***************************************************************** 06/11/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.146 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 NRC Amends Licensing, Inspection and Annual Fees Rule 2 German Nuclear Shutdown Planned 3 Disposition of High-Level Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel: 4 More Join Chorus for Nuke Power 5 Cost to Treat Waste May Doom Industry 6 Senate inquiry opposes Lucas Heights reactor plan 7 Letter: Do as Europe does: Recycle spent nuke fuel 8 Environmentalists back Nevada's fight against nuke waste 9 Russia's Chief Military Environmentalist On Spent Nuclear Fuel 10 Crocodiles flourish at FPL nuke plant 11 Government, Utilities to Sign Nuclear Energy Pact 12 German Nuclear Shutdown Protested _ June 11 8:34 AM ET_ 13 ADAMS: Items of Interest - Monday, June 11, 2001 14 Germany, US at nuclear poles 15 Nuclear power station’s winning formula: Atom+TM=results_ 16 Belarus children visit Upstate 17 Safety of nuclear power takes center stage at meeting here NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 Scientist defends use of dead babies 2 Handicapped used in nuclear tests 3 MoD planned to fake its nuclear might 4 Handicapped used in nuclear tests: report 5 Expert: Russian spying on U.S. continues 6 Research confirms IAAP dangers 7 Tell us your story 8 Reports of Ōblue flashÕ studied 9 Contaiminated fluid leaks into SRS basin 10 ORNL role expected to remain strong in nation's energy strategy 11 Disabled Britons 'used for atomic fall-out tests' 12 Did Iraq Conduct a Clandestine Nuclear Test? 13 Atom bomb, reactor experts in old U.S.S.R. struggle to adapt 14 OS man seeks change in DOE medical program 15 Meetings to focus on OR cleanup issues **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 NRC Amends Licensing, Inspection and Annual Fees Rule Press Release 2001 - 070 - _U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION_ _Office of Public Affairs_ _Telephone: 301/415-8200_ _Washington, DC 20555-001_ _E-mail: opa@nrc.gov_ _Web Site: http://www.nrc.gov/OPA_ No. 01-070 June 8, 2001 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is amending its regulations for the licensing, inspections and annual fees it charges to licensees for fiscal year (FY) 2001. The agency is statutorily required to collect about 98 percent (2 percent less than last year) of its budget this year through two types of fees. One is for NRC services such as licensing and inspection activities. The other is an annual fee paid by all licensees, which recovers generic regulatory expenses and other costs not recovered from fees for specific services. These fees are set out in Commission regulations 10 CFR Part 170 (licensing and inspection fees) and 10 CFR Part 171 (annual fees). The NRC must recover $453.3 million for FY 2001 (October 1, 2000 - September 30, 2001). This does not include $21.6 million appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund for high-level waste activities. Neither does it include $3.2 million appropriated for NRC's selected regulatory reviews and assistance provided to federal agencies and states. Funding for these activities is excluded from license fee revenues by law. The total amount to be recovered is about $6.3 million more than last year. The annual fees have been determined under the re-baseline method, which establishes new baseline fees. The Commission decided to re-baseline annual fees this year after considering factors such as the amount of the budget allocated to various classes of licensees and complex issues related to fairness and stability of the fees. Re-baselined annual fees result in reduced annual fees for a majority of licensees, including power reactors, uranium recovery licensees, radiography and broad-scope medical licensees. Annual fees will increase for other categories of licensees, such as fuel-fabrication facilities and distributors of radio-pharmaceuticals. There is also a $6 increase over FY 2000 in the hourly labor rate for NRC services performed in the reactor program, and a $1 increase for NRC services performed in the nuclear materials program. The hourly rates are $150 for the reactor program activities and $144 for the nuclear materials program activities. In accordance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act that requires agencies to consider the impacts of rule changes on small businesses, the NRC reviewed its fees established in FY 2000 for such businesses. It has concluded that a change to the reduced annual fees for small entities is not warranted for this fiscal year. The final FY 2001 annual fees for some licensees are as follows: _Categories of Licensees _ _FY 2000 Annual Fee_ _FY 2001 Annual Fee_ Operating Power Reactors (including spent fuel storage/reactor decommissioning annual fee) $2,815,000 $2,753,000 High-enriched Uranium Fuel Facility 3,327,000 3,545,000 Low-enriched Uranium Fuel Facility 1,116,000 1,146,000 Uranium Recovery (Conventional Mills) 132,000 94,300 Radiographers 14,900 12,500 Broad Scope Medical 28,100 24,200 Distribution of Radiopharmaceuticals 3,800 3,900 Other changes include a fee of $450 to be assessed for each annual registration of generally licensed devices, consistent with the recent revisions to the Commission's regulations in 10 CFR Parts 30, 31 and 32 establishing the registration program. Assessment of the registration fee will begin after the generally licensed devices currently in use are first registered with the agency. As a streamlining measure, the NRC is eliminating fees now assessed to Agreement State licensees for revisions they file related to the types and locations of licensed activities they conduct in areas under NRC jurisdiction based on the agency's reciprocity provisions. The fees assessed for the initial applications for reciprocity filed by these Agreement State licensees will increase from $1,200 to $1,400 to recover the costs of processing the revisions. The final rule will be published with additional details in an upcoming edition of The *Federal Register.* ***************************************************************** 2 German Nuclear Shutdown Planned Today: June 11, 2001 at 14:05:28 PDT BERLIN- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and leading energy companies formally signed an agreement Monday to shut down Germany's 19 nuclear power plants, making it the world's largest industrialized nation to willingly forgo the technology. Though it could take decades to complete, the plan underscores the divide between Europe and the United States on environmental policy. President Bush last month unveiled measures to promote the building of more nuclear plants, and many now operating are expected to apply to extend their operating license. After the signing ceremony in Berlin, Schroeder said that while it was up to every country to design its own energy policy, "naturally we would hope that many follow our example." The pact limits nuclear plants, which provide nearly a third of Germany's electricity, to an average 32 years of operation. That would likely see the most modern plants close around 2021 and see Germany join nations such as Italy and Austria in abandoning nuclear power. Still, some environmentalists say that timetable is far too long while German conservatives argue that abandoning atomic power is a mistake. Power company executives say they haven't given up hope that a future government would scrap the plan. The nuclear shutdown still must be approved by the Cabinet and parliament, where Schroeder's Social Democrats hold the majority along with the environmentalist Greens. Eliminating nuclear power is a pet cause of the Greens, who for years backed protests focused on halting nuclear waste transports, which the pact will end by mid-2005. Police deployed thousands of officers Monday to protect the latest shipment from demonstrators while the environmentalist group Greenpeace placed containers of contaminated soil from reprocessing plants in France and England outside the headquarters of the Social Democrats and Greens. About 30 anti-nuclear activists beat drums and erected a model nuclear reactor that belched orange fumes during the signing ceremony at the new chancellery in Berlin. The leading opposition party, the conservative Christian Democrats, argued that eliminating nuclear energy would force Germany to use dirtier power sources. That could make it more difficult to curb emissions as outlined by the landmark 1997 Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gases. "Abandoning atomic energy is a historic failure," said Ulrich Mueller, a Christian Democrat who is environment minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg state. But Schroeder said the Kyoto agreement meant Germany also had the responsibility to establish environmentally friendly power sources, a stance it will take to a U.N. climate conference next month in the former German capital Bonn. "Germany truly will meet its responsibilities for climate protection," Schroeder pledged. The U.S. administration opposes the Kyoto accord. Monday's signing comes a full year after Schroeder hammered out a preliminary phase-out plan with industry leaders. E.On, the last of the four power companies involved to approve the deal, only did so Sunday. But whether the German nuclear plan would survive a change in government remains open. Some conservatives, who hope to oust Schroeder in parliamentary elections next year, have said they will reverse the policy - a move that industry would welcome. E.On chairman Ulrich Hartmann, speaking after Schroeder at Monday's ceremony, said the signing was "no reason to celebrate for us," arguing that the policy was misguided given limited energy resources and the need to cut emissions of carbon dioxide. "Nothing in life is irreversible," he insisted in an interview published Monday in Die Welt newspaper, though adding that industry would "keep to the agreements with the government as long as it keeps to them." All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 3 Disposition of High-Level Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel: Nat'l Acad Press Catalog: Disposition of High-Level Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel: The Continuing Societal and Technical Challenges Committee on Disposition of High-Level Radioactive Waste Through Geological Isolation, Board on Radioactive Waste Management, National Research Council 212 pages, 6 x 9, 2001. Earth and Life Studies (DELS) Related Titles Press Release _ISBN_ _Binding_ _List Price_ _Web Discount Price_ _Add to Shopping Cart_ 0-309-07317-0 paperback 32.00 25.60 ***** by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 4 More Join Chorus for Nuke Power ABQjournal: _Monday, June 11, 2001 Albuquerque Journal--> John Fleck--> _By John Fleck_ *Journal Staff Writer* Pete Domenici gets a glimmer in his eye when he talks about the possibility that someone might soon begin building the first new U.S. nuclear power plant in more than 20 years. "That's not decades away," the Republican New Mexico senator said in a recent interview. "That's right around the corner." Since the fall of 1997, Domenici has been a lone voice in Washington, enthusiastically talking up the future of nuclear power. Suddenly, he has company. Electricity shortages in California are a reminder that the nation's power consumption is rising faster than supplies, and nuclear power has its first serious presidential and congressional backing in years. When the Bush administration released its national energy plan last month, nuclear power was given a prominent role. Seventeen senators have signed on as co-sponsors of Domenici's "Nuclear Energy Electricity Supply Assurance Act of 2001," a bill aimed at smoothing the way for a resurgence of nuclear power in the United States. Against that backdrop, the industry is talking seriously for the first time in decades about building new nuclear power plants. But while Domenici and others work to smooth the regulatory road, the bottom line for the future of nuclear power in the country might be financial — can a new generation of nuclear power plants be cost-effective? "I think the economics are the most important factor," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who took over last week as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. _Fear and funding_ These are heady times for the scientists and engineers who have toiled for more than two decades on technologies for new nuclear power plants. There were times when it seemed there was little chance their ideas would ever be used. No nuclear power plants were built during the past two decades as the electric power industry turned to other fuels, especially cheap natural gas. While public fears about safety have dogged the industry, the biggest thing standing in the way of nuclear power plants was their cost, said Gary Rochau, a nuclear physicist at Sandia National Laboratories who works on next-generation nuclear power plant technology. "It's a simple matter of economics," Rochau said. "Once they are built, they produce power at a relatively low cost," Bingaman said. According to a 1999 study by the Worldwatch Institute, the last nuclear power plants built in the United States cost an inflation-adjusted $3 billion to $4 billion each. Building natural gas plants to supply a comparable amount of electricity cost $400 million to $600 million. Nuclear engineers have developed designs for a new generation of nuclear power plants they believe will be cheaper and safer than past designs. Their designs include the use of high-temperature gas instead of boiling water to turn heat to electricity, and Rochau noted they incorporate "passive" safety features, such as using gravity for emergency cooling water instead of requiring pumps. The new designs are more efficient, Rochau said, extracting more electricity from their nuclear fuel. "My opinion is that we will see a new nuclear power unit on line in 10 years," he said. But critics say the new enthusiasm is misguided. They raise arguments about nuclear waste disposal and reactor safety. Nuclear power's most practical drawback might be that it remains more expensive than the alternatives, said Edwin Lyman, scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute, an anti-nuclear group in Washington, D.C. _Nuclear crusader_ Pete Domenici sounded like a voice in the Washington wilderness when he began what amounts to a nuclear crusade in the fall of 1997. With his long-standing goal of a balanced federal budget met, the state's senior senator was looking for a new national issue to tackle, and the need for a rethinking of our nation's nuclear policies fit the bill. In a speech at Harvard University in October 1997, Domenici talked about what he saw as irrational fears of radiation and a national discussion of our nuclear future that focused only on risks without considering benefits. "That was, quite frankly, a call to arms," recalled Jim Lake, president of the American Nuclear Society. In the years since, Domenici convened a series of meetings with leaders in government, industry and the U.S. nuclear research community to try to figure out how to revive nuclear power. "What Domenici has done is he's restimulated everybody's thinking about these things," Lake said. This spring, Domenici introduced a bill aimed at helping move nuclear power forward. It would: * Renew a law that limits nuclear power plant operators' liability for accidents. * Authorize spending on research into new power plant technology. * Fund research into new nuclear waste disposal technologies. * Simplify federal regulation of nuclear power plants. At the time Domenici's crusade began, it might have seemed like he was tilting at windmills. The nation's nuclear power plants were aging, and there was little enthusiasm for them in the utility industry. That has changed. Rather than shutting plants down when their licenses expire, utilities are asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to relicense them, extending the plants' lives. "There are already five relicensed," Domenici said. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects operators of another 40 nuclear reactors to apply over the next several years for operating license extensions, said Christopher Grimes, head of the commission's license renewal division. The reason? Economics, according to Grimes. With the plants' construction costs now paid for, utilities believe they can economically continue to run nuclear plants for another 20 years. One factor contributing to the economic renaissance of existing U.S. power plants is increasing productivity. The 103 U.S. nuclear power reactors operating last year were generating power an average of 89 percent of the total possible operating time, according to the NRC, up from 60 percent in 1990. Nuclear energy generates 23 percent of the United States' electricity, according to U.S. Energy Department data. "What has happened to the industry is incredible," Domenici said. _Balance is shifting_ What happens next, though, is unclear. While the economics of operating a nuclear power plant once you've paid for its construction have become attractive, it is still unclear whether the same can be said for a new power plant. Between now and 2020, according to a federal study published last December, 27 percent of the current U.S. nuclear generating capacity will be retired. During that time, according to the study, U.S. electricity needs will grow by 1.8 percent a year, meaning 1,300 new power plants of some sort could be needed in this country — more than one new plant a week. Until recently, said Sandia's Rochau, natural gas-burning power plants, the low-cost darling of the utility industry, seemed to leave little economic opportunity for new nuclear power plants. With rising natural gas prices and new, more efficient designs for nuclear power plants, Rochau believes that balance is shifting. The key, according to Rochau, is a new way to build nuclear power plants. Gone are the days when each plant was a unique design, requiring its own lengthy Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process. New designs on the drawing boards would be smaller and modular, using components built in a factory and assembled on site. Most of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safety reviews for the design would only need to be done once, Rochau explained. "You build plants on a cookie cutter approach, rather than every one being unique," Rochau said. And the most likely home for new plants would be on the site of existing plants, where utility companies have the infrastructure in place to manage them, and also where local communities have become comfortable with nuclear power in their back yards. Lyman, of the Nuclear Control Institute, believes the only way the new plants will be made economically competitive is by doing away with important safety features like the massive concrete containment buildings that surround existing reactors. Without cutting corners like that, Lyman argued, the new generation of nuclear reactors will not be economically competitive. Rochau does not give Lyman's argument much credence. Any new plant designs must meet strict safety standards to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, he said. If they don't, he said, "We'll never get them built." Copyright 2001 Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** 5 Cost to Treat Waste May Doom Industry ABQjournal: _Monday, June 11, 2001 Albuquerque Journal--> John Fleck--> _By John Fleck_ *Journal Staff Writer* Any effort to revive the nuclear power industry in the United States is likely to be bedeviled by the problem of waste. But Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has been a longtime advocate of a new technology aimed at neutralizing much of the waste's radioactivity, making the problem easier to deal with. "Solving the waste problem," Domenici said, "is a technology problem." Critics complain the difficulties posed by nuclear waste will not be so easily solved, noting the danger of the highly radioactive waste remaining after a nuclear power plant has burned its fuel. But, critics say, it might ultimately be economics, not safety and the environment, that dooms new efforts to solve nuclear power's waste problem. The kind of solution Domenici is proposing "fails economically, period," said Ed Lyman of the Nuclear Control Institute. For four decades, nuclear power generation's highly radioactive used fuel has been piling up at reactor sites around the country, awaiting a disposal solution. The federal government would like to stash it permanently at a place called Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But that effort is mired in a scientific and regulatory quagmire, at least 10 years behind schedule and facing an uncertain future. So Domenici and others are advocating revival of an old idea: chemically process the old fuel, removing usable nuclear materials for use in future fuel and reducing the resulting amount of waste. The process has been banned in the United States since the 1970s. The Carter administration decided then that reprocessing posed risks because it encouraged the extraction of plutonium from nuclear waste, and plutonium could be used to make nuclear weapons. Domenici also is a leading advocate of transmutation. It is a technology in vogue among some at Los Alamos National Laboratory that would use a linear accelerator similar to those used by research physicists to actually "transmute" radioactive waste atoms into a less dangerous form. It is a program Domenici has favored for years. The Department of Energy has repeatedly tried to cut funding for transmutation research, only to run up against Domenici's congressional clout. "Domenici kept putting money back in," Lyman said. That could happen again this year. The Bush administration's request for the coming fiscal year for transmutation research was zero, but Domenici appears poised to again try to restore funding for the effort. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., has his doubts about transmutation's viability. "Transmutation is certainly something we need to continue exploring," said Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "I have doubts about how cost-effective a solution transmutation will wind up being." Ultimately, though, for reprocessing to become a part of the U.S. nuclear industry would require significant government subsidy, Lyman argued. On its own, he said, it is not economically viable. Copyright Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** 6 Senate inquiry opposes Lucas Heights reactor plan BY JIM GREEN _A federal senate committee has slammed plans for a new nuclear research reactor in the southern Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights._ The committee's majority report, released on May 23, is is a joint production of the Labor Party and the Democrats. The Democrats also wrote a minority report, taking a more critical line on the reactor project than the Labor Party, while Liberal and National Party senators issued a minority report which restates the government's support for a new reactor. The majority report states bluntly that “no conclusive or compelling case has been established to support the proposed new reactor and that the proposed new reactor should not proceed”. The committee found that “the decision to build a new reactor was taken without a detailed investigation of Australia's present and future scientific and medical needs”. It was not convinced that logistical difficulties constitute a serious obstacle to the importation of radioisotopes, one of the main stated reasons for the new reactor, and also noted the expanding medical and scientific applications of alternative technologies such as cyclotrons. On the foreign policy agenda driving the Coalition government's plan for a new reactor, the committee found that “the justification for the new research reactor solely on national interest grounds is not strong where national interest is defined on purely `security' and non-proliferation grounds”. The committee said the government's argument that a new reactor is required to facilitate nuclear disarmament and the implementation of nuclear safeguards is “tenuous”. The committee went on to say, “The argument for the new research reactor on national interest grounds is more convincing when all areas of nuclear technology are considered, including its role in the region as an educational, research and training centre. The Committee believes, however, that this reason alone is not sufficient to justify the new research reactor. “If the reactor is to go ahead, then the main considerations in establishing the need for a reactor must be its place as a research tool providing a neutron source for Australian researchers and products for industry, the health care system and the potential impacts on the environment.” The committee recommended that before the government proceeds any further with the project it should establish an independent public inquiry into the alleged need for a new nuclear reactor and related issues, such as funding for both medical and scientific research in Australia. The government rejected that recommendation on the same day the senate report was released. Secrecy The senate committee was particularly critical of the Coalition government and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) for their secrecy. It said, “The Committee is highly critical of ANSTO's attitude which seeks to make a parliamentary committee subordinate to the whims of a government agency and prevents that committee from exercising its responsibility to scrutinise the executive. The Committee therefore appreciates the frustration experienced by the Sutherland Shire Council and members of the public who have experienced a similar attitude.” Even the committee's Liberal and National Party senators conceded that point, accepting “that ANSTO could have been more helpful in providing certain less commercially sensitive information to the Committee and could have been more willing to seek a compromise when sensitive material was involved.” The committee recommended that Senator Nick Minchin, the minister for industry, science and resources, be censured for his refusal to comply with an order of the senate. The senate had unsuccessfully sought from Minchin various documents relating to the project, including the reactor contract between ANSTO and the Argentinean company Invap, and the spent fuel reprocessing contract between ANSTO and the French company Cogema. The committee expressed numerous concerns about the failure of ANSTO and the federal government to put in place plans to manage radioactive wastes arising either from the existing HIFAR reactor at Lucas Heights or from the planned new reactor. Arrangements for spent fuel are particularly tenuous. ANSTO has a contract with Cogema to reprocess spent fuel from the HIFAR reactor, and the contract also has provisions covering spent fuel from a new reactor. However, Cogema's medium- to long-term future cannot be assured, given mounting political pressure to end reprocessing in Europe. In March, a French court prohibited the unloading of a shipment of ANSTO's spent fuel at a French port. While the decision was overturned on appeal, and the spent fuel was transferred to Cogema's plant at La Hague, further court action is underway. Greenpeace France is awaiting the judgement of a French court as to whether Cogema's storage of spent fuel from ANSTO is legal under the provisions of the 1991 Waste Management Act, which seeks to prevent La Hague being used as a de facto waste storage site. ANSTO and the federal government hope that reprocessing wastes will not be returned to Australia for at least 10-15 years. Regardless of the outcome of the current court case, Cogema does not yet have the licences required to reprocess spent fuel from ANSTO. For the new reactor, ANSTO plans to use a uranium-molybdenum fuel type, which is still under development. If the reactor project proceeds and the uranium-molybdenum fuel type is not yet available, ANSTO plans to use a uranium-silicide fuel as an interim measure. It is far from certain that Cogema could or would reprocess silicide spent fuel. The ANSTO-Cogema contract specifically precludes reprocessing of silicide spent fuel, although ANSTO claims to have subsequently obtained an in-principle agreement from Cogema to reprocess silicide spent fuel. A back-up plan for silicide spent fuel — sending it to Argentina for “processing” — is still more tenuous. Such a move would certainly generate a political controversy and, most likely, legal challenges, in Argentina. One basis for a legal challenge would be Argentina's constitution, which prohibits the importation of radioactive waste — unsurprisingly, ANSTO's claim that spent fuel is not radioactive waste is not universally accepted. Moreover, Invap has admitted that there are no facilities to process spent fuel in Argentina, despite ANSTO's statement in October 2000 that “Invap has satisfied ANSTO that they already have the basic facilities and technology that would be required should processing by Invap be needed”. In fact, Invap has no processing facilities, while the Argentinean nuclear agency CNEA only has partly constructed, partly operational experimental processing facilities at the Ezeiza Atomic Center. Because of the uncertainties surrounding spent fuel, the senate committee recommended that ANSTO prepare and fully cost a contingency plan for spent fuel conditioning and disposal within Australia, fully describing the technologies which would be used. Even if ANSTO is able to send spent fuel overseas for reprocessing, the resulting wastes will be returned to Australia and there is no store to receive this material. The government is stalling on this issue, and does not plan to announce a site for a store for long-lived intermediate-level wastes, including reprocessing wastes, until late 2002 at the earliest. Labor obfuscation Although the Labor Party endorsed the majority report of the senate committee, it has not committed to stopping the reactor project if it wins the federal election later this year. Nor does the senate report commit the Labor Party to establishing an independent public inquiry into the project if it wins government. Labor's public statements on the reactor have been contradictory. Environment spokesperson Nick Bolkus said in a March 16, 2001 media release, “Labor today stepped up its calls on the Government to abandon plans for a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights”. In January 2001, Bolkus sent a letter to the People Against a Nuclear Reactor campaign group in which he says, “A Labor Government will subject the contract to the closest scrutiny with a view to attempting to stop the construction of a new nuclear reactor”. Industry spokesperson Carmen Lawrence said in a January 22, 2001 media release that the “the federal opposition repeats its calls on the government to scrap plans for the construction of a $326 million new reactor at Lucas Heights” and recommended investing instead in “innovative technologies for a cleaner, greener