franklin started work at the Hallam Power Plant in 1961, a year before the Atomic Energy Commission built an ex­perimental nuclear reactor there. Like every other childhood Saturday, the day Julie Rakes' father died started out with cereal and cartoons. Still dressed in their pajamas, the four Franklin children, Joan, Jeff, Julie and John, had gathered around the television in the basement of their Lincoln home. The date was Oct. 29, 1970. The children's favorite cartoon - Scooby-Doo - was on when their grandmother called for them to come upstairs and talk to their father on the phone. While the two oldest kids, Joan and Jeff, ran upstairs to talk to their dad, Julie waited. The 7-year-old didn't want to leave Scooby-Doo to talk to her father. Eventually, Julie followed the other children upstairs to the kitchen. After Joan and Jeff finished talking to their dad, they handed the phone to Julie. Hubert Franklin's voice was clear and his memory sharp that morning in 1970, unlike so many other days when the medication he took to relieve the pain made him forgetful and tired. "He knew who I was," Julie said. It was a short conversation. They spoke of everyday things, like what Julie planned to do that day and how Hubert had felt the night before. At one point, Hubert became quiet and there was a lot of commotion in the background. Then Julie's mother, Marge, came on the phone and told her she had to hang up but would call back. When Marge called back five minutes later, she told the anxious family that Hubert had died. "I didn't know how to accept it," Julie said. When her grandmother tried to hug her, Julie pulled free and ran. She ran outside into the cold, dreary October day. She ran down the street to her best friend's house, where she tried to forget the morning's tragic events. Now a 37-year-old with children of her own, Julie Rakes often thinks about the circumstances surrounding her father's death. Back in 1970, doctors had told her mother that her children would have a 17 percent increased chance of acquiring leukemia if her husband's death from the disease was related to hereditary factors. But Rakes doesn't believe the cause of her father's cancer was related to heredity. As a nuclear engineer, Hubert Franklin often worked with dangerous elements. After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Franklin started work at the Hallam Power Plant in 1961, a year before the Atomic Energy Commission built an experimental nuclear reactor there. The reactor used sodium as a coolant and graphite to moderate nuclear fission. About 90 people worked at the Hallam plant as employees of Consumers Public Power, which became part of the Nebraska Public Power District. The plant produced electricity for only 16 months before design flaws forced engineers to shut it down in 1964. The Atomic Energy Commission decommissioned the plant in 1967. But during that brief time, Franklin's family believes Hubert developed the deadly disease that cost him his life. The U.S. Department of Energy has named the former Hallam Nuclear Power Plant as one of 317 sites where DOE employees may have become sick because of irradiation. The Hallam plant was the only Nebraska site on the list. Always a brash and daring man, Hubert Franklin often took the jobs that brought him the greatest chance of being exposed to danger, his widow, Marge Etherton, said. Within the concrete and steel walls of the Hallam Nuclear Power Plant, that danger could mean radiation contamination. Hubert came home at least three times with black film badges, she said. The badges, which were worn by all employees of the plant, monitored the level of radiation to which the employee had been exposed, said Guy Horn, a former operator at the Hallam plant. The more radiation they encountered, the darker the film strips on the badges became, Horn said. Now a senior vice president for Nebraska Public Power District, Horn said he knows of no former employees of the nuclear plant who have become sick as a result of radiation exposure. "We monitored our exposure (to radiation) on a constant basis when we were inside the facility," he said. "I don't remember ever having an overexposure." Like any group of employees, however, the Hallam plant workers had their share of cancer victims over the years, he said. None of those employees, or their survivors, have attempted to link their sicknesses with radiation exposure at the plant, he said. At least until recently. A few weeks ago, Horn received a call from Hubert Franklin's son, John. Franklin had read a Jan. 13 article in the Journal Star about the government's efforts to find sick former employees of the plant, or their survivors, to possibly receive federal compensation. John Franklin, who at 33 is the same age as his father when he died, said he wants answers. During the phone call, Franklin asked Horn if he knew his father and how his father had died, to which Horn answered that he did. He then asked Horn if his father's death may have been related to overexposure to radiation. "He said he wouldn't answer me without looking at the exposure records first," he said. In order to receive compensation, employees who believe they may have become sick because of radiation exposure must first have their exposure records examined, Horn said. Should those records concur with medical diagnoses, those employees may be eligible for compensation, he said. After reading the newspaper article, John Franklin also tried to contact the Department of Energy to ask what requirements must be met in order for survivors of sick former employees of the Hallam plant to receive compensation. After leaving a message at the DOE phone number, Franklin waited for a return call, which has yet to come. The federal act that provides compensation to DOE employees who may have become sick because of radiation exposure was signed into law Dec. 7 by former President Bill Clinton. The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act of 2000 provides compensation to individuals who developed illnesses as a result of working in nuclear weapons production-related activities and at certain federally owned facilities in which radioactive materials were used. "This is part of the government's efforts to reverse its practice of denying compensation to DOE employees who became sick from working at these types of facilities," said Jeff Sherwood, a DOE spokesman. The DOE has received more than 2,000 calls since releasing the list of sites where employees may have become sick, Sherwood said. Only one of those calls was about the Hallam plant. Should the DOE find sufficient evidence linking an employee's sickness to radiation exposure, the employee or his or her survivor could receive a $150,000 compensation package, as well as payments for ongoing medical expenses, Sherwood said. Doctors never connected Hubert Franklin's death with exposure to radiation, Marge Etherton said. She said the connection between irradiation and cancer just wasn't known at that time. She said she has since learned acute myelogenous leukemia, the type Hubert suffered, has been linked to irradiation. According to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the cause of acute myelogenous leukemia is not evident in most cases. Through studies of Japanese survivors of atomic bomb detonations in World War II, however, irradiation has been associated with an increased risk of the disease. Other factors associated with increased risk of acute myelogenous leukemia include chemotherapy used to treat certain types of cancer and some genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome. As for Down Syndrome, there was no chance of that, Etherton said. And her late husband had never experienced chemotherapy before being diagnosed with the rare form of leukemia. "This person had never been ill," she said. "He was 33 years old and killed by this." On a recent evening, Etherton leaned back in her easy chair and told the story of those tumultuous years when her husband got sick and died. The doctors did everything they could to save Hubert, including giving him experimental drugs and chemotherapy. Despite their best efforts, however, Hubert died just 118 days after being diagnosed with leukemia. After her husband died, Etherton received $7,000 from Hubert's retirement account and a small insurance policy. Neither Consumers Public Power nor the Atomic Energy Commission ever offered the widow compensation for her husband's death. With four kids and little money, Etherton decided to move home to Harvard, where her family lived. While in Harvard, Etherton attended nursing school and met her future husband, Wayne Etherton. A 60-year-old woman with short, graying hair and a kind-but-forceful demeanor, Marge Etherton now supervises nurses and conducts health inspections for the Nebraska Health and Human Services System. She works in the same building as her son, John, a pharmacist with Nebraska HHS. Although she doesn't necessarily need the federal compensation money, Etherton would like to know what caused her former husband's acute leukemia. And if irradiation is what caused Hubert's death, she would like an apology. "I'd like them to admit that that's what could have happened to him," she said. Despite the uncertainties surrounding Hubert's death 30 years ago, Etherton has moved on with her life. Life goes on, and dwelling on things only prevents growth, she said. "I think that's what he would have wanted for the kids." As the daylight gave way to a cold winter evening outside her Auburn home, Rakes thought of the many difficult days spent without her father. The day after her father died, Rakes remembers running out of the mortuary with her head in her hands, screaming. She couldn't stand to look at the man who had held her in his arms and cuddled her. The day she and her family packed their things to leave for Harvard was warm and sunny in Lincoln, Rakes remembers. When they arrived in Harvard, however, the weather had changed. Although