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05/12/01 ****     RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)       **** VOL 9.116
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                    NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
 
 1  Reid and Democrats Urge the White House to Make Work on Energy 
 2  Nuclear panel hearings to focus on plant
 3  Cheney: Nation needs to push nuke power
 4  TCS: Cheney Was A Big-Time Supporter of Giveaways To Energy
 5  Energy Conservation Pressure Mounts 
 6  Nuclear Comeback 
 7  Let tribe store N-waste

                    NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
 
 1  The military's legacy in the South Chemical waste is only one of 
 2  Were Australian soldiers used as nuclear guinea pigs?  
 3  Australia confronts UK over N-tests
 4  Servicemen exposed to radiation
 5  Britain accused of using troops for nuclear tests
 6  CONTROVERSIAL PLAN: Nuke plants proposed for test site
 7  Britain admits using servicemen in nuclear tests
 8  The Age: Maralinga 'lies' prompt new probe
 9  Canberra knew military personnel exposed in atomic tests: report 
10  Diggers lay in N-dust 
11  The hallucinogenic security of nuclear mushroom clouds 
12  NGO calls for Korean nuclear-free zone 
13  China preparing nuclear test
14  Chinese believed preparing for a nuclear weapons test 
15  China reported stepping up nuclear test preparations
16  Unending tale of Israeli atrocities 
17  Diversified Test Site needs high-tech help 
18  Use of N-arms only for training purposes: Dr Kalam
19  *Lepse* crew moves to 'village' 
20  Israel Seizes Nuke Papers to Stem Media Leaks
21  Iraq admits it had radiation bomb plan 
22  DOE seeks suspension of effort to convert plutonium 
23  Opinion: Hanford's moral imperative
24  Chief picked for FFTF review
25  Nuclear cleanup budget cuts go too far, GOP senators contend 
26  Feature: Ask Incky -- Ask Incky 

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                     NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
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 1 Reid and Democrats Urge the White House to Make Work on Energy 
Policy Public and Bipartisan
 
[Sen. Reid Press Release] 
                                       
May 10, 2001 

(WASHINGTON) – Stressing the importance of a clean, reliable and 
affordable energy supply to American families, Senators  Harry 
Reidand Jeff Bingamanasked the White Housetoday to make sure its 
Energy Task Force works in an open and bipartisan manner. The 
Senators also laid out criteria for a successful energy plan.

        Senator Reid, of Nevada, is the ranking Democrat on the 
SenateEnvironment and Public Works Committee, and Senator 
Bingaman, of New Mexico, is the ranking Democrat on the Senate 
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

        "A clean, reliable and affordable energy supply is 
critical to American family budgets today, and is critical to our 
country's prosperity in the future," Senator Reid said. "We want 
the Bush administration to hear from Democrats on the committees 
with jurisdiction on this important issue. The American people 
don't want our energy future determined behind a veil of secrecy 
under the influence of lobbyists from the oil, gas, coal and 
utilities companies.

        "We need to power America, not empower America's 
polluters."

        The Senators stressed that policy must not deal only with 
the prospect of a long-term energy crisis, but must give American 
families relief from surging energy prices right now. It must 
stress increasing the energy supply, increasing energy 
efficiency, and promoting the innovation of new technology.

        In a letter to President Bush, Senators Reid and Bingaman 
wrote: "There are three main elements to any serious and 
constructive effort to deal with our energy crisis: to increase 
supply, to increase energy efficiency, and, in particular, to 
expand the use of clean and renewable energy. Diversity, among 
both fuels and technologies, is as critical to economic success 
as is the deployment of new more efficient technologies."

        Senator Reid said, "We stand ready to work with the 
Administration to craft an effective energy plan. This is the 
defining challenge America now faces and should not be a partisan 
game. We should convene a bipartisan Energy Task Force including 
members of Congress, the Administration and the public, and we 
should work on this important issue out in the open."   
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 2  Nuclear panel hearings to focus on plant

The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Saturday, May 12, 2001

Staff Report
 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold three public meetings 
next week to discuss activities at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion 
Plant and its raw-product supplier, the Honeywell Specialty 
Chemicals plant in Metropolis, Ill. 

At 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Massac County Courthouse in 
Metropolis, the agency will address the safety performance of the 
Honeywell plant. Although the facility has been safe, improvement 
is needed in following procedures related to regulatory 
compliance and operating license conditions, the NRC said. A 
second meeting, at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Paducah Information 
Age Park Resource Center, deals with how the agency plans to 
revise its oversight program for nuclear fuel facilities like the 
Paducah and Metropolis plants. The NRC wants suggestions on the 
changes, designed to make the oversight program more 
risk-informed and performance-based. Proposed revisions are in 
NRC documents SECY-99-188 and SECY-00-0222, found on the NRC Web 
site at

www.nrc.gov/NRC/COMMISSION/SECYS/index.html. A general review of 
the proposals is at

www.nrc.gov/NMSS/FCSS/FCOB/INSP/REVISED/fcindex.htm. 

The NRC will meet at 1 p.m. Thursday at the resource center to 
review the Paducah plant's safety performance from October 1998 
to December 2000. The plant has been safe, but improvements are 
needed in areas such as the documentation and determination of 
nuclear criticality safety controls, the agency said. 

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 3  Cheney: Nation needs to push nuke power

The San Francisco Examiner
 		 
Monday, May 14, 2001

Opinion    |    P.J. Corkery     

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's turn to nuclear power as 
a long-term energy strategy will necessitate a permanent nuclear 
waste dump, Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday. 

"Now, with the gas prices rising as dramatically as they have, 
nuclear power looks like a pretty good alternative from an 
economic standpoint, if the permitting process is manageable and 
if we find a way to deal with the waste question," said Cheney, 
who is developing energy policy recommendations for President 
Bush. 

In a CNN interview, the vice president said his recommendations 
would include changes meant to speed federal permits to utilities 
seeking to build nuclear power plants. The industry has not 
sought a government permit to build a new plant in more than 20 
years, since before the accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile 
Island spread fear about nuclear power. 

Nuclear power provides 20 percent of the nation's electric 
capacity today. As to the thorny question of nuclear waste, 
Cheney said: "Right now we've got waste piling up at reactors all 
over the country. Eventually, there ought to be a permanent 
repository. The French do this very successfully and very safely 
in an environmentally sound, sane manner. We need to be able to 
do the same thing." 

He did not say where the government might put such a site but 
Nevada officials fear it would almost certainly be built in their 
state. 

In 1987, Congress passed a law designating Nevada's Yucca 
Mountain as the nation's only high-level nuclear waste 
repository. Such a site would receive waste from nuclear power 
plants and from defense uses. 

Nevadans have been bitterly fighting the proposal for 14 years. 

Shedding more light on the energy policy that Bush is scheduled 
to unveil next week, Cheney left open the possibility that Bush 
will seek the so-called "power of eminent domain" to construct 
new electrical transmission lines. Such authority allows the 
government to appropriate private property for public use. The 
federal government already has such authority with respect to 
laying gas pipelines. 

"The issue is whether or not we should have the same authority on 
electrical transmission lines, that's never been granted 
previously. That's one of the issues we've looked at. We'll have 
a recommendation when we release the report next week," Cheney 
said. 

He defended his energy-policy work against critics who say he has 
focused too much on increased production ---- boosting coal 
burning and drilling for oil and natural gas. 

"You'll find that most of the financial incentives that we 
recommend in the report go for conservation or renewables, for 
increased efficiencies. Now, we don't have a lot of new financial 
incentives in here to go out and produce more oil and gas, for 
example, so, we believe in conservation, we believe in 
renewables, we believe in wind and solar and all of those other 
technologies," Cheney said. 

He said renewable forms of energy provide just 2 percent of 
national electric generating capacity and cannot solve the 
nation's problem of demand exceeding supply. 
  
© 2001 The San Francisco Examiner ExIn, LLC
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 4  TCS: Cheney Was A Big-Time Supporter of Giveaways To Energy
   
U.S. Newswire 
11 May 19:51 

In Congress, Vice President Cheney Was A Big-Time Supporter Of 
Giveaways To Big Energy 
To: National Desk 
Contact: Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers For Common Sense, 
202-546-8500 ext. 110 (work) or 202-544-0740 (home) 

WASHINGTON, May 11 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Billions of dollars in tax 
breaks and subsidies to the oil, gas, and nuclear industries 
supported by Vice President Cheney throughout his Congressional 
career have done little to make energy cheaper or reduce our 
foreign energy dependence, according to a congressional bill 
analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national budget 
watchdog organization. 

"The Vice President has never found a giveaway to big energy that 
he didn't like." said Cena Swisher, Program Director at Taxpayers 
for Common Sense (TCS). "Throwing billions of dollars at these 
companies may be politically smart, but does nothing to reduce 
the energy crunch." 

Throughout his political career, Vice President Dick Cheney has 
been a stalwart advocate of subsidies and tax incentives for 
different sectors of the energy industry. While serving as a 
Representative for the state of Wyoming, he either sponsored or 
co-sponsored at least 20 measures concerning energy policy. The 
reasoning behind many of these measures was to spur energy 
production and decrease our nation's reliance on foreign oil. 

"As we learned in the 1970s, you can't buy your way out of an 
energy crisis," continued Swisher. "The only thing these 
subsidies have done is to line the pockets of energy industries." 

While many of these bills did very little to increase production 
or reduce our foreign energy dependence, they have made oil 
companies increasingly profitable. From 1996-1998, the oil and 
gas industry was the lowest-taxed industry in America, with a tax 
rate of only 12.3 percent. 

According to news reports, the White House energy task force 
report to be released next Thursday, will advocate for large 
increases in federal spending on fossil fuel and nuclear research 
and development, as well as more tax breaks for those same 
industries. 

For a copy of the bill analysis go to http://www.taxpayer.net
  
*Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire 
*****************************************************************
 5  Energy Conservation Pressure Mounts 
                                       
  Politics - Associated Press - updated 12:03 AM ET May 15     

  Reuters  |  AP  |  ABCNEWS.com  |  Videos     

Saturday May 12 10:10 AM ET
 
*By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer *

WASHINGTON (AP) - As the White House prepares to unveil an energy 
policy tilted heavily toward production, President Bush ( - ) is 
getting pressure, even from some of his strong supporters, to pay 
more attention to energy conservation.

Some Republican lawmakers and key business lobbyists expressed 
concern in recent days that unless the president's energy 
blueprint focuses more on saving energy, as well as producing it, 
the package will never be approved by Congress.

In his weekly radio address, Bush said Saturday that conservation 
would be an important element of his policy.

``This week, we will introduce a comprehensive energy plan to 
help bring new supplies of energy to the market, and we will be 
encouraging Americans to use more wisely the energy supplies that 
exist today,'' he said.

Bush said he would encourage companies to explore ways to 
conserve energy resources, such as making appliances more 
efficient, installing sensors to shut off lights in empty rooms 
and upgrading power transmission lines to make them less 
wasteful.

His plan, he said, ``harnesses new technology to squeeze as much 
out of a barrel of oil as we have learned to squeeze out of a 
computer chip. We can raise our standard of living wisely and in 
harmony with our environment.'' Congressional unrest over the 
president's conservation efforts surfaced this week as both 
Republicans and Democrats hammered the administration for deep 
cuts in energy efficiency programs in the Energy Department's 
proposed budget. ``Energy efficiency has to be part of a balanced 
energy strategy,'' Sen. Jeff Bingaman ( - - ), D-N.M., told 
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ( - ) at a Senate hearing.

A few days earlier at a similar hearing in the House, Rep. Jim 
Moran, D-Va., said the type of efficiency programs the 
administration wants to cut have been ``extraordinarily 
successful'' and paid for themselves. He cited one study showing 
$7 million in efficiency investments produced $51 million in 
energy savings.

The issue of conservation vs. production is expected to be a 
focus of debate as Congress crafts energy legislation in the 
coming months.

The Bush budget would cut about $150 million, or more than 40 
percent, from research programs to develop more energy efficient 
buildings, energy conservation programs for industry, and 
development of more fuel efficient automobile. It cuts in half a 
program to help the government reduce its energy costs.

Sen. Pete Domenici ( - - ), R-N.M., chairman of the Budget 
Committee, also expressed concern about the cuts, but said he was 
confident money would be increased and that the Bush energy 
proposals will include ``a sizable conservation component.''

``We need a balanced approach. We need conservation and we need 
production,'' agreed Sen. Frank Murkowski ( - - ), R-Alaska., 
seeking to blunt a barrage of criticism from Democrats.