future”. On the other hand, Labor was embarrassed by a report in the March 28 *Sydney Morning Herald* which said that Labor science spokesperson Martyn Evans had admitted telling the Argentinean ambassador that Labor had “never been in the business of simply cancelling contracts”. In 1999, federal Labor MPs endorsed a report of the federal parliament's Public Works Committee which concluded that “a need existed to replace HIFAR with a modern reactor”. In 1998, a letter from then Labor deputy leader Gareth Evans to ANSTO was released in which Evans said that Labor's stated policy of opposing the construction of a reactor at Lucas Heights (but not necessarily elsewhere) was due to “the realities of politics in an election year, and in particular our need to win [the federal seat of] Hughes”. Bolkus said in the March 17, 2001 *Sydney Morning Herald*, “We [a Labor government] will closely scrutinise the contract and the legal commitments and make an economic assessment ... but obviously we'll be looking ... to see how to get the Australian people out of it. ... If we found we have to pay $200 million in damages [to Invap] or something, it's a pretty hard decision.” Cancelling the reactor contract would require payment to Invap and its sub-contractors for work already carried out plus penalties for breaking the contract — the total would probably be between $50-70 million. If elected, Labor will also assess the political costs of pursuing or cancelling the reactor project. The next government will also have to deal with the growing stockpile of spent fuel and other radioactive wastes — a problem which will be far more difficult to resolve if a new reactor is built. [The senate report can be downloaded at .] http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/lucasheights_ctte"><http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/lucasheights_ctte> ***************************************************************** 7 Letter: Do as Europe does: Recycle spent nuke fuel Today: June 11, 2001 at 10:04:26 PDT So the nuclear industry is calling for 50 new reactors over the next 20 years. European reactors are designed to use recycled nuclear fuel. Recycled nuclear fuel can be used for 12 to 15 years. In the United States, nuclear fuel is used for 3 to 4 years. Perhaps the solution to the spent-fuel problem is to build the 20 new plants according to the European design. Then the 70,000 tons of spent fuel from U.S. reactors that are intended to be buried in Yucca Mountain can be recycled. There were three nuclear facilities in the United States in the '70s that were scheduled to recycle spent fuel, so we already possess the capability to recycle. _RON BOURGOIN_, Rocky Mount, N.C. Editor's note: The writer was the consultant to the town of Rolesville in Wake County, N.C., in 1984 when a site in that area was being considered by the Department of Energy as a potential high-level radioactive waste repository. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Environmentalists back Nevada's fight against nuke waste Today: June 11, 2001 at 10:13:05 PDT _By Mary Manning _ LAS VEGAS SUN Environmental activists from across the country told Nevada officials Friday in Las Vegas that they support the state's fight against a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. They added that the project may have been successfully delayed, but is long from dead. Nevada's congressional delegation has stopped temporary nuclear waste storage and stalled permanent burial of 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for more than 14 years, national grassroots representatives said. In 1987 Yucca Mountain was designated in federal law as the only site to be studied as a high-level nuclear waste repository. A repository was originally supposed to open by 1998, but now will not open before 2010. Since the Democrats gained control of the Senate last week, leaders have said legislation to further the Yucca Mountain Project will not be considered this year. The environmentalists also told the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, meeting at Las Vegas City Hall, that new federal Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for how much radioactivity can escape from a proposed repository are encouraging, but not final. The EPA standard would allow an average farmer 11 miles from the repository to be exposed to 15 millirems a year of radiation from Yucca Mountain, with a maximum of 4 millirems coming through the ground water. An average chest X-ray is 5 millirems. That was lower than the limits suggested by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which would license the repository. The NRC advocated exposure of 25 millirems a year, with no separate ground water limit. NRC officials have said they will adopt the EPA standard when it becomes final next month. "I was very pleased with the EPA regulations," said former governor and two-term U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, a vehement opponent of a Yucca Mountain repository, who was attending his first meeting as a commission member. However, a clause tacked onto the law that can remove one or the other standard could be dangerous, he warned. The language, called a severability clause, was put into the EPA standards during a Bush administration review of the radiation exposure limits, agency officials said. "Severability means they can pick and choose what remains in the standard," Bryan, 63, said. "The severability clause cuts both ways." Bob Loux, executive director of the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects, agreed with Bryan. The nuclear industry filed two lawsuits within hours of EPA releasing the standards on Wednesday, Loux said. "That might give them another shot at going back to Congress and getting the standards set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," he said. Grassroots activists said they can help stop the government from dumping nuclear waste in Nevada by raising national opposition to the plan. "Yucca Mountain is flawed, that is the message to get out across the country," Scott Denman, executive director of the Safe Energy Communication Council, said. The council is a national energy policy group formed in 1980 to counteract "propaganda" from the Nuclear Energy Council, the former lobbying arm of the nuclear industry. "You are not alone," Denman told Nevadans. "You share the same values of most Americans. A nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is not inevitable." Representatives from Massachusetts, Georgia, Utah and Washington, D.C., activist groups echoed that sentiment. Congressional action on Yucca Mountain could be as far away as 2003, after the next elections, Don Hancock, director of the Southwest Research and Information Center of Albuquerque, N.M., said. No matter how much the public opposes a Yucca repository, it will take an act of Congress to stop it, Hancock said. "Yucca Mountain is still in the law," Hancock said. "Until it is removed by Congress from the law, it could return as a solution after the congressional elections in 2002 or after the presidential election in 2004." Glenn Carroll of Atlanta, who has fought nuclear utilities from expanding in the South for years, said it is time for a national dialogue on storing radioactive wastes, mainly spent fuel pellets, on site until a sound scientific solution is offered to handle the nuclear materials. "But first, let's stop putting $1 million a day into the rat hole at Yucca Mountain," Carroll said. Some Department of Energy laboratories have started research into methods to transform spent nuclear fuel into something less radioactive and with less bulk. UNLV received $3 million this year to initiate studies on advanced accelerators, a method that would allow transforming the high-level nuclear waste near the 103 existing reactors around the nation. The accelerators would not eliminate a need for a repository, but it would have to store materials for about 300 years, instead of 10,000 years. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 9 Russia's Chief Military Environmentalist On Spent Nuclear Fuel Imports Pravda.RU Jun, 08 2001 Colonel-General Boris Alexeev, chief of the environmental safety service of the Russian armed forces, positively assessed the adoption by the State Duma (Russia's lower chamber of parliament) of the federal law on the import of nuclear waste to Russia for subsequent processing. General Alexeev said at a news briefing that Russia has advanced technologies and equipment for recycling radioactive fuel. These technologies and equipment are in need of permanent improvement but, said the general, "we don't have the money for it. This money will have to be earned from the processing" of spent nuclear fuel. Our interviewee stressed that "it is not about the burial, but about the processing of costly and very valuable primary material, which can later be used as fuel for nuclear power stations." Simultaneously, General Alexeyev noted that he is not voicing the opinion of top officers at the Defense Ministry on this matter, but his "personal opinion". ***************************************************************** 10 Crocodiles flourish at FPL nuke plant **Palm Beach Post Staff Reports** Monday, June 11, 2001 Crocodile Dundee would have a field day at FPL's Turkey Point nuclear plant in Homestead, which is home to 50 adult crocodiles and their babies. The crocodiles don't seem to mind sharing their home in the canals around the plant with power workers, maybe that's because Florida Power &Light Co. researchers have helped foster growth of the endangered species. FPL, a subsidiary of Juno Beach-based FPL Group, began a crocodile research and monitoring program in the 1970s. In recognition of its work on crocodile habitat and other Everglades-related restoration, FPL has received the Edison Electric Institute's National Land Management Award for 2001. The award, announced May 23, also went to the Richmond, Va.-based Dominion power company. FPL manages 25,000 acres surrounding the Turkey Point site, which contains fresh and estuarine wetlands and subtropical hardwood forests. The land is home to 29 state- and 17 U.S.- protected animal species. _-- Deborah Circelli_ ***************************************************************** 11 Government, Utilities to Sign Nuclear Energy Pact F.A.Z. - English Version [Frankfurter Allgemeine] *By Reiner Burger* FRANKFURT. The "nuclear consensus" -- an agreement between the German government and utility companies to phase out nuclear energy -- is due to be signed in the chancellor's office on Monday evening, and provides more than just a legal framework for the agreed remaining operating period for nuclear power stations. The government hopes the agreement will allow it to reduce the number of Castor transports of spent nuclear rods and eventually end them completely. Reprocessing the waste in facilities at Sellafield, England and at La Hague in France is to stop by 2005. But the agreement includes no comprehensive plan for nuclear waste disposal, instead shifting the storage of spent fuel rods from three central temporary depots at Ahaus, Gorleben and Greifswald to temporary depots throughout Germany and five interim depots at power stations, which will store waste only until it can be moved to the temporary depots. Though nuclear power legislation obliges federal authorities to set up permanent radioactive material storage depots, the obligation has yet to be met. In a declaration attached to the consensus, the coalition government of Social Democrats and Alliance 90_The Greens commits itself "to taking the measures required, regardless of the phaseout of nuclear energy, to ensure that permanent storage facilities for radioactive waste are made available in good time." But there is no word on when the first such facility will be open, partly because the government decided, as part of the consensus, to suspend further feasibility studies on Gorleben, the depot that could most quickly be made available as a permanent storage site. The consensus states that this moratorium does not mean "giving up Gorleben as the site of a final storage depot," but Lower Saxony Premier Sigmar Gabriel says Chancellor Gerhard Schröder voiced "considerable doubt" over the suitability of the Gorleben salt caverns in an April letter to his state government. Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin has said he believes the search for permanent facilities must begin anew. He has appointed a group of scientists to, rather than find the site itself, identify "the criteria for appropriate siting of a final nuclear storage facility." The criteria will not be presented until September. The search for a site will start in 2005, says Bruno Thomauske, head of a project group at the Federal Radiation Protection Agency in Salzgitter on the licensing of temporary and interim storage. He also serves on Mr. Trittin's final storage committee. The search for suitable sites is expected to take years. Judging from the time approval took for the Gorleben site, the government plan to open a permanent storage site by 2030 looks unrealistic. The government, meanwhile, is diverting political attention to a "fair distribution" of Castor transports among the states, where power stations have applied for 13 temporary and five interim storage depots. The Salzgitter agency has to date approved one interim storage plant in Neckarwestheim. Here, as in the interim storage facilities for which applications have been filed at the nuclear power stations in Philippsburg, Krümmel, Brunsbüttel and Biblis, the aim is to store Castor containers for at most five years until the temporary storage sites are completed. An agency spokesman says the agency hopes to grant all license approvals by 2002 so that temporary facilities able to store 1,702 Castor containers holding up to 18,550 tons of fuel rods could open by 2005. Initial public consultations at the various sites, such as Hesse's Biblis, have already taken place. The rest are due to be completed by year's end. It remains to be determined when storage at temporary depots will end. Fears that temporary storage facilities could be turned into permanent sites are expressed equally by nuclear energy opponents and the governments of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse, all of which oppose the phaseout of nuclear energy. Jun. 10, 2001 © Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2000 All ***************************************************************** 12 German Nuclear Shutdown Protested _ June 11 8:34 AM ET_ *By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press Writer * BERLIN (AP) - Supporters and opponents of nuclear power on Monday protested a deal being signed by the German government and utilities to shut down the country's 19 nuclear power plants. Hailed by its backers as a historic shift of energy policy in Europe's biggest economy, the deal could take decades to carry out. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and executives of four power companies were to sign the deal in Berlin later Monday. The government and utilities approved the nuclear phaseout a year ago, but needed time to negotiate details of the legislation to be submitted to parliament. The last of the power companies, E.On, approved the deal Sunday. Anti-nuclear activists oppose the deal, which sets no fixed date for the last plant to close, because they want a quicker shut down. Pro-nuclear politicians do no want Germany to abandon nuclear power and warn that it could impede efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases in line with the international pact signed in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, by forcing Germany to switch to other fuels, such as oil. Nuclear plants provide almost a third of German electricity. The government has said it plans to promote other energy sources, including wind power. The accord says the nuclear plants should have a standard life span of 32 years, which would see Germany's newest nuclear plant shutting down in 2021. The first of the plants, at Stade in northern Germany, is to close in 2003. However, the accord stipulates that the transport of nuclear fuel and waste - which has attracted massive protests from Germany's anti-nuclear lobby - should end in mid-2005. The environmental group Greenpeace placed containers filled with contaminated soil from reprocessing plants in France and England outside the headquarters of the Social Democrats and Greens, the two parties in Germany's governing coalition. ``The government pretends it has resolved the end of nuclear energy once and for all,'' said the organization's energy expert, Susanne Ochse. ``Anyone who knows the deal knows that is complete nonsense.'' Utilities, in turn, have made plain that they would look to future governments to stop the phaseout. E.On chairman Ulrich Hartmann insisted that ``nothing in life is irreversible.'' ``I'm sure that nuclear energy will still play an important role in the future,'' he said in an interview with the daily Die Welt. - | Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 ADAMS: Items of Interest - Monday, June 11, 2001 State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects ADAMS - Items of Interest Recent Released Documents Added - Monday, June 11, 2001 These documents and others may be retrieved at the NRC PERR web site ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item ID: 011590239 Accession Number: ML011560649 Date Added: 6/8/01 2:11:18 PM Title: 05/18/01 PUBLIC MEETING SUIMMARY - REQUEST TO AMEND EASTERN ISOTOPES, INC LICENSE N O, 45-25221-01MD. Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-II/DNMS/MLIB1 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590242 Accession Number: ML011580312 Date Added: 6/8/01 2:11:51 PM Title: 05/24/01 meeting with South Carolina Electric and Gas Company regarding NRC Reactor Oversight Process Annual Assessment of Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station and with State and Local Governrnent Officials to discuss regulatory rule of the NRC Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-II/DRP/RPB5 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590151 Accession Number: ML011520503 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:35:28 AM Title: 05/31/01 - Ltr L Hendricks, Nuclear Energy Institute, Standard Format and Content for Technical Specifications for 10 CFR Part 72 Cask Certificates of Compliance w/ Encl 2- Basis for Technical Specification Controlled Contents Parameters Author Affiliation: NRC/NMSS/SFPO Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590256 Accession Number: ML011580500 Date Added: 6/8/01 3:11:35 PM Title: 05/31/01 meeting with Virginia Electric and Power Company regarding NRC Reactor Oversight Process Annual Assessment of Surry Power Station and with State and Local Government Officials regarding the role of the NRC and role of Surry resident inspector Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-II/DRP/RPB5 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590262 Accession Number: ML011590514 Date Added: 6/8/01 3:12:06 PM Title: 06/20/2001 EOC meeting notification letter to special local addressees Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV/RSLO Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590247 Accession Number: ML011590425 Date Added: 6/8/01 2:12:22 PM Title: 06/21/2001 mtg. with TXU Electric re: EOC performance assessment of Comanche Peak Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV/DRP/A Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590274 Accession Number: ML011590548 Date Added: 6/8/01 5:12:34 PM Title: 06/26/01 Meeting with Constellation Nuclear, Re Meeting between Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Inc. management and the NRC staff to discuss the end-of-cycle plant performance assessment, as documented via letter dated May 31, 2001. Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-I/DRP/PB1 Document/Report Number: 01-021 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590222 Accession Number: ML011590030 Date Added: 6/8/01 12:13:30 PM Title: 06/26/2001 Meeting between Entergy Nuclear Generating Company management and the NRC staff to discuss the plant performance assessment resulting from the initial implementation of the Reactor Oversight Process, as described in the Annual Assessment Lette Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-I/DRP/PB6 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590275 Accession Number: ML011590584 Date Added: 6/8/01 5:12:37 PM Title: 06/27/2001 Meeting between AmerGen Energy management and the NRC staff to discuss the end of cycle plant performance assessment, as documented via letter dated May 30, 2001. Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-I/DRP/PB7 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590272 Accession Number: ML011590025 Date Added: 6/8/01 5:12:27 PM Title: 06/27/2001 meeting with Dominion, Inc., on license renewal for North Anna & Surry Nuclear Stations to provide the NRC staff with a review of the license renewal applications and to clarify the organization of the license renewal applications. Author Affiliation: NRC/NRR/DRIP/RLSB Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590241 Accession Number: ML011580016 Date Added: 6/8/01 2:11:39 PM Title: 07/10/01 meeting with Tennessee Valley Authoritiy to discuss NRC Reactor Oversight Process Annual Assessment for Sequoyah facility and with State and Local Government Officials to discuss the regulatory role of the NRC Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-II/DRP/RPB6 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590273 Accession Number: ML011590543 Date Added: 6/8/01 5:12:31 PM Title: 07/11/2001 Meeting between FirstEnergy management and the NRC staff to discuss the end-of-cycle plant performance assessment, as documented via letter dated May 30, 2001. Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-I/DRP/PB7 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590240 Accession Number: ML011580008 Date Added: 6/8/01 2:11:29 PM Title: 07/17/01 meeting with Watts Bar to discuss the NRC Reactor Oversight Process Anniual Assessment of Facility and with State and Local Government Officials to discuss regulatory role of the NRC and the role of the Watts Bar resident inspector Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-II Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590260 Accession Number: ML011570602 Date Added: 6/8/01 3:11:54 PM Title: 6/20/2001; Meeting with FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company and Nuclear Management Company, LLC, and their Consultants Regarding Containment Analysis Methodology Author Affiliation: NRC/NRR/DLPM Document/Report Number: 05000334, 05000412 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590155 Accession Number: ML011580533 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:35:45 AM Title: 6/22/2001 Meeting with Nuclear Fuel Services/NRC to Discuss North Site Decommissioning Plan and Other Licensing Actions Author Affiliation: NRC/NMSS/FCSS/SPB Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590139 Accession Number: ML011520317 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:32:48 AM Title: Dominion Generation Nuclear Analysis and Fuel. Author Affiliation: Dominion Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590167 Accession Number: ML011510108 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:37:05 AM Title: Draft Proposed Major Revision to 10 CFR Part 71, "Packing and Transportation of Radioactive Material" Author Affiliation: NRC/ACNW Document/Report Number: R-0169 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590109 Accession Number: ML011560698 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:29:30 AM Title: Meeting with Exelon Regarding Dresden Unit 2/3 Reactor Building Crane Issues Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-III Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590087 Accession Number: ML011520065 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:27:52 AM Title: Notification of Upcoming Meeting 06/07/2001 Re End-of-Cycle Assessment at South Texas Project for FEMA/Gary Jones. Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV/ORA/RSLO Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590088 Accession Number: ML011520156 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:27:57 AM Title: Notification of Upcoming Meeting 6/7/2001 End-of-Cycle Assessment at STP for Mayor, City of Palacios Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590089 Accession Number: ML011520201 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:28:02 AM Title: Notification of Upcoming Meeting 6/7/2001 End-of-Cycle Assessment at STP for Roger Mulder Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590090 Accession Number: ML011520249 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:28:07 AM Title: Notification of Upcoming Meeting 6/7/2001 End-of-Cycle Assessment at STP for the Judge of Matagorda County Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590091 Accession Number: ML011520255 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:28:11 AM Title: Notification of Upcoming Meeting 6/7/2001 End-of-Cycle Assessment at STP for the Mayor of the City of Bay City, TX. Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590092 Accession Number: ML011520117 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:28:16 AM Title: Notification of Upcoming Meeting 6/7/2001 regarding the End-of-Cycle Assessment at STP for Sheriff James Mitchell Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-IV/ORA/RSLO Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590111 Accession Number: ML011560049 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:29:42 AM Title: NRC Inspection 03031046/2000-002, NRC Office of Investigations (OI) Report 1-2000-021, and Notice of Violation Author Affiliation: NRC/RGN-I/DNMS/NMSB1 Document/Report Number: IR-00-002 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590225 Accession Number: ML011590037 Date Added: 6/8/01 12:13:50 PM Title: Press Release-I-01-029: NRC To Meet With North Atlantic Energy Service Corporation To Discuss Performance At Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant Author Affiliation: NRC/OPA:RGN-I/FO Document/Report Number: Press Release-I-01-029 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590226 Accession Number: ML011590068 Date Added: 6/8/01 12:13:54 PM Title: Press Release-IV-01-023: NRC To Meet With South Texas Project To Discuss Safety Performance At STP Nuclear Power Plant Author Affiliation: NRC/OPA:RGN-IV/FO Document/Report Number: Press Release-IV-01-023 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590248 Accession Number: ML011590312 Date Added: 6/8/01 3:11:02 PM Title: Press Release-IV-01-024: NRC To Meet With Wolf Creek To Discuss Safety Performance At Nuclear Power Plant Author Affiliation: NRC/OPA:RGN-IV/FO Document/Report Number: Press Release-IV-01-024 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590189 Accession Number: ML011510271 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:40:35 AM Title: Staff Requirements Memorandum Dated April 11. 2001, on the March 22, 2001, Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste (ACNW) Briefing of the Commission Author Affiliation: NRC/ACNW Document/Report Number: R-0171 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 011590190 Accession Number: ML011510343 Date Added: 6/8/01 9:40:38 AM Title: Summary Report - 126th ACNW Meeting, 05/15-16/01 Author Affiliation: NRC/ACNW Document/Report Number: ACNWS-0121 ***************************************************************** 14 Germany, US at nuclear poles JUNE 11, 2001 + As President Bush leaves for Europe today, Berlin signs plan to shut nuclear plants within 25 years. _By Lucian Kim _ Special to The Christian Science Monitor _BERLIN _ As President Bush prepares to leave today on a six-day trip to Europe - his first extended visit - many Europeans are looking for explanations of why he rejected the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. For Germany - not one of Mr. Bush's scheduled stops - his declaration last month of plans to promote new nuclear power plants, part of a broader policy on meeting America's future energy needs, only added to the astonishment. In this country, which views itself as a leader in the global debate on both climate change and nuclear energy, nuclear power is considered an outdated 20th-century technology. Today, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and representatives of the country's leading utilities are expected to sign a carefully hammered-out agreement that aims to phase out the use of nuclear energy within the next 25 years by shutting down the country's 19 atomic power plants. While Bush argues that greenhouse-gas reduction measures and economic growth are contradictory - and nuclear power is necessary to meet increased US energy demands - Germany is trying to prove the opposite. "For one, Germany is the first really big industrial country that's giving up nuclear power, and secondly, it's the country with the most ambitious climate-protection program," says Jörg Haas, an environment specialist with the Berlin-based Heinrich Böll Foundation, a group close to the German Greens party. "I think we can be proud that we are showing that this works." The government's energy strategy seeks to compensate for the loss of atomic power - which currently accounts for 30 percent of domestic electricity production (compared with 19 percent in the US) - through better conservation and new technologies, particularly those that use renewable-energy sources and increase efficiency. _Source:_ Internatinoal Energy Agency STAFF Reached after roundtable talks with the country's nuclear industry, the German agreement sets the framework for later amendments to Germany's atomic-energy laws. It foresees imposing a 32-year lifespan on nuclear power stations, which means that Germany's newest reactor would close as early as 2021. At the same time, the unpopular transport of nuclear waste would be drastically reduced, reprocessing of spent fuel abroad would end, and plant operators would have to increase their liability coverage tenfold, to $2.3 billion, until the last reactor goes offline. Putting a "comprehensive and irreversible" end to nuclear power is a cornerstone of Chancellor Schröder's center-left coalition, especially for the junior-partner Greens. Born out of the environmental movement two decades ago, the Greens originally attacked atomic power not only out of safety concerns, but because they viewed big utility companies as a threat to democracy. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was instrumental in shaping public opinion here. Polls consistently have shown that a large majority of Germans favor an end to nuclear power. Still, Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin, himself once a shaggy-haired radical, has had to make compromises with the nuclear industry that disappointed hardcore environmentalists. Television images of 12,000 demonstrators - and heavily-equipped police - went around the world in March, when nuclear waste rolled through northern Germany for the first time in four years. "I think that the Greens should be clear that the battle isn't over with this 'atomic consensus,' " says Mr. Haas. On the other side, while Germany's utilities officially have agreed to quit the nuclear-power business, the Bush administration's renewed interest appears to have encouraged plant operators. In a radio interview a week ago, Gert Maichel, president of the pro-nuclear Atomic Forum, suggested a future government could reverse the agreement. "Every law can be changed one day," adds Christian Wilson, spokesman of the Atomic Forum in Berlin. "That's what Maichel meant. In the US, atomic energy is being reassessed. In France, nuclear power is relied on heavily." Critics have charged that a "nuclear-free" Germany may simply end up importing reactor-generated electricity from neighbors such as France. Others suggest that German utilities agreed to shut down their atomic power stations because they would not have survived anyway in the European market. "The liberalized electricity market doesn't allow for the longterm planning necessary for the enormously high capital investments of nuclear energy," says Haas. He says many utilities are moving toward small power stations that can react quickly to market fluctuations. The German zeitgeist is not on the nuclear industry's side. In light of protests against a controversial new nuclear plant in the neighboring Czech Republic, the German utility giant E.ON recently announced its intention to terminate a contract for Czech electricity. Consumers here already have the option of choosing whether the current from their wall sockets is produced by renewable or traditional energy sources. Some experts are drawing up plans to "label" electricity. To cover domestic-energy needs for the short and medium term, the German government is promoting new technologies with conservation and the expansion of cogeneration, a technique that involves turning waste heat from natural-gas-driven power plants into useable energy. "I'd say not to focus the question exclusively on the replacement of [nuclear] plants, but to see it in connection with the entire energy policy in Germany, which is also concerned with climate protection," says Manfred Fischedick, an expert on future energy sources at the Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy in Wuppertal. In the longer term, Berlin has set ambitious goals to boost energy production from renewable sources. The government wants this sector to account for 10 percent of total energy production by 2010 - and 50 percent by 2050. An unpopular "eco-tax" is meant to encourage conservation and investment in alternative energy by making fossil fuels expensive. Last year, the government passed a law on renewable energy, which, for a time, fixes the price of electricity from alternative energy sources such as wind, water, and the sun. Environmentalists have argued that nuclear power has long benefited from state subsidies, and that if the industry were required to insure itself in full against a major accident, atomic energy would become unprofitable. Environmentalists also maintain that fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, directly and indirectly, by governments around the world. If there's the political will, says Mr. Fischedick, expanding renewable-energy sources is feasible, but Germany still would have to rely on imports. In 35 to 40 years, he envisions Europe's grid of "eco-electricity" stretching from hydroelectric plants in Scandinavia to solar farms on the Mediterranean. [bullet] For further information: + Phasing out nuclear powerGerman Embassy (UK) + Germany: Plan To End Nuclear Power Raises Some QuestionsRadio Free Europe (June 2000) Please Note: The Monitor does not endorse the sites behind these links. We offer them for your additional research. . Copyright 2001 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights ***************************************************************** 15 Nuclear power station’s winning formula: Atom+TM=results_ The Indian Express: Top Stories June 11, 2001 D N Moorthy_ _Kakrapar, June 10:_ Kakrapar Atomic Power Station (KAPS) in Gujarat boasts of being one of the more efficiently run units of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). It recorded the highest power generation among all the NPCIL units for three consecutive financial years — and the longest accident-free period of 280 days. Both KAPS 1 & II crossed the generation targets for all the months of the financial year 2000-2001. Above all, the station was absolutely free from labour trouble and not a single man day was lost. So what is the secret that sets it out from the rest of the power stations run by the NPCIL? Efficient human resource management certainly, but both Station Director R Bhiksham and Chief Superintendent G Nageswara Rao are unanimous in their claim that ‘religion’ had a significant part to play in the achievements recorded by the station. Nuclear establishments the world over are facing growing opposition for fear of a possible meltdown in the core of the reactor setting off an uncontrolled chain reaction. Stress-free working conditions are key to the safe and efficient running of a nuclear power station. As an engineer put it, ‘‘We break the atom to harness the energy and the attendant temperature to produce steam to run the turbines. This entails considerable stress to the workers involved, particularly in high radioactive areas. So we decided to take steps to lower stress levels by harnessing the energy of the mind.’’ So ‘meditation’ is the preferred term. Various organisations are officially invited to conduct meditation courses and offer religious discourses. The Prajapita Brahmakumaris group, the TM (transcendental meditation) group and an organisation called Vipassana regularly interact with workers and the management. In fact, the station has officially allotted the premises of what was once a school for these activities. For example, Vipassana meditation involves 10 days of rigorous living under the direction of the course conductor. The participants start at 4 am and retire at 9.30 at night. The protagonists of the meditation course claim that it is an ancient meditation technique re-discovered by Gautam Buddha. It was introduced in India by an immigrant from Myanmar of Indian origin, S N Goenka. When asked how the workers could afford to stay for 10 days without work, Bhiksham said when the workers take their first course, the period is treated as duty. When a particular worker wants to repeat the regimen for attaining more peace, he has to take leave. Nearly 45 per cent of the total workforce of 1,217 has been covered by the meditation programme. Bhiksham himself, and almost all the leading engineers, administrators and engineers have undergone the course and the management encourages the participation of its workers in the programmes. Apart from Vipassana, the Brahmakumaris and TM culture are also popular among the workers. Many attend the programmes of all the three groups. Indian Express Newspapers ***************************************************************** 16 Belarus children visit Upstate [charlotte.com] June 11, 2001 After Chernobyl Belarus children visit Upstate _*Church gives youngstersa break from their contaminated homeland*_ *Associated Press * _GREENVILLE_ -- They live within 100 miles of the site of a 1986 accident that covered the land with deadly radiation, but the 16 Belarussians can forget about the Chernobyl nuclear plant this summer and enjoy a six-week respite from the contaminated environment. Members of the North Hills Community Church have invited the group of girls and two translators to experience life in the Upstate with nine host families through the North Carolina-based American-Belarussian Relief Organization. It's also a chance for medical screenings, dental visits, eye checks and dermatology exams. Shortly after their arrival in Greenville, the girls, ages 7 to 15, spent a morning at the Pediatric Clinics of the Greenville Hospital System's Children's Hospital, where they received breakfast, gift bags and free screenings. Ten years ago, America began welcoming children from Belarus, a former Soviet Union nation that received 70 percent of the radiation damage just north of Chernobyl's home in the Ukraine. The radiation continues to manifest itself as thyroid disease, thyroid cancer, leukemia, birth defects and vitamin deficiencies among its children. One host dad, Charlie Gills, has visited some of their homes in Belarus. Although they don't talk much about the nuclear accident, any of them can immediately point you to Chernobyl, he said. Gills and his wife, Susan, have kept children three previous summers, and this year, turned it into a project for their entire church. Members are holding cookouts, offering free haircuts and gathering consignment-shop outfits for the girls. One member made a quilt for each. Others in the community have jumped in as well. When Cindy Driskill arrived home with her two visiting children, she found two giant gift bags on her doorstep, a surprise from a friend. "What they liked most was two little baby dolls," Driskill said. "They clutched those baby dolls and slept with them, like that was just their prized possession." But the visitors are also very aware of those they left behind. One 12-year-old came with all her garments in a little plastic bag. "But when we took her to the church to pick out clothes, instead of picking out something for herself, she picked out something for her little sister," said her host mom, Sheri Metz. ***************************************************************** 17 Safety of nuclear power takes center stage at meeting here JS Online: By LEE HAWKINS JR. of the Journal Sentinel staff *Last Updated: June 10, 2001* A group of international experts on nuclear power plants will meet in Milwaukee next week as part of an annual conference to discuss safety issues and the future of nuclear power. The American Nuclear Society, an international educational organization dedicated to nuclear science and technology, will hold its annual meeting June 17-21 at the Midwest Express Center. The event is expected to attract nuclear advocates from as far away as Japan and Germany, said Mike Sellman, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Management Co., a Hudson-based organization that oversees operation of several of the region's nuclear power plants, including Wisconsin's Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant and the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant. The conference attendees will include U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member Jeffrey Marifield and top officials from the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan. The conference's theme is "Safety Culture and its Relationship to Economic Value in a Competitive Market." "We will be gathering in Milwaukee to discuss the latest advancements in nuclear technology," Sellman said. "The fundamental basis for the operation of nuclear plants in the country is safety, safety, safety." The conference comes as nuclear advocates across the U.S. push for a renewed effort to build nuclear facilities in the country. The new attention given to nuclear power comes as the nation faces increasingly frequent energy problems, including power shortages in California, and as wholesale prices for natural gas and coal soar. Despite the challenge of finding a storage site for thousands of tons of spent radioactive fuel produced by nuclear plants, advocates say nuclear power has many advantages, including the lack of greenhouse gas emissions and new technologies that have brought greater efficiencies to nuclear power. Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on June 11, 2001. © Copyright 2001, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. All ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Scientist defends use of dead babies The Taipei Times Online: 2001-06-11 NECESSARY EVIL: The former leader of a project that used the corpses of babies, including Taiwanese, has defended his work, saying it greatly benefited mankind AFP, HONG KONG The former head of a top-secret US project which used the corpses of babies in Cold War nuclear experiments has defended his work as a benefit to mankind, a news report said yesterday. In an interview with Hong Kong's *Sunday Morning Post*, Lawrence Kulp, acknowledged Project Sunshine used bone samples of cremated babies from around the world between 1955 and 1963 to test nuclear fall-out. "What's unethical about chemically analyzing ash? There was a huge benefit for mankind," he was quoted as saying. A furore erupted last week after Britain's *The Observer* newspaper cited declassified US documents as showing around 6,000 corpses of babies from hospitals in Hong Kong, Australia, Britain, Canada and South America were shipped to the US for the experiments. Officials have acknowledged that relatives did not always give their permission for the dead babies to be used. Project Sunshine scientists focused on measuring Strontium 90, released into the atmosphere during nuclear tests, in the bones of dead babies, children and adults to see if the nuclear powers were poisoning the globe. Kulp noted in the interview that their work eventually led to a 1963 world treaty banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere. He said it was necessary for the scientists to get bodies from Asia because neither the British nor the Americans could obtain bodies from "Red" China to study irradiation. "China was a big place. The data would have been representative of the diet of southeast China. We couldn't get samples from China. There was a Cold War going on," he said. He said the project's British scientists used Hong Kong's former colonial status to gain access to corpses, while US scientists turned to Taiwan for similar purposes. "Hong Kong and Taiwan bone samples were crucial to determining what levels of exposure there had been to the population of the region to this radiation. Hong Kong had the right rainfall, the right longitude and latitude," he said. The results of the study reportedly showed more harmful effects from nuclear fall-out in North America and Europe because both the US and the former Soviet Union were conducting their nuclear tests around Siberia. Kulp also said Project Sunshine was organized on a "doctor-to-doctor" rather than a governmental basis, and confirmed the role of British scientists, which has always been denied by the British government. He dismissed allegations the project's scientists had been "baby-snatching" saying corpses of all ages were used in the testing. Project Sunshine was started in 1955 after Willard Libby of the University of Chicago appealed for large numbers of bodies, preferably stillborn babies, for the experiments. This story has been viewed 499 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/06/11/story/0000089509] Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 2 Handicapped used in nuclear tests 11/06/2001 08:23 - (SA) London - Britain used physically and mentally handicapped people as guinea pigs during nuclear tests in Australia in the 1950s, the daily The Independent reported on Monday. The handicapped people were never seen again after the tests and they probably died after being present during nuclear explosions at Maralinga in the desert of South Australia, the paper said. The Independent recalled that similar allegations had been