they had a wonderful mother, the Franklin children often lacked the support other children received from two parents, Rakes said. As a teen-ager, Rakes would walk out to her father's grave on the outskirts of Harvard and lie down beside his grave. She would talk to the tombstone, as if it were her father and she still his beautiful daughter. But the memory that stands most poignantly in Rakes' mind is of the morning she lost her father and the cartoon the Franklin children were watching when they got that terrible phone call. "I hate Scooby-Doo to this day," she said. Although she knows it would not bring her dad back, Rakes would like the Department of Energy to admit what she believes is its part in her father's death. "I don't really care about the money," she said. "It would just be nice for them to say, 'We're sorry.' " *Reach Kevin Abourezk at 473-7237 or kabourezk@journalstar.com. * Copyright © 2001, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 15 Experts Dispute Nuclear Dump Data Saturday, February 10, 2001 Whether Nevada's Yucca Mountain is the place to store radioactive waste. From Associated Press LAS VEGAS Mountain rock more than 4 million years ago, but they can't agree whether the finding means nuclear waste shouldn't be buried there. A Russian sided with a Nevada state geological consultant Thursday in arguing that nuclear material should not be stored in the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "My perso conclusion this cannot have resulted without having [thermal] water flowing inside," Yuri Dublyansky of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch, said during a briefing. Dublyansk mountain in the past, it could happen again, creating a threat to flood the cavern and spread radioactivity from nuclear waste stored in the mountain. But a U.S in rock samples to rainwater seepage. Current rainfall totals are low enough that they aren't seen as a threat by most experts. Jean Clin headed a two-year study, said the study found no evidence of hot water in Yucca Mountain in the past 2 million years. "I don't Dublyansk the evidence of water in ancient rock means the site should be disqualified for nuclear waste disposal. "It is my permanent repository," Szymanski said. Yucca Mou the nation's high-level nuclear waste, mostly metal rods containing spent fuel pellets from commercial power reactors. Nevada, C advertising to help stir opposition and press the Department of Energy to reject the site. At the ur general's office is investigating allegations of bias in the site selection process by the Department of Energy and its contractors. Scientist spewed from volcanic eruptions nearly 13 million years ago. Roughly 11 million years ago, the mountain was reheated by below-ground volcanic activity from nearby Timber Mountain. Based on the study team, including geochemist Joseph Whelan of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Denver, thinks the minerals took 6 million years to cool to temperatures ranging from 113 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The scien 78, contained "fluid inclusion" records indicating elevated temperatures. Whelan in percolated from Yucca Mountain's surface. Szymanski formed by hot water from within and that the mountain did not take 6 million years to cool. "Somethin our study didn't address that." Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 South Carolina, Georgia senators want money for SRS Infrastructure Saturday, February 10, 2001 The Associated Press AIKEN (--) The Savannah River Site needs $208 million to repair crumbling infrastructure, according to a letter signed by all four U.S. senators from Georgia and South Carolina. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., wrote the letter Friday to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, noting that many of the buildings and other structures at the former nuclear weapons site near Aiken are more than 40 years old. "In order for SRS to remain the 'Flagship' of the Energy Department's industrial complex, we strongly feel that there are several critical areas that require immediate attention from you and your department," Thurmond wrote in the letter that also was signed by Sens. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C.; Max Cleland, D-Ga.; and Zell Miller, D-Ga. SRS has a backlog of about $800 million worth of repairs and upgrades to roads, bridges, utilities and buildings, company officials say. "As a result of lacking refurbishment, SRS has experienced an increase in the amount of problems in areas that have not received upgrades in the past 10 years," Thurmond wrote. The letter came one day after Abraham testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about infrastructure needs at the nation's nuclear weapons facilities. A spokesman for the secretary reaffirmed that commitment Friday. "The secretary has made addressing the problems of infrastructure at all of our sites a top priority and will be addressing all the needs at all the sites in some way, shape or form," Joe Davis said. "We appreciate the senators' heads-up and look forward to speaking with them about the issues," the spokesman said. Concerns about the site's infrastructure most recently surfaced in March, when the site's Citizens Advisory Board pushed the Energy Department to provide money to address SRS infrastructure needs. thestate.com | realcities.com ***************************************************************** 2 Living on contaminated ground [Thestar.com] Feb. 11, 03:34 EDT Inco and town in uneasy alliance to clean up metals Kate Harries ONTARIO REPOR Sunday Special PORT COLBORNE - The memory of the men in white coveralls haunts Craig Edwards. They turned up one day in November, 1995, and dug soil samples from a vacant lot behind his home on Rodney St. in this seaway town, where the Welland Canal meets Lake Erie. They wouldn't say who sent them, nor what they were looking for. Speculation was rife that it had something to do with a proposed low-income housing development on the site. But that plan died and a year later the two local businessmen who owned the land - one of them the current mayor's father - sold it to Inco Ltd., the Canadian mining giant that once operated a nickel smelter here. Inco has had a plant in Port Colborne, operating at various capacities, since 1918. The plant, which today refines cobalt and precious metals, is a block from Edwards' house. The men in white remained a mystery - a mystery that keeps recurring. Questions first resurfaced a year ago, when the provincial environment ministry told Edwards and other residents that their neighbourhood was one of two area ``hot spots'' for concentrations of nickel, copper and cobalt. At lower levels, the heavy metals contamination covers most of the southern Niagara Peninsula, a total of 316 square kilometres - but nowhere does it present a health risk, they were assured. The memory returned with a vengeance last September, when a Niagara Region health inspector knocked on Edwards' door. He and partner Ellen Smith listened in shock as Dave Young advised them that soil samples taken in June in the front yard of the home they've owned for 10 years showed massive concentrations of nickel. There were also worrisome levels of lead - which acts on the body's nervous system and can cause learning disabilities - and arsenic. The couple should not allow their young sons - Eric, 8, and Andrew, 3 - to play in the yard, Young told them. Wash hands frequently, he said. Clean off shoes and pets' paws to avoid tracking in dirt. Vacuum often. The environment ministry suggests the higher levels are an anomaly - possibly the result of an ancient dumping of contaminated landfill, possibly nothing to do with Inco. But Edwards is outraged, and insists that someone must have known how severely contaminated the Rodney St. area was. ``The city knew, Inco knew, the MoE (Ministry of the Environment) knew,'' he charges angrily. ``What upsets me is they not once came to my door and told me. I've raised two kids here and they've been playing in the dirt all that time.'' Inco has told The Star that the company did, indeed, commission the 1995 soil sampling by the men in white. And those tests did, indeed, reveal high levels of nickel and lead. Nickel appeared at up to 4,100 parts per million, much higher than the environment ministry's residential guideline of 200 ppm, and lead at over its 200-ppm guideline level, said Del Fraipont, manager of Port Colborne's Inco plant. Similar results - for nickel - were turning up in tests conducted by the environment ministry, going back to 1991 and updated in 1998 and 1999. Rodney St. residents, like others in this city of 18,000, were left in the dark as tests were conducted in their community. It was just a year ago that the ministry finally went public with its results. At that time, Niagara Region Medical Officer of Health Robin Williams said there was no evidence of a health risk. The ministry revealed that severe contamination had spewed out across the Niagara Peninsula from the plant's landmark 500-foot smokestack. A total of 29 square kilometres had nickel levels above the residential guideline, with two ``hot spot'' areas, including Rodney St., where nickel levels were up to 5,000 ppm, 25 times the guideline. Then the new sample was taken from Edwards' property in June. As he found out in September, it showed nickel levels at 14,000 ppm, 70 times higher than the guideline. It also showed lead at 435 ppm and arsenic at 85 ppm, two and three times higher respectively than the provincial guidelines. Subsequent testing of 14 other Rodney St. properties has shown a variation in nickel concentrations, the ministry says. But those results have not been released, and residents want to know if Edwards' property is the only ``anomaly.'' Worried environment ministry officials embarked on a concentrated sampling of 235 properties in Edwards' east-side neighbourhood of about 1,000 residents. Results were to be