***************************************************************** 11/13/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.268 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Austrian political parties involved in further wrangling (Ein 2 Ukrainian plant tests carriage for transporting nuclear waste 3 N-power unions in Acas move 4 Deadly cargo: 'Nuclear train' cheats protesters caption story 5 Nuclear reactor safety reviewed 6 U.S. nuclear agency proposes fine for Mathy Construction Co. - 7 Bulgaria: Nuclear plant official denies intermediary hired to 8 Open scrutiny urged for Vermont Yankee records 9 Pretoria to Explore Use of Nuclear Energy 10 Zion nuclear plant could start up again 11 Bid to change nuclear image 12 Chernobyl engineers here for study tour 13 Protesters fight police over nuclear convoy 14 German nuclear waste train resumes journey after police disperse protesters 15 Ever cautious Swiss drill for nuclear accident 16 Lawmakers check out security at nuclear plant 17 State asks circuit court to re-examine Yucca issue 18 Campaigning begins in Japanese town ahead of nuclear plebiscite 19 Age of plant cited in nuke leak 20 Yucca dump draws criticism from international experts 21 Activists Step Up Nuclear Protests 22 Arrests made ahead of nuclear waste transport 23 German Authorities Detain Activists 24 Yucca: There are risks in short-circuiting Sept. 11 liability process 25 BE strike threat could leave Scots in the dark 26 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Leak investigation doesn't worry official 27 U.S. Faces Insurance Bailout Minefield 28 Terror threat left out of Yucca report 29 Lithuanian premier says nuclear plant decommissioning is still NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 BUSH LIKELY TO RESUME ATOMIC TESTING! 2 A Summit Topic: Russia's Plutonium 3 Russia has no evidence of Bin-Ladin possessing nuclear weapons 4 US bombings to have lasting effect: experts 5 Y-12 once housed uranium from Kazakhstan 6 oPINION: uc AND lIVERMORE 7 DOE needs to get on the ball at the test site 8 Al Qaeda Said to Claim Ability to Buy Nuclear Arms 9 U.S. skips UN's nuclear talks 10 Scientists Say They Met bin Laden 11 Technology:Nuclear advocate lectures 12 More than 40 years of nuclear standoff and missile defense 13 Editorial: UC Should Continue to Run Nuclear Research Labs 14 Manley says test-ban treaty will help keep nukes out of terrorist hands 15 Summit Is Not About Concessions 16 Indian Scientist: I needed a change, so I quit 17 Experts to Assess Risks of Terrorism and Nuclear Threat 18 Experts Discourage U.S. Use of Nuclear Weapons in War 19 Advocates say panel composition must change 20 Bush: U.S. to Reduce Nuclear Warheads 21 Russian Official Reveals Attempt Made to Steal Nuclear Materials 22 Pall License Agreement with U.S. Department Of Energy Reaches Key 23 Coalition Disputes Bin Laden's Claim Of Possessing Nuclear Weapons 24 Urgent priority for nuclear terrorism -- The Washington Times 25 INTERESTING TIMES: Brilliant pebbles now 26 Bush, Putin to Reduce Nuclear Arms 27 If Muslim Extremists Control Pakistan's Nukes, What Will U.S. Do? 28 Nuclear program getting the brush-off 29 ORNL lends staff to national security effort 30 Russians Acknowledge Nuclear Security Breaches 31 Opinion - Children's Museum interview with one of Oak Ridge's 32 UN Frets About Ex-Soviet Nukes **************************************************************** **************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Austrian political parties involved in further wrangling (Ein Bild souveraner Uneinigkeit) Der Standard - Austria; Nov 13, 2001 The leaders of Austria's four political parties confessed that they had been able only to agree on one thing when emerging from their discussions over the future of the Czech-owned nuclear power plant Temelin, and that was the need for unity. Further meetings are expected on Friday. Vice Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer also gained backing in her claims over Czech sovereignty from a legal expert. The question revolves around whether one country's sovereign decision is allowed to endanger another country, and Manfred Rotter, a Linz-based civil law expert, said that Ms Riess-Passer was right to say that this was not allowed. ***************************************************************** 2 Ukrainian plant tests carriage for transporting nuclear waste BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 13, 2001 Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax Kiev, 13 November: The Stakhanov rail car construction plant (in Luhansk Region) will send to Russia for final tests soon the trial model of a nuclear waste carriage it has manufactured. The plant's chief Yuriy Syrovetskyy has told Interfax that the car was tested at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant successfully. "The bulk of the tests are over and we are looking forward to their successful completion in Russia and their production according to plan. We have a contract for one such transporter already," he said. Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1301 gmt 13 Nov 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter ***************************************************************** 3 N-power unions in Acas move Financial Times; Nov 13, 2001 By CHRISTOPHER ADAMS Unions representing workers at Britain's biggest nuclear power producer have agreed to seek conciliation in an effort to resolve a dispute over pay. However, the unions said yesterday that going to conciliation would not stop industrial action that is threatening to close plants from next Monday. The talks with British Energy, which generates a fifth of the country's electricity, will be held through the conciliation service Acas. The unions plan a work-to-rule and overtime ban, which they say will close the company's eight nuclear power stations. The unions are seeking increases of between 3.2 and 3.5 per cent. The increases would be in addition to usual length of service awards. British Energy has offered a deal which it says is worth 2.4 per cent from October or a two-year inflation and performance linked package. Christopher Adams Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 1995-1998 ***************************************************************** 4 Deadly cargo: 'Nuclear train' cheats protesters caption story The Birmingham Post - United Kingdom; Nov 13, 2001 French policemen on the tracks after the train carrying six trucks loaded with nuclear waste passed them and crossed the French-German border at Lauterburg, northern France. A dozen anti-nuclear protesters were arrested after four chained themselves to treetops above the railway line where the German nuclear waste shipment passed underneath. The protesters had hoped to block the shipment of atomic waste which was being returned from France, where it was treated at a reprocessing plant, to a waste site in Gorleben, 100 miles north of Hanover. Early yesterday dozens of protesters marched to the French border where the train loaded with six containers of waste was expected. Authorities were keen to prevent a repeat of protests that disrupted the last waste transport to Gorleben in March, which environmentalists delayed for 16 hours by chaining themselves to the tracks. Protesters have seized on the September 11 terror attacks as more evidence of the danger posed by nuclear power and the resultant waste shipments. ***************************************************************** 5 Nuclear reactor safety reviewed news.com.au - [12nov01] From AAP THE nation's nuclear safety monitor has ordered a security review of the proposed new national nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights amid heightened terrorism concerns. The Australian Radiation Protection and Safety Authority (ARPANSA) ordered the Australian Nuclear Safety and Technology Organisation, which is seeking permits for a new reactor, to hold the review. It must now provide an assessment of potential sabotage and terrorist targets within the facility and the consequences of any attacks. The review must also include the effects of a large commercial jet crash into the facility, in light of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. ARPANSA chief executive John Loy has released a two-page physical protection and security statement for the reactor, set to be built in southern Sydney. "The site assessment will be fully reviewed by ARPANSA," Dr Loy said in a statement. He said he would check on the health and safety risks to people and the environment when determining whether or not to approve the licence. Argentinian company INVAP has been contracted to build the reactor in 2002 - to replace the existing installation - once official safety approvals are in place. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently called the US terrorist attacks a wake-up call and admitted that no nuclear reactor could be protected from a September 11-style attack. ***************************************************************** 6 U.S. nuclear agency proposes fine for Mathy Construction Co. - lacrossetribune.com News Last updated on Tue Nov 13 10:31:29 CST 2001 By Tribune staff The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has proposed a $3,000 fine against Mathy Construction Co. of Onalaska for violating NRC requirements asso-ciated with the loss of a portable moisture density gauge that contained two sealed radioactive sources. In a press release, the NRC said the gauge is used to measure soil conditions at road and building sites, and was recovered later. It said the gauge was not damaged, and consequently there was no immediate health or safety concern. The NRC said that on July 18, the company notified the agency that a portable moisture density gauge had been stolen from the back of a pickup truck parked at a gas station. It was being used at a temporary job site in Baraboo, Wis., and contained 8 millicuries of cesium-137 and 40 millicuries of americium-241 in two sealed sources. While the gauge case was secured to the truck bed, the key had been left in the case lock and the gauge itself was not locked, the NRC said. A citizen found the gauge shortly after its theft, and it was returned to the company. The NRC staff identified two violations - failure to adequately secure and limit access to the gauge, and failure to lock the gauge or the transport case when it was not under the direct surveillance of an authorized user. The NRC noted Mathy has taken corrective actions, including additional training for employees, to prevent a recurrence of the situation. Mathy officials did not return phone calls from the Tribune on Monday. La Crosse Tribune. All rights ***************************************************************** 7 Bulgaria: Nuclear plant official denies intermediary hired to ship spent fuel BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 12, 2001 Text of report in English by Bulgarian news agency BTA web site Kozloduy, 12 November: The Kozloduy EAD [Nuclear Power Plant] has not hired an intermediary for the transport of spent nuclear fuel to Russia, N-plant executive director Yordan Kostadinov said in connection with allegations in the Russian press that the N-plant is working with offshore company Energy Invest Trade Corporation (EITC). The spent fuel contract was signed between Kozloduy EAD and Tekhnoeksport-Moscow, Kostadinov said. Under the contract, Kozloduy EAD covers transport costs one month after the arrival of the fuel in Russia. The payment for the fuel that arrived 10 days ago in Russia will be made in late November, Kostadinov said. "We have enough money to pay for both the delivery of fresh nuclear fuel and for the transportation and processing of the spent fuel," he said. Under the headline "Contraband import of nuclear unit remains", the Novaya Gazeta newspaper ran an article alleging that the deal was done between Tekhsnabeksport, the foreign trade agent of the Russian Nuclear Energy Ministry, and Kozloduy EAD but the payments will be done by EITC which is registered on the Virgin Islands and headquartered in Vaduz, (Liechtenstein). Kostadinov said this does not correspond to the truth. Asked about why is then the N-plant being linked to this particular offshore company, he said that the previous management attempted a contact with EITC but no contract was ultimately signed. Source: BTA web site, Sofia, in English 12 Nov 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 8 Open scrutiny urged for Vermont Yankee records By Associated Press,, 11/13/2001 MONTPELIER - The administration of Governor Howard Dean says it wants secret documents filed in connection with the pending sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to be opened to public scrutiny. The Public Service Department is siding with several antinuclear groups, who are urging regulators to open the sale to full public scrutiny. The department went even further, saying it was concerned about the growing number of documents kept under seal in utility rate cases, including Vermont Yankee. The department's public advocate has urged the Public Service Board to err on the side of openness. ''There has been significant growth in the amount of material being treated as confidential,'' wrote James Volz, director of public advocacy for the department, in a recent filing with the board. ''The fact that so many documents remain under seal without a determination by the Board is against the public policy of the state to provide `free and open examination of records,''' Volz wrote. Volz added his voice to those of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution and Citizens Awareness Network against the secrecy order proposed for many of the documents filed to support the proposed sale. Entergy Nuclear Co. of Jackson, Miss., has filed a petition seeking a certificate of public good to purchase Vermont Yankee for $180 million. The two antinuclear groups say the so-called protective orders violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution, as well as the Vermont Constitution. Although Volz said he had not done the legal research yet to determine if he agreed with that specific argument, he said that he shared their concerns about secrecy and protective orders. This story ran on page B8 of the Boston Globe on 11/13/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company. ***************************************************************** 9 Pretoria to Explore Use of Nuclear Energy allAfrica.com: November 12, 2001 Trevor Gozhi Pretoria Minerals and energy minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says South Africa is ready to explore the application of nuclear energy in scientific and industrial fields. Speaking to journalists in Pretoria today, Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka said most people associated nuclear power with weapons of war. 'Nuclear is much more than bombs. We are going to learn more about food security, agriculture and the use of nuclear in medical advances,' she said. She said pilot projects have shown that unwanted insects could be terminated without harming plants or the environment. Minister Mlambo-Ngcuka said South Africa's infrastructure would make it easy to enhance the use of nuclear energy. South Africa's various scientific research institutions, she said, included the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) at the University of Stellenbosch, a technical institution at the University of the North West and the Centre for Applied Sciences and Research at the University of the Witwatersrand. According to her, the power utility Eskom had good experience in nuclear power stations and that its capacity in terms of infrastructure, research and training was an advantage to nuclear energy projects. 'Nuclear energy application in developing countries will contribute to socio-economic developments. We will have medical, diagnostic and preventative medicines and radiation therapy,' she said. Meanwhile, the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME), in conjunction with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will tomorrow until Thursday host a Regional Public Information seminar in Cape Town on 'Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century.' The event will among others discuss nuclear radiation, nuclear applications, nuclear power and safety, and nuclear science and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. In addition to South African participants, 12 representatives from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia and Zimbabwe are expected to take part in the seminar. Copyright © 2001 BuaNews. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). ***************************************************************** 10 Zion nuclear plant could start up again November 12, 2001 Power company says it's one of many options under study --> Three years after it started backing out of nuclear power, Exelon Corp. is thinking about restarting one or both nuclear reactors at its shuttered Zion plant as it works on a new reactor design in South Africa that may be safer and more efficient to operate. "This is very, very preliminary. There's not even a timetable for a timetable," said Craig Nesbit, spokesman for Exelon, which owns Commonwealth Edison. "Part of the goal of the company is to increase generation. You look at all the possibilities." ComEd decided in 1998 to close down the two Zion reactors, and crews have begun the long task of dismantling them. Systems that supported the reactors have been shut down and pipes have been drained and removed. The reactors were the largest nuclear plants in the nation when they came online in 1973 and 1974--each one capable of producing 1,000 megawatts. But safety and maintenance problems led the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to put them on its watch list of troubled plants. In announcing the shutdown, Exelon said the reactors had become too expensive to operate. The company figures it will cost nearly $1 billion to demolish them. With the company looking for new sources of power, Nesbit said nothing is being ruled out, including firing one or both reactors back up. "Is it feasible to start up the old reactors? We don't know. There are more than a dozen things we're looking at." Meanwhile, Exelon is helping develop a prototype nuclear plant in South Africa that its backers say will be safer and less costly to operate. The reactor uses a "pebble bed" design, which circulates round uranium fuel pellets through the reactor and generates only about one-tenth as much heat as a conventional reactor. Supporters say it therefore cannot have a meltdown. "We are evaluating a variety of different places we could put a reactor," Nesbit said. "But this is all very early." Daily Southtown Pioneer Press Post-Tribune Star Newspapers Suburban Copyright 2000, Digital Chicago Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 Bid to change nuclear image PRETORIA Government begins a process today to "alter the public perception" of nuclear technology, as it now looks to it as a source of energy to fast-track the country's developmental needs. Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka explained yesterday that because nuclear energy was associated with destruction government had to "promote public understanding" of nuclear energy applications before it did anything. Deputy Minerals and Energy Minister Susan Shabangu said that among the areas of "peaceful and developmental uses" of nuclear energy that government was looking at were the elimination of fruit diseases for food security in agriculture, energy provision in the form of electricity grids and the fight against diseases such as the drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis. The first public information seminar begins today in Cape Town and ends on Thursday. Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia and Zimbabwe are attending today's seminar. Watchdog body the International Atomic Energy Agency is helping SA with the information sessions. Deputy director-general of the agency Werner Burkart, said his agency had no doubt SA had the will and wherewithal to handle the envisaged nuclear programme responsibly. Certain nuclear approaches could be far less expensive than most pharmaceutical approaches. Zanzibar had been free of tsetse fly for three years, thanks to nuclear technology, Burkart said. The National Nuclear Regulator would ensure the process was "not just technology driven", said manager Phil Nkhwashu. The risk would have to be managed, and international standards of care and caution would not be compromised. The public would have to be informed. "The politicians must take the right decisions," he said. Mlambo-Ngcuka said: "Sustainable development is an issue for us." Government could not ignore the usefulness of such an energy carrier as nuclear technology as if its problems could not be resolved. African energy ministers would set up a committee under which nuclear energy's peaceful uses were to be thrashed out. BDFM Publishers (Pty) Ltd disclaims all liability for any loss, ***************************************************************** 12 Chernobyl engineers here for study tour The Cincinnati Post Post staff report Sixteen engineers from Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant are in the United States for a three-week study tour that will help them build a permanent, leak-proof cover for the closed reactor. ''This is a mammoth project, possibly the largest construction job in the world at this time,'' said Lee Cole, president of Cincinnati's Center for Economic Initiatives, which organized the tour. Western governments are giving about $750 million to this project. It will employ some 6,000 people who worked at Chernobyl when the plant was operating, Cole said. CEI Vice President James Titus and CEI associate Thomas Dunn are organizing and leading the tour. They are partners in Dunn &Titus PSC, a Cincinnati architectural and construction management firm. ''It's going very well,'' Dunn said Monday as the group toured various construction sites around Cincinnati. The group has gone to Chicago to study some of the architecture there and has been to facilities including a window plant and a precast concrete plant. The United States, along with several other Western nations, asked Ukraine to close Chernobyl and make it safe for the future, Lee said. The U.S. government has asked CEI to help. On the tour, which began Oct. 29 and will end Sunday, the Ukrainian group is learning about testing techniques, management systems, refitting nuclear power plants to use fossil fuels, modern construction equipment and building materials. Construction professionals from four states are volunteering their time and expertise. Tour participants also will be working on building new residences in Slavutych, a city built hastily in 1986 to house evacuated Chernobyl workers. The Center for Economic Initiatives has been using the study tour method to give business people from the former Soviet Union a firsthand look at modern technologies, management and productivity methods and free-market competition for several years. The tours grew from efforts in 1991 to form a trading partnership. A CEI-run study tour in October brought 15 information technology specialists from Chernobyl to the United States. Publication date: 11-13-01 ***************************************************************** 13 Protesters fight police over nuclear convoy Independent News © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Imre Karacs in Berlin 13 November 2001 Thousands of German police fought protesters as a train returning from France with reprocessed nuclear waste neared its controversial storage site in Gorleben, north Germany. About 100 demonstrators were detained. Many of the environmentalists who battled with police the last time the train called in March were gathering again on the German heathlands. Even before the consignment set off from Normandy on Sunday, protesters chained themselves to treetops above the expected route and demonstrated in towns. There have also been several acts of sabotage on railway lines, attributed to militant anti-nuclear activists. So far the numbers of those camped along the route, especially around the railway bridgehead of Dannenberg, have been smaller than those seen in March. Farmers flanked by 2,000 protesters used 200 tractors to block roads around Dannenberg on Sunday. Five thousand people had held a rally in the nearby town of Lüneburg the day before. But in spite of the smaller crowds, the German authorities were taking no chances. About 15,000 officers were being deployed ahead of the train's arrival in Dannenberg probably today. There the containers will be loaded on to special flat-bottomed trucks for a 12-mile road journey that is often the focus of violent clashes. In March riot police used water cannon against anarchists outside Dannenberg station, but the road trip was undisturbed. Intelligence indicates this time the militants will try to hit the lorries as they approach Gorleben. Police forces across the country are appalled at the latest delivery, which they say distracts from other pressing tasks. Extra resources have already been allocated to the armoured vans now transporting euro notes and coins to banks all over Germany. Security has also been increased since the 11 September attacks, requiring a more prominent police presence. To cap it all, many police will be on duty at Germany's football World Cup play-off match against Ukraine in Dortmund tomorrow. The Greens say nuclear energy is vulnerable to terror attacks and therefore unsafe. Police and environmentalists both called in vain for a postponement of the latest delivery of nuclear waste. ***************************************************************** 14 German nuclear waste train resumes journey after police disperse protesters November 13, 2001 DANNENBERG, Germany (AP) -- Police used batons and dogs to remove anti-nuclear activists from a railroad Tuesday, enabling a much-delayed train carrying 80 tonnes of radioactive waste to finish its trip across Germany.  Small groups of demonstrators held back by police blew whistles as the train inched into the terminal at Danneberg, where the shipment was to be loaded onto trucks for the final 20 kilometres to a storage site.  The six large containers were expected to arrive Wednesday at an above-ground warehouse near the village of Gorleben, focus of Germany's well-organized anti-nuclear lobby.  "These shipments just can't be done securely," said Jan-Boris Ingerowski, 21, a law student from Hamburg. "Gorleben is about as safe as a potato shed."  Similar demonstrations across Germany slowed the train, even though 15,000 security forces were deployed along the route. The 1,400-kilometre trip began in La Hague, France, the site of a facility that reprocesses waste from nuclear plants in Germany and elsewhere. The six containers held about 80 tonnes in all.  The shipments are to end by 2005 under an agreement between the German government and the country's nuclear plants, which are to shut down within 20 years. The protesters say the shipments aren't safe and want them halted sooner. They pointed to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States as more evidence of the danger posed by nuclear power and radioactive waste.  Police repeatedly had to remove groups of demonstrators, some of them chained to the tracks, hundreds of others sitting on the rails.  In one stretch, two members of the environmental group Greenpeace climbed trees and unfurled a banner across the tracks denouncing the country's main power companies.  Near the end of the line police used batons and dogs to clear 200 demonstrators from the tracks, a police spokesman said. Several demonstrators were bitten.  Similar tactics during the last shipment in March delayed the train by almost a day.  The containers are to be transferred from Gorleben to a former salt mine once the mine has been determined suitable for a permanent dump, long a subject of dispute. [http://www.canoe.ca/copyright.html] © 2001, Canoe Limited ***************************************************************** 15 Ever cautious Swiss drill for nuclear accident Planet Ark Environmental News: SWITZERLAND: November 12, 2001 ZURICH - As the world wrings its hands over a potential nuclear attack by extremists, Switzerland is readying a drill to test how it can cope with an accident that spews radiation into the air. In the works for more than a year, the exercise next week assumes that an atomic weapon contaminates the broad plain that stretches from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance, forcing millions into thousands of bomb shelters in houses and public buildings. "This is absolutely the first time that we are practising for such a thing," Felix Blumer, spokesman for the National Alarm Centre, said last week. With typical Swiss precision, its timing coincides perfectly with growing public concern that extremists could unleash biological, chemical or nuclear attacks that would outdo even the events of September 11. "We could not have picked a better time," Blumer said. Government officials, army officers, radiation experts and civil defence groups will conduct the computer-simulation drill on Monday and Tuesday from reinforced bunkers. Swiss citizens will not actually have to move underground. "The assumption is there will be an accident with an atomic weapon that is so radioactive that practically the entire Swiss central plain has to go into the underground shelters. That of course would have wide-ranging consequences. All public life comes to a halt. People are not able to go to work," he said. The point of the exercise is not so much getting people into the shelters, as getting them out again. "How do you communicate that they should come out? Food will be contaminated. How do you deal with that? What can you eat, what can't you eat? All these things will be examined," Blumer said. The drill underscores the importance Switzerland places on civil defence, even years after the Cold War. Thousands of Swiss homes, hospitals and public structures have basement bomb shelters, thanks to a 1963 law requiring them in practically every new building. In neutral Switzerland, a nation of 7.2 million that largely escaped the ravages of two world wars, telephone books carry instructions on what to do if an attack or accident dumps chemicals or radiation. A siren system, regularly tested, warns the population to gather emergency rations and take cover in shelters now more widely used to store wine, vegetables, suitcases and furniture. Story by Michael Shields REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 16 Lawmakers check out security at nuclear plant Tuesday, November 13, 2001 By Timothy D. May, The Associated Press MIDDLETOWN, Pa. -- Lawmakers who toured the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and received briefings on security changes there yesterday said the public can rest assured that adequate precautions are being taken to protect the plant from terrorist attack. "What we saw was impressive," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said at a news conference held across the Susquehanna River from the plant, which is about 10 miles south of Harrisburg. "They are going through a top-to-bottom review of all their [security] procedures," he said. "There has been a wake-up call here." Specter went on a hourlong tour of the plant with U.S. Reps. Joe Pitts and George Gekas, both R-Pa., and a half dozen state lawmakers. Reporters were not allowed to attend the tour or briefing, which was conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Exelon Nuclear Corp., the company that operates the reactor. State police troopers were posted at Three Mile Island and Pennsylvania's other four nuclear plants shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Two weeks ago, Gov. Mark Schweiker ordered National Guard troops posted at all nuclear plants in the state to augment private security forces on site. Although officials declined to discuss details about the extra security measures in place at Three Mile Island and the other plants, Hubert Miller, NRC's Region I administrator, said the plant is protected by a "large fence with intrusion detection on it" and that inside it, "areas within the plant are even more difficult" to reach by unauthorized people. He also described the private security force at the plant as "large" and "well-armed." Although it is unclear whether the concrete containment vessel that surrounds the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island could withstand a commercial jetliner crash, Miller said the vessel was designed to be stronger than most because of the proximity to Harrisburg International Airport. Miller also said NRC inspectors are performing comprehensive reviews of security at Three Mile Island and the nation's other 71 commercial nuclear plants. The reports are expected to be complete in a few months. Gekas and Pitts said yesterday they will introduce a resolution in Congress calling on the NRC to work with the Department of Defense, the FBI and the Office of Homeland Security to help address specific security needs at all nuclear plants in the country. [http://www.post-gazette.com/privacy.asp] ***************************************************************** 17 State asks circuit court to re-examine Yucca issue Las Vegas SUN Today: November 13, 2001 at 10:42:40 PST By Cy Ryan SUN CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- The state of Nevada is continuing legal efforts to deny the federal government the water it needs to develop Yucca Mountain into a repository for high-level nuclear waste. The state is asking the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to re-examine an earlier finding of a three-judge panel that favored the Department of Energy. Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said today a petition was mailed to the court Friday and asks that the full court re-hear the case, rather than letting the decision of the three-judge panel stand. Adams said the appeals panel made errors in the facts it included in its decision. She said the petition relies in part on the dissent written by Judge Procter Hug of Reno. The circuit court, in its 2-1 ruling, sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt in Las Vegas to decide whether the federal Nuclear Waste Police Act supersedes the Nevada law that bars a nuclear dump in Nevada. The Energy Department had filed an application seeking permanent water rights for the proposed repository that has not yet been designated by President Bush nor approved by Congress. Mike Turnipseed, while he was state engineer, denied the application of the federal agency, noting Nevada law prohibits a nuclear dump. The Energy Department then filed suit, claiming the federal law pre-empts the state law. Adams said one of the issues is whether federal law even comes into play, since there has not been any approval by either the president or Congress. "In my mind they really blew it," Adams said of the 9th Circuit. It may be six months before the court rules on the petition for a re-hearing before the full court. The re-hearing petition was filed on behalf of Turnipseed, who is now director of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects that has been fighting the Yucca Mountain designation. The state wants the issue decided in a state District Court, not in the federal system. That's what Hunt's initial decision held. The circuit court, in a decision written by Judge Thomas Nelson, said, "Although the location of a nuclear waste repository is plainly a sensitive social issue, it is not the issue in this case "The issue in this case is whether the Nuclear Waste Policy Act preempts Nevada Revised Statute," which says the construction of a dump would be detrimental to the state's public interest. Any final decision by the circuit court could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 Campaigning begins in Japanese town ahead of nuclear plebiscite BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 13, 2001 Text of report in English by Japanese news agency Kyodo Tsu, Japan, 13 November: The official campaign period began Tuesday [13 November] for Sunday's plebiscite in the town of Miyama in Mie Prefecture on the town's plan to host a nuclear plant. The plebiscite on a nuclear plant of Chubu Electric Power Co. will be the first such to be held before a power company decides on a candidate site. The 8,753 eligible voters in the western Japan town will be asked whether they approve or oppose the plan and absentee ballots will be accepted from Tuesday through Saturday, town officials said. In February, members of the town's chamber of commerce and others submitted a petition to the town assembly to lobby for the construction of the plant in the town in a bid to boost the local economy. The petition carried the signatures of some 5,600 - about 64 per cent - of Miyama's residents. Citizens opposed to the project also submitted a petition to the town assembly immediately after the supporters' petition was presented. The town assembly subsequently set up a special panel to examine the petitions presented by the two groups. Following nearly six months of deliberation, the panel concluded that it is necessary to seek the residents' opinions about the project. In late September, the assembly enacted an ordinance to hold the plebiscite. The ordinance stipulates that the result of the plebiscite will not be legally binding, but that the town government and the assembly have to respect the residents' will as expressed by a majority of valid ballots cast in the vote. A group of residents opposed to the plant construction held a ceremony Tuesday to mark the start of their campaign for the plebiscite. Toru Hayami, a 48-year-old member of the group, said, "It's sad that we have to choose whether or not to host a nuclear plant in this beautiful town. But now that it has begun, we have to win." Supporters of the plant project said they will not openly campaign in the run-up to the plebiscite. Tatsushi Fujimura, a 51-year-old member of a supporting group, said the group will only reconfirm the intention of those who signed the petition. The nuclear plant project, which was first conceived in 1963, was originally scheduled to be built on a site covering part of the towns of Nanto and Kisei in the prefecture. However, Mie Governor Masayasu Kitagawa said in February last year the project should go back to the drawing board because of differences over the plan among the local communities. Since then, Chubu Electric has been looking