Although Bush's energy plan has yet to be announced, 
environmentalists have already attacked it as focusing too 
heavily on boosting coal and nuclear programs and drilling for 
oil and natural gas in off-limits federal acres including an 
Arctic wildlife refuge.

Vice President Dick Cheney ( - ) provided fuel to the 
environmentalists when in a major energy speech he dismissed 
conservation as ``a sign of personal virtue'' and not a way to 
solve long-term energy problems. Within days the White House 
maneuvered to back away from the remark. The administration also 
has received strong signals from the business community that 
conservation shouldn't be ignored. 
 
  Copyright © 2001 ., and The Associated Press. All rights 
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 6  Nuclear Comeback 

(washingtonpost.com)
 
Saturday, May 12, 2001; Page A24 

FOR THE NUCLEAR power industry these are heady days. Spiking 
natural gas prices and power shortages in California have focused 
new attention on nuclear power's role in keeping the country's 
lights on. As electric deregulation moves forward, nuclear plants 
have sold for unexpectedly high prices. Vice President Cheney 
signaled again Tuesday that the administration's energy task 
force will support greater reliance on nuclear power. There's 
even talk that some company might order up a new nuclear 
generating plant, something that hasn't happened in more than 20 
years.
 
Behind the buzz are achievements worth recognizing. Though Three 
Mile Island and Chernobyl remain etched in public memory, the 
industry has built a solid safety record over the past decade. 
Nuclear generators' efficiency has increased to record levels, 
and nuclear plants now produce roughly one-fifth of the nation's 
electricity. The 103 plants operating in the United States crank 
out power without pumping carbon dioxide or smog-causing 
pollutants into the atmosphere. In a world facing global warming, 
that's a significant advantage. But significant questions remain, 
too, including what sort of subsidies would be required to make 
new plants economically viable, whether that money would be 
better invested in other carbon-free generating methods and how 
to addressconcerns about nuclear proliferation.
 
A fundamental problem is what to do with the radioactive waste 
the plants generate. The federal government is more than a decade 
behind in its efforts to establish permanent underground storage 
for the toxic wastes: It agreed by law to begin accepting spent 
fuel in 1998, but the storage site proposed at Yucca Mountain, 
Nev., is still under study and even if approved won't be ready 
until at least 2010. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's formal 
recommendation on whether the site should be developed is due 
later this year. The state of Nevada hotly opposes use of the 
Yucca Mountain site, as do many environmentalists. Opponents 
raise serious questions about how well the mountain would isolate 
the deadly waste over time; they also cite potential hazards 
involved in shipping spent fuel to the site from plants around 
the country.
 
Meanwhile, radioactive waste continues to pile up at plants, 
which have been storing it safely but were never designed as 
permanent repositories. Some states, fearful of becoming de facto 
long-term disposal sites, have begun placing limits on expansion 
of fuel storage around nuclear plants. Roughly 40,000 metric tons 
of waste are now awaiting permanent disposal; 2,000 tons more are 
produced each year. At that rate it will take only 15 years to 
reach the limit of Yucca Mountain's planned capacity. With plants 
that were once expected to phase out now renewing their licenses, 
it's already time to think about a second long-term storage site. 
The nuclear industry says the disposal issue is a political 
problem, not a technical one. Maybe so; but it ought to be solved 
before new plants are built.
 
                      © 2001 The Washington Post Company
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 7  Let tribe store N-waste
 
[deseretnews.com] 

 May 12, 2001

      The Deseret News on April 20 announced a forthcoming court 
battle over NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard). The players are to be 
the Goshute Indian leaders, backed by the Private Fuel Storage 
Consortium, and the Utah leaders who passed some rather stiff 
anti-nuclear storage laws, believed by the Goshutes to be 
unconstitutional.

       The court battle may do an insurmountable amount of good 
if the elements of the battle are made public as the battle 
proceeds. Every statement made by either side should be evaluated 
for accuracy by the press so that appropriate court and public 
opinion may be formed.

       There are many national issues afoot that have a bearing 
on this case. The main one is that nuclear power generation and 
the small amount of waste created thereby must coexist. If we are 
to get an increase of clean energy by building new, modern 
nuclear plants, we must provide for the relatively small amount 
of waste that these plants generate.

       Utah is being asked to store much of the waste that has 
been accumulated over 30-40 years of operation by the existing 
plants, and it will fit in only 800 acres of Utah desert soil. 
With a fabulous monthly rental, the Goshute Indians want the 
rental and are not afraid of any health risks involved. The 
rental could, happily for them, go on for longer than is being 
asked. Let's be generous and give them something we owe them and 
at the same time do our country a favor.

 Harold O. Johnson Orem
 
 © 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company 
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                     NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
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 1 The military's legacy in the South Chemical waste is only one of 
the reminders of past defense policies         


    The Anniston Star Online 05-06-2001, The military's legacy in 
the South Chemical waste is only one of the reminders of past 
defense policies Chemical waste is only one of the reminders of 
past defense policies - Off Calhoun County 109, near Bynum, sits 
nearly a billion dollar's worth of machinery, machinery designed 
to burn a load of some of the most toxic substances known to 
man."> 05-06-2001     opinion     Off Calhoun County 109, near 
Bynum, sits nearly a billion dollar's worth of machinery, 
machinery designed to burn a load of some of the most toxic 
substances known to man. -->                         
                                       
                                       	
By John Fleming
Star Associate Editor        
05-06-2001
                                       	
Off Calhoun County 109, near Bynum, at the end of the winding 
Morrisville Road, just beyond the scatter and aroma of the 
Calhoun County dump and just shy of a stand of pines sits nearly 
a billion dollar's worth of machinery, machinery designed to burn 
a load of some of the most toxic substances known to man.

Come this fall, officials at the chemical weapons incinerator at 
the Anniston Army Depot will begin burning surrogate material - 
substances that are, at least theoretically, extremely difficult 
to destroy - to further prove to themselves and to the people of 
the county that it will indeed be safe to incinerate the 2,253 
tons of nerve gas in our midst.

  The burning of the VX, sarin and mustard gas is not something 
any of us are looking forward to. Indeed it is not something this 
or any other community in this nation deserves. 

   And we have every right to be upset about being placed in this 
situation. Indeed, having 7 percent of the nation's stockpile of 
chemical weapons has caused some of us to focus almost solely 
that issue. Who could blame us? What else could possibly be as 
important? 

   Yet we need to remember that we are not the only community in 
the United States or the South having this problem. There are 
many places sharing our situation. And others are dealing with 
different kinds of contamination, some of it a lot scarier than 
what we have in Bynum.

   We'll keep this discussion to the South, since such a large 
chunk of the hazards left behind by the military as a result of 
policies adapted during World War II and the Cold War are in our 
region.

   The enormity of the toxic substances left behind in the South 
points to a couple of things. It says we had powerful politicians 
such as John Sparkman, who managed to get big government 
projects, including military ones, in this part of the country. 
But it also says that during the bad old days, when the country 
was trying to win a world war and, later, getting ready for a 
possible one against the Soviets, Southerners wanted to do their 
part. We are loyal, patriotic people. We have given our people in 
greater numbers than any other region of the country. If the Army 
needed a place to stash chemical weapons, then that was more or 
less OK. Of course, there was not much debate about it then, but 
helping the military and being the recipient of the additional 
jobs was not all bad.

We rarely thought about the day when we would be stuck with 
decaying canisters of deadly nerve agent. We hardly considered 
what we would do with radioactive waste. Most folks thought we 
wouldn't have to bother with getting rid of the chemical weapons 
at the Anniston Army Depot because we would use them on the 
battlefield.

But the Second World War ended and we won the Cold War without 
firing a single chemical or nuclear weapon.

    So now begins the cleanup. But again, let's remember we are 
not alone. There are three communities around the South 
struggling with the disposal of chemical weapons. In Pine Bluff, 
Ark., there are 3,849 tons of nerve agent waiting to be 
destroyed. At the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland (OK a 
border state) there are 1,623 tons of mustard agent and at Blue 
Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, there are 523 tons of various 
agents, including our familiar VX gas. 

    At 240 sites around the country, and in such places as Camp 
Siebert in Gadsden, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, Fort Meade, Md., 
and forts Benning and Gillem in Georgia, the Army is 
investigating the possibility that deposits of chemical weapons, 
in some cases from as long ago as the First World War, may have 
been left behind.

      Even more dangerous and more toxic, however, are the 
scatterings of radioactive waste left around the South. Have a 
look at Oak Ridge, Tenn., the home of the Manhattan Project, the 
place where the first atom bomb was built. The minds that slaved 
over the task there during World War II helped bring an end to 
the war. But since then, the place has been used to produce all 
sorts of nuclear weapons and waste that has served only to 
contaminate the area. It is not just the tons of uranium and its 
related products that are around Oak Ridge that make it such a 
toxic place. It is the million pounds of mercury that has bled 
into the ground.

 "During the 1950s, 60s and 70s tons of lithium and mercury were 
discarded in the process," says Ralph Hutchinson the coordinator 
of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. "The enriched 
uranium, the plutonium, fluoride, iodine and other related 
products are all here, but it is the mercury we are most worried 
about."

                             Cleanup at Oak Ridge

   John Schlatter of Bechtel Jacobs, a contractor in charge of 
environmental cleanup for Department of Energy at Oak Ridge, says 
DOE is making a major effort and spending a lot of money ($500 
million a year) to cleanup the effects of 50 years of nuclear 
research and production at Oak Ridge. "Environmental cleanup (at) 
Oak Ridge is a huge, complex job that will, by most estimates, 
take another 10 to 15 years to complete at a cost of several 
billion dollars," said Schlatter. 

 Schlatter says the mercury problem first came to the public 
attention in the 1980s with the revelation that more than 2 
million pounds of mercury had been released into a local creek 
over a period of many years. 

   "The creek bed," Schlatter said, "has been cleaned up, but 
there are many other contaminated areas still being remedied."

  Schlatter explains that the DOE reservation in Oak Ridge has 
approximately 1,100 acres of various wastes, including uranium. 
Because of abundant rainfall and high water tables, he says, 
contaminants have leached from these areas for decades, resulting 
in contaminated soil, surface water, and groundwater. 

 The situation is serious indeed in Oak Ridge, but in order to 
understand the enormity of the nuclear waste issue in the South, 
one has to include the Savannah River complex in South Carolina. 
Here government agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission and 
now the Department of Energy since the 1950s manufactured 
plutonium and uranium for nuclear weapons for the military, 
storing 120,000 cubic meters of high-level radioactive waste and 
up to 4.5 million cubic feet of low-level waste. And this stuff 
will be around a long time. Plutonium, for example, has a 
half-life of 25,000 years. 

           There is no way, in short, to dispose of nuclear 
waste. To make matters worse, the Savannah River facility is not 
only still in business, it is the destination for radioactive 
material from other parts of the nation.

    Similar problems plague the community of Paducah, Ky., where 
a gaseous diffusion plant that used enriched uranium has left 
large amounts of contamination. Ongoing cleanup efforts in 
Paducah have included plutonium, uranium, chromium, arsenic and 
PCBs. The site has an estimated 486,000 metric tons of depleted 
uranium and 52,000 drums of chemical waste. The non-partisan 
accounting office of Congress, the General Accounting Office, 
says if the site is to be cleaned up by the target date of 2010 
then the government would have to spend $1.3 billion between now 
and then. 

 "All three of these place are on the Superfund list," says Bill 
Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. "All are 
hugely and wildly contaminated and will remain so practically 
forever."

  Will Callicott of the Westinghouse Crop, which operates the 
Savannah River complex for the Department of Energy, says 
environmental cleanup is moving forward at a rapid pace.

 "There is a lot of waste management activity going on here, and 
has been for years, said Callicott. "We have been doing this 
since 1970s and more then half of the sites have been remediated 
or are in the closure process. But there is a lot more to do. A 
significant part of it should be cleaned up by 2028." Chemical 
and nuclear sites, of course, are the places that cause us the 
most worry. But there are also other insidious problems out 
there.

Recently authorities at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina discovered 
ground water contamination. Authorities in Suffolk, Va., are 
finally about to declare a 975-acre tract of land clear after 
struggling to clean up aging stores of TNT and equipment 
suspected of being used in chemical warfare. And the 
Environmental Protection Agency is continuing studies of the old 
Cordova munitions plant in Memphis to determine the extent of 
contamination of white phosphorous, TNT, ammonia nitrate and 
mercury.