released at a meeting this coming Thursday. In the meantime, medical officer Williams has reversed her position, allowing that further investigation of the health of Port Colborne residents is warranted. Two studies have been commissioned. However, she has resisted demands by Mayor Vance Badawey and other citizens that Rodney St. be evacuated. The Edwards tests point to only an increased ``relative'' risk in chronic exposure, she explains, a risk that is reduced when the ground is frozen and can be minimized by washing and vacuuming. But a sense of outrage and distrust is palpable among residents. When the alarming test results from Rodney St. were made public in the fall, the dynamic of the community's partnership with Inco was irrevocably changed. ==== Inco's history in Port Colborne goes back to 1918, when the refinery opened here to process ore mined in Sudbury. The workforce peaked at 3,000 during World War II. By 1984, when the nickel refinery closed, most of the jobs had gone west to Inco's operation in Thompson, Man. Now a mere 200 people refine cobalt and precious metals at the plant here. What remains is a persistent legacy of soil tainted by emissions from the refinery smokestack, stretching over 316 square kilometres from the Welland Canal to the Niagara River. On about one tenth of the area - 29 square kilometres - nickel concentrations reach 200 ppm, the level at which the environment ministry prohibits any land-use change unless the soils are cleaned up. This meant a virtual freeze on development in Port Colborne. Nickel is a proven carcinogen in the workplace, but research on its effect on humans in environmental, rather than occupational, exposures is inconclusive. The metal's toxic effect on vegetation, however, is well-documented and is the basis for the ministry's 200-ppm standard. The contamination is not in dispute. Inco, the world's largest nickel producer, admits responsibility for three metals - nickel, copper and cobalt. The environment ministry had called Inco and the city to the table in July, 1998, to discuss evidence of contamination, though the ensuing negotiations were not made public until a year and a half later. Now the company has embarked on a risk-assessment process approved by the ministry, guided by a public liaison committee of seven citizens appointed by the city of Port Colborne. Inco has retained the firm Jacques Whitford to study Port Colborne soils and assess the level at which the contaminants present a risk to people or the environment. That work is scrutinized by the citizens' committee with help from their own consultant, Beak Environmental. Inco's final report, due by the end of this year, will recommend where and how to clean up. If it is approved by the environment ministry, work will begin. Much of the first year of the process was taken up with wrangling over the scope of work. The citizens were able to expand the number of chemicals to be studied from the original three to a wide range, and the environmental media from just soils to air, water and vegetation. They also won a new, more focused health study and a socio-economic study to look at an issue of major concern to residents, the impact of the contamination on property values. All costs are to be covered by Inco, which in the first year has shelled out $1 million for consultants, research and administration, said Bruce Conard, Inco's vice-president of environmental and health sciences. The citizens' committee meets regularly in the city council chambers. At one of its meetings last June, Edwards asked that his yard be used as a sampling site. Inco's response to the contamination is a prime example of the ``polluter-pay'' principle at work, says Karl Haniff, the environment ministry's regional director. The process now under way in Port Colborne could become a model for similar undertakings to reclaim contaminated urban industrial lands, or ``brownfields,'' Haniff says, with Toronto and Hamilton considered prime targets. Mayor Badawey and business leaders hope it will restore confidence in an area that's trying to re-invent itself as a retirement community and tourism destination. ``Any town with an industrial history has a problem - it's not unique to the city of Port Colborne. It's everywhere,'' Badawey says. ``The only difference is that the city of Port Colborne is doing something about it.'' But many fear that the community is caught up in an exercise in letting the nickel company off the hook. Harry Wells, chair of the citizens' committee, is among those who suspect that once the studies are done, the amount of cleanup required may be minimal. Wells says he believes Inco's goal is to demonstrate that 5,000 ppm of nickel in soil is safe. ``If through their risk studies they find that there's no human health risk at levels less than 5,000, then they can present a proposal that they can remediate to that level,'' he said. ``My committee is to get them down to one of these other levels - to get the best deal we can.'' The political process that's playing out here dates back to 1996, when the Tory government introduced a new approach to the restoration of contaminated sites that eased polluters' cleanup liability. Previously, there were only two acceptable levels: the naturally occurring background level (43 ppm in the case of nickel); and a level at which the contaminant starts to affect human health or the environment (200 ppm). The risk assessment approach allows for a higher third number. It involves calculation of new contaminant levels based on different soil types and differing property uses - whether industrial, residential or agricultural. Environmentalists are suspicious of risk assessment, a new research methodology that originated with the nuclear industry, says Tom Adams of Energy Probe. The environment ministry has embraced the trend of ``basing their criteria on calculated results rather than actual measured health impacts,'' Adams said. ``The purpose of it is to demonstrate that there is no potential for harm, not to study whether there is any harm.'' Here in Port Colborne, Inco has come up with a new twist on the process: Rather than proceeding site by site, a ``community-based risk assessment'' is taking a broad view of city conditions and will set community-wide contaminant levels. This is a significant change to the 1996 rules which are designed for polluters to clean up their own lands. Here, the property owners are not the sources of the pollution, and the polluter has no financial stake in the final outcome - a disconnect that the ministry has tried to address through public input. Conard, of Inco, agrees that it's possible 5,000 ppm might emerge as an acceptable level. ``Yes, it might be that high,'' he said. ``In most Port Colborne soils it could range anything from 1,500 to 5,000.'' If the risk assessment process throws up that figure, it means that plants, people and other organisms would be safe, Conard said. What the ministry guideline permits is a calculation of ``bio-availability,'' he said, explaining that some forms of nickel are less toxic than others, and some soils absorb more of the metal. The risk assessment evaluates how much nickel is available and how much is sitting in the soil, inert. ``If something is not bio-available to an organism, it is not toxic to that organism.'' Remediation in those areas where it is deemed necessary could entail removing soil to a landfill site. Or washing it. Or mixing it with cleaner soil to dilute the metals. Or adding lime to change the pH. Inco is also interested in trying out an experimental process that uses a plant that ``sucks up'' heavy metals through its roots, which could then be harvested and processed to retrieve the valuable compounds. The key questions remain: How big an area will Inco clean up? And will Inco admit responsibility if other, possibly more toxic, chemicals are linked to its emissions - such as the lead on Edwards' property? Rodney St. is at the south end of a neighbourhood known, for reasons lost in the mists of time, as Lidsville. This is a neighbourhood of neat homes on small lots, where everyone is related, knows everyone's business, and kids don't move away when they grow up. Now it's also a neighbourhood where sickness, death, and suspicion about links to the metal contamination are on everyone's mind. That was clear at a meeting of the citizens' committee several weeks after the test results from Edwards' yard became public. Joseph Mayne, a retired worker from Atlas Steel in nearby Welland, recalled the deaths within a year of each other of his daughter Debbie and niece Darlene. They had been born within a year of each other, too, in a neigbourhood northeast of the Inco plant. They both suffered painful deaths 10 years ago, at 37 and 38 years old, from liver cancer. ``What is the cost when two people perish?'' Maynes demanded. ``Why don't they take a survey of every home? I think we've put up with this long enough.'' Bernie Sumbler, another Atlas retiree, had a more immediate concern. ``I live over on Rodney St.,'' he told the meeting quietly, ``and I end up with cancer and I find out today.'' The shocked silence was broken by Al Kuja, a scientist in the environment ministry's standards development branch who became well-known here as he investigated soils across Port Colborne for the ministry's studies in 1998 and 1999. ``I might get into trouble for this but there's something going on,'' a worried Kuja said. ``There's areas where every single household has someone sick, every single family, some member has something - cancers, rashes, leukemia . . . ``Personally I think that something is going on.'' The Niagara health department has compared health statistics for Port Colborne and the rest of Ontario and found no evidence of a higher incidence of cancer, birth defects or any other disease here. However, medical officer Williams concedes, the small size of the city's population does mean variations could be missed in the statistics. Inco's