for an alternative site. Source: Kyodo News Service, Tokyo, in English 0246 gmt 13 Nov 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 19 Age of plant cited in nuke leak asahi.com : ENGLISH The Asahi Shimbun A pipe that released radioactive coolant Saturday into the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant had not been replaced or repaired since its installation in 1976, leading experts to suspect stress corrosion contributed to the incident. It was the second accident at the plant within a week. Kenkichi Hirose, of the Agency for Nuclear and Industrial Safety, said safety procedures at nuclear reactors may need to be reviewed, depending on what is determined to be the ultimate cause of the latest incident. The incident also has prompted officials of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to consider revising inspection procedures for older nuclear reactors, such as Hamaoka. Stress corrosion is cracking caused by a combination of pressure accumulated from the heat of welding pipes and a corrosive medium. It is common at boiling-water reactors such as Hamaoka, where the coolant contains high levels of oxygen, experts said. Investigators from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's Agency for Nuclear and Industrial Safety did not dispute the likelihood that the stainless steel pipe was affected by stress corrosion. In 1988, stress corrosion was detected in a portion of the control rod guide pipes that passed through a measuring device at the facility. But only one of the 89 guide pipes was inspected and repaired at that time. Analysts say the leak will likely call into question the reliability of safety inspections undertaken at older nuclear reactors. The pipe in question was 1.2 centimeters thick with an outer circumference of 15 cm. The corrosion occurred at the joint where the control rod guide pipes pass through the pressure vessel, investigators said. They called the leak, the first at a Japanese nuclear reactor from the joint of the driving mechanism, a ``major problem'' and are investigating the cause. If there is a leak from the bottom of the pressure vessel, water level meters that measure run-off from the reactor signal the alarm. But the alarm did not sound, suggesting only a small amount of coolant escaped, according to officials of plant operator Chubu Electric Power Co. No coolant escaped from the facility. Investigators detected the leak in the process of checking a pipe that ruptured last Wednesday. No radioactive leak occurred in that incident, either, officials said. Officials of the Agency for Nuclear and Industrial Safety assigned a seriousness rating of zero-plus to the leak-the higher of two grades at the lowest level on the International Atomic Energy Agency's eight-point scale for such incidents. In addition to regular inspections, nuclear reactors in operation for at least 30 years are subject to a safety review each decade. Under this system, reactors may operate for up to 60 years according to government standards. (11/13) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 20 Yucca dump draws criticism from international experts Las Vegas SUN Today: November 13, 2001 at 9:40:10 PST By Mary Manning International review panels have criticized a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain as Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham prepares to recommend the site as the nation's nuclear waste repository. The scientists, including representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, are concerned that the Department of Energy lacks sufficient information to prove the site safe to house the nation's high-level nuclear waste for at least 10,000 years. International experts have been critical of the DOE's study of the saturated zone, where water could carry radiation away from the proposed repository, an article in this month's Physics Today said. Abe Van Luik, a senior DOE policy adviser, said the Energy Department thought that the saturated zone beneath the proposed repository, where any radioactive contamination would leave the site, was well understood. But the reviewing scientists were "critical" of the DOE's work, he said. When scientists first began studying Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the mountain's volcanic ash was expected to keep most of the radiation from the environment, the reports say. But as DOE studies revealed more ground water than expected, more earthquake faults and the threat of volcanic activity, man-made barriers, such as waste containers and underground metal drip shields, became the major defenses. Unanswered questions about how the metal used for disposal containers would react to ground water when it is combined with chemicals heated by the waste inside the repository troubled the scientists. Water and heat could corrode the stainless steel containers, they said. The experts also said the DOE is relying too heavily on the man-made barriers. "A large amount of experimental and analytical work is needed on the long-term performance of waste package materials to enhance the technical basis and to increase confidence in long-term performance projections," an international scientific team reviewing proposed waste containers said. The reviewers said they were concerned that DOE has neither the time nor the money to answer serious questions regarding the strength of the containers. Although the DOE's approach to evaluate Yucca Mountain's performance -- the Total System Performance Assessment -- is adequate, reviewers said the Energy Department needs to convince Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff members that buried waste will not leak from corroded containers and release radiation into the ground water. The NRC must license Yucca Mountain before the DOE can build a repository. The NRC's scientific consultants have expressed concern about the possibility of a volcano erupting through buried waste at Yucca Mountain, as well as how fast ground water moving through the mountain would release radiation into the environment. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 21 Activists Step Up Nuclear Protests Las Vegas SUN Today: November 13, 2001 at 6:50:28 PST DANNENBERG, Germany- German anti-nuclear activists blockaded rail tracks and dangled from trees over the route of a trainload of radioactive waste Tuesday, hoping to disrupt the shipment headed for a disputed storage site in northern Germany. The train, carrying more than 80 tons of waste from a French reprocessing plant, rolled northward overnight toward an unused salt mine near the village of Gorleben, which has become the focus of Germany's well-organized anti-nuclear lobby. Early Tuesday morning two activists from the environmentalist group Greenpeace defied a massive police guard by climbing trees on either side of the tracks in a thickly wooded stretch. They unfurled a banner denouncing Germany's dominant power companies before police climbed up alongside and forced them down. "These shipments just can't be done securely," said Jan-Boris Ingerowski, 21, a law student from Hamburg who was part of the Greenpeace team. "Gorleben is about as safe as a potato shed." The train was traveling a 600-kilometer (375-mile) route from the German border to Gorleben. By late morning it had reached Lueneburg, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) from its destination after being held up by a problem with the engine, police said. Police also were able to cut free and remove two protesters who had chained themselves to the tracks just before Lueneburg. Similar tactics during the last shipment in March delayed the train by almost a day. Police also cleared hundreds of people sitting on the rails at several points along the route. Near the town of Dannenberg, where the containers are to be loaded onto trucks for the final 20-kilometer (12 mile) leg to Gorleben, mounted police forced demonstrators off the road. About 15,000 police have been deployed to protect the shipment. The German government this year signed an agreement with power companies to shut down all the country's nuclear plants within about 20 years. But campaigners say the shipments - which are to end by 2005 - and the dump aren't safe and want them halted sooner. The containers are stored in a warehouse at Gorleben because work exploring whether the salt mine is suitable as a permanent dump has been dragged out for decades by the controversy. To rally support, protesters have seized on the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States as more evidence of the danger posed by nuclear power and radioactive waste. But organizers concede that numbers are down from the last shipment in March and that the war in Afghanistan has made nuclear power less of an issue by for many Germans. Nevertheless, police have warned repeatedly that militants were more determined than ever to stop the train. German border police said Monday they had arrested seven people on suspicion of using jacks to dislodge rails at three points. Activists among a crowd of some 700 who blocked the rails in the village of Hitzacker late Monday removed ballast supporting the rails. Police pushed them back, and said they had detained about 50 people. (swg-ko-agh) All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 22 Arrests made ahead of nuclear waste transport HoustonChronicle.com Nov. 12, 2001, 11:43AM Associated Press DANNENBERG, Germany -- More than 100 activists intent on halting a shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste have been taken into custody by German security forces who want to avoid a repeat of protests that disrupted a transport in March, police said today. More than 15,000 police were deployed to protect six rail cars carrying nuclear waste that is being shipped from a reprocessing plant in La Hague, France, to a storage site in the northern German town of Gorleben. The shipment crossed safely in Germany this afternoon, after authorities removed 20 protesters who tried to lie down on tracks on the French side of the border. Along the route in Germany, police reported several attempts to block the train or sabotage the tracks. There were far fewer protesters than in March -- when activists delayed the shipment for 16 hours by chaining themselves to tracks -- but police said they seemed more determined. "We will see smaller groups on the streets, but more militancy," said police chief Hans Reime in Lueneburg in northern Germany. On the tracks near Dannenberg, 370 miles from the French border, police said they found a concrete block of the kind used by protesters to chain themselves to the tracks in March. It was the third block found in recent days. Police also detained four Greenpeace activists who chained themselves in treetops over the tracks near Dannenberg, where the waste is to be unloaded for the 20-mile trip by road to Gorleben. A Greenpeace spokesman said the four had intended to hang above the tracks with a banner denouncing German power companies. Police dogs tracked them down, and officers used ladders to climb up to the activists and force them down, Greenpeace spokesman Stefan Schurig said. Police said border guards also found loosened bolts on railroad tracks at several locations, including 64 near the French border. Police began taking protesters into custody Sunday. By this afternoon 106 people had been detained, but most were released, police said. However, 14 were arrested and held on charges including resisting state authority. Wolfgang Ehmke, a spokesman for a Dannenberg residents group that has campaigned against the shipments for 25 years, said many more protests were planned in the days to come, including a convoy of slow-moving vehicles intended to hinder police. He acknowledged there were fewer demonstrators than in the past and said the war in Afghanistan has made nuclear power a secondary issue for many Germans. However, he said there would be no let up in protests against Germany's plan to phase out nuclear power over the next 20 years. Protesters want Germany's nuclear plants shut immediately. "What the governing parties had promised hasn't happened," Ehmke said. "There'll be no peace here." German power companies and the government agreed this year to phase out nuclear power, but anti-nuclear activists say 20 years is too long to wait. Germany sends spent nuclear fuel to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the waste -- shipments the protesters maintain are unsafe. Authorities have imposed restrictions on low-flying aircraft over the last stretch of the route, but police said the measure was routine and not linked to any fears of terrorism. ***************************************************************** 23 German Authorities Detain Activists Las Vegas SUN November 12, 2001 DANNENBERG, Germany- More than 100 activists intent on halting a shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste have been taken into custody by German security forces who want to avoid a repeat of protests that disrupted a transport in March, police said Monday. More than 15,000 police were deployed to protect six rail cars carrying nuclear waste that is being shipped from a reprocessing plant in La Hague, France, to a storage site in the northern German town of Gorleben. The shipment crossed safely in Germany on Monday afternoon, after authorities removed 20 protesters who tried to lie down on tracks on the French side of the border. Along the route in Germany, police reported several attempts to block the train or sabotage the tracks. There were far fewer protesters than in March - when activists delayed the shipment for 16 hours by chaining themselves to tracks - but police said they seemed more determined. "We will see smaller groups on the streets, but more militancy," said police chief Hans Reime in Lueneburg in northern Germany. On the tracks near Dannenberg, 370 miles from the French border, police said they found a concrete block of the kind used by protesters to chain themselves to the tracks in March. It was the third block found in recent days. Police also detained four Greenpeace activists who chained themselves in treetops over the tracks near Dannenberg, where the waste is to be unloaded for the 20-mile trip by road to Gorleben. A Greenpeace spokesman said the four had intended to hang above the tracks with a banner denouncing German power companies. Police dogs tracked them down, and officers used ladders to climb up to the activists and force them down, Greenpeace spokesman Stefan Schurig said. Police said border guards also found loosened bolts on railroad tracks at several locations, including 64 near the French border. Police began taking protesters into custody Sunday. By Monday afternoon 106 people had been detained, but most were released, police said. However, 14 were arrested and held on charges including resisting state authority. Wolfgang Ehmke, a spokesman for a Dannenberg residents group that has campaigned against the shipments for 25 years, said many more protests were planned in the days to come, including a convoy of slow-moving vehicles intended to hinder police. He acknowledged there were fewer demonstrators than in the past and said the war in Afghanistan has made nuclear power a secondary issue for many Germans. However, he said there would be no let up in protests against Germany's plan to phase out nuclear power over the next 20 years. Protesters want Germany's nuclear plants shut immediately. "What the governing parties had promised hasn't happened," Ehmke said. "There'll be no peace here." German power companies and the government agreed this year to phase out nuclear power, but anti-nuclear activists say 20 years is too long to wait. Germany sends spent nuclear fuel to France for reprocessing under contracts that oblige it to take back the waste - shipments the protesters maintain are unsafe. Authorities have imposed restrictions on low-flying aircraft over the last stretch of the route, but police said the measure was routine and not linked to any fears of terrorism. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 24 Yucca: There are risks in short-circuiting Sept. 11 liability process [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Why is there now a controversy about whether spent nuclear fuel shall be stored at Yucca Mountain? Because private utilities decided to go forth with the construction of nuclear power plants, decades ago, without a firm commitment as to how and where that waste would be disposed. When those firms sat down to negotiate their insurance policies, why on earth didn't those private insurance companies insist that all such matters be contractually resolved beforehand? Because the federal government waved its magic wand, all those decades ago, passing congressional limits on the liability the private operators could ever face in the event of any nuclear mishap. And so the safeguards of the free market and the world's most finely tuned system for determining and distributing risk were circumvented -- the nation instead starting down a road where such decisions are made in the political arena -- enforced by the threat of armed federal force. Nevadans particularly should understand how this example recommends caution, as the Justice Department -- under another such bill enacted by Congress less than two weeks after the events of Sept. 11 -- now struggles to determine how much compensation shall be paid to the families of those who died in the World Trade Center or the planes flown into it. Supposedly, the federal compensation plan is only for those who voluntarily waive their right to go to court. But should too many families resist the blandishment of a quicker, easier payoff, will Congress really allow the airlines' financial future to hinge on the judgment of unpredictable juries, deciding whether the airlines tortiously represented that they had an effective security system when in fact they did not? American bankruptcy laws are among the most sophisticated and sensible in the world. They are designed not to close down entire industries, but rather to protect them while they carry out real reforms in the face of changed conditions. The emphasis being on "real reforms." We can't know what airline security would look like in this country if we didn't have government interventions at every step, from FAA security directives to a requirement that airlines contract for their security with airports -- which are usually, themselves, litigation-resistant agencies of a local municipal government. Would some airlines choose to charge higher fares, thus covering the cost of a guarantee of armed undercover marshals on every flight -- while proudly advertising that only citizens with security clearances service their planes? We can never know how many creative solutions might be tried, so long as airlines never experience the goad of knowing they'll be held liable for the real effectiveness of their security, rather than merely patted on the back (and protected) for continuing to do what doesn't work, so long as they "put on a good show." Are we now at war to defend our free market system -- or shall we adopt the credo of Benito Mussolini, who put the government in charge of everything, bragging that in the short term, at least, "The trains now run on time"? This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-13-Tue-2001/opinion/17432836.