   One would have thought the people in Childersburg were lucky 
to receive a large tract of land outside town from the army. It 
was, like our Fort McClellan, potentially ripe for industrial and 
commercial use. But the land was contaminated with dry powder, 
again, a substance used in the manufacture of bombs.

  It took years, but city leaders have finally managed to clean 
up the area. Changes for the better Even in our area the story 
goes beyond chemical weapons. At the Anniston Army Depot - parts 
of which have been designated a Superfund site - for decades 
officials used substances known as TCDs to clean tanks and other 
vehicles. The compounds have since been found in groundwater in 
the area. On Fort McClellan, construction of the Eastern Parkway 
has been slowed, in part, by the large numbers of unexploded 
ordnance which litter parts of the old fort.

   In the meantime, however, the military is waking up to the 
importance of contamination. The Army, for example, has even 
started a "green ammunition" program that aims to replace the 200 
million plus lead bullets fired each year (lead can contaminate 
ground and surface water) with tungsten or tungsten-nylon 
composites. 

The future of more widespread cleanups, however, is more 
worrisome because the Bush administration has shown itself less 
than interested in environmental affairs. Funding for cleanup 
activities is especially important to Department of Energy 
projects because DOE was involved in running a number of the 
nuclear programs around the country and funding for those 
cleanups comes out of its budget. But President Bush has proposed 
cutting the DOE's budget by about $700 million this year, ongoing 
cleanup efforts will no doubt suffer pushing back the day when we 
can all be free of the dangers of toxicity left over by the 
military. 

   That little bit of news is really the ultimate irony here. The 
South, you might say, deserves better. After all, the region 
didn't raise a ruckus when its services were needed to win the 
war and outdo the Soviets. And what do we get in return for all 
of this loyalty and sacrifice? A lot of deadly waste. The least 
we should ask for is an all-out effort to clean it up. *John 
Fleming is associate editor for The Star*.
                                       
  Copyright 2001 Consolidated Publishing. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 2  Were Australian soldiers used as nuclear guinea pigs?  

  [Thestar.com]   
  May. 11, 04:38 EDT   

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The Australian government said Friday 
it will investigate claims that the country's soldiers were used 
as guinea pigs in British nuclear tests during the 1950s and 
'60s.

 The troops were exposed to radioactive fallout just hours after 
bomb tests and tried out different types of clothing to determine 
what protection they offered against radiation, says Prof. Sue 
Rabbitt Roff, citing Australian archive documents.

 Rabbitt Roff, a senior research fellow at Scotland's Dundee 
University, said the document contradicts British government 
assertions in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 that no 
humans were ever used in experiments in nuclear-weapons trials.

 ''This document lists 24 Australian personnel who were used 
directly for clothing-trial experiments to see what sort of 
clothing would be more protective to men in a nuclear war 
situation,'' she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

 ''They were asked to wear particular types of clothing and to 
crawl and walk through ground zero some hours and days after the 
detonation of nuclear weapons at Maralinga in order to see 
whether their clothing would give them any sort of protection 
from the radioactive materials,'' she said.

 The British government conducted a series of atmospheric nuclear 
weapons tests at Monte Bello Island, off Western Australia, and 
at Maralinga in the deserts of southern Australia.

 Opposition leader Kim Beazley described the claims as ''very 
disturbing'' and called for a full inquiry.

 ''We've had formal investigations in relation to Maralinga 
before, which to my recollection have not turned up with anything 
quite like this,'' he said.

 Mark Croxford, a spokesperson for Veterans Affairs Minister 
Bruce Scott, said Scott has asked officials to contact Rabbitt 
Roff for a copy of the documents.

 Croxford said the government is compiling a registry of people 
who worked on the tests. The registry would be completed mid-year 
and used to begin a study into cancer rates among participants.

 Rabbitt Roff said the named servicemen could be tracked to 
determine if the tests affected their health.

 Lawyer Morris May, who represents a group of 30 Australian test 
victims seeking compensation, said the men had long claimed they 
were used as guinea pigs.

 May said one Australian driver had described how he and a group 
of British officers had been instructed to walk through an area 
contaminated by a recent explosion while wearing army issue 
woollen clothing.

 ''He found that a bit odd because it was very hot and normally 
woollen clothing would not be used at Maralinga at that time,'' 
May told ABC radio.  

                                                                  
Legal Notice:- Copyright 1996-2001. Toronto 
www.thestar.comis strictly prohibited without the prior written 
*****************************************************************
 3  Australia confronts UK over N-tests

BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | 

Saturday, 12 May, 2001, 10:03 GMT 11:03 UK      

The Australian Government is considering demanding compensation 
from Britain for using Australian servicemen in radiation 
experiments in the 1950s. 

We were testing the effects of very low level radiation fallout 
on clothing not personnel
   	 		
   	 	 UK Ministry of Defence spokesman 	 	 	   

The UK Government admitted on Friday that Australian troops had 
been ordered to run, walk and crawl across contaminated nuclear 
test sites. But it says the troops were only exposed to very low 
levels of radiation and were not put at risk. 

The Australian Government will raise the issue on Monday at a 
meeting with Britain's defence minister in London. 

Not satisfied 

"I think where a clear connection can be made between servicemen 
and women suffering as a result of the tests and what happened 
during those tests, of course the federal government would look 
at those questions, " Australian Foreign Affairs Minister 
Alexander Downer said on Saturday. 
	 		 			
Mr Downer's comments are an indication that his government is not 
satisfied with British reassurances about the safety of tests. 
New research into Australian archive documents at Scotland's 
Dundee University has revealed that 24 Australian servicemen 
tested different types of clothing to find out what protection 
they offered against radiation. 

The researcher, Professor Sue Rabbitt Roff, said the archives 
contradicted statements by the UK Government that no humans were 
used in experiments in nuclear weapons tests. 

Britain conducted a series of tests at Monte Bello Island off 
Western Australia and at Maralinga in the southern Australian 
desert during the 1950s. In one test at Maralinga, the servicemen 
were asked to wear particular types of clothing as they walked 
and crawled in the area hours and days after the detonation. 

Asked to participate 

But Britain denied that this amounted to using people for 
experimental purposes. 
	 		 			
[Soldiers crouching before a detonation] 

Servicemen were told to crouch moments before a detonation

"We never used people as human guinea pigs," a Ministry of 
Defence spokesman said. 

"We did conduct tests in the 1950s and 1960s on Commonwealth 
officers and they were asked to participate as logistical 
support. 

"We were testing the effects of very low level radiation fallout 
on clothing, not personnel." 

Those issues will be raised on Monday when Australia's Minister 
for Veteran Affairs, Bruce Scott, meets UK Defence Minister John 
Spellar in London. 

  Nuclear tests timeline  

   1952-63 - British Government carries out nuclear tests in 
Australia 1956 - Maralinga becomes location for all tests in 
Australia 1967 - Maralinga officially closed 1984 Australian 
Royal Commission set up in response to safety concerns   

One survivor of the nuclear trials in south Australia says the 
death rate among his former colleagues is alarmingly high because 
of illnesses caused by the exposure to radiation. 

Avon Hudson, who served with the Royal Australian Air Force in 
the early 1960s, said the dangers were so great, men had a better 
chance of survival in a war zone than they did at Maralinga. 

Morris May, a lawyer representing a group of 30 Australian 
veterans seeking compensation for exposure to radiation during 
nuclear testing, told Australian radio his clients had long 
claimed they were used as guinea pigs. He said one veteran, a 
driver, had described how he had been instructed to walk through 
a contaminated area wearing army issue woollen clothing. No one 
had believed him. 

      Search BBC News Online
*****************************************************************
 4  Servicemen exposed to radiation

        BBC News | UK | 

Saturday, 12 May, 2001, 03:37 GMT 04:37 UK      

Servicemen witnessed the nuclear tests
 		 		 		 	 	 	 	 		 	 	The Ministry of Defence has admitted it used
Australian servicemen in radiation experiments in the 1950s. 

The men were ordered to run, walk and crawl across contaminated 
areas but the MoD says they were only exposed to very low levels 
of radiation and were not put at risk. 

British researcher Sue Rabbit Roff discovered a document in the 
Australian National Archive which revealed that Australian 
personnel were used to test different types of clothing to find 
out what protection they offered against radiation. 

"We never used people as human guinea pigs," an MoD spokesman 
said. 

We were testing the effects of very low level radiation fallout 
on clothing not personnel
   	 		
MoD spokesman                     

"We did conduct tests in the 1950s and 1960s on Commonwealth 
officers and they were asked to participate as logistical 
support. 

"We were testing the effects of very low level radiation fallout 
on clothing not personnel." 

Ms Roff, senior research fellow at Dundee University, said the 
document she discovered lists 24 Australian personnel who were 
used in experiments to see what clothing would be more protective 
in a nuclear war. 

The men were asked to wear particular types of clothing and to 
crawl and walk through ground zero some hours and days after the 
detonation of nuclear and atomic weapons at Maralinga," she said. 

The Australian Government has said it intends to investigate the 
allegations. 

  Nuclear tests timeline  

   1952-63 - British Government carries out nuclear tests in 
Australia 1956 - Maralinga becomes location for all tests in 
Australia 1967 - Maralinga officially closed 1984 Australian 
Royal Commission set up in response to safety concerns   

Britain conducted a series of tests at Monte Bello Island off 
Western Australia and at Maralinga in the southern Australian 
desert. 

Morris May, a lawyer representing a group of 30 Australian 
veterans seeking compensation for exposure to radiation during 
nuclear testing, told the radio his clients had long claimed they 
were used as guinea pigs. 

He said one veteran, a driver, had described how he had been 
instructed to walk through a contaminated area wearing army issue 
woollen clothing. No one believed him. 
	         
Search BBC News Online
*****************************************************************
 5  Britain accused of using troops for nuclear tests

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

Patrick Barkham in Sydney
Saturday May 12, 2001 		
 		
Britain used servicemen as human guinea pigs to test clothing 
against radiation in the south Australian desert during the 1950s 
and 60s, a researcher at Dundee University claimed yesterday. 

Sue Rabbitt Roff said she had found Australian archive material 
that showed 24 Australian personnel were ordered to walk across 
contaminated craters after atomic blasts to test how different 
clothing protected them from radiation. 

The Ministry of Defence admitted that 12 servicemen from Britain, 
Australia and New Zealand were asked to test protective clothing 
in contaminated areas as part of an 80-strong force, whose role 
was to test equipment subjected to radiation in Australia in the 
50s and 60s. An MoD spokeswoman said: "We were testing the suits 
for performance and how they would react to very low levels of 
radiation exposure." 

The Australian Labor party called for a new inquiry into nuclear 
trials at Maralinga, 600 miles west of Adelaide. But the 
Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, said he would 
examine Professor Rabbitt Roff's findings before raising the 
issue with the British government. 

Between 1952 and 1963 the British government, backed by 
Australia, exploded numerous atomic weapons and tested nuclear 
material at Monte Bello Island, off Western Australia, and at 
Maralinga. More than 14,000 Australian and 22,000 British 
servicemen were exposed to the blasts. 

Prof Rabbitt Roff said the newly discovered document "puts the 
lie to the British government's claim that they never used humans 
for guinea pig type experiments in weapons trials in Australia". 

Lawyers for the British government told the European court of 
human rights in 1997 that none of the servicemen who witnessed 
the blasts were deliberately used in nuclear experiments, 
successfully defeating former officers' compensation claims. 

An Australian royal commission report in 1985 failed to prove 
servicemen were used as guinea pigs, but demanded that the 
British government pay for a £43m clean-up of the contaminated 
area, which was finally concluded last year. 

With fallout from the blasts reaching Adelaide and Melbourne, the 
commission ruled that civilians affected by the tests were 
entitled to seek compensation. Maralinga Aborigines were awarded 
£5.4m damages from Britain in 1994. 

Maralinga's inhospitable desert was last year declared safe for 
hunting by Aborigines, but everyday access remains restricted to 
a swath of desert more than 250 miles across, due to the presence 
of 20kg of plutonium in the ground. 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
 6  CONTROVERSIAL PLAN: Nuke plants proposed for test site

  [Las Vegas Review-Journal] 
  
Saturday, May 12, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
South Carolina lawmaker says using existing assets to meet energy 
needs makes sense 

By STEVE TETREAULT 
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., has suggested a plan 
to attack the energy crisis -- build nuclear power plants at the 
Nevada Test Site. 