Conard does not believe that the heavy metals in Port Colborne's soils have led to health problems but, he said, Inco agreed to fund a health study because of ``public anecdotal evidence, family history evidence and perceptions about health.'' The day after Kuja's outburst at the citizens' meeting, health and environment officials were in damage-control mode. ``Al won't be speaking for the ministry for a while,'' stated Dave McLaughlin, co-ordinator of field investigations in the soil standards section. Kuja ``spoke from the heart,'' he explained, but, as a soils specialist and not a health expert, he was out of line. From the heart. For locals, that suggested that someone, finally, was telling the truth. They were stunned that a government employee was expressing their deeply felt convictions. Wells of the citizens' committee is one of many Port Colborne residents who don't doubt for a moment the truth of what Kuja described. In his own family, Wells can list cancers and other medical problems suffered by his mother; his wife; his two daughters; a niece; his sister and her three children who lived on Rodney St. for years; and his father and a brother, though the two men had worked at Inco and therefore wouldn't have been exposed to metals only outside the plant. Wells said he was ``surprised and pleased'' to hear the environment ministry official speak out - but he expected Kuja to pay a price. ``He fell off the fence,'' Wells said. === It was Inco vice-president Conard who, when presented with the environment ministry's evidence, agreed ``there was no doubt it was coming from us.'' To stonewall would have been the old-style approach, Conard said, and he saw no point to it. ``I believe in science and the validity of information. That's the way I live my life.'' Still, he agreed, ``there's a great amount of distrust out there - and that's understandable.'' Inco employees talk of how the company fought the union for decades in Sudbury and Port Colborne to deny compensation for workers and pensions for the families of those who suffered early and horrible deaths from lung, nasal and larynx cancer. A deep emnity was forged. It's apparent in the skepticism of Jay Ayrs, former president of the steelworkers local in Port Colborne, himself in remission from a cancer of the lymph glands. ``Mr. Conard is there for a reason,'' Ayrs said. ``I think he will delay things as long as possible. People will lose interest and the company will get what it wants.'' The distrust is as persistent as the nickel in the soil. Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. ***************************************************************** 3 Forces failing soldiers: report National - Ottawa Citizen Online Sunday 11 February 2001 Protection needed from 'environmental health hazards' Mike Blanchfield The Ottawa Citizen The Canadian Forces have repeatedly failed to make rules that would ensure peacekeepers are protected from environmental health threats while on missions abroad, an independent investigator told the chief of defence staff last year. "The CF today recognizes the importance of environmental health hazards," concludes a Jan. 25, 2000, report by the Thomas Review Group, an independent consultant. "The CF has not, however, been able to generate any policy to address environmental health concerns for the past three years. ... "It is imperative, given Canada's continuing large-scale commitments to complex and intense overseas missions, that these policies be developed." The report, by former RCMP assistant commissioner Lowell Thomas, was commissioned in 1999 by Gen. Maurice Baril, chief of the defence staff, as part of the military's investigation into the Croatian toxic soil controversy. The affair, which focused attention on tampering with peacekeepers' medical files, also raised questions about whether soldiers are increasingly exposed to environmental toxins. The Thomas report was recently released under Access to Information Act. Its publication comes at a time when environmental issues are in the spotlight for both the Canadian military and its NATO allies. NATO countries are trying to come to terms with a scare that flared in Europe last month over whether the health of peacekeepers has been harmed by exposure to radioactive depleted uranium. Some 40,000 depleted uranium rounds were fired in the Kosovo and Bosnia conflicts of the 1990s. The radioactive substance is used in the tips of anti-tank missiles and concerns have been raised by some European countries that soldiers may be developing cancer as a result of exposure. Though no scientific link has been made between depleted uranium exposure and cancer, NATO countries are examining the issue closely. The Canadian Forces are about to begin an ambitious analysis with Statistics Canada, which the military predicts will debunk any fears that Canadian soldiers may have been adversely affected. The Croatia toxic soil controversy raised the profile of Canadian military health concerns two years ago when a mini-scandal erupted over whether peacekeepers sent to the Balkan country between 1993 and '95 were exposed to hazardous PCBs, heavy metals and other pollutants. Controversy arose over whether the files of thousands of peacekeepers were tampered with in an attempt to cover up that possibility. The mini-scandal resulted in three separate military investigations, including the Thomas report. Another report concluded too many peacekeepers were coming home sick, that the government didn't do enough to help them, but that no one particular environmental problem could be blamed. Mr. Thomas's report is scathing, especially the attention he draws to the lack of a military environmental policy as of one year ago. Defence Minister Art Eggleton has said in the past that the military now scouts out for environmental hazards the areas in which it will deploy troops. Mr. Thomas says the military's bungling of the Croatia situation undermined the confidence of the troops. The military did not initiate the investigations until media reports focusing on the mysterious ailments that befell some Croatia veterans forced it to do so. "The confidence of CF personnel in their own system to protect and promote their welfare has been shaken, and several former members felt that the media was the only way to bring the matter to light," the report concludes. However, Mr. Thomas does not entirely blame the Forces for the mishandling of the situation. He singles out a common cause for many of the military's woes in recent years -- the '90s decade of federal budget and personnel cuts that coincided with a burst in peacekeeping activity around the globe. "The investigation found that when the number and size of operations overseas increased, there was not a proportional increase in the resources and operational staff at National Defence headquarters. As a result, only the most serious concerns could be appropriately addressed." [UP] Copyright 2001 Ottawa Citizen Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 4 Artists unite in bid to free Vanunu THE SUNDAY TIMES: NEWS February 11 2001 BRITAIN writes Peter Hounam.* Contemporary painters including Paula Rego, Richard Hamilton and Maggi Hambling have agreed to donate their work. Tom Conti, the actor, Michael Rosen, the children's author, and Sarah Dunant, the novelist and broadcaster, will also make appearances. The campaign hopes to raise sufficient funds to launch a new campaign to persuade the Israeli authorities to grant clemency to Vanunu, who was found guilty of treason and espionage. He still has three years of his sentence to serve and there are fears continued incarceration is affecting his mental health. "We were very pleased that not a single artist that we approached turned us down," said Ernest Rodker, who has organised the auction next Sunday in Hampstead. "People are willing to help because they feel Mordechai has been punished enough. The election result in Israel last week was not encouraging for us, but we need to make a renewed effort to help someone who was acting only from the best of principles." More than 300 works of art valued at between £25 and £300 will go on sale. Historic photographs, including a signed Eve Arnold print from 1960 of Marilyn Monroe learning her lines during the making of her last film, The Misfits, will also go under the hammer, along with an original John Hopkins print of Martin Luther King. Those campaigning for Vanunu's release fear prison authorities in Israel are taking an increasingly hard line. His letters are heavily censored and can take six months to reach the outside world. + *The auction takes place at Burgh House, New End Square, at 6.30pm. For more information about the auction ring 020 7378 9324. * Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times ***************************************************************** 5 Utah House approves fallout committee w w w . s t a n d a r d . n e t ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the Hill *Saturday, February 10, 2001* SALT LAKE CITY -- A resolution urging the federal government to grant Utah a citizens subcommittee to examine the health effects of nuclear test sites was unanimously approved by the Utah House Friday. Rep. Lou Shurtliff, D-Ogden, said the state needs the committee to document possible health effects from Nevada's nuclear testing in the 1950s. Radiation from the tests drifted east over Utah, causing high incidences of cancers and other illnesses. The resolution asks the government to assign the state the last of the six federal subcommittees formed in 1994 to investigate the nation's nuclear legacy. The same resolution passed the House last year, but the Senate didn't consider the issue before it adjourned. In the 1950s, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission detonated more than 100 nuclear weapons at its Nevada Test Site. These tests were followed by underground detonations from the 1960s through the 1980s. The resolution will now be