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-13-Tue-2001/opinion/17432836.html] ***************************************************************** 25 BE strike threat could leave Scots in the dark The Scotsman Online - Andrew Turpin Deputy City Editor (aturpin@scotsman.com) SCOTLAND’S electricity supplies were threatened yesterday as nuclear energy supplier British Energy, which provides 50 per cent of the country’s electricity requirements, faced a growing threat of strike action by power workers over pay. Unions warned that, despite agreeing yesterday with the East Kilbride-based group to take their long-running pay dispute to arbitration, industrial action is likely from Monday. They warned that this will lead to the closure of some or all of British Energy’s eight nuclear plants in the UK, two of which are in Scotland, causing serious disruption to the country’s supply system. But ScottishPower held out some hope that cuts and blackouts could be avoided if strike action crippled the plants, and at a time when electricity demand is increasing. ScottishPower and other generators said they would put in place emergency measures to attempt to plug any electricity shortages from strike action and plant shutdowns. Both sides to the dispute believe that there is still time to avoid strike action. Closures would cost British Energy many millions of pounds it can ill afford. The group last week reported half year losses of £15 million and its shares fell another 3p yesterday to 275p. ScottishPower said that it has enough capacity at its coal-fired plants at Longannet and Cockenzie to meet any shortfalls in supply in Scotland, probably assisted by Scottish & Southern Energy’s hydro-electric and gas-fired plants. British Energy, which supplies about 22 per cent of the UK’s electricity demand, and more than 50 per cent in Scotland, said it hoped that talks through the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service would now be swiftly arranged and a solution to the pay dispute agreed. A spokesman declined to comment further on the possible impact of plant closures, saying only: “Safety will always be our top priority.” But Tony Aldous, national officer for Prospect, which has the biggest representation of the five unions at British Energy, said: “We are not convinced that any meaningful outcome will happen so a work-to-rule and overtime ban will proceed from midnight on Sunday.” He added: “It is inevitable that this will eventually mean plants closing down, as the company relies so heavily on overtime and people not working to rule.” Any shut downs would be carried out in a safe manner, Aldous said. The unions are seeking a pay rise for British Energy’s 5,000 staff in line with what they say is the industry average of around 3.2 to 3.5 per cent for the year which began last July. However, the company has offered 1.8 per cent from July plus another 0.5 per cent from October, or alternatively a two year arrangement partially linked to performance. British Energy is in the middle of pushing through big cost cuts at its UK plants, totalling £150 million over three years, to try and offset falling power prices under new electricity wholesale trading arrangements. One analyst, Fraser McClaren at ING Barings Charterhouse, said in a note yesterday: “Strike action would be very damaging. Assuming all eight of the company’s reactors closed for one day, lost revenue could amount to £4 million, and this does not take into account time necessary to restart the reactors.” He also warned that British Energy would have to buy power in the market to meet its obligations to customers under contracts and this would also be expensive given that short term power prices would soar. ***************************************************************** 26 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Leak investigation doesn't worry official [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Handing over of internal documents might be law violation By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The head of the government's nuclear waste disposal effort on Monday shrugged off allegations that his program might have received an improper leak of draft license documents for Yucca Mountain from another federal agency. Lake Barrett said he has not inquired internally about the matter in the 12 days since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it was investigating whether NRC staffers handed over internal documents to an attorney representing the Yucca Mountain program. "I haven't asked," said Barrett, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "To me it's not a major issue. It may be to others." Barrett said the documents, draft licensing guidelines for a proposed spent fuel repository at the Nevada site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, were going to be made public anyway at some point. "That's an NRC issue," he said about that agency's probe. "It's not a major issue to us." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had said that if the allegation is true, the document leak could violate law or NRC rules. At the least, he said, it would suggest inappropriate action by the NRC, which is supposed to act as an independent judge of a repository plan for the Nevada site. Nevada officials, who plan to contest any Yucca Mountain license application, have complained the same documents were not made available to them. Barrett made his comments to reporters following a presentation he made to a National Academy of Sciences board that studies nuclear waste. In a 20-minute talk to the 16-member Board of Radioactive Waste Management, Barrett said perennial underfunding by Congress has forced program managers to put off aspects of repository design, which could affect the project schedule. Instead of drawing up blueprints, department scientists have concentrated on the more immediate task of studying Yucca Mountain's geologic suitability as a repository site, he said. A decision by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on the Nevada site is expected "this winter," he said. "Right now everyone is focused on the site recommendation work, and then we will get to the license application," he said. "We have competing goods and only so many resources and they don't fit very well." For the eighth consecutive year, Congress reduced the Energy Department's request for Yucca Mountain spending, allocating $375 million for work in 2002, a $70 million reduction. Barrett said he and his deputies are weighing whether they can have a license application ready by 2003 if President Bush gives the go-ahead. The newest budget cut "is not going to help the timeline," he said. Barrett told reporters "several dozen" Yucca Mountain staffers were laid off when their work was complete, a normal procedure. But, he said, the budget reduction meant he couldn't bring on engineers and others to begin follow-up work. Among other features, Barrett said engineers have deferred designing security for a repository. He expressed confidence that a nuclear waste repository can be made safe from terrorist attack. "There is no direct September 11 corollary for our program," he said. "We can design it to meet the appropriate threats," adding the location is aided by its remoteness and proximity to Nellis Air Force Base. "As a brand new facility being built from scratch, we'll have a lot of flexibility to do what is needed," he said. "We'll be able to meet any requirements set by the Office of Homeland Security." This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-13-Tue-2001/news/17436177.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-13-Tue-2001/news/17436177.html] ***************************************************************** 27 U.S. Faces Insurance Bailout Minefield IHT: Reginald Dale International Herald Tribune Tuesday, November 13, 2001 WASHINGTON The United States has been called a land of opportunity, not of guarantee - as opposed to Continental Europe, which has traditionally been the other way around. Nevertheless, there are times when most of the country's decision-makers agree that government must intervene in the private sector to avert a wider economic disaster. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have created one of those occasions. Already the airline industry has won a quick $15 billion bailout, approved by both parties in Congress, and demands for similar treatment have poured in from other sectors such as buses and railroads. Not everyone is thrilled. Some members of Congress now feel they acted a little hastily in rushing money to the airlines. European carriers and the European Commission are understandably concerned that the aid may distort competition in favor of their American rivals, just as other "emergency" aid has helped to subsidize U.S. farmers. But now comes a case that dwarfs the airline industry in complexity and perhaps in economic importance: The insurance industry has persuaded Congress and the Bush administration that the prospects for national economic recovery could suffer a body blow in January, when around 70 percent of commercial insurance contracts have to be renewed. Without government help, insurance against terrorism could become prohibitively expensive or dry up altogether. Without such coverage, transportation, construction and energy projects would be starved of financing, with damaging ripple effects for the economy. In the highly competitive insurance industry, one might expect some companies to be licking their lips at the prospect of making a bundle out of new high-premium terrorism insurance. Risks are "routinely sliced and diced through myriad private contracts, the effectiveness of which can be judged by the fact that the huge losses of Sept. 11 will be spread throughout the world," said Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. But the industry is showing unusual unanimity in predicting the end of terrorism coverage. Without actuarial estimates of the scale and likelihood of future terrorist attacks - an impossible exercise in current circumstances - the risks simply cannot be priced. And while insurance companies may have survived Sept. 11, they would be devastated by a second such blow. It follows, the companies argue, that the government must limit the risk to make it priceable, and affordable, by providing "a backstop, not a bailout," in the fashionable jargon. But here we enter a minefield. If the government takes on too much responsibility for paying off terrorism claims, it will allow insurance companies to benefit from the higher premiums that are now inevitable without shouldering a fair share of the risk. There is a danger of moral hazard. If policyholders believe they will ultimately be bailed out by the government, they may not take enough expensive security measures. Some fear that the government may try to regulate premiums, delaying the return of a free market. Others, overoptimistic about the early defeat of terrorism, want only a temporary solution, and both liberals and conservatives oppose too much government intervention. The former do not want to give too much taxpayers' money to a "fat-cat" industry; the latter oppose government interference in principle. Most people, however, see why government should play a role. One of the government's jobs, after all, is to protect the country against terrorism in a way that it cannot do against earthquakes and hurricanes. If it fails, it should bear some responsibility. The House and the Senate unfortunately cannot agree on what that responsibility should be: In the event of huge future claims, the House wants the government to help out with repayable loans; the Senate wants the industry to pay the first $20 billion, after which the government would pay 90 percent of claims directly to victims. Many insurance companies are unhappy with both approaches. A better idea might be to form a special commercially run pool, backed by a government guarantee, for future terrorism payouts, as has already been done in Britain for Irish terrorism and in the United States for possible nuclear disasters. That would strike a better balance between opportunity and guarantee. And while it is at it, Congress could also start on much-needed tort reform by limiting punitive damage awards after terrorist attacks. E-mail address: Thinkahead@iht.com Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 28 Terror threat left out of Yucca report Las Vegas SUN Today: November 13, 2001 at 9:40:10 PST Project recommendation moves into final stages By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- The final report on whether Yucca Mountain is a suitable place to bury high-level nuclear waste will not contain an analysis of terrorist threats to the site, project chief Lake Barrett said Monday. Managers of the Yucca Mountain project are in the "chaotic" last stages of preparing a final recommendation on whether to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste at the Nevada site, Barrett said. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham likely will decide this winter whether to recommend the site to President Bush, Barrett said. "It's pretty well done," Barrett said of the sophisticated site-suitability report. The recommendation will come after 14 years of scientific study at Yucca Mountain, but will not include terrorist threat studies beyond a 14-year-old sabotage assessment. Nor will the report include studies of terrorist risks along the cross-country transportation routes that trucks and trains would follow to haul waste to the mountain ridge, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Nevada officials have called for such studies in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The final design of the waste repository won't be developed for years, Barrett said, so there is plenty of time to address potential terrorist risks. "We certainly can make (proposed designs) better," Barrett said. "We can make it hardened. We'll meet the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) regulations whatever they are." The NRC would be responsible for licensing the waste site. Barrett spoke to reporters after a regular fall meeting of the Board on Radioactive Waste Management, a 16-member panel within the National Academies that analyzes and makes recommendations on waste issues. Concerns about terrorist threats to the nation's waste were on the minds of the panel, in part because of Monday's American Airlines crash in New York. Yucca is the proposed site of the world's first high-level waste burial ground. Waste would be shipped to Nevada from government storage sites and 103 nuclear power plants around the nation. The DOE manages the project. The president and Congress have yet to approve it. Barrett reminded the panel that the Yucca site is a remote site that could fortify the nation's waste in a single, locked-down location. "I don't know how you can get much better than that," Barrett said of the Nevada site. "It is about the most secure location that you can get to." Barrett said he was confident that transportation casks were robust enough to protect against terrorist attacks. The nation has a legal and moral obligation to move the waste to a better place, Barrett said. "Yucca is a better place," he said. The NRC is reassessing security at nuclear power plants and waste storage sites, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve told the waste panel. The NRC soon will launch a "top-to-bottom review" of terrorist threats to all nuclear facilities, including the proposed Yucca site, Meserve said after the meeting. NRC officials will set a timeline for that review by the end of the month, Meserve said. "We're looking at everything," he said. Meserve and Barrett also spoke to reporters for the first time Monday about an investigation into whether someone at the NRC leaked a confidential Yucca review plan to the DOE's law firm, Winston &Strawn. The alleged leak -- reported first by the Las Vegas Sun, on Nov. 1, -- would be unethical, possibly illegal, and undermine the NRC's ability to independently review the DOE's application for a waste license, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other state officials have said. The NRC's inspector general launched a probe late last month that should be completed soon, Meserve told the Sun. He could not say who specifically is being questioned in the investigation. "The (NRC) inspector general is investigating, and I don't know anything more," Meserve said. "If there was a leak, (the document) certainly was nothing that anyone was authorized to release." Barrett downplayed the significance of the alleged leak. He said he did not know of any evidence of a leak. The document, if it fell into the hands of DOE Yucca managers, would not help the DOE shape its recommendation of the site, Barrett said. "I haven't seen (the document)," Barrett said. "It's not a major issue to us." Barrett on Monday also expressed frustration at a $70 million budget cut to the Yucca program for the next fiscal year, which was pushed by Reid. The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Reid negotiated in Congress for a $375 million budget for Yucca next year, $70 million less than what the DOE requested. Barrett will not be hiring engineers to work on repository designs because of the budget cut, he said. That will slow the DOE's plan to apply for the license from NRC sometime next year, Barrett said. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 29 Lithuanian premier says nuclear plant decommissioning is still "open issue" BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 13, 2001 Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas has said that the European Union should provide 100-per-cent financing of the decommissioning of Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power plant. Speaking to Lithuanian television, he added that the complete decommissioning of the power station was still an "open issue". In Brazauskas's opinion, the Ignalina nuclear power plant is the problem of the entire European Union. The following are excerpts from the programme Tema conducted by Rytis Juozapavicius, broadcast on 5 November; subheadings inserted editorially: Power plant seeks to streamline operations, increase energy price [Presenter] At the end of October, the management of the Ignalina nuclear power plant met representatives of Sweden's international projects for nuclear safety. This Swedish fund coordinates all the financial assistance of the Swedish government towards nuclear safety at the Ignalina nuclear power plant. The meeting discussed projects implemented at Ignalina this year and set guidelines for collaboration next year... [Juozapavicius] In late October, representatives of the Russian Kursk nuclear power plant visited Ignalina. The specialists from Kursk were particularly interested in the implementation of safety and quality programme at the Ignalina nuclear power station, the storage of spent nuclear fuel and the use of a new type of nuclear fuel containing erbium. A labour exchange project was launched at the office of the power station's personnel director in October. This project, implemented jointly with Danish partners, aims to find employment opportunities for the nuclear plant's personnel who will be made redundant as a result of the station's decommissioning. [Presenter] At its next meeting, the board of the Ignalina nuclear power plant is planning to discuss the issue of increasing the price of electricity generated at Ignalina and to review amendments to the company's statute in order to enable the plant to separate and relinquish its units that are not involved in power generation. Complete nuclear plant decommissioning still "open issue" - premier [Juozapavicius] We will now talk to Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas. We will interview the prime minister about the key issues of the Ignalina nuclear power station. Mr Prime Minister, what is your position regarding the date of decommissioning power unit two of the Ignalina nuclear power plant? [Brazauskas] I can say that, generally speaking, the issue of decommissioning the Ignalina nuclear power plant is not so simple. An answer to this question has not been worked out yet because Lithuania has only just begun talks [with the European Union] on all the problems of its energy sector - on the chapter on energy. One of the main issues in this chapter is the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant. I can say that the present government has basically taken all the actions needed in order to restructure Lithuania's entire energy sector. I have in mind the power-engineering and distribution sector. We are doing this, and I think that we will complete this work successfully in December together with the Seimas [parliament]. We have submitted some proposals to this effect to the Seimas to solve issues that are within its competence. Meanwhile, the issue of decommissioning the Ignalina nuclear power plant is still open today. It is subject to talks. All of this is not so simple. The matter is that we must and will focus all of our attention on the decommissioning of power unit one of the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Today, this is the most urgent issue, and this decommissioning process will give us a glimpse of the forthcoming total decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power station and will determine whether or not [such full decommissioning is carried out]. No official deadline set yet for complete plant decommissioning [Juozapavicius] How acceptable is the European Commission's wish to see Ignalina's power unit two decommissioned by 2009? [Brazauskas] This is the European Union's position, and we are well aware of it. It has been presented to us officially. Actually, I am still waiting for a document from the [EU enlargement] commissioner, Mr [Guenter] Verheugen, that would present this position officially. For the time being, the Lithuanian government has no document that would say clearly when power unit two should be closed. And what does the decommissioning of power unit two entail? It presumes a complete decommission of the entire power plant. So, we are waiting for this document. I hope it will arrive eventually and we will receive it. Then will follow a series of long discussions. The government and, I hope, the parliament will assess all the consequences of the planned decommissioning, its cost, the creation of new jobs, the effect of the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant on consumer prices, people and business entities, etc. The stakes are high. It is not a matter of simply opening or shutting down something and then forgetting about it. The storage of nuclear waste has to be mapped out for decades. There are several options. The so-called fast-track option, which is preferable to us, would not be completed in another 50-60 years. Therefore, investments will need to be made on a permanent basis. And these will not be productive investments that bring us yield. These will be sheer expenditures. EU urged to fully financing Ignalina decommissioning process [Juozapavicius] Lithuanian MP Kazimiera Prunskiene says Lithuania should obtain guarantees from the European Union that the EU will meet 80-90 per cent of all the costs of decommissioning the Ignalina nuclear power plant. [Brazauskas] Why not 100 per cent? I do not know why she has not called for 100-per-cent funding. One should imagine that all the costs of decommissioning the power plant and dealing with the consequences of this move on our economy and life are measured in billions, whether litas or dollars. Today, I dare not speak about concrete figures, because we do not know them. There are some projections, but it seems to me that they are still subject to very serious consideration. Therefore, I would not like to mention any specific figures. But the fact is that we are speaking about billions here. And I do not think that Lithuania could so easily allocate 10 per cent of that multibillion sum to invest and finance the decommissioning process. Nuclear plant decommissioning is EU's problem [Juozapavicius] How much money is the European Union already prepared to contribute to Lithuania in order to help it decommission the Ignalina nuclear power plant? What do you make of your talks with European Commission officials? [Brazauskas] Well, you know, Commissioner Verheugen, whose name Lithuania knows very well, and I have already had several discussions on this issue. We had these meetings while I was in my present post and in my earlier post [of president]. Practically, the European Commission's position was that this is an issue for Lithuania to resolve. However, we keep pointing out - and I would like to stress it once again - that this is not only Lithuania's problem. In fact, it is a problem of the European Union, because this nuclear power plant was not built for Lithuania, but for the entire region. More precisely, it was built for the self-sufficient Northwestern energy system of the Soviet Union. The [Soviet government's] decision was that this nuclear power station should have a capacity of 6m kilowatts, which is a fantastic capacity. But we managed to stop the completion of this project when the construction of power unit three was half-way through. If that reactor had been built, the nuclear power plant's capacity would have been 4.5m kilowatts. So, it is not a problem of only one state, especially such a small country as Lithuania. Our economic and financial potential is not adequate to the price and cost of decommissioning the nuclear power plant and dealing with the consequences of this decision. Therefore, we keep pointing out that this is the European Union's problem and that funding for the decommissioning should come from a completely separate financial source, without linking it to the issues of our membership of the European Union. Such funding should come in addition to the regular funding that will come after Lithuania has joined the European Union. Government's tough position to make demands [Juozapavicius] What is the government doing to solve the problems of the entire region related to the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant? [Brazauskas] So far, we are not doing anything. So far, we are only making demands. Our position is to demand additional funds or allocation of adequate funding to create alternative jobs for Ignalina's workers. This is our main task and we are pursuing it. Controversy over government's deadline commitments [Juozapavicius] During his visit to Lithuania in September this year, the enlargement commissioner, Guenter Verheugen, caused turmoil here by making a statement with regard to the date of decommissioning power unit two of the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Verheugen said that Lithuania had undertaken an official commitment to decommission power unit two by the end of 2009. [Presenter, reads Verheugen's statement] The former European Commission reached an agreement [with Lithuania] on this issue back in 1999. It has been put on paper, and everybody is free to familiarize himself with it. The present commission is not planning to revise this agreement or to begin new talks. [Juozapavicius] Mr Guenter Verheugen made this statement at a news conference. But Lithuanian politicians and diplomats immediately rushed to deny this allegation by the high-ranking EU official. [Presenter] In 1999, Algirdas Saudargas was Lithuania's foreign minister. The former minister said that the then government had not undertaken any obligations with regard to the date of decommissioning Ignalina's power unit two. [Saudargas] I am not aware of any such documents, because there were no such documents in the time of our government. That statement [by Verheugen] is a way of exerting pressure. The Commission's negotiators are very tough. But we should take this kind pressure in our stride and deny these statements. The Lithuanian government's position is unshakable. Meanwhile, as regards the actions they [the European Commission] are taking, I would not say that they are extremely improper. The matter is that such statements are not made by the official who signed the actual documents, but by another official. He has an excuse in saying that he sees things that way. So, he resorts to this kind of pressure. Maybe this is done in order to test the new government. Maybe the new government will cave in? Maybe it will not be able to fight back? [Presenter] Guenter Verheugen said he was referring to the financial memorandum on financial assistance towards the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, signed on 31 December 1999. In fact, that document did initially identify 2009 as the date for the decommissioning of power unit two of the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Here is a passage from the memorandum. [Juozapavicius, quoting passage] The funds allocated for activities in Lithuania within the framework of this programme shall be transferred to the recipient in the Phare partner country via the so-called Ignalina decommissioning fund, which shall be managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This fund shall ensure accumulation of assistance resources from international contributors towards the implementation of Lithuania's national energy strategy, particularly the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant - power unit one by 2005 and power unit two by 2009. [Saudargas] As regards these documents, the memorandum came on New Year's Eve. Well, our Foreign Ministry officials were attentive, they read through the document and found a sentence that was referring to Lithuania's national energy strategy. However, the interpretation of the strategy was erroneous, because it said that power unit one had to be decommissioned by 2005 and power unit two by 2009 under the strategy and that money would be allocated for that purpose. So, we immediately challenged this wording and I did not sign this document. [Presenter] Next comes a passage from Algirdas Saudargas's letter to the former head of the European Union's mission to Lithuania, Heinrich Schmiegelow. [Juozapavicius, reads passage] Part of this sentence, specifically the words "and power unit two by 2009", do not correspond to the text of the energy strategy adopted by the Lithuanian Seimas on 5 December 1999. I hope you will agree that a mistake has found its way into the text of the said memorandum. Sincerely, Algirdas Saudargas. [Saudargas] Then we got a reply signed by an authorized official. He was not an envoy, but a charge-d'affaires. The reply said that we [the European Commission] are taking your clarification into account and will henceforth treat the Lithuanian national energy strategy accordingly, also making a correction in the signed document. Now, somebody who has not analysed the matter in detail or pretends not to know these particulars has taken this document and referred to the specific wording [regarding the decommissioning date], ignoring the appended document that goes with it. Well, these are just games, and I would say they are commonplace. However, they are absolutely unfounded. Opinion poll shows public resents nuclear plant decommissioning [Presenter] It is up to Lithuanian politicians to decide when power unit two is to be decommissioned. After a decision is taken, the operations of the entire nuclear power plant will be stopped. This is just a question of time. A new public opinion survey carried out on the web site tvnet.lt [news portal] in October showed that 45 per cent of the respondents were convinced that the consequences of decommissioning the Ignalina nuclear power plant would be disastrous for Lithuania. Thirty-six per cent think that the price of electricity will go up. The remaining 19 per cent believe Lithuania will not experience any negative consequences because it has a sufficient number of other nuclear power plants. Sixty-seven per cent of the respondents disapprove of the European Commission's aim to have power unit two decommissioned by 2009. [Juozapavicius, interviewing passers-by on the street] What do you think of the position of the European Commission to have power unit two of the Ignalina nuclear power plant decommissioned by 2009? [Passer-by] I think it is too early to decommission power unit two. [Passer-by] If we are Lithuanians, let us be Lithuanians. Do we have to dance to their tune irrespective of whatever may come into their heads? This European Union has nothing to do with it. We should look at who is running the European Union. [Passer-by] I think it is quite normal on their part, because they want to make some money by selling their electricity to us and by depriving us of our facility to export electricity. [Passer-by] I personally support this position very much for one very simple reason - my summer house is just 30 kilometres away from the nuclear power plant. So, it is pretty much in a Chernobyl zone. I personally support this position very much. Lithuania seeks independence from Russian energy resources [Presenter] United States experts have warned that, having closed its sole nuclear power plant, Lithuania will become even more dependent on neighbouring Russia in the future. This will happen because the decommissioning of the Ignalina nuclear power plant will be followed by increased utilization of thermal power stations that run on natural gas, fuel oil or liquid fuel. These raw materials come from Russia. According to the analysis, being in control of these energy carriers, neighbouring Russia will be able to influence Lithuania's entire energy system and the price of electricity. A British energy expert, Helene Ryding, has been assisting the Lithuanian government with its national energy strategy for several years now. [Ryding, speaks in English with Lithuanian translation superimposed] Well, I think that is probably true. If you replace nuclear energy with fuel oil or natural gas energy, it will make sense to buy this raw material from your neighbour [Russia] because it has huge resources of natural gas and crude oil. However, you already are very dependent on Russia as far as nuclear technologies and nuclear fuel are concerned. So, in a way, one type of dependence will be replaced by another. [Andrius Kubilius, former prime minister, deputy chairman of right-wing opposition Homeland Union - Lithuanian Conservatives] Of course, nowadays you cannot be independent from external energy resources. But when speaking about energy independence, we have in mind our position that Lithuania should not rely on Russia as the sole supplier of energy resources. Let us consider such a country as Germany, which is somewhat bigger and stronger than Lithuania. As far as natural gas supplies are concerned, the German government has established very clear principles stipulating that Germany must obtain this energy resource from three independent sources. This policy has been successful, as Germany obtains one-third of its natural gas supplies from Gazprom, one-third from Norway and one-third from the Netherlands. So, Lithuania should pursue a similar policy in order to take care of its strategic security in the energy sector. It should search for alternative supply routes. This applies to electric energy, too. So, we ought to get connected to Western networks. [Juozapavicius] In order to avoid dependence on only one supplier, Lithuania's energy strategy stipulates measures aimed at strengthening cooperation with the Baltic and Northern European countries in building a common electricity market. The Baltic states inherited a common high-voltage network from the former Soviet Union. This network will serve as the foundation of the common electric energy market. An energy ring will be created, linking Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The consumers of these countries will be able to purchase electric energy from the cheapest supplier irrespective of where it is located. There are plans to connect the Baltic states' electric energy market with the Scandinavian countries and Poland in about 2005. Poland's high-voltage networks should give the Baltic states access to Western energy systems. [Ryding] Currently, in the European Union there is a trend to integrate national energy systems into the single electric energy market. [Juozapavicius] In 1999, when there were 15 members in the European Union, exactly half of all the energy resources were obtained from non-EU members. According to estimates, dependence on foreign energy resources is bound to increase further and reach as much as 70 per cent by 2030 as the EU is expected to consist of at least 30 countries. Decommissioning of Ignalina's first reactor to cost billions of litas [Presenter] The costs of decommissioning power unit one of the Ignalina nuclear power plant and restructuring Lithuania's energy sector will amount to 25.283bn litas. The Lithuanian Economics Ministry indicated this sum in a report submitted to the government. [Juozapavicius] The most costly part of the project will be construction of gas pipelines for new power plants as well as overhauls of the existing power stations. A sum of 1.36bn litas will have to be spent to increase the safety of supplies. Another 1.93bn litas is to be allocated for implementation of environmental requirements, because thermal power plants will cause greater pollution of the environment. Another 2.2bn litas will have to go into the physical decommissioning of power unit one. About 1m litas will have to be spent to liberalize the electricity and natural gas markets each as well to build up a fuel reserve. Germany takes in lead in contributing funds to decommissioning [Presenter] At the end of last month, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The issues discussed included the decommissioning of Ignalina's power unit two. Algirdas Brazauskas pointed out that the decommissioning should be common task for the entire European community. [Juozapavicius] Germany is the only member of the European Union that has announced its intention to decommission all of its nuclear power plants. The German ambassador to Lithuania, Detlof von Berg, told our programme about the position of the German government regarding the problems of the Lithuanian Ignalina nuclear power plant. [von Berg, speaks in German with Lithuanian translation superimposed] First of all, we should understand why Germany has got involved in the debate on the decommissioning of power unit two of the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Lithuania inherited Ignalina as a heavy burden. We realize that this is not only Lithuania's problem. We