Thurmond proposes "energy campuses" be established at the test 
site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and other federal 
reservations including the Idaho National Environmental 
Engineering Laboratory, the Hanford complex in Washington state 
and the Savannah River complex in the lawmaker's home state of 
South Carolina. 

All have played key roles in development of U.S. nuclear 
capabilities over the years and can do so again, Thurmond said. 

"It makes perfect sense to use these existing assets as a 
platform upon which to expand our civilian nuclear power 
production capabilities," the senator said in a May 1 letter to 
Vice President Dick Cheney, who is scheduled to unveil the Bush 
administration's energy strategy next week. The letter first was 
reported in The Energy Daily, a trade newsletter. 

Thurmond said placing nuclear plants at federal facilities would 
speed site selection, licensing and legal challenges. 

"To begin with, there is no need to secure new land or to 
convince the local populace that having a nuclear facility nearby 
is not a safety issue," he said. "Furthermore, it makes for a 
quicker and less contentious licensing process. 

"Finally, it reduces the amount of new infrastructure required, 
as you would be `leveraging' against what already exists at these 
locations," he said. 

Thurmond said electricity generated at the test site and at 
Hanford "would be able to directly or indirectly provide more 
power to energy-starved California." 

"These four sites were ideal for locating nuclear projects 50 
years ago, and they remain so to this day," Thurmond said. 

Thurmond, 98, generally does not talk to reporters. John 
Gastright, his aide on military matters who has worked on the 
plan, was not available Friday, a spokesperson said. 

Thurmond has asked Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska and Senate 
Energy Committee chairman, to consider funding a panel to study 
the idea. 

Kevin Rohrer, public affairs team leader at the Nevada Operations 
Office of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said, "We 
are currently not researching or developing or designing or 
testing a reactor" at the test site. 

Going back through the years, "I would probably be a liar if I 
said that absolutely nobody had ever thought of it (nuclear power 
generation), but as far as whether anybody seriously considered 
it, I don't know," Rohrer said. 

Several experimental programs were conducted at the test site 
during the Cold War, exploring ways to use atomic energy to 
propel rockets, according to test site histories. Two research 
reactors were built as part of Air Force-funded Project Pluto, a 
program begun in 1957 and ended in 1961. 

Area 25 in the southwest corner of the test site was the location 
for Project Rover in the early 1960s. Thirteen research reactors 
were assembled to prove that a nuclear reactor can be used to 
heat liquid hydrogen for spacecraft propulsion. 

In the early 1970s, the old Atomic Energy Commission and the 
nuclear power industry scouted the test site for power plant 
locations, but abandoned the idea when questions arose about 
seismic activity, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear 
Projects Office. 

"It might be a good idea for some places but it certainly 
couldn't work at the test site. There's not the water there to 
cool the reactor, and it could never meet Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission seismic design standards," Loux said, echoing 
arguments that Nevada is using to challenge the proposed nuclear 
waste repository at Yucca Mountain on the test site's southwest 
corner. 

Nevada lawmakers have been trying to move the test site into 
another direction, promoting programs to develop wind and solar 
power generation on the sprawling range where nuclear bomb tests 
were once conducted. 

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the idea of nuclear power 
plants at the test site was "preposterous." 

"The very person who has advocated states' rights over the past 
50 years is willing to sell states down the river to promote 
nuclear power," she said of Thurmond. 

"This is not an avenue the congressman would go down to solve the 
energy crisis," said Amy Spanbauer, an aide to Rep. Jim Gibbons, 
R-Nev. 

"Until the nuclear waste issue is resolved, we don't want to get 
into a discussion about new nuclear power plants," said Sen. 
Harry Reid, D-Nev., spokesman Nathan Naylor. 

In March, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse 
Helms, R-N.C., suggested to the Bush administration a new policy 
on nuclear weapons that might lead to resuming testing of smaller 
bombs that release less fallout. 

Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only 
site the federal government is considering for a high-level 
nuclear repository.
 
This story is located at: 
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/May-12-Sat-2001/news/16082304.html
*****************************************************************
 7  Britain admits using servicemen in nuclear tests

theage.com.au, Breaking News

Source: AAP|Published: Saturday May 12, 10:46 AM

LONDON, May 11 AAP/AFP - The British government today ended years 
of denials and admitted it had used Australian servicemen in 
nuclear radiation tests.
 
The Ministry of Defence was forced into the admission after a 
Scottish researcher uncovered a reference to the tests, carried 
out in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, in government archives.
 
The documents from the National Archives of Australia said 24 men 
had been chosen for the trials from an "indoctrinee force" of 
more than 250 British, Australian and New Zealand officers and 
civilians.
 
The men had walked, crawled and driven through a fallout zone 
three days after an explosion, testing out three different types 
of protective clothing.
 
"The object was to discover what types of clothing would give the 
best protection against radioactive contamination in conditions 
of warfare," the document said.
 
But the ministry denied it had treated soldiers as guinea pigs or 
lied about the experiments, and said the soldiers involved were 
exposed to little radiation.
 
"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," a ministry 
spokeswoman told AFP.
 
"Twelve indoctrinees were asked to do tests to see how military 
clothing worked."
 
The spokeswoman did not return AAP's calls today.
 
But Dundee University research fellow Professor Sue Rabbitt Roff 
said it was an historic admission following the British 
government's claim in the European Court of Human Rights in 1997 
that no humans had ever been used in experiments in nuclear 
weapons trials.
 
"They denied black and blue that these tests took place and this 
is a complete about-face," Roff told AAP.
 
"It's the start of a necessary turnaround on the part of the 
British government.
 
"They can no longer sustain the myth that these nuclear weapons 
detonations were only concerned with the development of the 
weapons, but also with human experiments to see what would happen 
to men in circumstances of war."
 
She said the tests were probably necessary at the time, when the 
Cold War was at its height.
 
"Our complaint is not even so much with the fact that the men 
were required to do these things but the fact that it's been 
denied ever since and they've been given no health care, they've 
been denied pensions and denied compensation for the radiogenic 
conditions that we feel that they've suffered from."
 
Roff said the claim that it was the clothing, not the men, that 
was being tested for exposure to radiation was lame and said 
thousands of Commonwealth servicemen not directly involved in the 
nuclear tests at Maralinga were required to be outdoors to 
observe the detonations.
 
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has promised to analyse the 
claims before deciding whether to raise the matter with Britain.
 
British and Australian governments have resisted pressure from 
veterans to accept that they suffered from radiation exposure and 
pay compensation.
 
In all, 12 British atomic bombs were detonated on Australian 
territory - three on the Monte Bello islands, off Western 
Australia, and nine at Maralinga, South Australia, - between 
October 1952 and 1957, while several hundred so-called minor 
tests were conducted up to 1963.
 

    Copyright © 2001 The Age Company Ltd. Any unauthorised use, 
*****************************************************************
 8  The Age: Maralinga 'lies' prompt new probe

By MARK FORBES
DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT 
CANBERRA
Saturday 12 May 2001

New evidence that Australian servicemen were used as guinea pigs 
and deliberately exposed to radiation during atomic testing in 
the 1950s will be investigated by the government.
 
Veterans groups have reacted angrily to government claims that it 
is acting on their health concerns, alleging continued stalling 
and cover-ups. They called for their nuclear duties to be defined 
as hazardous, entitling them to health care and pensions.
 
Documents uncovered in the Australian National Archives include a 
list of 24 Australians sent into "hot" areas to test how 
different clothing would protect against radiation, a senior 
research fellow at Dundee University, Sue Rabbit Roff, said 
yesterday.
 
The Australians were sent into ground zero at Maralinga hours and 
days after atomic detonations, Dr Rabbit Roff said. The documents 
proved that the British Government lied in claiming it never used 
humans as guinea pigs in the nuclear trials, she said.
 
Veterans of the blasts said the documents supported claims they 
had been making for 40 years, but had been continually denied by 
the British and Australian administrations.
 
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he was surprised and 
disturbed by the information. "I hope the government looks into 
it very quickly and, if necessary, formalises the process," he 
said.
 
Mr Downer said the government would wait to analyse the claims 
before deciding whether to raise the matter with Britain.
 
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley also said the news was "really 
disturbing". A royal commission in 1985 recommended against 
compensation for veterans of the blasts.
 
Copyright © The Age Company Ltd 2001. Any unauthorised use, copying or
*****************************************************************
 9  Canberra knew military personnel exposed in atomic tests: report 

ABC News - 12/05/01 : 

A report released today by the National Archives of Australia 
shows Australian authorities were aware Australian and New 
Zealand military personnel involved in atomic bomb tests in the 
1950s received excessive doses of radiation.
 
The report shows that more than one third of 76 personnel 
involved in tests in 1956 received a radiation dose greater than 
the maximum "permissible exposure" in a week. 

The records back work by British researcher Sue Rabbitt Roff, who 
said she had uncovered documents in the archive which proved 
servicemen were deliberately exposed to radiation in nuclear 
tests in the 1950s. 

Her document says 24 British, Australian and New Zealand officers 
and civilians had walked, crawled and driven through a fallout 
zone three days after an explosion, testing out three different 
types of protective clothing. 

"The object was to discover what types of clothing would give the 
best protection against radioactive contamination in conditions 
of warfare," the document said. 

In all, 12 British atomic bombs were detonated in Australia 
between 1952 and 1957. 


Denial
 
British and Australian governments have long resisted pressure 
from veterans of the tests to accept they suffered radiation 
exposure and deserved compensation. 

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. 

But the British Ministry of Defence ended years of denials and 
admitted yesterday it had used Australian servicemen in nuclear 
radiation tests. 


Howard
 
The Prime Minister, John Howard, has indicated the Government 
will consider establishing a register of Australian workers 
employed at Maralinga in the 1950s.
 
The Veterans Affairs Minister, Bruce Scott, is to meet with the 
British minister responsible for defence in London on Monday over 
the revelations many were exposed to exciessive doses of 
radiation.
 
Mr Howard says a register of the histories of former workers is 
possible but concedes it is a big task.
 
"A decision was taken a long time ago by the former Government 
not to establish a register," he said.
 

Compensation
 
The Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says the Government 
has not ruled out the possibility of pushing for compensation for 
the ex-servicemen.
 
"Where a clear connection can be made between servicemen and 
women suffering as a result of those tests and what happened 
during those tests, then of course the Federal Government would 
look at those questions," he said. 

border="0"> © 2001 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 
*****************************************************************
 10  Diggers lay in N-dust 

news.com.au - 

[ 12may01 ]

By MARK LUDLOW
12may01

A WITNESS to British nuclear testing at Maralinga in the 1950s 
says he saw up to 250 servicemen being forced to roll in 
radioactive dust.

 The claims follow startling new revelations that the British 
Government used Australian servicemen as guinea pigs in nuclear 
testing.

 The British have always denied this.

 Documents unearthed by a Scottish academic have ignited the 
sensitive issue of testing in outback Australia in the 1950s and 
1960s.

 The Howard Government said it would investigate the claims 
before deciding whether to raise the matter with the British 
Government.

 The documents allegedly list 24 servicemen who tested clothing 
to determine what protection they would offer against radiation 
in a nuclear war.

 Senior research fellow at Dundee University Sue Rabbitt Roff 
said the documents challenged the British Government's claim that 
people were never used for experiments after nuclear tests.

 "They were asked to wear particular types of clothing and crawl 
and walk through ground zero some hours and days after the 
detonation of nuclear weapons at Maralinga to see whether their 
clothing would give them any sort of protection from the 
radioactive materials," she said.

 The documents were uncovered at the National Archives in 
Canberra.

 Brisbane veteran Terry Toon, who was in Maralinga for 11 months 
in 1956 with the army engineer corps, said yesterday he saw 
truckloads of serviceman being dumped 5km from ground zero after 
the Marcoo blast in October 1956.

 He said he was be mused by the sight of hundreds of men rolling 
in the dust.

 It was believed small doses of radiation were not harmful to 
soldiers.
 
*****************************************************************
 11  The hallucinogenic security of nuclear mushroom clouds 

[The Japan Times Online]       

May 12, 2001   
  	
By RAMESH THAKUR 
Special to The Japan Times 

When former U.S. President Bill Clinton was recently in India, 
the story goes, he was walking along the beach one evening in a 
contemplative mood. Spying an object sticking out of the ground, 
he pulled it out, gave it a rub to see what it was and found it 
was a brass lamp. True to form, a genie appeared and invited him 
to make one wish.

 "One?" said Clinton. "I thought I was entitled to three."