considered by the Senate. -- *Standard-Examiner staff and wire services*  ***************************************************************** 6 263 tons of uranium slated to be gone in weeks This story was published Fri, Feb 9, 2001 By John Stang Herald staff writer Hanford plans to remove or dispose of roughly 263 tons of leftover uranium by March 31. That means almost half of the stockpile of uranium Hanford had at the beginning of 2000 will be disposed of in about seven weeks. The uranium was originally intended to be used for reactor fuel in Hanford's Cold War plutonium production days. Since the Cold War, it had been stored in various forms in the 200 Area and 300 Area. The 200 Area's uranium -- actually 734 tons of uranium trioxide powder -- was shipped to the Department of Energy's Portsmouth, Ohio, site for permanent storage last year. Over the next two months, DOE plans to: -- Ship 258 tons of uranium billets from the 300 Area to Portsmouth. Billets are heavy 20-inch-long cylinders that hold uranium. -- Ship another 2.6 tons of uranium dioxide pellets to Portsmouth. -- Ship another 0.44 tons of uraniumdioxide to DOE's Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico for research purposes. -- Bury another 1.76 tons of uranium dioxide -- which is not wanted elsewhere -- in central Hanford. That will leave 1,056 tons of uranium in billetlike cylinders ranging from 1 foot to slightly more than 2 feet long. Out of that amount, DOE plans to bury roughly 149 tons of nonirradiated uranium fuel in central Hanford by June, said Leo Guillen, DOE's project manager for uranium disposal. The remaining 907 tons will stay in the 300 Area until DOE reaches a formal decision on what to do with a major amount of Hanford's solid wastes. That decision is scheduled for September 2002 after an environmental impact study is completed. Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 7 Nuclear Sites Could Be In Your Backyard Friday February 09 01:45 PM EST Detroit, Other Metro Areas Were Testing Grounds In The Past It's now an empty field. It sits along West Jefferson on Detroit's south side. Sixty years ago, this area was bustling with activity. A company called Revere Copper and Brass handled more than 1,000 tons of uranium. The heavy metal can cause health problems if inhaled as vapor or dust. High doses can damage the kidneys. While soldiers battled enemy forces around the globe in the second World War, top-secret projects involving radioactive materials were being conducted right here in metro Detroit. Five decades later, neighbors of these sites wonder if they're safe. Top-secret projects involving radioactive materials were being conducted right here in metro Detroit. Five decades later neighbors of these sites wonder if they're safe. Local 4 obtained classified documents just recently released from the Department of Energy. We've uncovered seven sites in the metro area, including three in Detroit and one each in Warren, Centerline, Farmington Hills and Ann Arbor. We've learned nuclear testing was done at these places during the War and post-War era. "It's interesting, but not surprising," Sarah Lile, the director of Detroit's Department of Environmental Affairs, said. "We were known as the arsenal of democracy." Lile has worked with government agencies to decontaminate and then demolish the plant that used to sit on West Jefferson. These documents reveal that we will never know just how much radioactive material passed through here in the 1950s. And here's another startling discovery. The presses and the furnace used here were stolen when the plant closed in the mid 1980's. And we've learned that equipment may have had radioactively contaminated dust. Carboloy Company was owned by General Electric in Warren during the 1950s. We've discovered that the company was involved in the testing of radioactive materials for two years, from 1956 to 1958. "They used uranium dioxide to see if they could develop fuels, nuclear fuels for rockets," Barry Moser, manager of Carboloy Facilities, said. Researchers worked to produce uranium metal slugs. They used the company's presses to turn the power into a solid to be used as fuel for nuclear rockets and weapons. "A lot of that stuff was probably pretty well classified," Moser said. Documents reveal that during the inuitial decontamination process in 1956 lathe coolant and sludge were dumped into a storm sewer and that some sludge was diluted with a solvent and water and spread over an unused field behind the plant. In 1995, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission came out to the site and performed extensive tests. A radiological survey was done and no contamination was found. Iin doing all the checking, they were unable to determine any possibilty of radioactivity existing now. In fact, the Department of Energy has signed off on all 7 sites where nuclear testing was done here in the metro area. On the government's once top-secret list: The former Wolverine Tube Division and The Detrex Corporation, both in Detroit; a University of Michigan site in Ann Arbor where research engineers worked with uranium and thorium and now owned by GM; the former United States Ordinance Plant in Centerline, believed to have assembled bomb components and weapons in connection with a top-secret Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb, and in Farmington Hills. The Star Cutter Corporation which used to sit along Grand River Avenue tested 100 pieces of uranium material during one week in 1956. A new company now hangs it sign there. Jim Strauch lives next door to that plant. He says he is surprised to learn that while he was fighting over in the Pacific, testing was being done in what is now his backyard. "I didn't know that. I imagine very few people knew that," Strauch said. Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! and . ***************************************************************** 8 N-activist's career began with a light in the sky [deseretnews.com] Sunday, February 11, 2001 By Jerry Spangler The memory wears on J. Preston Truman like a cowboy's brand. Searing, immovable, unforgettable. It was about 1953, and Truman — "J" to his family and friends — was nestled in his father's arms on the porch of the family home in Enterprise, a small southern Utah ranching hamlet of about 800. It was sometime just before dawn when the western sky erupted in white light. "It scared . . . me," said Truman, who traces his storied career as an anti-nuclear activist to that impressionable childhood experience. Today, Truman, now 49, is the venerable head of Utah Downwinders, a loose-knit montage of Quixotic gadflies who for three decades have campaigned to end all nuclear testing and to arrive at some sort of justice for countless thousands — many in Utah and Nevada — who have been killed and maimed by the nation's Cold War nuclear legacy. It is a toxic legacy that still haunts native Utahns, most of whom know someone — a family member, a friend, a neighbor — who has suffered from diseases believed linked to radiation poisoning inflicted by their own government. Truman was only 4 years old when his first friend, 5-year-old Michael Stalie, died of leukemia. Within a year or two, four other children in nearby Parowan and Paragonah had died of leukemia. Then grown-ups started getting the disease. "Suddenly it was leukemia, leukemia, leukemia everywhere you looked," he remembers. Still, most living in Mormon communities scattered throughout southern Utah and Nevada remained fiercely patriotic in the 1950s and 1960s. To question the government was to raise suspicions about loyalty, or worse to conjure up accusations of being a Communist sympathizer. Truman remembers a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign by the U.S. government to assure local residents that the nuclear tests were safe and blaming the Soviets for everything from poisoning the air to stranding a helpless dog in space. "There was kind of a carnival atmosphere about the whole thing," he said. "As kids, we would go out and play atomic war." They didn't know it, but it wasn't a game. There were days the radioactive fallout from nuclear blasts settled so thick on the family's 1951 Ford that Truman could write his name in the white ash. As more and more children died, however, more and more people started to question. If the tests were so safe, why then did the military feel it imperative to send passing motorists to the St. George Texaco to get their cars washed after each blast? If there was nothing to worry about, why were government officials monitoring fallout dressed in protective clothing? "I raised my hand and asked why we had to evacuate to a cellar for two weeks if Los Angeles was bombed, but it was OK for our own government to bomb us over and over," he said. He repeatedly raised that concern in subsequent letters to television stations, newspapers, congressmen and even President Lyndon Johnson. "Everyone thought there was something red besides my hair," he recalls. "They were very suspicious of my politics." Although above-ground tests ended in 1963, Truman began organizing other youth in town to protest the nation's nuclear policies. In 1969, as a high school senior, he met Utah's grand dame of anti-nuclear activists, Irma Thomas. She mentored Truman on the finer points of activism, inspiring the college-bound young man to look beyond the carnage in his own community to the havoc being wreaked by nuclear testing around the world. "Me and Irma were fellow travelers," he laughs, referring to a "red baiting" term common at the time. After attending Dixie College a short time, Truman enrolled at the University of Utah to study microbiology, immunology and radiobiology. And to continue organizing fellow students to protest the nation's nuclear policy. Few students seemed interested, and those that got involved usually did so because they had a friend or family member who was a victim of the testing. Those that did took the name "downwinders." Truman eventually abandoned his studies and any hope of a career in science to embark on full-time activism. He and his ragtag contingent of supporters went door-to-door throughout the state asking people fill in maps showing which neighbors had cancers and thyroid diseases. The downwinders story generated little interest in the United States, but the tide turned in 1977, he said, because of two events: First, the Deseret News published stories comparing the astronomically high leukemia rates in southern Utah to the much lower rates in northern Utah. And second, Scott Matheson, a downwinder himself who would later die of cancer, was elected governor. "From then on, it was open season," he said. "Everyone wanted a piece of the story." Truman keeps the fight going from Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, where he answers several hundred e-mails every day, many from activists in the former Soviet Union. Why keep fighting a fight he seemingly won? The U.S. government still hasn't passed a test-ban treaty, he notes ruefully. And there is scientific information coming to light showing that Utah and Nevada were not the only places blanketed by deadly radiation, but that people in Idaho and Montana were equally as hard hit. And then there are the victims in other countries. In all, more than 160 million people are believed to have been exposed to much higher than normal levels of radiation from nuclear testing. "We keep burying the dead," he said. "We still need to do something about the victims of it all." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *E-mail: spang@desnews.com* Front Page © 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 9 Contaminated worker loses part of thumb Augusta Georgia: technology@ugusta: 02/10/01 *Web posted Saturday, February 10, 2001 By Brandon Haddock *Staff Writer* A Savannah River Site worker had part of his right thumb removed after it was contaminated with radioactive material. Doctors at the federal nuclear-weapons site removed a section of tissue about the size of ``a small pea,'' said Susie Grant, a spokeswoman for Westinghouse Savannah River Co. Westinghouse operates SRS for the Department of Energy. Medical workers have not determined what radioactive element the tissue contained or whether the employee will receive a lasting dose of radiation from the incident, Ms. Grant said. Westinghouse declined to release the name of the employee, citing company policy. The incident occurred Jan. 16, as the employee was working in a contaminated area in an auxiliary building for the site's massive ``H-Canyon'' plant, according to a report issued by the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. As the worker removed his protective gear, he noticed a spot of blood on the cotton liners of his latex gloves, Ms. Grant said. Although the worker could not see a wound, he reported to site medical facilities, where doctors confirmed that part of his right thumb was contaminated, the spokeswoman said. The employee was not wearing proper protective gear for the work, which called for leather gloves or ``nitrile'' gloves, Ms. Grant said. Those gloves are thicker, and more puncture-resistant, than the latex gloves often used in radioactive work, the spokeswoman said. The Defense Board's report indicated that the worker chose to use latex gloves because of concerns about how heavier gloves would affect his movement. Ms. Grant said her company was investigating that issue. ``We're looking at the gloves that were used, and the lessons learned, trying to pinpoint the source of the problem,'' she said. ``We're going back and looking to find out why the latex gloves were selected.'' Reach Brandon Haddockat (706) 823-3409. All contents © 1996 - 2001 *The Augusta Chronicle*. All ***************************************************************** 10 Leaders seek aid for SRS *Web posted Saturday, February 10, 2001 By Brandon Haddock *Staff Writer* All four U.S. senators from South Carolina and Georgia are urging the nation's new energy secretary to fix Savannah River Site's aging infrastructure. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., wrote Friday to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, asking him to fund about $208 million in improvements at the federal nuclear weapons site. The letter was co-signed by Sens. Ernest ``Fritz'' Hollings, D-S.C.; Max Cleland, D-Ga.; and Zell Miller, D-Ga. ``As a result of lacking refurbishment, SRS has experienced an increase in the amount of problems in areas that have not received upgrades in the past 10 years,'' the senators wrote, noting that much of the site's infrastructure is more than 40 years old. ``In order for SRS to remain the `Flagship' of the Energy Department's industrial complex, we strongly feel that there are several critical areas that require immediate attention from you and your Department.'' The letter came one day after Mr. Abraham testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about infrastructure needs at the nation's nuclear weapons facilities. A spokesman for the secretary said Mr. Abraham was committed to meeting infrastructure needs across the nuclear weapons complex. ``The secretary has made addressing the problems of infrastructure at all of our sites a top priority and will be addressing all the needs at all the sites in some way, shape or form,'' said Joe Davis, the secretary's deputy director for public affairs. ``We appreciate the senators' heads-up and look forward to speaking with them about the issues.'' SRS has a backlog of about $800 million in needed repairs and upgrades to its infrastructure - the backbone that is formed by roads, bridges, utilities and buildings. Concerns about the site's infrastructure have surfaced several times, most recently in March 2000, when the site's Citizens Advisory Board pushed the Energy Department to provide money to address SRS infrastructure needs. Repair needs cited U.S. senators from South Carolina and Georgia asked Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to fund improvements in five specific systems at Savannah River Site: Steam system reconfiguration: Would replace the D-Area powerhouse, the site's primary steam supplier, with a more efficient source of steam. Estimated cost: $40 million. Improvements to waste collection and transfer system: Would upgrade the site's system for transferring highly radioactive wastes in order to meet state and federal regulatory requirements. Estimated cost: $45 million. Improvements to Savannah River Technology Center's ventilation systems: Would upgrade the research-and-development lab's ventilation systems, which currently place workers at risk of exposure to radiation, the senators reported. Estimated cost: $40 million. Security Systems Restoration Project: Would replace aging systems, prone to failures, with modern, standardized equipment. Estimated cost: $48 million. Site Electrical Infrastructure Restoration Project: Would upgrade site electrical systems that cannot cope with increased demands for electricity. Some systems contain components that do not comply with codes and could cause fire and explosion if they failed, the senators wrote. Estimated cost: $35 million. Reach Brandon Haddockat (706) 823-3409. All contents © 1996 - 2001 *The Augusta Chronicle*. All ***************************************************************** 11 Bush administration to examine decision on uranium deal [First Energy] Ohio Beacon Posted at 5:02 p.m. EST Friday, February 9, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration said Friday it will review a decision to permit more Russian uranium imports. In a letter to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice promised to review the Clinton administration decision to let U.S. Enrichment Corp. buy commercial uranium from Russia. That uranium would be in addition to uranium salvaged from former Soviet warheads and sold by USEC to nuclear power plants. Rice's correspondence was a response to the committee's chairman, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., and a bipartisan group of House members who expressed concern about Russia competing with U.S. plants as a source of electricity-grade uranium. The United States has two plants that produce uranium for power plants. One is in Paducah, Ky., the other in Piketon, Ohio. USEC operates both, but in June plans to cease production in Ohio. The company has said a new agreement to buy commercially produced uranium from Russia at market prices is essential because otherwise, the company will have to continue paying above-market prices for the warhead uranium. USEC said it expects to work out a final agreement with Tenex, its Russian counterpart, later this year. AP-CS-02-09-01 1656EST --> ***************************************************************** 12 President considers halving US nuclear arsenal Independent By David Usborne 10 February 2001 George Bush is expected shortly to ask the Pentagon to reassess its nuclear arsenal with a view to possibly cutting the number of American nuclear warheads by well over half. The President acknowledged yesterday that he will ask the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to begin a "top-to-bottom review" of the US military and of its spending. Mr Bush made no direct comment about unilateral cuts in nuclear weapons but officials indicate that will become a priority. President Bush alluded often during his election campaign to scaling back the nuclear arsenal. Large cuts could also help to assuage concerns in China, Russia and among the European allies about US plans for a nuclear missile shield, known as the National Missile Defence programme. "The review, I understand, could be a step toward a new strategic doctrine," one senior defence source said. "We would balance strong defence with a smaller nuclear offence – unlike the massive number of warheads during the Cold War." Answering reporters' questions yesterday, Mr Bush confirmed that the military is