can define it as a post-Soviet problem. If this nuclear power plant had been built several kilometres to the north, we would be speaking about Latvia's burdensome heritage now. But this is only one side of the coin. The other is that the majority of EU member states, including Germany, believe that the Ignalina nuclear power plant is dangerous. The Chernobyl catastrophe has shown this danger very clearly. Today, nuclear power plants may also become targets for terrorist attacks. In the event of a calamity, nuclear energy may cause tremendous damage. We see this as a threat to entire Europe. Let us imagine an accident at the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Clouds of radioactive dust might fly over Lithuania and land in Frankfurt, Offenbach, Cologne or Paris. This would be a very sad scenario. But it vividly shows why we, the Germans and the French, want the position of the European delegation on the date of decommissioning Ignalina's power unit two to be translated into reality as soon as possible. Being a member of the European Union, Germany has committed itself to solving this issue. About one-third of the European Union's funds is contributed by Germany. This is our country's contribution to the EU budget. However, Germany is also making direct monetary contributions towards the solution of the Ignalina nuclear power plant's problems. Germany has already transferred 7m German marks to Ignalina's special fund. This is our financial assistance towards the preparatory work at Ignalina in order to ensure successful decommissioning of the entire nuclear power plant later on. If we were to consider sums of money, I would like to mention a hypothetical figure. Let us say that 2bn euros would be needed to shut down the plant's reactors and organize nuclear waste storage. However, this amount of money will not be needed immediately, because the decommissioning process will last for decades. The 2bn euros that I mentioned is equivalent to Lithuania's current foreign debt. I will tell you frankly: it would be very irresponsible to nearly double that debt and to leave Lithuania alone to deal with this financial problem. [Juozapavicius] What is Germany's position regarding the date of decommissioning nuclear power two at Ignalina? [von Berg] Germany supports the decisions taken by the European Union. We are a member of the European Union for that matter. Once the European Commission has adopted such a position, we support it. And if the EU says that power unit two must be shut down no later than in 2009, Germany will support and back this position. I will tell you frankly that we see no point in extending the deadline of 2009, set by the European Commission, by several more years. It may be na\ive of me, but I ask myself what Lithuania would gain if the Ignalina nuclear power plant were kept in operation for a few more years beyond that deadline, at the same time compromising Lithuania's entry of the European Union? Nuclear safety may be compromised by emigration of specialists [Juozapavicius] A working visit by the parliamentary commission for the problems of the Ignalina nuclear power plant's region to the power station was tumultuous. Representatives of the town's community said at the meeting that they were missing a consistent programme of social guarantees. The people asked whether the authorities had a clear vision of the city's and region's development... [Presenter] In February this year, the government approved a programme for the decommissioning of power unit one of the Ignalina nuclear power plant. Mayor of Visaginas Vytautas Rackauskas said that nothing had been done over the eight months that followed. The Seimas has not yet adopted a law on social guarantees. Representatives of the nuclear power plant's unions warned that the station's best specialists might go to work at foreign nuclear power plants even before the decommissioning of power unit one. So, the plant risks being left without any competent employees to continue operating the facility safely. The highly-skilled specialists of the Ignalina nuclear power plant who speak English can find work at Canadian and American nuclear power plants. Deputy Minister of Social Security and Labour Rimantas Kairelis said that no exclusive social security guarantees would apply to the personnel of the Ignalina nuclear power plant because that would violate social justice. [Kairelis] The exclusivity of these guarantees is subject to debate. For instance, the amounts of redundancy payments are subject to debate, because factories are being closed in other Lithuanian regions, too. The workers of these factories are also being made redundant with empty hands. Should there be any exclusive guarantees for the Ignalina power plant workers, or should they be in line with Lithuania's general policy? This is the main issue in the debate regarding special monetary guarantees. Source: Lithuanian Television, Vilnius, in Lithuanian 1430 gmt 5 Nov 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 BUSH LIKELY TO RESUME ATOMIC TESTING! Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 17:14:59 -0600 (CST) White House Wants to Bury Pact Banning Tests of Nuclear Arms http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0707-01.htm Bush Hints Nuclear Test Moratorium May End http://www.downwinders.org/bush.html Is the Bush Administration preparing to break out of the nuclear weapons testing moratorium? http://www.downwinders.org/commentary.html ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As I've often told Ginsberg, you can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold. KEN KESEY (1935 - 2001) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find a job, post your resume. http://careers.yahoo.com ***************************************************************** 2 A Summit Topic: Russia's Plutonium November 13, 2001 o the Editor: Re "An Easy Bargain With Russia" (Op-Ed, Nov. 10): Burton Richter proposes that President Bush agree to the demand by President Vladimir V. Putin for lower strategic bomb inventories. But the proposal doesn't address what becomes of the thousands of nuclear warheads retired by each side. The United States-Russian agreement to turn plutonium "pits" of these warheads into fuel for nuclear power plants is wrongheaded when operatives of Al Qaeda are looking for atom bomb materials. Lax nuclear security in Russia would be aggravated by transporting tons of weapons-grade plutonium thousands of miles from pit-conversion plant to fuel-fabrication plant to nuclear power plants. Presidents Bush and Putin should instead agree to abandon Russia's insistence on using plutonium as fuel in return for American financial incentives to dispose of it directly as waste. PAUL L. LEVENTHAL Pres., Nuclear Control Institute Washington, Nov. 10, 2001 Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 3 Russia has no evidence of Bin-Ladin possessing nuclear weapons BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 13, 2001 Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS Moscow, 13 November: The command of the Russian Defence Ministry has no evidence that the Al-Qa'idah terrorist group headed Usamah Bin-Ladin has nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, Chief of the Defence Ministry Department in charge of Russia's nuclear arsenal Gen Igor Valynkin told journalists on Tuesday. "Bin-Ladin does not and cannot possess nuclear weapons either of Soviet or western production," the general stressed. Nevertheless, the general did not rule out that such weapons might get to the Taleban from Pakistan. "Bin-Ladin has contacts with secret services of Pakistan, the country which possesses nuclear weapons," Valynkin admitted. "Therefore, we cannot rule out possible developments when Bin-Ladin gets nuclear weapons into his possession," the Russian general stressed. Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1117 gmt 13 Nov 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 4 US bombings to have lasting effect: experts -DAWN - International; 13 November, 2001 By Our Staff Reporter ISLAMABAD, Nov 12: While Osama bin Laden claims to have nuclear and chemical weapons and threatens their use if the United States did so, defence experts say that the Americans are already dropping highly dangerous ordnance on Afghanistan that could have devastating effect on people's health in that beleaguered country and also in Pakistan. A leading military expert told Dawn that since Oct 7 the United States Air Force has been raining down depleted uranium shells at targets inside Afghanistan, especially against the Taliban front lines in the north. "There is widespread radiation in many areas that could adversely affect tens and thousands of people in the two countries for generations to come," he said. Exposure to radioactive contamination from depleted uranium, or DU, is known to cause lung cancer, leukemia, the blood cancer, and birth defects as has been the case in the two countries where the Americans and their allies have used this weapon in recent years - Yugoslavia and Iraq. "DU causes slow death," said a medical doctor. US-led NATO air force bombed Yugoslavia in 1999, using DU shells, to drive away Yugoslav forces from one of its provinces - Kosovo - where the pre-dominant population is Albanian. When a weapon made with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through and then erupts in a burning cloud of vapour. The vapour settles as dust, which is chemically poisonous and also radioactive. © The DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2001 ***************************************************************** 5 Y-12 once housed uranium from Kazakhstan Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 10:54 a.m. on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Once upon a time, Oak Ridge stored 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium -- enough to make more than 20 nuclear devices -- from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. In fact, it was seven years ago this month that the material was delivered to the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant, now known as the Y-12 National Security Complex. The operation, referred to as Project Sapphire, began in early 1994 when the government of Kazakhstan asked the United States for assistance in disposing of the uranium that it could not store securely. On Oct. 7, 1994, President Clinton directed the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to undertake a joint mission to retrieve the 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. A 31-member U.S. team -- most of them from Y-12 and representing Martin Marietta Energy Systems, which managed the facility -- was dispatched to Ulba, Kazakhstan, with one of their duties being to package the material for transportation. A month later, three C-5 aircraft were sent to Kazakhstan to pick up the uranium and the team. The aircraft carrying the uranium landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware where the material was loaded onto trucks and transported to Oak Ridge. By removing the material from Kazakhstan, the United States put this bomb-grade nuclear material out of the reach of potential terrorists and other groups. Officials started shipping the highly enriched uranium to Babcock and Wilcox in Lynchburg, Va., in early 1995 where it was to be blended down into commercial reactor fuel, said David Wall, senior nuclear engineer with the National Nuclear Security Administration in Oak Ridge. The last shipment left Y-12 in October 1995. Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 6 oPINION: uc AND lIVERMORE The Daily Californian - Letters to the Editor: Boycotting is Protected Speech Tuesday, November 13, 2001 The University of California runs the Los Alamos and Livermore nuclear weapons laboratories, for which it is paid $50 billion over the current 5 year contract (which runs until 2005). While it may be obvious to those who work in public relations at UC that this is the case, it is also true that it is not publicized if it can at all be helped. Examples of this abound—from Los Alamos recruitment literature (no mention of nuclear weapons work, but a cryptic reference to needing "Q-clearance"), to Livermore's 'bait-and-switch' hiring practices. Last week the Berkeley Chancellor's Forum on Nuclear Weapons managed to get through all five hand-picked panelists without one of them mentioning the University's role and responsibility. The 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banned underground nuclear testing and required the five declared nuclear powers to disarm in good faith. The U.S. response was to ignore the disarmament requirement and instead initiate a program to replace underground testing with huge experimental facilities (NIF and DARHT) and supercomputer simulations (ASCI). Although this program is misleadingly advertised as being necessary to maintain the "safety and reliability" of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, safety here does not mean disarmament, or even de-alerting, but instead refers to the labs re-designing and upgrading existing weapons to include what are euphemistically described as modifications. These not-new-just-modified weapons include ones with deep earth-piercing capability, and ongoing work on developing mini-nukes—exactly the kinds of devices that would be the most dangerous in either government or terrorist hands. Because of its stewardship and sustainment of Los Alamos and Livermore, the relationship between UC and the U.S. nuclear arsenal is uniquely cozy. Dr. Julian Borrill Staff Scientist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory E-mail: dailycal@dailycal.org ***************************************************************** 7 DOE needs to get on the ball at the test site [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Monday, November 12, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal To the editor: Re: the Nov. 8 editorial on cleaning up the test site: Rep. Shelley Berkley may be putting a new twist on the repository issue, but it's a real one and it's based on science. Her letter calls for characterization of the radioactivity beneath the test site to find out if it may contribute to leaked contamination from the repository in the future. Many of us think it's about time such action is taken by the Department of Energy. Most would agree that $7.2 trillion should not be spent to clean up the 130 million curies of radiation in the groundwater beneath the Nevada Test Site, but the alternative is not to just allow them to sit and "cool" because they don't just sit and they probably aren't just tritium. They migrate, and many of the 260 radioactive plumes that are migrating have been underway for about 40 years. The problem is that the DOE knows almost nothing about their speed, flow paths, constituents, shapes and concentrations, despite 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to study them. The reason for the lack of knowledge is unclear, but an examination of the work the DOE has performed gives a hint. Its groundwater program has produced two costly products, a regional groundwater model and a study of the Frenchman Flat contamination. Both were peer reviewed and both were given poor marks. Looking at the DOE's efforts to protect the public (the DOE's primary mission) by monitoring groundwater is also scary. There is very little chance that it would detect contamination, even if it were at Oasis Valley's doorstep. The editorial is correct in stressing aggressive monitoring of the groundwater, which could create an effective early-warning system. Perhaps Rep. Berkley's action will help convince the DOE to get that task started. SUSANNE FORESTIERI LAS VEGAS http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-12-Mon-2001/opinion/17409261.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-12-Mon-2001/opinion/17409261.html] ***************************************************************** 8 Al Qaeda Said to Claim Ability to Buy Nuclear Arms Monday November 12 11:28 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Pakistani journalist who interviewed Osama bin Laden last week said on Monday the Saudi-born dissident had told him nuclear arms could be bought on the central Asian black market for $10 million to $20 million. Hamid Mir, editor of the Urdu-language Ausaf newspaper, told CNN's ``Larry King Live'' that he had pressed bin Laden and his aide, Ayman Zawahri, on the issue after they said they would retaliate in kind for any U.S. use of nuclear warheads. ``He said that if the United States of America is going to use these kinds of weapons against us, then we reserve the right to respond back the same way,'' said Mir, who said he had conducted the interview somewhere in Afghanistan after being taken blindfolded to a secret location. ``He used the word 'nuclear deterrent' and he said 'we will not use these weapons first but we will retaliate'. After that I tried my best to get more information on from where you get these kinds of weapons, but he was not willing to speak more on this issue,'' Mir said. ``But when my interview was finished and we were just having tea, I engaged him again on this issue and I was trying to get information from where you got these kind of weapons. ``They gave me some indication that you can if you have $10 million, $20 million, you can get these kinds of weapons from the underworld mafia of the central Asian states and some disgruntled Russian scientists.'' Mir's comments elaborated on accounts of his interview published in Pakistan on Saturday, when bin Laden's reference to nuclear retaliation was first reported. Senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, said on Sunday it was unlikely that bin Laden or his al Qaeda network had access to nuclear arms. The United States is leading a military campaign to destroy al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors, accusing bin Laden's group of being behind the Sept. 11 attacks on America in which about 4,500 people were killed. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited ***************************************************************** 9 U.S. skips UN's nuclear talks November 12, 2001 BY GERALD NADLER Test ban treaty was rejected in 1999; 12 others also oppose --> UNITED NATIONS--A United Nations conference on speeding ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty opened Sunday--without the United States, which reiterated last week that it did not support the pact. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by 161 nations and ratified by 84 of them, cannot take effect until all 44 countries that possess nuclear weapons or have nuclear power programs have signed or ratified the treaty. Only 31 such nations, including Britain, France and Russia, have ratified the 1996 accord that bans nuclear tests in any environment. The United States is among 13 non-ratifiers. Washington had signed the pact five years ago, but the Senate rejected the treaty in 1999. Opponents of the treaty say it is unenforceable. The United States forced a vote last week in the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the test ban accord. At that session, the United States was the only nation to vote against the accord, while India and Pakistan--both new nuclear nations that have not yet signed the treaty--joined Russia, China, Britain and France in voting in its favor. The United States was invited to attend Sunday's conference as an observer but decided not to go, State Department spokeswoman Eliza Koch said. ''The purpose of the conference is to promote ratifications of the treaty, and the administration has made clear that it has no plans to ask the Senate to reconsider its 1999 vote on this issue,'' she said. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan opened the three-day conference Sunday by urging nations who haven't ratified to approve the pact. In a pointed allusion to the United States, Annan said some nations withholding ratification ''are states which themselves worked hard to conclude the treaty.'' ''Now it is within their power to bring it into force,'' Annan said. ''I implore them to do so.'' Annan also stressed that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks show more than ever that the treaty is needed. ''Those events should have made it clear to everyone that we cannot afford further proliferation of nuclear weapons,'' he said. AP Daily Southtown Pioneer Press Post-Tribune Star Newspapers Suburban Copyright 2000, Digital Chicago Inc. ***************************************************************** 10 Scientists Say They Met bin Laden Las Vegas SUN November 11, 2001 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan- Two retired nuclear scientists who were recently arrested and questioned have acknowledged that they met terror suspect Osama bin Laden at least twice this year, Pakistani investigators said Sunday. Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid left their senior positions at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission about two years ago and established a relief organization in Afghanistan. The men said they met bin Laden at least twice during visits to Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar in connection with the construction of a flour mill, according to a Pakistani official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mehmood heads Tameer-e-Ummah, or the Nation Building, a private group involved in rehabilitating war-ravaged Afghanistan. Majid also worked for the aid group. The scientists were arrested Oct. 23 and questioned about their work in Afghanistan. They were released after a few days in detention, only to be arrested again a couple of days later. They were questioned by both Pakistani and U.S. investigators, the Pakistani official said. Neither man has been charged with any offense, and Pakistani officials said there was nothing to suggest that the men passed on nuclear information or materials to anyone in Afghanistan. In a newspaper interview published Saturday, bin Laden claimed he had acquired nuclear and chemical weapons and would unleash them if the United States used such weapons against him. U.S. officials have said that bin Laden has attempted to acquire weapons of mass destruction but that they have no information to suggest he has been successful. Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and until the Sept. 11 terror attacks, supported Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement. The Taliban have harbored bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, suspected in the attacks on New York and Washington. But Pakistan insists it has not leaked nuclear information or material, and that its nuclear weapons remain well protected. "Pakistan is fully alive to the responsibilities of its nuclear status," President Pervez Musharraf said Saturday at the United Nations in New York. "Let me assure you all that our strategic assets are well guarded and are in safe hands." Musharraf is a key partner in the U.S.-led military campaign to root out bin Laden and al-Qaida and defeat the Taliban. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 Technology:Nuclear advocate lectures 11/13/01 [http://augustachronicle.com/images/headlines/111301/Domenici_Lecture.jpg] (left to right) Guest lecturer Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico stands for the National Anthem along with Westinghouse Savannah River Company President Bob Pedde, his wife Linda Pedde, and Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness vice chairman Bill Reinig at the start of the Tenth Annual Edward Teller Lecture at the Radisson Riverfront Hotel on Monday night. ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/STAFF Nuclear advocate lectures Web posted Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Have a thought? Go to the [http://augustachronicle.com/cgi-bin/ubb/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro] or Chat. By [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] Staff Writer The United States must continue a "new dialogue" on the future of nuclear energy, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici told local supporters of the nuclear industry Monday. "Like any technology, it's important to know the benefits and the risks," Mr. Domenici, R-N.M., told about 750 people as he delivered the 10th annual Edward Teller Lecture at Radisson Riverfront Hotel Augusta. "In the nuclear areas, we often hear from the anti-nuclear people, whose sole focus is on the risks. Obviously, if you only worry about the risks, you'll never know about the benefits," he said. The lecture is sponsored by the Aiken-based pro-nuclear group Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness. It is named for Edward Teller, the physicist regarded as the father of the hydrogen bomb. Mr. Domenici is an advocate of nuclear technology. He delivered a 1997 speech at Harvard University that is credited with helping to restart the nation's then-dormant nuclear industry. The industry has made strides said, Mr. Domenici said. He noted that some utilities even plan to apply to build nuclear-power plants - an idea considered laughable a few years ago. But the senator warned that the industry must address its problems to continue its re-emergence. Chief among those issues is a long-term solution for disposing of spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive wastes, Mr. Domenici said. "Here we sit with a rather insignificant, not-so-difficult engineering problem of what to do with waste from nuclear reactors," he said. "It should not be a showstopper. It should not be that difficult to solve." Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] . 1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. ***************************************************************** 12 More than 40 years of nuclear standoff and missile defense By Associated Press, 11/13/2001 02:31 A chronology of events in the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union: 1945: The United States drops atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to end World War II. 1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb. 1950s: Cold War accelerates. 1957: Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first earth-orbiting satellite. 1961: Berlin Wall built. Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails. 1962: Cuban missile crisis. 1968: President Johnson says the United States and Soviet Union will discuss limits on strategic nuclear arsenals and ballistic missile defenses. Talks are canceled when Moscow invades Czechoslovakia in August. 1972: President Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT I agreement, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. 1979: In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter withdraws the SALT II treaty from Senate consideration. 1982: Soviets and United States begin Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. 1983: Reagan announces during a nationally televised speech that the United States will embark on an extensive research and development program to examine the feasibility of a missile defense program. 1986: An agreement to drastically reduce strategic nuclear arms collapses at the Reykjavik summit because of Soviet opposition to American Strategic Defense Initiative development. 1987: Reagan and Gorbachev sign the INF Treaty, which bans ground-launched, medium-range nuclear missiles. 1989: Berlin Wall falls. Soviet Union cuts conventional forces in Europe. 1991: President Bush and Gorbachev sign the START I Treaty. Soviet Union disbands. 1993: President Bush Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign START II treaty. 1997: Members of a congressionally chartered panel chaired by Donald Rumsfeld are named to examine missile threats to the United States. 2000: President Clinton decides not to authorize work to begin on deploying national missile defense. May 2001: President Bush declares, ''We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world.'' July 2001: Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agree to tie U.S. plans for building a missile defense shield to talks on reducing both nations' nuclear stockpiles. Sources: Associated Press reports, Center for Defense Information and Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. ***************************************************************** 13 Editorial: UC Should Continue to Run Nuclear Research Labs The Daily Californian - Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Last Wednesday the ASUC Senate approved a bill to send a letter to the UC Board of Regents asking them to renegotiate their contracts with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory to end nuclear weapons research there. The call to eliminate nuclear weapons research would be foolish for the university and potentially disastrous in an already volatile national security climate. The UC system has run both labs since their creation in the 1940s, and freely admits its involvement in nuclear weapons research. Despite its security problems in the past, giving responsibility for nuclear weapons research over to another agency at this time would be a dangerous changeover. The ASUC wants more communication between the UC regents and the student body about the labs—this is a valuable goal. But to call for an unconditional cessation of nuclear weapons research is melodramatic and unrealistic. If nuclear research leaves the UC, it will simply go elsewhere. If the Deparment of Energy or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration take over, we can expect less communication and more difficulty in recruiting the scientific talent necessary to ensure a safe stockpile of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons exist—nobody denies this. With that in mind, it's crucial that we have a means to assure the safety and reliability of our existing arsenal, and this cannot be achieved without actual testing or accurate scientific modeling programs. Projects like the National Ignition Facility and the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative White, which are being conducted at the labs, are critical measures in the effort to replace actual weapon detonation with scientific modeling. Moving the location of the government's top nuclear research labs does little except waste time and money. The UC receives $10 billion a year until the current contract expires in 2005, and the prestige of running the labs brings in additional grants like the $2 million that came this summer for supernovae resarch. The UC should continue to administer the labs' operation. It should, however, make every effort to deal with residential areas near the labs to ensure residents' concerns about radioactive waste and radiation poisoning are met. Efforts should also be made to improve the security at the UC labs, who were plagued by a series of high-profile security leaks just prior to last year's renewal of the Department of Energy contract. E-mail: dailycal@dailycal.org ***************************************************************** 14 Manley says test-ban treaty will help keep nukes out of terrorist hands November 13, 2001 Canadian Press UNITED NATIONS (CP) - A strong and enforceable international treaty system, including a ban on nuclear tests, can keep terrorists from getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction, Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley said Monday. In a speech drafted for delivery at a conference on the comprehensive test-ban treaty, Manley said terrorists want nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. "From the statements of the criminal Osama bin Laden, there is no doubt that weapons of mass destruction form a part of the terrorist agenda," he said. "It scarcely need be said that there exists a real threat from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons." Effective international treaties - with mechanisms to ensure compliance - are needed to make sure such weapons are not produced, stockpiled or used. "This is our best protection against having weapons of mass destruction fall into the wrong hands," said Manley. He urged the universal adoption of the test-ban treaty as a cornerstone of international efforts. The treaty was concluded in 1996 after three decades of negotiation. So far, 161 countries have signed it and 85 have ratified it. That's 13 short, however, of the number of ratifications needed to bring the treaty into force. The United States has not signed, although it is observing a voluntary moratorium on testing. That's good, as far as it goes, Manley said. "However, we are disappointed that the United States is not also proceeding with ratification of the (treaty) and we urge it to reconsider." Manley said the benefits of the treaty are clear. "The threats faced by the world community today are complex, diverse and unpredictable," he said. "The events of Sept. 11 reinforce the need for states and international bodies to take every possible measure, consistent with the rule of law and with the values that characterize our societies, in order to assure the safety of our citizens and the security of our nations." It is urgent, he said, that the treaty come into force as part of the war on terrorism. "This treaty is based on and provides strength to the same partnerships and coalitions that are now so essential to the fight against terrorism. It is rules-based and provides clear terms for compliance, implementation and verification. It also underscores the principle of preventive action - the greatest assurance of security that we can have." The world wants safety and security, not a continuing arms race, said Manley. Copyright © 2001 National Post Online | Privacy Policy | Corrections ***************************************************************** 15 Summit Is Not About Concessions Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2001. Page 12 Editorial To Our Readers In the days and weeks leading up to President Vladimir Putin's summit with President George W. Bush, the focus was on the future of the ABM Treaty and on what essentially would be a START III, an agreement to cut strategic nuclear arsenals. Officials shuttled back and forth between Washington and Moscow, hinting after each meeting that the two sides were getting closer. Putin came out over the weekend and told American journalists that he was "very optimistic" a compromise could be found on the ABM Treaty, which forbids the U.S. to develop a national missile defense shield. And U.S. officials indicated that Bush was prepared to agree to a Russian proposal to slash the number of warheads held by both countries by as much as two-thirds. At the same time, Bush's national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice, cautioned that no specific deal could be expected from the three-day visit: "Not every meeting has to be accompanied like the old summits were with the Soviet Union by arms control agreements." Rice went on to say that the Russian-U.S. relationship "is larger than the security relationship. And so economic relations are important, political relations are important. This is a very different relationship now." Rice is right. The relationship is larger than the security relationship. And while Russia has long pushed Washington for a drastic reduction in strategic arms, Putin now wants more. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Putin made a series of gestures to the United States. In standing firmly behind the U.S. anti-terrorism campaign, he opened the way for the deployment of U.S. troops in Central Asia. He promised to close Russia's listening post in Cuba and naval base in Vietnam, two symbols of its past influence in the world. We could argue that none of these steps was a concession to the United States, but a pragmatic move that furthered Russia's own interests. (Notice that Putin did not bow to the West at all over Iraq or Iran.) But that is not how Putin's actions have been seen by Russia's military and political elite, who fear that once again Russia is giving without getting anything in return. In order to overcome the discontent, Putin needs to come back from the United States with some tangible results. What Putin wants is U.S. support for redefining Russia's relationship with NATO and for putting Russia on track to join the World Trade Organization. Both are well within Washington's power, and here, too, we could argue that we're not talking about concessions to a former foe. Integrating Russia into the West economically and politically would do more for U.S. security than any deal on NMD. www.themoscowtimes.com ***************************************************************** 16 Indian Scientist: I needed a change, so I quit The Indian Express : National Network NATIONAL NETWORK Tuesday, November 13, 2001 EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, NOVEMBER 12: INSISTING there were no differences with the government on any issue, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam former principal scientific advisor to government said he quit office for change and to interact with 100,000 school students and inculcate in them a scientific bent of mind. He said the nuclear command and control structure were in place and there were no grounds to worry. India has both ‘‘fission and fusion’’ nuclear bombs, Kalam said the weapons were for deployment and not for storing alone. Kalam said that as far as the safety aspects of these weapons were concerned these were positioned in place and there should be no grounds to worry. ‘‘The Prime Minister has already said in May 1998 that India had a hydrogen bomb. India has both fusion and fission bombs,’’ he said. ‘‘There are both believers and non-believers. The world can say anything. US or Russia or Canada would dispute India’s claim on the Pokhran tests but we have carried out the required tests at Pokharan and are are satisfied with that,’’ he added. He insisted he quit office at his own free will and was not fired. ‘‘I have an aim. By 2003 August, I have to interact with 100,000 school children and inculcate in them the scientific vision,’’ he said. ‘‘Now I am 70 years old. How long am I expected to continue. I was not sacked, I demited office,’’ he added. He went into details of his past career talking of the first 20 years in Indian Space Research Organisation and the next 20 years in DRDO to give examples of change in his life. He spoke of Vision 2020; to make India a developed country to ensure both economic and territorial security. ‘‘As long as there is the umbilical cord of seeking critical technology, self reliance and developed nation status cannot