 "You know how it is," said the genie. "These are hard times. 
Business is down, helpers are hard to find. Besides, your 
country's management gurus -- having appropriated that word from 
here, by the way, without paying copyright fees for intellectual 
property -- have made downsizing the rage in everything."

 "Oh, all right," said Clinton. "In the last days of my 
presidency, I really gave peace in the Middle East everything I 
had, to no avail. Grant me peace in the Middle East."

 "Nah, too hard. Even we genies have had to give up there and 
swim across the Arabian Sea to seek our fortune in foreign lands. 
That's how I came to be washed ashore in India. Ask me something 
else."

 "OK," said Clinton. "In that case, rid these lands of nuclear 
weapons."

 "On the other hand," replied the genie, "I feel nostalgic about 
my lost homeland. Can we look at those geopolitical maps of the 
Middle East again? . .

. Three years ago, the nuclear genie was let out of the bottle in 
South Asia. Those Western countries that argued the merits of 
nuclear deterrence in underpinning the peace of Europe for over 
four decades with the most conviction have been among the most 
skeptical of hopes for nuclear peace in South Asia. Conversely, 
Indians, having been among the most passionate in denouncing 
nuclear weapons have now embraced them with great enthusiasm.

 Impressed by the argument that nuclear deterrence was 
responsible for the long peace between the Cold War rivals, 
Indian and Pakistani strategists saw no reason why the 
subcontinent would not enjoy a similar afterglow following 
weaponization. The theoretical argument on the benefits of the 
measured spread of nuclear weapons held that the likelihood of 
war decreases as deterrent and defensive capabilities increase, 
and that the newer nuclear powers can and will be socialized into 
the responsibilities of their new status.

 Stability-enhancing features of nuclear deterrence in general 
are given particular cogency in the case of Indo-Pakistani 
hostility by features distinctive to the two nations' 
relationship. For example, propinquity and the pattern of 
population distribution leaves each of them vulnerable to nuclear 
fallout from its own weapons used against the other, thereby 
producing a measure of self-deterrence. The wars between India 
and Pakistan have been exceptional in the degree of restraint 
shown by both sides. Neither has chosen to bomb civilian targets. 
An ambiguous nuclear posture had already stabilized the status 
quo. The 1998 tests simply brought into the open the clandestine 
nuclear reality of the past decade.

 Such complacency rests on self-delusion. In fact, India's 
security interests suffered substantial damage as a result of the 
nuclear tests. Its claims to nuclear-power status were dismissed. 
India still lacks effective deterrent capability against China. 
The subcontinent itself is more dangerous after the tests. Do the 
people of New Delhi feel safer knowing that their country's 
historic enemy has the ability to drop a nuclear bomb on them? 
Nuclear weapons failed to deter Pakistani infiltration or Indian 
retaliation in the two-month war in Kargil (Kashmir) in 1999.

 Instead of breaking free from the subcontinent, India found 
itself bracketed even more tightly with arch rival Pakistan. The 
issue of Kashmir was internationalized as never before, and 
Pakistan did its best to keep the province on the world's front 
pages. Far from China being accepted as the point of departure 
for India's nuclear-security policy, Beijing was actively courted 
by Washington as a comanager to contain the nuclear situation in 
South Asia.

 This might suggest that Pakistan gained from the twin sets of 
nuclear tests. Such a conclusion would be erroneous. The tests by 
Pakistan set in train a chain of consequences whose net effect 
was to bring to a head the cumulative crises of governance and 
economy. Pakistan risked becoming South Asia's first failed 
state. With insecure borders to the east and north, it was also 
being torn apart by armed sectarian and subnational groups whose 
violence threatened not just rival gangs but the nation as a 
whole. The agencies of law and order were delivering neither. 
Costs were spiraling out of control, basic necessities were 
becoming unaffordable for ordinary people, the government seemed 
incapable of reforming the tax system and collecting taxes and 
debts from the politically powerful, and international donors and 
creditors were leaving.

 That is, the economy had spent itself out, the state was 
inadequate to the tasks of governing, and people-centered "human 
security" had collided head-on with state-based "national 
security." Pakistan risked becoming a nuclear country with a 
begging bowl. This is why the takeover of government by the 
military was generally welcomed at the time.

 The nuclear crisis compelled Western policymakers to focus on 
the India-Pakistan security relativities in a way that they had 
not done before, with the result that for the first time the 
disparities began to register on their consciousness. Indian 
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has gone so far as to claim 
that India and the United States are "natural allies" as the 
world's most populous and powerful democracies. While this is 
hyperbole, the fact remains the successive rounds of India-U.S. 
talks at the highest level were the most sustained in decades and 
gave India a higher profile in Washington. Partly as a result of 
the changed nuclear reality, India has been one of the few 
countries to have officially welcomed the Bush administration's 
planned changes in nuclear doctrine.

 Washington began to understand the complexities of linking 
Kashmir to any solution to the nuclear standoff, and to warn 
against cross-border state sponsored terrorism in Kashmir. Where 
outsiders had worried that Kashmir would be the flash point for 
the next nuclear conflict, it transpired that nuclear testing had 
become the catalyst for raising the temperature over Kashmir.

 In the short term, India suffered the setback of being bracketed 
with Pakistan; in the medium term, Pakistan risked the world 
realizing that the two countries are in different leagues; in the 
long term, both risk forgetting that nuclear games are irrelevant 
to the real needs of their people. The language of "roti, kapara 
aur makan" -- food, clothing and housing -- is common to India 
and Pakistan. Hallucinogenic mushroom clouds are no substitute.
 
*Ramesh Thakur is vice rector of the United Nations University in 
Tokyo. These are his personal views.

The Japan Times: May 12, 2001
*****************************************************************
 12  NGO calls for Korean nuclear-free zone 

[The Japan Times Online]       

May 11, 2001   
  	
Japanese delegation hopes to establish sister cities in North Korea 

By ERIKO ARITA 
Staff writer 

A group of people trying to increase the number of "nuclear-free 
municipalities" in Japan is planning to visit North Korea in 
August to promote exchanges at a grassroots level and discuss the 
possibility of establishing a nuclear-free zone on the Korean 
Peninsula.

 They hope their effort will rev up the effort to normalize ties 
between Japan and North Korea and bring the two countries closer 
together on a more personal level.

 "The normalization talks seem stalled at the central government 
level," said Masaru Nishida, chairman of the Nuclear-Free Zone 
Citizens Network Japan. "If people directly talk with each other, 
they would know that everybody loves peace," he said.

 Nishida believes that local governments should have their own 
diplomacy and that the delegation can help break the political 
deadlock.

 The delegation being arranged by the Tokyo-based nongovernmental 
organization includes people from nuclear-free municipalities 
across Japan -- 30 prefectures and 2,525 cities, towns and 
villages have made declarations aimed at abolishing nuclear 
weapons.

 During the six-day trip scheduled to start in early August, the 
group plans to visit Pyongyang, Kesong and Panmunjom and meet 
with a group called Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries of 
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which meets with 
private citizens from other countries.

 Nishida, a 72-year-old literary critic and former professor at 
Hosei University in Tokyo, took a similar delegation to North 
Korea in 1987 and has been active in expanding and networking 
nuclear-free municipalities in Japan and abroad since the 1980s.

 He hopes the second visit will lead to a sister-city arrangement 
between the two countries, which he believes will help pave the 
way to normalized bilateral relations and eventually eliminate 
the threat of a nuclear war in Northeast Asia.

 However, some question whether local autonomy exists in North 
Korea, which is known for its centralized administrative 
framework and inscrutable power structure. In addition, there is 
some doubt about whether a sister-city tie can be formed with a 
city in North Korea if there are no official diplomatic ties 
between the countries.

 Nishida also thought it might be difficult to discuss the issue 
with North Koreans, but he said that he has been encouraged by an 
official of the city of Kesong whom he met on his first visit and 
who was enthusiastic about the sister-city program.

 In a separate diplomatic move, the city of Sakaiminato, Tottori 
Prefecture, linked up with the city of Wonsan in what is the sole 
sister-city relation between the two countries, according to the 
Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, an 
organization jointly run by local governments in Japan.

 The ties are growing stronger thanks to marine trade, the city 
said.

 "Now is a time of 'global localism.' " Nishida said. "I am 
talking with chiefs of Japanese municipalities who believe that 
municipalities should be involved in peace-building, and asking 
them to form sister-city relations with cities in North Korea."

 Nishida emphasized that personal exchanges could prove to be a 
powerful bilateral security measure.

 In discussing the building of a nuclear-free zone covering the 
Korean Peninsula and Japan, the delegation is planning to hold a 
forum with the Korean Anti-nuke Peace Committee, an organization 
that communicates with foreign antinuclear groups.

 "In the forum, I want to confirm a joint declaration of North 
and South Korea (made in 1992). Then I want to ask them what they 
think of the idea of building a nuclear-free zone and how to 
establish it," Nishida said, acknowledging that some Western 
countries suspect North Korea has developed a nuclear bomb.

 In 1992, North and South Korea announced the Joint Declaration 
on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. A decade before, 
the late Kim Il Sung, the North's founding father, made a joint 
declaration with the then Social Democratic Party of Japan in 
1981 on establishing a nuclear-free zone in northeast Asia. 

Currently, every country in the Southern Hemisphere is covered by 
at least one of several nuclear-free treaties. Although these 
treaties would not be fully effective unless states possessing 
nuclear weapons sign relevant protocols, there are growing voices 
in the international community to expand the zones to cover the 
Northern Hemisphere.

 "By expanding nuclear-free zones, where countries neither own 
nor produce nuclear weapons, I believe we can take firm steps 
forward toward eliminating nuclear weapons from our planet," 
Nishida said.

 Following a rapid decrease in tension on the Korean Peninsula 
after the historic meeting in June between South Korean President 
Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Nishida hopes 
building a nuclear-free zone in the area will contribute to 
eliminating the remnants of the Cold War in Northeast Asia.

 During the visit, the delegation is also planning to meet with 
North Korean survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki. Japanese government researchers said in March that more 
than 900 Koreans who were exposed to radiation in the bombings in 
August 1945 now live in the North.

 "We should urge the Japanese government to pay compensation to 
the victims. But to do this, we need to form diplomatic 
relations," Nishida said.
 
*Interested people can join the delegation. For more information, 
call Katsuaki Kimura (Japanese only), the secretariat of the 
delegation, at (03) 3338-3718. *

Peace Boat cruise A Japanese nongovernmental organization 
promoting peace, human rights and environmental issues will 
launch a cruise in August to both North and South Korea, 
according to tour organizers.

 Officials of Peace Boat, which has sponsored global cruises on 
chartered passenger ships since 1983, said this joint visit to 
both North and South Korea will be the first ever.

 Organizers said the ship in this voyage, with a capacity of 600, 
will leave Kobe port on Aug. 27 and call at Nampo in North Korea 
and then South Korea's Inchon before sailing back to Tokyo on 
Sept. 8.

 Participants in the cruise plan to visit and observe the 38th 
parallel from both the North and South Korean sides. The parallel 
is the demarcation line between North and South Korea, which are 
still technically at war.

 Organizers said they plan to conduct exchanges with students at 
Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies.

 They also plan to hold an international conference on board 
about producing history textbooks common to Asia, and invite 
educators from countries that include the Philippines, China and 
Vietnam.

 "Such citizen-level exchanges are crucial, precisely at a time 
when big issues such as history textbooks are being taken up," 
said staff member Daini Nakahara.
 
The Japan Times: May 11, 2001
*****************************************************************
 13  China preparing nuclear test

UPI News Article: 

12 May 2001 6:09 (ET)
 
 WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- China is stepping up preparations 
for an underground test at its Lop Nur nuclear weapons testing 
facility, The Washington Times reported Saturday, adding that a 
test could be carried out in the next several days.

 Quoting U.S. intelligence officials the newspaper said spy 
satellites last week picked up vehicle activity at the Lop Nur 
nuclear weapons test site in the remote western province of 
Xinjiang.

 Intelligence reports of the upcoming test coincide with the 
resumption Monday of U.S. reconnaissance flights near China, 
which could be used to detect intelligence related to the test, 
the officials said.

 However, they did not know if the RC-135 Rivet Joint flight on 
Monday was looking for electronic signals in eastern China that 
may be related to the test, but RC-135s have collected nuclear 
testing information from the Chinese in the past.

 China is believed to be working on a new small warhead based on 
the design of the U.S. W-88 nuclear warhead. U.S. intelligence 
experts say that China obtained secret design information on the 
W-88 through espionage in the United States.