to reassess itself. "Secretary Rumsfeld is beginning a review of the defence – a top-to-bottom review of what's happening in today's military, reviewing missions, reviewing opportunities for change," he said at the White House. The US currently has about 7,000 nuclear warheads while Russia has 6,000. The latest arms control treaties between Washington and Moscow call for levels to fall to between 2,000 and 2,500 for each side. Mr Bush could seek to cut these levels even further. Analysts suggest that a unilateral reduction in its nuclear arsenal will give the US room to back away from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. At present the ABM, considered a foundation stone of disarmament, would stand in the way of the US building or even testing a missile defence shield. Cutting the nuclear capability would also allow Mr Bush to reinforce the US military in other ways, with new conventional weaponry and a boost in pay for US personnel. He said that pay rises and other defence priorities would be one of the issues he will discuss while "travelling the country next week". Mr Rumsfeld has also kept his counsel on the nuclear weapons question. But asked by reporters recently about the prospect of a sharply reduced US nuclear arsenal, he noted that, "it is a different world, we know that". President Bush's insistence on a comprehensive review of all military priorities has not won him praise from all quarters of the Pentagon. Many in the military would like Mr Bush to commit more money to the US armed forces now before starting the reassessment. Mr Bush stressed yesterday, however, that there would be no "early supplemental" for the Pentagon, meaning that he would not seek any early increase in the current Pentagon budget of $297bn (£205bn). Aides say that he could ask for additional defence money from Congress in the summer. Some senior US officers have also expressed deep reservations about any unilateral cuts in America's nuclear strike force while Russia retains its full arsenal. Last year, however, senior officials from the Pentagon conceded during hearings in Congress that US defence needs could easily be met with a much reduced number of missiles. Next week, Mr Bush is to travel with Mr Rumsfeld to several US military bases, including the US Joint Forces Command in Virginia. XXX © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. ***************************************************************** 13 Australia 'campaigned for own atomic bomb' ISSUE 2087 Saturday 10 February 2001 Dr Wayne Reynolds - The University of Newcastle, Australia Australian Department of Defence AUSTRALIA mounted a 20-year campaign to get its own atomic bomb to protect "a small white population" from the threat of Asian communism, according to a book published yesterday. Canberra's nuclear ambitions lasted from the end of the Second World War to 1968, the book claims. Dr Wayne Reynolds, author of Australia's Bid For The Atomic Bomb, said the project was carried out behind the cover of the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric project. Dr Reynolds, of the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, claimed that Australia first worked with Britain, but the plans were foiled when the British Government developed its own weapon in the Fifties and bowed to American pressure to exclude Australia. The Australian Defence Department refused to comment, describing it as a historical issue with no relevance to current policy. ***************************************************************** 14 Whitehall is shaken by Gibraltar broadside ISSUE 2087 Saturday 10 February 2001 SPAIN has made a blistering attack on British sovereignty over Gibraltar, signalling a sudden cooling of relations between Madrid and London. Josep Pique, the Foreign Minister, told the Spanish Senate Gibraltar was an "economic parasite which, far from being productive, lives off Spain". The attack came without warning and generated acute concern in London. Foreign Office officials took more than 16 hours to issue a response. A statement said: "The UK has made clear that it has attached importance to keeping open all our channels of communication." But Whitehall sources said there was shock at the suddenness of the attack, only a fortnight after talks between Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, and Mr Pique. The relationship with Spain's conservative administrationis seen as central to Government attempts to liberalise European Union economies. Mr Pique said the colony was "a gigantic duty-free shop" and was a "dead weight, difficult to support" in relations between Spain and Britain. Spain's restrictions on Gibraltar would remain in place, he added. The remarks were the strongest anti-British statements from the ruling Popular Party party since it was elected five years ago. The timing suggested a carefully staged move by an embattled government. A Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman said several factors, including public concern over the nuclear submarine Tireless, in Gibraltar awaiting repairs, lay behind them. He said: "At the last meeting we had with the British, they did not seem interested in the Brussels process in which it was agreed to discuss the future of Gibraltar. "We have been more than loyal to the British over Tireless and we cannot understand why they have not been loyal to us over this. There is mounting public pressure over Tireless and people are becoming fed up." Spanish governments since Franco have wheeled out the Gibraltar issue to rouse populist sentiment and deflect criticism in times of trouble. The government of Jose Aznar, the Prime Minister, has come under attack almost daily for its allegedly soft approach over the Tireless. Having presided over a period of economic prosperity and growth, it is now under fire from a revitalised opposition over a number of issues. These range from mad cow diseaseto scandals involving flax and olive oil producers fraudulently claiming millions of pounds in EU subsidies. The warm relationship between Mr Aznar and Tony Blair was built on their shared goal of greater economic liberalisation in the EU. The new hostility could make the summit on economic reform in Stockholm in four months' time a difficult occasion. Mr Pique said future co-operation with London over Gibraltar, which was ceded to Britain in perpetuity under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, would take place only "in the context of sovereignty negotiations". Peter Caruana, Chief Minister of Gibraltar, said the statement was "highly subjective . . . and factually inaccurate and all in all a very hardline statement of a very hardline position". 9 February 2001: Britain is blamed for Spanish CJD scare © Copyrightof Telegraph Group Limited2000. ***************************************************************** 15 DOE puts off review of ignition laser job Follow-up study awaits response to lawsuit *February 10, 2001* By Glenn Roberts Jr. STAFF WRITER LIVERMORE -- The Energy Department has put its plans on hold for a February follow-up review of a laser project at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory pending a legal response to a lawsuit filed by project opponents last month. That lawsuit alleges that an August review of the National Ignition Facility laser project was not an independent review, as the Energy Department maintains. The lawsuit also alleges that the review failed to comply with federal openness laws. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental organization, and Livermore-based Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, filed the lawsuit against the Energy Department in November. And on Feb. 1, the groups filed a motion for a court injunction to block the Energy Department from using a report that was prepared by the August review team. The team was led by Energy Department officials and was composed mostly of workers who are directly employed by the Energy Department or its labs. Darwin Morgan, a spokesman for the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, a security agency within the department, said that the department will not announce any plans for a follow-up review of the project until after the court documents are filed on Wednesday. "We'll clarify what the department is going to be doing" at that time, he said. Marylia Kelley, executive director for Tri-Valley CAREs, said she hopes the court challenges will lead to a truly independent review of NIF, something she said has so far not happened. A hearing on the motion for an injunction is set for next Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C. Livermore Lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton said earlier this month that an Energy Department review of the NIF project was planned in late February in order to meet a March 1 deadline set by Congress last year. Members of Congress, in approving additional money for the over-budget NIF project, ordered confirmation, by March 1, on whether project managers implemented a formal system for controlling NIF's cost and schedule. Congress also ordered a set of other conditions due by March 31, including a review of whether NIF has met its cost and schedule goals in the first two quarters of the 2001 budget year. If NIF managers do not comply with the orders, Congress could withhold $69.1 million from the project. The project, which will cost an estimated $3.5 billion to $4 billion, is about $1 billion over budget and six years behind schedule, say federal officials. ***************************************************************** 16 Filters from bomb plant greatest potential for trouble - By N.S. Nokkentved By N.S. Nokkentved XXX Times-News writer Sunday, February 11, 2001 TWIN FALLS -- Perhaps the greatest risk of a spontaneous nuclear reaction in buried radioactive waste in Idaho is from air filters from a Colorado nuclear bomb factory. Officials at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory say monitoring would have detected any spontaneous nuclear reactions in the buried waste. But documents obtained by The Times-News suggest no monitoring was done that would have detected such an event. State and federal regulators met with Energy Department and INEEL officials from Dec. 6 to 8, 2000, to discuss the likelihood of a spontaneous nuclear reaction -- known as a criticality -- in plutonium-contaminated waste buried at the INEEL. Such a criticality might not raise any immediate concern, but the possibility of such an event is a factor in deciding whether and how best to clean up the buried waste that threatens the Snake River Plain Aquifer. INEEL officials denied a Freedom of Information Act request for minutes from that meeting, but The Times-News obtained the minutes elsewhere. According to a draft of the minutes from Dec. 6, "There have not been any records identified to indicate that any monitoring for criticality was done during the flooding events." INEEL spokesman Tim Jackson noted that the minutes say personnel were not contaminated during the flooding, and that shows personnel were monitored. The monitoring has been a source of contention among federal and state agencies. EPA officials suggest that a small spontaneous uncontrolled nuclear reaction might have gone undetected during one of three flooding events at the INEEL's burial ground. Sue Stiger, head of environmental cleanup at INEEL, in December told The Times-News that monitoring was in place at the time that would have showed the evidence of a nuclear reaction. "We would have been able to detect it," she said. But EPA officials challenged the assertion that a past criticality would have been detected by the kind of monitoring done at the time. That conclusion could not be made without an evaluation of the personnel, their location and monitoring data from the time of the event, Wayne Pierre of the EPA's Seattle office said in his responses to the minutes. With sufficient plutonium within a given space, water could act as a "moderator" during a flood and allow a nuclear reaction to occur. Without water, small amounts of plutonium are not likely to sustain a nuclear reaction. The burial ground was flooded in 1962, 1969 and 1984. And officials agree that some waste containers potentially hold enough plutonium for such a reaction. But INEEL officials assert that the material did not go critical during the flooding, the minutes say. Not everyone at the meeting agreed, Pierre said. "This issue is not closed," he said. According to the minutes, based on what is known today, the Energy Department is not worried about a criticality risk. But EPA officials are concerned, Pierre said. They are particularly concerned about air filters from the nuclear bomb plant at Rocky Flats, near Denver, Colo. The filters, most of them shipped to INEEL in wooden and cardboard boxes, were heavily loaded with plutonium. Rocky Flats gave up trying to recover plutonium from the discarded filters. The Rocky Flats Plant "aggressively tried to get the plutonium off the filters, but could not," retired plant supervisor Al Williams said in the minutes. The filters were dumped in the burial ground pits along with the other waste. They may constitute the greatest risk of an accidental criticality, Pierre said. Yet information about the filters and the amount of plutonium they contain is uncertain. Some data suggests that some drums of filters could contain more than one kilogram of plutonium distributed through the filters -- a favorable configuration for a potential criticality if water were present, Pierre said. INEEL officials said the likelihood of finding such overloaded waste drums would be rare. But officials agreed to investigate the apparent gaps in information about filters. From 1952 through 1970 plutonium-contaminated and other waste was dumped willy-nilly into pits and trenches at the 88-acre burial ground at INEEL -- a site now known as the Subsurface Disposal Area. The waste came primarily from the nuclear bomb factory at Rocky Flats, near Denver. What is a criticality? A criticality is an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. In such an accident, nuclear materials sustain a reaction -- or "go critical," in the parlance of nuclear science. This is not the same as a nuclear explosion, but it releases energy, a characteristic blue glow and potentially lethal levels of radiation. The leftovers remain radioactive for many years. ***************************************************************** 17 Anchorage Daily News - Scientists to watch for radiation leaks Scientists to watch for radiation leaks By Don Hunter Anchorage Dai *(Published February 10, 2001)* A consortium of universities, state and Aleut agencies is preparing a long-term plan to monitor Amchitka Island, the ocean surrounding it and the fish and marine mammals that swim there for traces of radiation that might leak from three underground atomic blasts conducted three decades ago. The effort will be paid for by the federal Department of Energy but conducted by a university-led agency called CRESP -- Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation. The agency was formed in 1995 after the National Science Foundation recommended that an independent agency collect data and evaluate risks associated with DOE's nuclear programs. Only minor traces of leakage were detected on Amchitka after the tests concluded in 1971, and none in the waters surrounding it, DOE officials say. But the agency hasn't conducted offshore tests for radionuclides for years. State environmental officials are worried that radiation could leach into the marine environment around Amchitka through groundwater. Computer modeling by federal scientists indicated the deep blast pits could begin leaking anywhere from 15 years to millennia after the tests. The DOE stopped testing in the near-shore waters in 1977, said Doug Dasher, the environmental radiation program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Dasher's agency will test tissue samples collected from blue mussels in the ocean near the island this summer. The long-term monitoring by CRESP will expand to include fish and marine mammals, and continue perhaps for decades or longer. The buried remnants of the atomic blasts will remain radioactive for more than 20,000 years. The Alaska CRESP work will be directed by scientists at the Fairbanks and Anchorage campuses of the University of Alaska, and by officials of the DEC and the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association. At a meeting at the association's offices Friday, the local CRESP representatives said people who live in Aleutian island villages will have a strong voice in deciding what animals are sampled and how the program is conducted. Amchitka is federally owned and uninhabited. But hunters and fishermen from other villages sometimes harvest animals there or stop for water on trips. And seals or otters taken in other parts of the chain may have lived in Amchitka waters for significant parts of their lives. "We view that (Amchitka) as Aleutian land," said Bob Patrick of the APIA. "It's in the backyard of everybody that lives out there ... We want the Aleut voice to be the one that really sets it up." Patrick plans to travel to villages on the chain in March, asking for advice. Researchers need to know what kinds of subsistence foods residents depend on and how much they eat. Any long-range monitoring must be driven by the practical needs and concerns of the people who live closest to the old atomic testing site, he and others said. The United States conducted the tests between 1965 and 1971. The first was an 80-kiloton device called Long Shot. The second, Milrow, was a one-megaton bomb exploded in 1969. The last, five-megaton Cannikin, was among the largest underground tests ever conducted by the United States. All the bombs were exploded in pits drilled deep into the island and capped. "There's a dangerous place out there that may leak. We don't know," said Susan Hills, a marine scientist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "We need to make a plan ... for how to be long-term stewards of this dangerous place." Scientists should prepare to monitor the island and its environs for a very long time, Dasher said. "Even if leakage occurs 1,000 years from now, people may live on Amchitka again by then." Reporter Don Hunter can be reached at dhunter@adn.comor 907-257-4349. ***************************************************************** 18 U.S. Stockpile Size Affects Lab Workload ABQjournal: , February 10, 2001 Albuquerque Journal--> John Fleck--> By John Fleck *Journal Staff Writer* Fewer U.S. nuclear weapons would reduce the number of plutonium bomb parts that would have to be built at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a veteran U.S. government adviser. A Bush administration review of the size of the U.S. stockpile, announced Friday, could lead to reduced pressure on Los Alamos to expand plutonium manufacturing operations, said Sidney Drell, a California physicist and longtime adviser to the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Much of the nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories would be unchanged by a reduction in stockpile size, according to Drell. "I don't think there's a difference there," he said. That is because the work, which involves research into the effect of aging on U.S. weapons, is not directly linked to the size of the stockpile. But the number of new plutonium pits, the explosive cores of nuclear weapons, depends on the size of the stockpile, Drell said. Los Alamos is the only place in the United States capable of making pits, but that capability is extremely limited. There has been pressure on the lab and the Department of Energy to increase the lab's pit-making capacity, something that has been strongly resisted by anti-nuclear groups. [Get Copyright Clearance] Copyright 2001 Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************