investigated and rejected in 1985 by an Australian royal commission. However, it said, a pilot who claimed to have taken the handicapped people to the test site confided at the end of the 1980s in an Australian scientist, Robert Jackson. Jackson, director of the Centre for Disability Research and Development at Edith Cowan University in Perth, found the pilot's statements credible and was trying to find the man, who used to work for the centre but left several years ago. Several Australian soldiers based at Maralinga had said that two groups of seriously handicapped people had been taken to a test area shortly before one of the 12 nuclear blasts carried out by Britain in Australia in the 1950s, the paper said. At the beginning of May the British government admitted having exposed 12 soldiers from New Zealand, Australia and Britain to nuclear radiation, while saying their role was to test protective military clothing. The British defence ministry spokesperson then said: "These were not nuclear tests as such, these were radiation tests on clothing. We were not testing people, we were testing the clothing. People have never been used as guinea pigs." The British government claimed in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no humans had ever been used in experiments in nuclear weapons trials. - Sapa-AFP ***************************************************************** 3 MoD planned to fake its nuclear might Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Secret documents reveal Whitehall was anxious about Britain's ability to withstand attack and aimed to deceive Soviet Union and public _Richard Norton-Taylor Monday June 11, 2001 The Guardian_ The government drew up plans to spread false information about Britain's capacity to withstand a nuclear attack in the cold war in a ploy to deceive both the Soviet Union and the public at home, top secret documents reveal. They show that Whitehall 50 years ago was anxious about what it called Britain's "military weakness" at a time when the Soviet Union was building up its arsenal of nuclear weapons. "It is an increasingly held view that any future world war," wrote a top Foreign Office official in 1950, "whether won or lost by the western democracies, will in fact destroy our civilisation as we know and value it today." Senior officials in the FO and Ministry of Defence drew up what they called a "policy of deception" involving the "planting of false or misleading information" about Britain's air defences combined with a black propaganda campaign to destabilise the Kremlin and its satellites in eastern Europe. "The object would be to match the estimated progress of the Russians in atomic development by a judicious anticipation and, if necessary, exaggeration of the results of our research and developments in the fields," they wrote. The vulnerability of Britain's defences could be disguised, they said, by "simulating" weapons trials. "It should be possible to show that the forces available to Great Britain are increasing at a significantly greater rate than in fact they are," officials wrote. Documents made available at the public record office show officials made it clear the idea was to deceive the British public as well as the Russians. They said: "Simulating weapons tests may not only deceive the enemy but also our own people if, as is possible, they are reported in the press or are circulated in other ways." The files contain cards inserted by Whitehall weeders saying that numerous papers had been withheld, suggesting the deception plans were approved by Clement Attlee's postwar Labour administration. More than 50 pages are missing from a file called "maintenance of nuclear deterrent 1965-1971". However, papers which have been made available reveal that the MoD secretly warned that Britain's V-bombers - the mainstay of the country's nuclear force before the US Polaris submarine system was bought in the late 1960s - would suffer "severe attrition" and "unacceptable losses" during raids on Russia. The documents also show that the Treasury was sceptical of the MoD's request to increase Britain's nuclear arsenal. Harold Macmillan, the chancellor, told the MoD early in 1956: "If the United Kingdom ever has to drop a megaton bomb on an enemy, the policy of 'the deterrent' will have failed." He added: "If global warfare starts, there must be a limit to the number of nuclear weapons which we and the Americans can effectively employ. "To hold an appreciable stock of these weapons is to lock up a very considerable amount of the nation's resources". The MoD replied: "The effectiveness of our contribution to the deterrent surely depends on our being not only able to make the bomb but also to have a sufficient number of them to use in global war should we have to." The MoD won the argument. The deception policy included spreading exaggerated reports of the strength of resistance movements in the Soviet Union and its satellites as part of what officials called "political sabotage and destruction of Stalinism". The officials added: "It is not all loss if the enemy realises that deception is being attempted because if, once he has reason to suspect what his intelligence services actually see may be deception, he poisons for himself all his intelligence." Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 4 Handicapped used in nuclear tests: report news.com.au - [ 11jun01 ] From AAP and news.com.au staff BRITAIN used physically and mentally handicapped people as guinea pigs during nuclear tests in Australia in the 1950s, according to allegations reported in a UK newspaper today. It is claimed the handicapped people were never seen again after the tests, and probably died after being present during nuclear explosions at Maralinga, The Independent said. The newspaper recalled that similar allegations had been investigated and rejected in 1985 by an Australian royal commission. But, it said, it had now learned of a pilot who claimed to have taken the handicapped people out of Britain. He reportedly told his story to Australian academic Robert Jackson, who is director of the Centre for Disability Research and Development at Edith Cowan University in Perth. Dr Jackson told the newspaper he gave a presentation to 300 staff in the late 1980s, during which he mentioned the allegations about radiation experiments. The Independent reports that afterwards one staff member told him: "That was true. I was one of the pilots, and we didn't fly them out again." Dr Jackson told the newspaper: "I was quite convinced." He is reportedly trying to trace the man, who left the centre several years ago. Several Australian soldiers based at Maralinga had said that two groups of seriously handicapped people had been taken to a test area shortly before one of the 12 nuclear blasts carried out by Britain, the paper said. The British government said in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no humans had ever been used in experiments in nuclear weapons trials. SA The Mercury Sunday Tasmanian Sunday Times Gold Coast Bulletin Quest ***************************************************************** 5 Expert: Russian spying on U.S. continues Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB foreign counterintelligence chief who now lives in the Washington, D.C., area, talks to National Nuclear Security Administration employees last week at the Department of Energy's North Las Vegas facility. Photo by Gary Thompson. Monday, June 11, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Former KGB agent says domestic intelligence-gathering easier now than during Cold War _By KEITH ROGERS _ REVIEW-JOURNAL _ _A former Radio Moscow correspondent who came to Nevada 40 years ago to spy on the United States -- and then rose to a top-level position in the KGB -- returned to the Las Vegas Valley last week to warn U.S. nuclear security workers about Russia's continued stake in spying. "They have to bear in mind intelligence has never stopped," Oleg Kalugin, a former Soviet major general and KGB foreign counterintelligence chief, said in an interview after briefing National Nuclear Security Administration employees for two hours Tuesday in North Las Vegas. "It would be naive to assume that Russians are not conducting intelligence operations," he said. Kalugin, 67, said it is much easier now for Russians to gather intelligence in the United States. Today, they are free to travel, as opposed to the Cold War days, when Soviet nationals had to adhere to restrictions on where they could go within the United States. As the sole Moscow Radio correspondent covering the United States in the early 1960s, Kalugin -- who previously had been an exchange student at Columbia University's School of Journalism -- first came to Nevada in 1961 "by car from Oregon to have a look at Reno and Las Vegas to collect maps." Because his radio career focused on current events and featured interviews with scientists and celebrities, including Linus Pauling and Natalie Wood, he said he was not suspected of spying for the Soviet Union until later in his career. Even today, Kalugin said it is not beyond the intelligence network under Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin to collect valuable nuclear weapons and defense information from U.S. citizens who befriend Russian spies whose covers range from gamblers to bank officials and partners in joint ventures "where there's a free flow of money." Developing contacts through sex partners -- both male and female -- has always been a productive technique for Russian and former KGB spies. "Putin's three ways to deal with people are vodka, blackmail and the threat to kill," Kalugin said. "Russia today is run by Soviet KGB officers who are nostalgic about the old, glorious days." Putin, he said, was his subordinate in the 1980s. Kalugin now said he fears democracy is losing its grip in Russia. Anti-American undercurrents, he said, are even evident in hit rock 'n' roll songs. "In the long-range analysis, the U.S. government has not done enough to support democratic change in Russia. More young people are turning anti-American," he said. U.S. officials should also be concerned about Russian scientists handing nuclear weapons technology to countries that oppose the United States. "The Russian government claims they are in full control of their nuclear forces. But those in control are humans, willing to sell anything at a fraction of the price," he said. Kalugin retired from the KGB in 1990, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed. He stayed on briefly as a deputy in the Russian Parliament and then took up residence in the Washington, D.C., area, where he is an author and consultant. A Russian citizen, he returned to the United States in 1995 under a three-year contract with AT. Kalugin spoke from his experiences with and knowledge of high-profile spy cases. These include this year's much-publicized Robert Philip Hanssen case -- the former FBI agent charged with espionage for the alleged delivery of highly classified documents to drop points in Virginia -- and the case of Navy mole John Walker, who for 18 years supplied sensitive Defense Department information to the Soviet Embassy. As Walker's supervisor, Kalugin received the Navy's secret communication codes from Walker, a former chief petty officer and cryptographic technician whose spy ring operated from 1967 until 1985. As for Hanssen, Kalugin said there are mysteries about how the U.S. government discovered his operation. "Probably when this man starts talking, he will disclose something else." While he said the Central Intelligence Agency relied in the past on high-flying planes and high-tech equipment for spying, the KGB preferred recruiting people. Soviet students and scientists who came to the United States to collaborate on research projects also gathered intelligence. "We cultivated young people with the ultimate goal of turning them into agents," he said. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 6 Research confirms IAAP dangers The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP Sunday, June 10, 2001 [Unknown dangers at IAAP] By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye · Team finds workers were exposed to a variety of hazards. Findings by a University of Iowa health team support Middletown munition workers' claims that they were exposed to a wide variety of dangerous materials that may have caused long-term illnesses and even deaths. The team, led by Dr. Laurence Fuortes of the U of I College of Public Health, has issued its first-year report detailing the working conditions and the hazardous materials often encountered by hundreds, if not thousands, of workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. The Atomic Energy Commission assembled, test-fired and in later years, disassembled nuclear weapons and their components at IAAP from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. As many as 40,000 people may have worked at the plant during AEC's tenure. More than 2,500 were identified by the university researchers as AEC workers, but it often was difficult to distinguish between AEC and other weapons workers from available IAAP records. Fuortes' group, working with a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, assembled records and accounts from the plant operators, the Department of Energy, the Army and workers themselves and found that workers handled or came in contact with such hazardous elements as: · Radioactive materials including uranium isotopes 235 and 238, depleted uranium, plutonium, tritium and X-rays. · Beryllium. Lighter than aluminum but stronger than steel, beryllium is used in nuclear weapons to boost the nuclear chain reaction. · Explosives such as RDX, TNT, tetryl and HMX. "For much of the work force there was considerable potential for (skin) and airborne exposure to (explosive) agents through process of formulation, melting, pouring, packing and extensive machining ...," the report said. · Numerous chemical solvents and curing agents. · Asbestos, radon and silica. The survey noted the miles of asbestos-coated steam pipe and temolite asbestos fiberboard-lined tunnels at the ordnance plant. "Much of this asbestos insulation or construction material is in relative disrepair ...," the report said. University researchers also found that even though many employees did not work directly with hazardous materials, they likely were exposed to numerous occupational hazards through secondary contacts. "These workers include guards on surveillance duty, laundry personnel who handled contaminated clothing, and various delivery and storage personnel," the report said. It also noted that IAAP workers described "personal or co-worker episodes of extensive (skin) and hair discoloration resulting from high explosives exposures." The health experts found that the AEC's attempts at monitoring worker radiation exposure was often spotty. "It is clear that many production workers and others potentially at risk were not monitored," the report said. It cited examples of security guards who were not given radiation detection badges, even though they worked around radioactive materials. "Several of the security guards who did not receive dosimetry recall standing by and signing for the radioactive materials when they arrived by rail," the report said. It also noted that unmonitored workers told of "spending their entire shift in the rooms where the devices containing radioactive materials were partially assembled." The study also noted reports by workers that some of the women on Line 1 worked late into their pregnancies. The university study supports findings about poor radiation monitoring discovered in a recent U.S. Department of Health survey of the plant's history. The federal study cited a 1971 health protection survey at the plant that found problems with the plant's system for monitoring radiation contamination. "Areas not covered by the monitoring system included the change room (dress out) and cafeteria areas," the federal report said. The 1971 report noted that workers wearing potentially contaminated contractor-supplied clothing would wear the same clothing to the cafeteria. The university survey also provides a Line 1 building-by-building account of what AEC operation occurred in each building and the hazardous materials involved. In their conclusions, researchers said their findings support creation of a medical surveillance program. "This conclusion is based on the suggestive evidence that a large number of workers had significant exposures to detrimental agents and the strong need expressed by former workers for a credible targeted program of medical surveillance and education." The study said the screening and protection program should center on workers at risk for bladder cancer, chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer. Researchers also noted that they are still waiting for records on IAAP workers and operations to be forwarded from the Pantex nuclear weapons site in Texas. The AEC moved its operations from Middletown to Pantex in the mid-1970s, and many IAAP records apparently are still warehoused there. Over the past 18 to 24 months, workers who had been sworn to silence as they diligently manufactured the weapons that helped win the Cold War began to tell their stories of lax protection, poor health monitoring and sometimes extremely dangerous working conditions. The plant's commander, Col. Bruce Elliott, has pledged that the Army will not seek recrimination against those who talk of their experiences, and Congress recently passed legislation designed lift the veil of secrecy surround plant operations. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 __319-754-8461_ Front Desk ' ' '| ' ' '_319-754-6824_ FAX ' ' '| ' ' ' _1-800-397-1708_ Outside Burlington [this is a line and ***************************************************************** 7 Tell us your story The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP [The Hawk Eye Special Edition] Sunday, June 10, 2001 [Unknown dangers at IAAP] The Hawk Eye is inviting former workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown to share their stories regarding possible health-related problems due to exposure to chemicals. The stories may include what type of materials you worked around at the plant, what a work day was like and anything else you wish to tell. We also ask you to include your telephone number and address to verify stories. Please send your items to: IAAP Stories; c/o Mike Augspurger or Dennis Carroll; The Hawk Eye; 800 S. Main St.; Burlington, IA 52601; or e-mail maugspurger@thehawkeye.com or djc825@aol.com. 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 __319-754-8461_ Front Desk ' ' '| ' ' '_319-754-6824_ FAX ' ' '| ' ' ' _1-800-397-1708_ Outside Burlington [this is a line and that's all that it is] _©' 2000 The Hawk Eye, all rights reserved._ ' '_ Updated daily_ ' ***************************************************************** 8 Reports of Ōblue flashÕ studied The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP [The Hawk Eye Special Edition] Sunday, June 10, 2001 [Unknown dangers at IAAP] By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye · Scientists offer varying theories about what may have caused event. Federal and state regulators are investigating the possibility that a runaway nuclear chain reaction at the Middletown munitions plant in the early 1970s released a large burst of radiation that may have killed two workers and sent large amounts of radiation into the environment. One regulator, Dan McGhee of the Radiological Bureau of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said there appears to be "a 50-50 chance" that a nuclear "criticality" occurred in which people were killed. According to Department of Energy reports, a criticality accident occurs when the minimal amount of fissionable material necessary to sustain a nuclear reaction inadvertently comes together, setting off the chain reaction. There is a sudden release of energy and deadly radiation, but not necessarily an explosion. Such an event is accompanied by a blue flash of light or a glow that can linger for some time. It is thought that if such an event did occur at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, it may have occurred in one of the areas used to assemble and disassemble nuclear bombs. In the entire Atomic Age, there have been only 60 documented criticality events reported worldwide, according to scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and only 21 fatalities reported since 1945. Such an occurrence at the Middletown plant is not listed among those events, as published in a 2000 update of "A Review of Criticality Accidents" by the Los Alamos lab and Russian nuclear experts. Investigators, who include the Iowa Department of Public Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, have centered their probe around information contained in recently declassified documents and the accounts of former IAAP workers who said they witnessed or were familiar with the event. Pinning down a date has been difficult, but the reported flash is believed to have occurred in the summer of 1972 or 1973, according to researchers at the University of Iowa College Public Health who have talked with former nuclear weapons workers who said they saw or knew of the flash. A report from the university survey team includes the account of a worker who said he witnessed a blue flash in a nuclear assembly room, then helped two injured workers who later died. However, former workers remain reluctant to say much more --Źassuming they know more --Źand the reported victims have not been identified. One is said to have died the day after the flash, the other a year later. Nuclear weapons were assembled and, in later years, disassembled at Middletown in circular reinforced-concrete rooms, about 30 feet wide. The rooms were surrounded by earth and topped with tons of gravel to contain radiation from possible nuclear explosions or other radiation releases. Daniel Bullen, former director of the nuclear reactor program at Iowa State University, said it is unlikely that a criticality would have occurred during the assembly or disassembly of a nuclear weapon. "I would be extremely skeptical," he said. Bullen is not involved in the IAAP investigation. Other nuclear scientists have said such a glow could have been caused by a chemical fluorescence or phosphorescence or a glow from tritium -- a radioactive material sometimes handled by IAAP nuclear workers. Scott Marquess, project manager for the EPA Superfund cleanup at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, said his agency is trying to determine whether there are residual signs of such a criticality that would remain nearly 30 years later. For example, it is considered possible that fission materials from a criticality still might be embedded in nearby glass, and there still could be lingering radiation. Bill Field, radiation expert with the university's team surveying the health of former IAAP nuclear workers, said the blue flash or glow seen by workers could have been what is known as Cerenkov radiation, in which charged radioactive particles traveling faster than the speed of light from a fission reaction release a blue glow. That often is observed at nuclear power plants when spent nuclear rods are submerged in water, but that is a controlled environment. In an April letter to Army officials urging a aerial radiological survey of the plant, Gov. Tom Vilsack cited recently declassified documents that he said refer to plutonium, "ground zero" and "an incident that may have led to contamination" in the early 1970s. It has not be determined whether that "incident" was the blue flash seen by workers. The Atomic Energy Commission assembled, test-fired and in later years, disassembled nuclear weapons and their components at IAAP from the late 1940s to the mid 1970s. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 __319-754-8461_ Front Desk ' ' '| ' ' '_319-754-6824_ FAX ' ' '| ' ' ' _1-800-397-1708_ Outside Burlington [this is a line and that's all that it is] _©' 2000 The Hawk Eye, all rights ***************************************************************** 9 Contaiminated fluid leaks into SRS basin | The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC The Associated Press "> The Associated Press "> June 11, 2001 _ _ Contaiminated fluid leaks into SRS basin _ The Associated Press _ AIKEN | About 1,200 gallon of a contaminated liquid used to clean tanks at the Savannah River Site has leaked into a catch basin. Officials at the former nuclear weapons plant said no workers were affected and there was no airborne contamination from the leak found Friday night. "The safety system we had worked just as it was designed," said Dean Campbell, a spokesman for Westinghouse Savannah River Company. The uranyl nitrate solution leaked while it was being treated in a temporary storage tank before being pumped into a long-term storage container, Campbell said. The temporary tank is surrounded by a steel collection box that can hold the contents of the 5,000-gallon tank. ***************************************************************** 10 ORNL role expected to remain strong in nation's energy strategy June 11, 2001 By Frank Munger News-Sentinel senior writer In the early days of the Bush administration, there has been a lot of talk about energy policy and strategies for the future, including an emphasis on clean-coal technology (a term some critics have labeled an oxymoron, suggesting there is no such thing as clean coal). Anyway, I wasn't sure how Oak Ridge National Laboratory's work matched up with this new agenda, so I called Rod Judkins, who heads the lab's fossil energy program. First off, I asked him to define clean-coal technology. "In simplistic terms, it refers to the use of coal in an environmentally acceptable manner," Judkins said. He said he expects the Oak Ridge lab to be an important participant in the clean-coal program, although many of the newly funded activities coming out of Washington are directed at the power industry itself and aren't really targeted for research institutions like ORNL. Overall, however, the laboratory's fossil energy program -- with a current spending level of about $14 million a year -- should remain stable for the near term and grow in the years ahead, Judkins said. "I sure hope we do, because that's what I told my boss," he said. Materials research and development are ORNL's calling card, and the laboratory applies that research strength to many fields -- including fossil energy. That link could become more obvious in the years ahead as today's research efforts are put to work. There often is lag time between research success and commercial application, of course, and Judkins notes that one of the lab's material developments in the mid-1980s -- a steel alloy with 9 percent chromium and 1 percent molybdenum -- is now widely used in coal-fired steam plants around the world. The alloy is used in piping, headers and tubing in plant systems exposed to steam because it's a lot stronger than traditional steels and allows the plant to be operate at higher temperatures -- thus gaining power efficiencies. More recently, ORNL has developed a series of intermetallic compounds known as iron aluminides -- 2 percent chromium, 28 percent aluminum and the rest iron -- that offer advantages for hot-gas filters in coal plants, Judkins said. "It is extremely corrosion resistant and appears to be the best solution to a very nagging problem with some coal systems -- having reliable filters to remove the particulate matter," he said. Judkins said it's an exciting time to be working in fossil energy, and he outlined a number of other activities in the lab's broad-based program, such as working with industry participants to develop fuel cells and hybrid systems that use coal and natural gas in combination to maximize results. He said he thinks it's wise for the nation to invest the time and money to develop alternative forms of energy, but he adds: "My guess is that in 2100 we'll still be burning a lot of coal and oil," he said. Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. [E.W. Scripps] Copyright © 1999-2001, The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 11 Disabled Britons 'used for atomic fall-out tests' © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Kathy Marks in Sydney 11 June 2001 Severely disabled people were sent out from institutions in Britain to be used as guinea pigs during British atomic tests in the Australian desert in the 1950s, it was alleged yesterday. They did not return home and are assumed to have died after witnessing nuclear explosions at Maralinga, in South Australia, at close quarters. Claims that disabled people were deliberately exposed to radioactive fall-out to assess its effects on humans were examined in 1985 by an Australian Royal Commission into the tests, but were dismissed as unsubstantiated. Now *The Independent* has learnt of a pilot who says that he flew them out from Britain. The pilot related his story to Robert Jackson, a respected Australian academic who is director of the Centre for Disability Research and Develop- ment at Edith Cowan University in Perth. The encounter took place after Dr Jackson gave a presentation to 300 staff in the late 1980s, during which he mentioned the allegations about radiation experiments. Afterwards, he said, one staff member told him: "That was true. I was one of the pilots, and we didn't fly them out again." Dr Jackson said that he closely questioned the man, who had become a disabled care worker, and had no doubt that he was telling the truth. "I was quite convinced," he said. The people used as guinea pigs had multiple disabilities, both physical and intellectual, the man told him. Dr Jackson is now trying to trace the man, who left the centre several years ago. The disclosure follows revelations last week that bodies of stillborn and dead babies were shipped to the US in the 1950s from Britain, Australia, Canada and Hong Kong for use in research projects on the effects of radiation exposure. Thousands of human bone samples were also sent out. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency has admitted that bone samples were taken from dead babies and adults and sent abroad to be tested for Strontium 90, a key radioactive element, in a programme that continued until 1978. Dr John Loy, the agency's chief executive, said pathologists in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney cremated the bones before sending them to the US and Britain, where the ashes were tested with a geiger counter. Britain exploded 12 atomic bombs on Australian territory in the 1950s, at Maralinga and off the Montebello Islands, in Western Australia. Australian servicemen stationed at Maralinga have claimed that two groups of severely disabled people were brought into the test area just before a detonation codenamed One Tree, the first of four. One group was brought by rail to Watson, about 20 miles away, and the other was flown in. Terry Toon, president of the Australian Atomic Ex-Servicemen's Association, said yesterday that service personnel were given strict instructions not to approach a building just north of the Maralinga airstrip terminal. The building was surrounded by a 6ft-high fence and guarded by Federal police. On one occasion, Mr Toon said, a refrigeration mechanic, Fred Wilkinson, went in to carry out repairs. "He said that the sound coming from inside the building was like the gibbering of mentally retarded people," Mr Toon said. "He said that after the second [atomic] test, you couldn't hear them anymore." Dr Jackson said it was "highly likely" that the experiments described by the pilot took place, given prevailing attitudes towards disabled people in the 1950s. "They were treated very poorly," he said. "They were dispensable." Documents declassified by the US Energy Department in 1994 revealed a programme of secret radiation experiments carried out by the CIA between 1953 and 1967. The subjects included intellectually disabled boys at a school in Massachusetts, who were given radioactive milk with their breakfast cereal, and pregnant women in Tennessee, who were exposed to X-rays at an ante-natal clinic. Also from the Australasia section Disabled Britons 'used for atomic fall-out tests' Shame of harsh Outback refugee 'jails' condemned War crimes suspect who fled Britain fights extradition Australia says servicemen may have been exposed to depleted uranium Rat poison spill threatens whale feeding grounds --> ***************************************************************** 12 Did Iraq Conduct a Clandestine Nuclear Test? June 11 7:04 AM ET_ By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The chief U.N. arms inspector and experts at a London think tank have concluded there was no evidence Iraq had carried out a successful nuclear test in 1989, as alleged in news reports earlier this year. Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said he reported to the U.N. Security Council last week ``the information is totally wrong'' that Iraq conducted a nuclear test beneath Lake Rezazza, southwest of Baghdad on Sept. 19, 1989, before the Gulf War (news - web sites). He told reporters his department and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had evidence in its files, from overhead flights and previous ground inspections ``there had been no nuclear tests'' nor a tunnel under the lake. Purported evidence of a test, from two defecting former scientists in Iraq and an interpretation of satellite photographs of the test area, was reported in London's Sunday Times newspaper in February and received fairly wide coverage. Terry Wallace, a professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona, says that while it is far easier to prove something did happen than to prove it did not there was no reason to believe the story is ``anything but a hoax.'' An examination of global earthquake catalogs, produced by the International Seismic Center and U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites), revealed no significant seismic activity in Iraq the day the test was alleged to have taken place, Wallace said. Such an explosion he said, in an article for the London-based think tank, the Verification, Training and Information Center, would have been easily detectable by international or by regional monitoring in Iran, Israel or Jordan, which keep records of earthquakes. None of them reported any seismic events of the magnitude necessary for a nuclear test in the region around Lake Rezazza, Wallace said. U.N. arms inspectors have not been permitted to track down Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction since mid-December 1998, when they were withdrawn shortly before the United States and Britain launched a four-day bombing campaign prompted by Iraq's failure to cooperate with the arms teams. Blix's agency has now signed a contract with a private, satellite firm and is restarting overhead flights this month. Earlier this year, Western intelligence agencies alleged that Iraq had reconstituted parts of its banned arms programs. The German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) in February told selected reporters Iraq could produce a nuclear device in three years and fire a missile as far as Europe by 2005. U.S. and British officials alleged in January that Iraq had rebuilt three factories capable of producing chemical and biological weapons. The IAEA, meanwhile, carried out its annual inspection of the Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear power center in January and reported that low-grade nuclear material held there had not been moved since its last visit. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 13 Atom bomb, reactor experts in old U.S.S.R. struggle to adapt LFP Local News: June 11, 2001 _By FRED WEIR, CP_ OBNINSK, RUSSIA -- The inhabitants of this formerly secret "nuclear city" are some of the nicest, and scariest, people you could hope to meet. Most of them spent their lives constructing the Soviet Union's vast atomic bomb-and -reactor empire. Now they are demoralized, impoverished and seeking new employment. "We need to find ways to apply what we know to civilian industry and commerce so that our scientists can make a decent living," says Alexander Sorokin, a physicist and deputy head of Obninsk's Science Council, a group of local experts trying to map out a new future for this city of 100,000 located a two-hour drive from Moscow. University of Western Ontario students spent May in the city trying to help. "Innovation is the key to success, and Soviet science always had a wealth of ideas," he says. The trick is to harness the brainpower of Obninsk's 12 state-run science institutes, which once built atomic reactors for Soviet submarines and spacecraft, and teach them to design better mousetraps instead, he says. A great deal more than Russia's economic fate may ride on the success of schemes to convert the heavily militarized former Soviet scientific complex to civilian pursuits. Nuclear security experts worry that angry and desperate atomic scientists could offer their services to other countries, including unstable "rogue" regimes. "About 3,000 Russian scientists are closely watched by the security services because what they know must never get out," says Vladimir Orlov, director of the independent Pir Center in Moscow, a think tank on nuclear security issues. "But there are tens of thousands more who could theoretically help produce weapons of mass destruction if they went to the wrong place." Obninsk is one of a score of closed towns constructed by the U.S.S.R., often in remote regions, which still house thousands of nuclear bomb and missile experts. Under the Soviet regime they led a privileged life, with special supplies of consumer goods, high salaries and other perks. But with the collapse of Communism, government support evaporated. Thousands of formerly pampered scientists were plunged into poverty. Those who were able left Obninsk. For those remaining, the average monthly salary is 1,800 rubles ($95 Cdn). A recent survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found many of the formerly closed nuclear communities in an advanced state of social and economic collapse. "I can't see this economy continuing on the way that it is," says Peter Busse, leader of a group of five Canadian students from UWO who spent most of May teaching western business practices at a private financial academy in Obninsk. "We were amazed to find this town, with 100,000 inhabitants, has only four restaurants. There is no commercial district, no downtown." Significant numbers of bomb and missile experts surveyed in the Carnegie study expressed a desire to emigrate, and some said they would be willing work for anyone who paid them. "You can't attach security guards to all the Russian scientists who possess dangerous knowledge and therefore pose a risk of nuclear proliferation," says Orlov. "Ultimately we must find new employment that rewards them with appropriate salaries and status. We're still a long way from that." At least one nuclear bomb expert, recruited from a former Soviet Central Asian republic, is known to be working for international terrorist Osama bin Laden, Orlov says, citing sources in the Kremlin's Security Council. In another instance seven years ago, the Federal Security Service, the former KGB, stopped an entire planeload of Russian atomic scientists just as they were departing for North Korea. Like many of the secret atomic cities, Obninsk was founded after the Second World War as a "sharashka," a specialized prison camp for politically suspect Soviet scholars and captured German scientists. The solid stone apartment blocks along its leafy downtown boulevards were constructed by Nazi prisoners of war, as was the main physics institute. CNEWS Headlines ***************************************************************** 14 OS man seeks change in DOE medical program Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:42 a.m. on Monday, June 11, 2001 _by Paul Parson _ Oak Ridger staff An Oliver Springs man is on a mission to get changes made to the Department of Energy's occupational medicine program. Lester Raby's quest began shortly after his wife, Mary, died of cancer in 1994. She was a secretary in the Safeguards and Security Division at DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office. Mary Raby's death, according to her husband, might have been prevented if she had received "adequate care" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's medical clinic. He said that's where she received her annual physical examinations. Lester Raby said lab reports show problems with his wife's blood cells as far back as 1987. Those problems were never mentioned at that time, he contends. According to Lester Raby, his wife's platelet count dropped from 196,000 in 1989 to 122,000 in 1990. The normal value is 200,000 to 300,000 per cubic milliliter. Platelets are a component of the blood that play an important role in clotting. It wasn't until 1991, according to Lester Raby, that an ORNL physician instructed his wife to get to the hospital because there was an "emergency." Mary Raby was admitted to Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge where she was diagnosed with refractory multiple myeloma, a type of bone cancer. Mary Raby died on Feb. 22, 1994. While Lester Raby is dissatisfied with the care his wife got at the ORNL clinic, he said all of DOE's sites have problems with their occupational medicine programs, except for one -- the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash. He says DOE should use that site as a model for its other occupational medicine programs. So Lester Raby has drafted and sent to the federal agency and several elected officials a total of 14 recommendations for improvements in DOE's occupational medicine program. "I'm trying to correct a serious problem," he said of the recommendations, which include: + To avoid all conflicts of interest, do not allow the same contractor to operate the plants and the medical program. + Remove the funding for occupational medicine from site operations and fund the program through the director of occupational medicine's office. + Transfer authority for the clinics from the site operations to the director of DOE's occupational medicine program. The program would be enforced by DOE's Office of Oversight. + All DOE sites should have access to specialists in the fields of toxicology, epidemiology, immunology, hematology, endocrinology and industrial hygiene as well as any other disciplines central to occupational medicine that would apply to the types of chemicals and hazardous materials with which the employees work. + Require all medical programs to be accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Inc., which is headquartered in Illinois. Joe Davis, a spokesman for DOE headquarters, confirmed that the federal agency has received Lester Raby's recommendations. Davis added that DOE's Office of Environmental Safety and Health is in the process of conducting a review of occupational medicine programs within DOE, which could result in some improvements. "It's not something that is going to happen immediately," Davis said. He said DOE will continue to work with Lester Raby and that his recommendations could be taken into consideration during the review. Also receiving a copy of the recommendations was U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., according to Harvey Valentine with the senator's Washington, D.C., office. Valentine said Thompson staff members have spoken to DOE about Lester Raby's recommendations. "We are monitoring their response," Valentine said. Locally, each of DOE's major contractors, including UT-Battelle and BWXT Y-12, have separate occupational medicine programs that are run through their operating budgets, according to Frank Juan of DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office. He said the programs have to meet "various accreditations through various organizations." Regarding one of Lester Raby's recommendations, at least one DOE Oak Ridge clinic is already accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Inc., while another is in the process of becoming accredited. Bill Wilburn, a spokesman for BWXT Y-12, said the occupational health clinic at the Y-12 National Security Complex underwent a survey by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Inc. this January. "There were no adverse or deficiency findings," he said. " A full three-year accreditation was achieved. The date for the next accreditation survey is on or before Jan. 30, 2004." James Phillips, a physician and the current medical director of ORNL's Health Division, said the lab's clinic is in the process of being accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care Inc. A survey will be conducted during the second week of September. All Contents ©Copyright* The Oak Ridger * ***************************************************************** 15 Meetings to focus on OR cleanup issues Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:43 a.m. on Monday, June 11, 2001 _by Paul Parson _ Oak Ridger staff On the agenda for Wednesday's Oak Ridge Site-Specific Advisory Board is an overview of the Department of Energy's local depleted uranium hexafluoride program. From 1945 to 1985, workers at the Oak Ridge K-25 site used depleted uranium hexafluoride as feed material for the gaseous diffusion process. The plant produced low-enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power reactors. Now, the majority of depleted uranium hexafluoride is stored at the K-25 site in about 4,700 steel cylinders, which are about 48 inches in diameter. Each cylinder holds approximately 10 to 14 tons of the material. The SSAB meeting starts at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Garden Plaza hotel, 215 S. Illinois Ave. The group is a federally appointed citizen's panel that provides advice and recommendations to DOE on its Oak Ridge environmental management program. Also meeting this week is the Citizens' Advisory Panel of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee Agenda items include DOE's fiscal year 2002 Environmental Management budget and a presentation by Roger Thompson, industrial hygiene manager for Bechtel Jacobs Co. Bechtel Jacobs is DOE's environmental manager for Oak Ridge. The LOC meeting begins at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation office at 761 Emory Valley Road. The group is a nonprofit organization funded by the state of Tennessee that provides advice to local, state and federal officials regarding DOE environmental management decisions. 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