 Asked about the upcoming test, Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama 
Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
would not comment directly.

 "It's my judgment the Chinese will benefit immensely from what 
went on at Los Alamos and Livermore," Shelby said of Chinese 
espionage activities at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

 "In the years to come, you will see a modernization of their 
nuclear weapons and a lot of it will be based on our models, 
including the W-88," he said, noting that when the Chinese 
succeed in developing their nuclear arms it will be a "quantum 
leap" in their strategic power.

 Test preparations at Lop Nur were first reported by The 
Washington Times on April 9, after U.S. intelligence agencies 
detected the first signs of an impending nuclear test in March.

 Officials said the upcoming test, which could take place before 
the end of the month, might be a "subcritical" nuclear test -- a 
small explosion designed to simulate a nuclear blast.

 Other officials suspect the Chinese will carry out a small 
nuclear test despite their pledge to have stopped all nuclear 
testing in 1996.

 U.S. intelligence agencies suspect China is engaged in covert 
nuclear testing that relies on small, low-yield underground 
blasts. The suspicions are based on intelligence reports 
indicating Beijing´s agents purchased special containment 
equipment from Russia several years ago that masks the effects of 
underground nuclear tests.

 The last Chinese nuclear-related test took place in 1999, 
shortly before a senior State Department official delivered an 
apology to Beijing for the accidental bombing of the Chinese 
Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the NATO aerial bombing 
campaign.

 Meanwhile, the Chinese government has defended its use of 
aircraft to intercept U.S. surveillance flights near its coast 
and said they threaten its security.

  The surveillance is "a grave threat to China's security," 
Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters in Beijing.

 Chinese jet fighters did not challenge the RC-135 flight Monday, 
but Sun said sending jets to monitor the planes is "necessary and 
very reasonable." He said the United States should "learn from 
the past" to avoid further incidents.

 U.S. surveillance flights were halted after the April 1 
collision between a U.S. EP-3E aircraft and a Chinese F-8 
interceptor. The F-8 crashed and its pilot was killed after the 
collision. The EP-3E made an emergency landing on China's Hainan 
Island and the crew was held 12 days before being released.

 China's Deputy Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said Wednesday that 
returning the aircraft by allowing it to fly out of China would 
"further hurt the dignity and sentiments of the Chinese people" 
and cause "strong indignation and opposition from the Chinese 
people."

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
*****************************************************************
 14   Chinese believed preparing for a nuclear weapons test 

-- The Washington Times
 
May 11, 2001

By Bill Gertz
 THE WASHINGTON TIMES
 
China is stepping up preparations for an underground test at its 
Lop Nur nuclear weapons testing facility, according to U.S. 
intelligence officials. A test could be carried out in the next 
several days, they said. 

Vehicle activity at the test site in the remote western province 
of Xinjiang was detected by spy satellites last week, said 
officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Intelligence reports of the upcoming test coincide with the 
resumption Monday of U.S. reconnaissance flights near China, 
which could be used to detect intelligence related to the test, 
the officials said.

The officials said they did not know if the RC-135 Rivet Joint 
flight on Monday was looking for electronic signals in eastern 
China that may be related to the test, but RC-135s have collected 
nuclear testing information from the Chinese in the past.

China is believed to be working on development of a new small 
warhead based on the design of the U.S. W-88 nuclear warhead. 
China obtained secret design information on the W-88 through 
espionage in the United States, according to U.S. intelligence 
reports.

Asked about the upcoming test, Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama 
Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
would not comment directly.

"It´s my judgment the Chinese will benefit immensely from what 
went on at Los Alamos and Livermore," Mr. Shelby said of Chinese 
espionage activities at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.

"In the years to come, you will see a modernization of their 
nuclear weapons and a lot of it will be based on our models, 
including the W-88," he said, noting that when the Chinese 
succeed in developing their nuclear arms it will be a "quantum 
leap" in their strategic power.

Test preparations at Lop Nur were first reported by The 
Washington Times on April 9, after U.S. intelligence agencies 
detected the first signs of an impending nuclear test in March.

Officials said the upcoming test, which could take place before 
the end of the month, may be a "subcritical" nuclear test -- a 
small explosion designed to simulate a nuclear blast.

Other officials suspect the Chinese will carry out a small 
nuclear test despite their pledge to have stopped all nuclear 
testing in 1996.

U.S. intelligence agencies suspect China is engaged in covert 
nuclear testing that relies on small, low-yield underground 
blasts. The suspicions are based on intelligence reports 
indicating Beijing´s agents purchased special containment 
equipment from Russia several years ago that masks the effects of 
underground nuclear tests.

The last Chinese nuclear-related test took place in 1999, shortly 
before a senior State Department official delivered an apology to 
Beijing for the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in 
Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the NATO aerial bombing campaign.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government yesterday defended its use of 
aircraft to intercept U.S. surveillance flights near its coast 
and said they threaten its security.

The surveillance is "a grave threat to China´s security," Foreign 
Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters in Beijing.

Chinese jet fighters did not challenge the RC-135 flight Monday, 
but Mr. Sun said sending jets to monitor the planes is "necessary 
and very reasonable." He said the United States should "learn 
from the past" to avoid further incidents.

U.S. surveillance flights were halted after the April 1 collision 
between a U.S. EP-3E aircraft and a Chinese F-8 interceptor. The 
F-8 crashed and its pilot was killed after the collision. The 
EP-3E made an emergency landing on China´s Hainan island and the 
crew was held 12 days before being released.

Mr. Sun said again yesterday that China will not allow the U.S. 
aircraft to be repaired and flown off. 

"Due to the nature of the plane, it will not be allowed to fly 
back from Hainan to the United States," he said. "The specific 
means of transporting the plane will be talked about by the 
sides."

China´s Deputy Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said Wednesday that 
returning the aircraft by allowing it to fly out of China would 
"further hurt the dignity and sentiments of the Chinese people" 
and cause "strong indignation and opposition from the Chinese 
people."

This article is based in part on wire service reports.

 
*****************************************************************
 15  China reported stepping up nuclear test preparations
 
May 12, 2:21 PM
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. spy satellites have detected evidence 
that China has stepped up the pace of preparations for an 
underground nuclear weapons test that could take place before the 
end of the month, The Washington Times reported on Saturday. 

The newspaper quoted U.S. intelligence officials as saying spy 
satellites last week picked up vehicle activity at the Lop Nur 
nuclear weapons test site in the remote western province of 
Xinjiang. 

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the 
newspaper that the information was gleaned from intelligence 
reports that coincided with the resumption on Monday of U.S. 
reconnaissance flights near China. 

The Washington Times first reported on test preparations at Lop 
Nur on April 9, after U.S. intelligence agencies detected signs 
of an impending nuclear test in March. 

The newspaper quoted the officials as saying China was believed 
to be trying to develop a new small warhead based on the design 
of the U.S. W-88 nuclear warhead. It said China obtained the 
secret design information on the warhead through espionage in the 
United States. 

U.S. intelligence agencies suspect China is engaged in covert 
nuclear testing that relies on small, low-yield underground 
blasts, according to The Washington Times. 
                                       
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 16  Unending tale of Israeli atrocities 

-DAWN - International; 14 May, 2001
 
By Ian Gilmour 

LONDON: I was on my way to Khan Yunis, a desperately poor 
Palestinian refugee town in the Gaza Strip, when we learned it 
was under heavy bombardment. Please, urged my Palestinian guides, 
could I postpone my visit to the next day? Although I thought it 
unlikely I would suffer the same fate as the four-month-old baby, 
blown to pieces that morning by the Israeli army, I agreed. 

The next day, seeing houses that had, without any warning, been 
bulldozed in the middle of the night by the Israeli army and then 
talking to their former inhabitants, now huddled in tents, was a 
haunting experience. 

And Khan Yunis is not untypical. A ruthless colonial war is being 
waged throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the 
territories occupied by Israel since 1967. I also happened to be 
in Beit Jalla the previous day, when the Israelis reoccupied and 
demolished a section of this Christian suburb of Bethlehem. The 
Israeli army of occupation has the overwhelming superiority of a 
19th century imperial power. "We have got the Maxim Gun," sang 
Hilaire Belloc, "and they have not." The modern equivalent of the 
Maxim gun for mowing down "the natives" is the American-made 
Apache helicopter and a plethora of other hi-tech weaponry. 

And since, as Yasser Arafat perhaps wistfully told me, the 
Palestinians "don't have helicopter gunships, tanks or gunboats", 
General Mofaz, the Israeli commander, is able not only to destroy 
buildings and kill Palestinian fighters and unarmed civilians in 
any quantities he wants, but also to impose collective 
punishments and to make life intolerable for the entire 
population. 

In addition, on the pretext of security, Mofaz is laying waste 
some of the best Palestinian soil. I saw acres and acres of 
uprooted olive and fruit trees, some of them in places where 
there could be no possible security excuse. Israelis used to 
boast that they had made the desert bloom; now they can boast 
they have turned previously blooming Palestinian land into a 
desert. 

But why, it may be asked, are "the natives" restive? And is it 
not their own fault, for were they not offered a very "generous" 
deal at Camp David last autumn? To take the second question 
first, the claim that Barak made a generous offer at Camp David 
has become the reigning orthodoxy. But it is a myth. 

The alleged generosity involved derisory terms on Al Quds and 
would have kept most of Israel's major illegal settlements in 
place, turning the areas assigned to the Palestinians into a 
series of mini-Bantustans, and making the resulting Palestinian 
state enviable. 

For instance, this "state" would have been deprived of almost any 
water, as all the West Bank aquifers were to be annexed by 
Israel. Had Nelson Mandela accepted such an offer from apartheid 
South Africa, he would have been reviled as a traitor. And if 
Yasser Arafat had accepted the Camp David offer, he would have 
been similarly execrated. 

Not only did the Palestinians, suffer a public-relations disaster 
at Camp David, they helped to unify Israel behind a hardline 
policy by the way they talked, understandably, about the right of 
return for the refugees whom Israel expelled in 1948. Their 
return would effectively mean the abolition of the state of 
Israel. Yet an Israeli admission that they were ill-treated and 
entitled to compensation is perfectly feasible and long overdue. 

The answer to the first question is that the natives are restive 
because they are fed up with 34 years of brutal occupation. They 
want the right of self-determination and they now realize that 
they have been double-crossed. 

Israel's pre-1967 frontiers already give her 78 per cent of 
Palestinian territory, which seems quite a lot. The Oslo 
agreement was meant to establish an irreversible process whereby 
Israel exchanged the Palestinian land she had occupied since 1967 
for peace. Instead, Israel has done the opposite. Because of what 
the former Israeli Minister, Shulamit Aloni, has called Israel's 
"unrestrained greed", it has, since Oslo, doubled the number of 
illegal settlers. 

Ariel Sharon continually denounces Palestinian "terrorism" and 
"violence", forgetting, no doubt, that his own record of 
terrorism and violence is, as the police used to say, as long as 
your arm. To take just its high points. In 1953, he and his 
subordinates bravely massacred 69 Jordanian villagers, including 
46 women and children. In 1982, he engineered the Israeli 
invasion of Lebanon and killed hundreds of civilians by his 
bombing of Beirut. 

Finally, there were the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, for which 
an Israeli commission found Sharon "remiss in his duties". The 
Cabinet voted to remove him from his ministry by a vote of 16 to 
one (himself). Since then, Sharon has consistently favoured the 
violent option and always tried to block any progress towards 
peace. 

Many Israelis take a different attitude to Palestinian violence 
in the occupied territories. They have little love for the 
settlers, and they recognise that most (though not all) 
Palestinian violence in the territories is not "terrorism" but 
justified resistance to armed occupation. 

Israel's illegal settlements on the West Bank are bad enough, but 
the ones in the Gaza Strip are an affront to civilisation. The 
former Minister, Haim Ramon said that as soon as there is a 
ceasefire, Israel and all the settlers should leave the Strip. 
That is, indeed, the only respectable solution. -Dawn/The 
Observer News Service. 

*****************************************************************
 17    Diversified Test Site needs high-tech help 

Las Vegas Business Press
 
    May 14, 2001     
http://www.lvbusinesspress.com         
 
*By David Hare, Staff Writer *

Despite the number of imposing signs dotting the Nevada Test 
Site, officials claim they're in search of qualified personnel to 
work at the former nuclear weapons testing site 65 miles NW of 
Las Vegas

 On a tour of the Nevada Test Site one can’t help but notice an 
array of signs throughout the 1,375 square mile compound: DANGER, 
RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL; KEEP OUT WHEN RED LIGHT IS FLASHING; STOP, 
WAIT FOR GUARD. 

Now, add this sign to the list, HELP WANTED. 

“Like other high tech industries, we’re finding it’s difficult 
attracting good qualified young people,” said Darwin Morgan, 
director of public affairs for the Nevada division of the 
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), formerly known 
as the Department of Energy. 

During its heyday between the 1950s and the 1980s – four decades 
when nuclear weapons testing mushroomed in the desert – the test 
site employed as many as 11,000 people, from scientists and 
engineers to janitors and kitchen staff. Today, according to 
Morgan, the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, employs 
about 1,800, including scientists, janitors and kitchen staff. 
Since the nuclear weapons testing moratorium in 1992, Morgan said 
staffi

Exterior view of a house built on the Nevada Test Site in the 
1950s to determine the effects of an atomic blast.
    

ng levels at the site have remained low but steady. Though atomic 
testing may be a specter of Cold War days gone by, use of the 
facility has diversified into other programs, such as hazardous 
chemical spill testing, emergency response training, and 
conventional weapons testing. 

As more projects continue developing at the Test Site, 
recruitment efforts are becoming more strenuous and strained, 
according to Morgan. 

In January, NNSA officials visited several universities in search 
of future electrical engineers and physicists. 

“The average age of our current staff is creeping up,” Morgan sa

Interior view.
    
id. “We have to eventually find a way to replace them.” 

Activities at the Hazardous Material (HAZMAT) Spill Center sound 
like something pulled from a James Bond movie, only in this case, 
according to Morgan and other government officials, the threat is 
real and imminent. 

Last week President Bush appointed Vice President Dick Cheney to 
head an “anti-terrorism” task force creating a new office within 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency devoted to making sure 
the country is prepared to recover from any use of nuclear or 
biological weapons on American soil. Morgan said the HAZMAT Spill 
Center, designed to release hazardous materials for training 
purposes, hosts several local, state and federal agencies 
conducting weapons of mass destruction training funded by the 
U.S. Department of Justice. 

“We should see more of this kind of activity happening at the 
Test Site,” he said. 

Part of the training at the HAZMAT site, according to Morgan, 
includes various government and law enforcement officials engaged 
in “virtual” scenarios, such as turning over a tanker truck 
transporting radioactive waste and setting it on fire. As 
firefighters struggle to determine the contents of the truck 
while also attempting to put out the fire, SWAT officials engage 
in a mock gun fight with “bad guys” or terrorists. 

Another scenario involves government officials raiding a 
“terrorist factory” where biological weapons are being produced. 
When the factory explodes, HAZMAT crew members move in and begin 
the cleanup as law enforcement officers contain the crime scene. 

Other projects ongoing at the Test Site include BEEF, or the Big 
Explosives Experimental Facility, where a series of high 
explosives are detonated to help determine the safety and 
reliability of such an impact on nuclear stockpiles. But if all 
this talk of big bombs and terrorist war games doesn’t inspire a 
flood of resumes from potential employees, keep in mind, the Test 
Site also features a gymnasium, a pool, a five-lane bowling 
alley, tennis courts, a cafeteria and steak house, and a softball 
field. 

In the coming years, there may also be room for many more new 
hires at the Test Site, as immediately to the west sits Yucca 
Mountain, where an 800 foot cavern awaits the government’s 
decision on where to store nuclear waste that’s been collecting 
around the country for decades. 
  
*****************************************************************
 18  Use of N-arms only for training purposes: Dr Kalam

rediff.com: 

*Fakir Chand* in Bangalore 

Bharat Ratna Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, the architect of India's missile 
programme, has clarified that the use of nuclear weapons by the 
defence forces in the ongoing defence exercises in the Thar 
desert of Rajasthan is only for training purposes. 

Reacting to reports on the use of nuclear weapons in Operation 
Poorna Vijay, the principal scientific advisor to the Union 
government said he had nothing to add to what the Army spokesman 
has said on the use of nuclear weapons in the ongoing exercises. 

"They (nuclear arms) are being tested for military operations. 
They are only for training by our armed forces. I cannot say 
whether we would go for their production right away," Dr Kalam 
said on the sidelines of his interaction with the students of the 
Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science. 

Asked when would production of nuclear weapons commence, Dr Kalam 
referred to the annual report of the Department of Atomic Energy 
for the fiscal year 2000-01, which hints at production of a 
limited number of nuclear weapons. 

"The policy on nuclear weapon production is outlined in the DAE 
report. We will go ahead with the research and development 
activities in the run up to manufacturing them in a limited 
quantity," Dr Kalam said. 

Hailing the government's decision to open up defence production 
to the private sector, Dr Kalam said the move would enhance the 
technological capabilities of the Indian industry and at the same 
time encourage innovation in our research laboratories. 

"So long our defence establishments have been only developing 
technologies and prototypes and have not gone in for mass 
production. Now it is the for the Indian industry to come forward 
and take advantage of the new opportunity," he said. 

*****************************************************************
 19  *Lepse* crew moves to 'village' 

The remediation of the nuclear storage ship *Lepse* is dependant 
on whether the EU and Russia sign multilateral agreement at the 
next summit. 

  Bellona's director, Frederic Hauge, is handing over the key to 
the Lepse Village to the captain of the nuclear storage ship. 
Head of nuclear icebreakers department, Stanislav Golovonsky, on 
the left side.   

  Thomas Nilsen/Bellona   

Igor Kudrik , 2001-05-11 21:19

In the middle of the shabby and littered with metal scrap base 
for nuclear powered icebreakers, situated in the outskirts of 
Murmansk, the colourful housing containers look a bit out of 
place. Snowflakes are dashing in the rain, wind blowing from the 
Kola Fjord. Bellona representatives and Murmansk Shipping Company 
officials, commercial operator of nuclear icebreakers, are 
surrounded by reporters. And there is indeed a bit of news to 
report. An international project aimed at providing not just a 
bogus radiation safety, but safety for the people crewing onboard 
the nuclear storage ship *Lepse* is completed successfully. The 
project is nicknamed the *Lepse Village*. 

The project was launched and funded by Bellona Foundation and 
implemented in co-operation with Murmansk Shipping Company, MSCo. 
The housing containers were delivered by Norwegian company 
UNITEAM A.S. 

The remediation project for the *Lepse* itself has been stalled 
without a tax exemption and liability agreement. The agreement 
now named Multilateral Environmental Programs in Russia, or 
MNEPR, should be in place to resolve those issues not only for 
the *Lepse* project, but also for other international initiatives 
called to solve radiation safety problems in Russia. 

        The crew onboard the *Lepse*, who now is exposed to 
higher than permitted levels of radiation, cannot wait for 
politicians to make the MNEPR deal. From now on they live in the 
safe *Lepse Village*. From there they will continue to monitor 
the situation onboard the *Lepse* ensuring it does not capsize 
before the international projects takes off. 

The *Lepse Village* is a rehearsal, a small step towards the 
solution of the whole problem. 

Bellona-Murmansk, Bellona's sister office in this part of Russia, 
has learned from its first hand experience how slow and hard it 
is to implement an international project. It took almost a year 
to obtain licence for tax exemption from the Russian Ministry of 
Economy. Then there was a whole extra pile of papers and licences 
required to make things moving. No wonder that the *Lepse 
Village* is one of the few international projects that have been 
implemented in Russia so far. 

The MNEPR will be discussed during the next EU-Russia summit. To 
ensure the progress at the meeting EU environmental commissioner 
Wallström is in Moscow this week having meetings with high 
ranking Russian officials. The outcome of the summit will largely 
determine the fate of the Lepse remediation project along with 
other initiatives.   

*Lepse* remediation project

 From 1962 until 1981, *Lepse* was used as a service ship at the 
nuclear icebreaker base. Today, 639 spent fuel assemblies are 
stored on board the *Lepse* under highly unsatisfactory 
conditions. The fuel has become partially jammed in the holding 
tubes and is thus extremely difficult to remove. 

Bellona has been discussing the *Lepse* project with MSCo since 
1992. Russian calculations had shown that without access to 
remotely controlled equipment, the work to remove the spent 
nuclear fuel would subject 5,000 workers to the maximum permitted 
doses of radiation. Since this equipment was too expensive for 
MSCo, the company thought of the option to tow the vessel to 
Novaya Zemlya and dispose it there. 

As a counterweight to these proposals, in the fall of 1994, 
Bellona presented an alternative approach of removing the spent 
fuel from the *Lepse* with the help of remote controlled 
technology. This solution would engender a significant reduction 
in the radiation doses to which workers would be exposed, but it 
would also be more costly. Indeed, in view of the greater cost, 
MSCo’s response to the plan was sceptical. 

In the autumn of 1994, following an environmental conference 
organised by Bellona and MSCo, an expert panel was formed by the 
EU, consisting of representatives from EU’s TACIS-programme, DG 
XI and Norway. Upon the recommendation of the EU expert group, 
18.5 million USD were appropriated for a technical solution. The 
technical feasibility study was financed by the TACIS programme. 

The objective of the feasibility study was to investigate how 
spent nuclear fuel could safely be removed from *Lepse* and, once 
removed, how to manage it properly. Bids were invited for the 
feasibility study from the European nuclear industry. The British 
AEA Technology and French SGN won the tender. An international 
advisory group consisting of government representatives from 
Norway, France, the EU, the United States and Russia was 
established to monitor the work on the *Lepse* project. The 
project is now waiting for the Russian and EU signatures under 
the MNEPR agreement.
   
      Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge 
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: 
webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 20  Israel Seizes Nuke Papers to Stem Media Leaks

The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

May 12, 2001*   

BY JACK KATZENELL
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

    JERUSALEM -- Israel's State Archives confiscated papers 
relating to the country's nuclear secrets from the widow of a 
former prime minister while she was out of the country, a 
newspaper reported Friday. 

    Alarmed by persistent leaks of nuclear secrets to the media, 
the Defense Ministry ordered the confiscation of documents 
belonging to late Prime Minister Levy Eshkol, the daily Haaretz 
said. 

    The ministry suspected the Eshkol archives might be the 
source of some of the leaked information, the report said. 

    The papers were in the possession of Miriam Eshkol but were 
kept at a Jerusalem government office dedicated to Eshkol's 
memory. State Archivist Evyatar Friesel took advantage of the 
widow's absence to have the documents moved to the State 
Archives, the paper said. 

    Friesel on Friday refused to comment on the report. Miriam 
Eshkol could not be reached for comment. 

    Israel has a nuclear reactor near Dimona in the Negev Desert 
and is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons, but has always 
refused to confirm it. 

    Eshkol became prime minister in 1964 when the nuclear program 
was said to have been in its early stages. 

    Last month, Israel announced the arrest of a retired general 
accused of disclosing classified military information to a 
reporter. Retired Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Yaacov, 75, a scientist who 
has U.S. as well as Israeli citizenship, was involved in the 
nuclear program, the British newspaper Sunday Times said. 

    In 1986, the Sunday Times published photographs taken by 
Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who worked at the Dimona facility. 
On the basis of the photographs, experts said at the time that 
Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear 
weapons. 

    Vanunu is now serving an 18-year sentence for providing the 
pictures. The Defense Ministry recently decided to keep Vanunu 
under surveillance after his release, and to try him again if he 
again attempts to disclose classified information, Haaretz 
reported. 

    Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said he was not 
familiar with either the reported confiscation of the papers or 
the ministry's decision on Vanunu. 

    However, he said both decisions would be justified to prevent 
such leaks of sensitive information. 

    "It is against the law to divulge classified information . . 
.," he said. 
   
  © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on 
*****************************************************************
 21  Iraq admits it had radiation bomb plan 

CNN.com - 

- May 11, 2001
 	 	
From Ronni Berke
CNN United Nations Correspondent
 		 
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Iraq has told the United Nations it had 
considered building a radiation bomb in 1987, but shelved the 
idea after determining it was not feasible. 
		 
No such weapon was ever manufactured or tested, Iraqi Ambassador 
Mohammad al-Douri said in a letter, released Friday, to U.N. 
Secretary General Kofi Annan. 

In 1987, when Iraq was at war with Iran, "an Iraqi technician 
conceived the idea of making a defensive radiological bomb," 
al-Douri said. "Iraqi specialists explored the technical and 
practical aspects of this idea, and they ascertained that it was 
not feasible." 
		 
Al-Douri claimed that in 1995 Iraq had provided the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with complete files on all nuclear 
issues, including the 1987 proposal for a defensive radiological 
bomb. 
		 
Those explanations satisfied the IAEA that Iraq had no nuclear 
weapons or weapons-useable nuclear material, al-Douri said. 
		 
In the letter, al-Douri criticized The New York Times for 
publishing a report in April that said Iraq had tested a 
radiological bomb. He accused the Bush Administration of using 
the "false report" from the Times, which he called "the 
mouthpiece of world Zionism," as a pretext for retaining the 
economic embargo against Iraq. 
						
by CNN Interactive. 

*****************************************************************
 22        DOE seeks suspension of effort to convert plutonium 

*May 11, 2001*
 By Glenn Roberts Jr.
STAFF WRITER

 A research program that seeks to eliminate the possible reuse of 
some surplus weapons-grade plutonium -- part of a 
nonproliferation agreement with Russia -- could be suspended in 
the approaching budget year. 

According to an Energy Department budget proposal released this 
year, the program already has been scaled back this year and will 
be suspended in 2002. In 2000 the program received about $32.3 
million, this year it will receive about $20.9 million, and next 
year it is slated to receive $3 million to pay for activities 
related to the suspension. 

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory researchers participate in the 
research program. They have developed a method to incorporate 
plutonium into ceramic pucks and prevent its future use in 
weapons. The technology was successfully demonstrated in 1999. 

Livermore Lab officials had no comments about the plan to suspend 
activities for the research program. 

But Tom Clements, executive director for the Nuclear Control 
Institute in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday, "Lawrence 
Livermore was at a pretty critical stage that was moving from 
research and development into development and testing." 

A suspension in the program could make it difficult and costly to 
restart the program, as researchers will leave to work on other 
projects, Clements said. "Not only are there short-term job 
impacts and budget impacts at Lawrence Livermore, but it appears 
that the U.S. is reneging on a commitment made (on disposing 
weapons-grade material)," he added. 

The Nuclear Control Institute is an organization that advocates 
nuclear nonproliferation. 

Al Stotts, a spokesman for the Energy Department's nuclear 
security agency, said the program to remove surplus plutonium 
from re-entering the stockpile "is not being phased out." 

"The Bush Administration is in the process of making decisions 
and doing reviews," he said, and the 2002 budget is not yet 
final. 

"The United States is still considered to honor our obligations 
under the U.S.-Russian agreement regarding the disposition of 
surplus plutonium," he added. 

A proposed suspension in money for the program is the result of 
delays with related projects at the Savannah River Site, an 
Energy Department site in South Carolina, Stotts said, and the 
pending review of nonproliferation programs with Russia. 

Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, whose district includes Livermore Lab, 
has sent a letter to Energy Department officials requesting 
documentation for the decision to suspend the plutonium 
immobilization program. 

Using the lab's technology, plutonium bits would be incorporated 
into ceramic pucks, and the pucks would be placed in small 
stainless steel cans. Those cans would be placed in larger 
canisters and surrounded with glass containing high-level waste. 

The Savannah River Site is the planned site for plutonium 
immobilization activities.     <IMG

NewsChoice.com
*****************************************************************
 23  Opinion: Hanford's moral imperative

The Seattle Times: Editorials &

May 12, 2001 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
 			
The history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is one of secrecy, 
psychological denial, and public apathy. 

The huge volume of hazardous nuclear waste at Hanford seriously 
threatens our environment and public health, now and for 
generations to come. For example, the tank waste at Hanford alone 
consists of an estimated 53 million gallons of nuclear and 
chemical waste buried in 177 underground tanks. An estimated 1 
million gallons have already leaked from the tanks. 

The Hanford site contains more total hazardous nuclear waste than 
any other single location in the Western Hemisphere. 

In spite of the unpleasant reality of the nuclear waste threat at 
Hanford, most of the public has chosen to look away in 
anxiety-relieving denial. Our public apathy and denial is 
somewhat understandable because of the overwhelming magnitude of 
our nuclear waste problems. Meanwhile, years and decades have 
passed and the serious risks to the water table and the Columbia 
River continue. Costs for proper water treatment have continued 
to escalate. It seems irresponsible, even immoral, for us not to 
deal adequately with the huge nuclear waste problems that our 
generation has created. We have a moral responsibility to 
confront the nuclear mess and to safely stabilize the nuclear 
waste we are leaving to our future generations. 

We often refer to Hanford "cleanup." Actually, the word "cleanup" 
creates a perception of a less-complex process. Hanford's nuclear 
waste is not just "dust" that lends itself to "cleanup." 
"Disaster prevention" conveys higher priority and urgency than 
"cleanup." 

This is an appeal for your attention to encourage you, and all of 
us, to become more informed about Hanford issues. We then need to 
transfer that environmental and public health concern into 
constructive action, to increase public and congressional 
awareness. 

Let's commit ourselves to do all we can to make nuclear waste 
remediation a high national priority - for ourselves and future 
generations. 

*Jim Trombold is a Seattle internist, board member for Physicians 
for Social Responsibility and member of the Hanford Advisory 
Board. More information can be found by e-mailing wpsr@wpsr.org. 

                        seattletimes.com home
 			
*****************************************************************
 24  Chief picked for FFTF review
 
This story was published 5/13/2001
 
By Annette Cary
 Herald staff writer
 
The manager of the Department of Energy's Brookhaven, N.Y., area 
office has been named to head the review of Hanford's Fast Flux 
Test Facility.
 
"I think this clearly demonstrates the Department of Energy wants 
to work with us on FFTF," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. 
Hastings earlier asked the Bush administration to reconsider a 
decision to permanently shutdown the reactor.
 
The Brookhaven manager, Mike Holland, plans to visit the 
Tri-Cities next week to tour the reactor and talk with employees 
there, Hastings said.
 
Three weeks ago, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced he 
would give the dormant FFTF a 90-day reprieve while DOE considers 
new information that might prevent a permanent shutdown. Once 
sodium is drained from its cooling system, it never can be 
restarted.
 
As part of the review, DOE will look at possible uses of the 
reactor and prepare an analysis of the benefits and difficulties 
of operating it. DOE also will be considering whether the 
government can find significant partnerships that would decrease 
the government's costs to operate the reactor.
 
The Clinton administration ordered the reactor dismantled in one 
of its final acts, in part, because not enough interest from 
companies and other governments and government agencies had been 
found to restart the reactor. But supporters argued little work 
had been done to assess interest in the reactor or its products.
 
Since the January order to shut down the reactor, a drug company 
and researchers have written letters saying the reactor is needed 
to ensure a reliable supply of isotopes for new medical 
treatments.
 
The American Nuclear Society also called for a restart of FFTF 
saying it is needed for tests required in the development of 
advanced nuclear energy systems.
 
DOE still is coming up with the formal process to submit 
proposals on use of the reactor and to collect comments, Hastings 
said.
 
Supporters of the reactor want it restarted for civilian uses, 
including making isotopes for medicine, producing isotopes to 
provide electrical power for space missions and for research.
 
"I continue to believe FFTF is vital to the nation's nuclear 
infrastructure and has the real potential to save thousands of 
lives through the production of medical isotopes," Hastings said.
 
Holland has 25 years of experience in the operation of nuclear 
reactors, including 10 years at DOE. He took the job as manager 
of the Brookhaven office this year and is responsible for 
contract management and safety oversight for the Brookhaven 
National Laboratory.
 
In the early 1990s, he was responsible for program management and 
safety oversight of reactor programs at the High Flux Beam 
Reactor and the Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor. His duties 
from 1997 to 2001 included directing the permanent shutdown and 
stabilizing those reactors.
 
This year, an independent report prepared for DOE concluded the 
government's nuclear technology capabilities are "in a near 
free-fall" as reactors and other facilities have been shut down 
and research dollars have diminished.
 
It called the High Flux Beam Reactor at Brookhaven and the FFTF 
at Hanford "irreplaceable assets."
 
FFTF was built in the 1970s as part of a government 
breeder-reactor research program, but the program was ended in 
the 1980s under the Carter administration's nuclear 
nonproliferation policy. It remains one of DOE's largest and most 
modern reactors.
 
However, keeping it in standby condition costs about $40 million 
a year. Opponents of restarting the reactor consider that wasted 
money and want Hanford to focus exclusively on cleaning up the 
nuclear site, which was used to produce plutonium for bombs 
during World War II and the Cold War. Back to top stories 

Copyright 2000 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 25  Nuclear cleanup budget cuts go too far, GOP senators contend 

Oak Ridger Online --> 

Story last updated at 1:38 p.m. on Friday, May 11, 2001

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration's proposed cuts in 
nuclear weapons plant cleanup go too deep, some Senate 
Republicans said Thursday.

 Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said he agreed with Energy Secretary 
Spencer Abraham's goal of finding ways to improve the 
complicated, costly cleanups in the future. However, "What we 
cannot deal with are dramatic cuts in current programs," he said.

 Lawmakers from Ohio, Tennessee and other states that are part of 
the nuclear weapons complex have been generally dissatisfied with 
the spending plan for cleaning the sites of chemical and 
radioactive waste and in some cases, spent nuclear fuel.

 The proposal trimmed cleanup from the current level of more than 
$6.2 billion to about $5.9 billion for fiscal 2002. Spending to 
clean up sites in Tennessee would drop about 13.5 percent under 
Bush's budget.

 Craig said he's concerned that the administration's proposed 
cuts might leave the federal government unable meet specific 
cleanup goals and deadlines negotiated with the states.

 "I'm not prepared to say that any compliance will not be met," 
replied Abraham, who appeared before the Senate Energy and 
Natural Resources Committee to explain -- and at times, defend -- 
his 2002 budget priorities.

 Under the proposal, the budget of a former weapons plant in 
Miamisburg, Ohio, would be cut from about $91 million this year 
to $71 million.

 Efforts are under way to find about $1 billion to add to next 
year's spending on cleanup and other nuclear programs but there's 
no definite agreement, said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete 
Domenici, R-N.M.

 His state would be among those losing money if the 
administration gets the cleanup funding levels it requested in 
the Energy Department budget.

 New Mexico's cleanup budget would drop to $309 million from $367 
million.

 Craig's state would lose, too. The administration has requested 
$547 million for cleanup in 2002 Idaho, down from $637 million 
this year.

 Other states in line for nuclear cleanup budget cuts under the 
Bush administration's proposal for 2002 include Washington, which 
would suffer a drop to $1.56 billion from the current $1.6 
billion; South Carolina, where cleanup funds would drop to $1.14 
billion from $1.29 billion; and Tennessee, with a drop to $410 
million from $474 million for the Oak Ridge complex, according to 
the DOE's environmental management office.

 Abraham urged the members of the Senate Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee to examine his budget proposal in light of 
the top-to-bottom review he has ordered to look for better ways 
of managing the massive job of cleaning up former nuclear weapons 
plants.

 Of the major weapons plant sites, he said, only the Fernald site 
in Ohio and the Rocky Flats site in Colorado are expected to be 
cleaned up quickly, as early as 2006.

 The full cleanup of all sites is estimated to require about 70 
years.

 "I think it's unconscionable to tell people if they're lucky 
their grandchildren will live in a community where environmental 
remediation has been completed," Abraham said. "I think we can 
find a better way."

All Contents.©Copyright *The Oak Ridger *
*****************************************************************
 26  Feature: Ask Incky -- Ask Incky 

Oak Ridger Online --> 

Story last updated at 11:51 a.m. on Friday, May 11, 2001

Where was the S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant located?

 According to Bill Wilburn of BWXT Y-12 Public Relations, the 
S-50 Thermal Diffusion Plant was located at the K-25 site. 
According to the Oak Ridge Health Agreement Final Report, the 
S-50 was an experiment that was run in 1944 and 1945 (less than a 
year of operation) and after several successive failures to 
effectively enrich uranium, the equipment and plant buildings 
were dismantled.

 *Ask Incky is The Oak Ridger's action line/consumer line column. 
Initiated to answer questions about the city's incorporation, it 
now accepts questions on a variety of subjects. It is not a 
public forum, however. Questions must be submitted with name, 
address and telephone number. These are never revealed. Call 
Incky at 482-4959 or send your question in a letter to Incky, 
P.O. Box 3446, Oak Ridge, Tenn. 37831, or e-mail to 
oakridge@oakridger.com*

All Contents ©Copyright *The Oak Ridger *
    
*****************************************************************

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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