be achieved,’’ he said. Kalam talked of his younger days and said the most important lesson he had learnt was that a team leader always takes the blame personally but lets his team bask in the glory of success. ‘‘A mission is greater than an individual and when this lesson is learnt then victory is sure to be achieved,’’ he said. He spoke of his love for the desert and the ocean; both his karm bhoomi. The ocean because that is where the missiles and satellites were tested and launched. The desert because of the summer trials for tanks and the Pokhran tests took place there. On the success of Prithvi and Agni missiles, electronic warfare equipment and the failures of others (Akash, Nag, Trishul), Arjun tanks, Kalam said failures are there because they were working. ‘‘If there is no work done, there will be no set backs. We will be successful,’’ he added. © 2001: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All ***************************************************************** 17 Experts to Assess Risks of Terrorism and Nuclear Threat U.S. Newswire 12 Nov 16:54 To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Bob Schaeffer, 941-395-6773, Lynn Martin, 617-868-5050, ext. 209, or Adrian Zupp, 617-868-5050, ext. 212, both of IPPNW News Advisory: When: Nov. 14, 9:30 a.m. Where: National Press Club, 529 14th St., Washington, D.C. Lisagor Room Who: Some of the world's leading experts on nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation, and the potential for nuclear terrorism will be briefing U.S. and international media at this event sponsored by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and its U.S. affiliate Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). The line-up of experts includes: -- Ambassador Richard Butler, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq and Diplomat in Residence at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the forthcoming book Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense. -- Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information and formerly a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Blair is a former nuclear missile launch control officer who is an expert on the security policies of the United States and the former Soviet Union. -- Jonathan Schell, formerly a writer and editor with The New Yorker, is one of the world's foremost authorities on nuclear issues. He is author of The Fate of the Earth, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and The Abolition. Schell is a frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs and The Nation. -- Mary-Wynne Ashford, MD, a Canadian physician who serves as IPPNW's co-president. Dr. Ashford has written and spoken extensively on nuclear disarmament in North Asia, Russia, and the U.S., particularly on the urgent need for de-alerting and preventing further proliferation of nuclear weapons. -- Ira Helfand, MD, of PSR is an emergency room physician who has spoken widely on the medical effects of nuclear war in the United States, the former Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, and France. Dr. Helfand is a co-author of "Accidental Nuclear War -- A Post-Cold War Assessment," which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. -- Bob Musil, chief executive officer of PSR, is also adjunct professor in the Nuclear Studies Institute of American University and Adjunct Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. -- John Pastore, MD, of IPPNW and PSR is a cardiologist at Tufts Medical School and St. Elizabeth's Medical Center of Boston. Dr. Pastore served as a research internist with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1969-1971. In addition to addressing issues of nuclear terrorism in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, PSR will release a new report that details the medical impact of a nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. IPPNW will present an overview of the variety of potential nuclear terrorist threats with particular emphasis on terrorist use of radiological weapons based on IPPNW's study "Crude Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and the Terrorist Threat." This briefing takes place on the eve of the Bush-Putin Summit, where speakers hope national leaders will directly address issues of nuclear terrorism. Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire ***************************************************************** 18 Experts Discourage U.S. Use of Nuclear Weapons in War The Daily Californian - Attack Motivations Discussed By MILLIE LAPIDARIO Contributing Writer Tuesday, November 13, 2001 The United States will have to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in the war on terrorism to lessen the threat of terrorist groups using them as well, said an expert at the Chancellor's Forum on Nuclear Danger and Global Survival held recently at UC Berkeley. The U.S. government will eventually have to deal with terrorists who threaten to use weapons of mass destruction, said Scott Sagan, co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. To prevent terrorists' use of nuclear weapons, U.S. policy-makers should "keep our nuclear weapons off the table, not threatening to use them in this, or future, wars against terrorism," Sagan said. A panel of five experts from across the country, specializing in areas ranging from international law to diplomacy, gathered on campus last Thursday. They discussed how the Sept. 11 attacks have affected international politics and the dangers of nuclear weapons if they are in the hands of terrorists. But experts say governments around the world are not likely to sponsor nuclear terrorism, and will make it exceedingly difficult for terrorists to get their hands on them. If a nuclear weapon was used against the United States, it would be relatively easy to identify which country constructed the bomb, said Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland. "States don't want to have a return address," Telhami said. The forum also sidetracked into discussing the motivation behind Osama bin Laden's tactics against the United States. Experts said bin Laden's campaign is not a religious one, but is purely political. The mission of bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network is to overthrow "corrupt" regimes in the Islamic world and remove American and Israeli influence in the Middle East, which is a political and not religious goal, according to the experts. "These well-educated people were willing to commit horror and die for it, committing the ultimate irrational act. It seems mysterious to us, so we leap into the conclusion that it is about faith," Telhami said. But faith is only used as a tool to recruit members to the terrorist groups, and is not bin Laden's ultimate rationale for his campaign. "Despair in the region is a perfect place for bin Laden to recruit. A sense of hopelessness, not having any power over your life and watching your life getting from bad to worse, having no future—what bin Laden gives them is a sense of 'empowerment,'" Telhami said. Knowing that only a few people with knives can change the whole world is what appeals to bin Laden's supporters, who come from war-torn regions, Telhami said. Bin Laden felt that he could escape U.S. retribution from terrorist attacks because the United States is not able to fight long wars, Sagan said, citing U.S. action in Beirut and Somalia as examples. While previous wars have eventually been open to negotiation, one expert expressed doubt over the possibility of U.S. negotiation with bin Laden. "Bin Laden is basically saying that (Americans) are infidels and they shall be crushed, so I don't think he is asking for any condition to be filled," said Nayan Chanda, a professor with the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. E-mail: dailycal@dailycal.org ***************************************************************** 19 Advocates say panel composition must change This story was published Mon, Nov 12, 2001 By The Associated Press and Herald staff WASHINGTON -- Labor advocates want more workers on a panel advising on compensation for Hanford and other workers who were made sick building the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Unless changes are made, the advocates fear not enough people will be compensated. The panel is made up of mostly scientists, doctors and engineers, including Wanda Munn of Richland, a retired nuclear engineer. Carl "Bubba" Scarbrough, president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council at the government's nuclear facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said workers can best understand -- and therefore convey -- the risks and working conditions of their jobs. "We should be advisers," he said. "For one thing, our heart would be in the right place." A law passed by Congress last year required the White House to appoint a panel that reflected "a balance of scientific, medical and worker perspectives." The 10 people selected included only one rank-and-file worker Richard Espinosa, a metal shop steward at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico. White House spokeswoman Anne Womack defended the makeup of the board. "We think it's pretty balanced," she said. Womack added that one of the doctors on the panel, James Melius, works for a union in New York. Munn said her work at Hanford in nuclear safety, including the start up and safety of several operating systems inside the Fast Flux Test Facility, qualifies her to evaluate worker concerns. "I've been there," she said. Concerns about the makeup of the panel are understandable but with the group so new that it has yet to hold a single meeting, criticism is premature, she said. The couple of people on the panel she already knows are well-qualified in health physics and familiar with radiation exposure science, she said. The panel was named after the government acknowledged that radiation, silica or beryllium could have sickened some workers at Hanford and other nuclear sites. Congress has passed a law providing medical care and payments of $150,000 to sick workers or their surviving families. For more information, call 783-1500. Many medical records are missing or incomplete, so the panel's primary task is to help determine how much radiation workers were exposed to on the job. If doses can't be estimated, the panel will help decide whether certain workers should be given the benefit of the doubt. Richard Miller, an analyst for the Government Accountability Project, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, said he's concerned by the fact that three members of the panel are tied to the Energy Department. He said he is not worried about Espinosa's independence from the agency, since he is protected by a union. Miller said lawmakers called for an "independent review process" and recognized Energy Department officials would have a conflict of interest. The legislation prohibited them from writing dose reconstruction guidelines. "I want people who have absolutely no connection to the Department of Energy on this committee," he said. Panelist Antonio Andrade, who is a radiation health expert at the Energy Department's Los Alamos lab, disagreed. He said people who are familiar with agency facilities are needed on the panel. "If anything, we bring truth, experience and knowledge about specific situations to the table," he said. Several lawmakers have asked the administration to add Mark Griffon, a health physicist who evaluates risks at nuclear facilities. "He would have an inclination to be quite supportive of people who have been exposed but also continue to use a scientific basis for making decisions," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., who made his case in a letter to White House Personnel Director Clay Johnson. Griffon said he received a call from the White House Friday asking him to submit an application. On the Net: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health compensation office: www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/default.html. Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 20 Bush: U.S. to Reduce Nuclear Warheads Las Vegas SUN Today: November 13, 2001 at 11:45:20 PST WASHINGTON- President Bush said Tuesday the United States will reduce its arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads by two-thirds or more over the next decade - to between 1,700 and 2,200. The resulting force will be "fully consistent with American security," he said after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bush said he and Putin retain differing viewpoints on the American plans to develop a missile defense shield, and "we will continue dialogue and discussion" on the subject. At a joint White House news conference, Bush also said he would work to "end the application" of Cold War-era legislation that restricted trade. The president said he and Putin also had agreed to support a United Nations call for a "broadly based and multiethnic" government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban. "Russia and America share the same threat and share the same resolve" to battle terrorism, he said. "We will fight and defeat terrorist networks wherever" they exist. Emerging from more than three hours of talks, Bush said the discussions with Putin herald "a new day in the long history of Russian-American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope." Putin, who spoke after Bush, echoed his remarks. "We intend to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the Cold War," Putin said. Putin said his government would try to respond in kind to Bush's pledge to reduce nuclear arsenals. The United States currently has roughly 7,000 intercontinental nuclear warheads. Russia has an estimated 5,800. Putin also reaffirmed that Russia and the United States continue to disagree about the missile defense shield. Bush came to office pledging to develop a shield, even if it meant scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union. In deference to Putin's assistance in the war against terrorism, though, the administration recently announced a delay in some missile defense tests, saying it wanted to avoid bumping up against the treaty's prohibitions. Bush's comment about trade restrictions referred to the 1974 Jackson-Vanik legislation. Designed to lift emigration curbs on Jews and other minorities, it forced the Soviet Union to permit mass departures in order to qualify for trade privileges. "Russia is fundamentally a different place," Bush said. Because of progress on Jewish migration, he said "my administration will work with Congress to end the application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia." Bush said he and Putin had spent considerable time discussing the situation in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban abandoned the capital city of Kabul overnight. Bush said the withdrawal signaled that "we're making great progress in our objective, and that is to tighten the net and eventually bring al-Qaida to justice and at the same time deal with the government that's been harboring them." Bush made clear he hasn't changed his views on the ABM Treaty, Putin's concerns notwithstanding. "I'm convinced the treaty is outdated and we have to move beyond it," he said. He added he expects the two sides will continue their discussions on the topic. He and Putin are scheduled to meet again Wednesday and again Thursday at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush said he had adopted a new approach on arms control, one based on trust that does not require "endless hours of arms control discussions." "I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand. But if you need to write it down on a piece of paper I'll be glad to do that. We don't need arms control negotiations to reduce our weaponry in a significant way." The two presidents lunched in the mansion's Blue Room and then addressed reporters in the East Room from two brand-new lecterns specially designed for Bush and built by hand by the White House Communications Agency. Bush said repeatedly that the northern alliance forces in Afghanistan have pledged they would not occupy Kabul, the capital. Asked whether northern alliance leaders should be treated favorably because of their presence in the city, Bush said, "there is no preferential place at the bargaining table. All people will be treated the same." All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 21 Russian Official Reveals Attempt Made to Steal Nuclear Materials (washingtonpost.com) Report Coincides With Bin Laden's Claim to Have Weapons By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, November 13, 2001; Page A22 A senior Russian official has reported a major incident involving the attempted theft of nuclear materials in the past two years, raising fresh fears about the security of the former superpower's aging nuclear arsenal. The incident, revealed in a report by the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, coincides with claims by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden that he has acquired weapons of mass destruction and would be willing to use them as a last resort. While U.S. officials are skeptical that bin Laden has acquired a real nuclear weapon, they believe he might have acquired radiological materials that could be scattered into the atmosphere with the help of a conventional bomb. A White House official said he had no information to support claims in the Pakistani media that bin Laden had met with retired Pakistani nuclear scientists who have shown sympathy for his fundamentalist Islamic views. Earlier, a well-placed Pakistani official told The Washington Post that one of the architects of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, had acknowledged holding meetings on humanitarian matters with bin Laden associates in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. The report of a serious attempt to compromise Russian nuclear security surfaced at a conference this month in Vienna hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency that was convened to discuss the possibility of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities. Western experts at the conference were taken aback when Yuri Volodin, head of the safety department at the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, reported a previously undisclosed security violation of the "highest possible consequence" sometime during the past two years. Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear expert who worked at the Clinton White House, said Volodin refused to provide further details about the nature of the violation. Bunn said he assumed that the materials had been recovered, as otherwise the Russians would probably not have drawn attention to the incident in a public forum. Volodin could not be contacted for immediate comment. There have been dozens of attempts by smugglers and terrorists to gain access to Russia's vast nuclear arsenal in the 10 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but no leakage of sufficient quantities of highly fissile materials to build a nuclear weapon has been confirmed. Thefts of low-grade radiological material have been more frequent. While U.S. officials say there is no doubt that bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network has attempted to acquire nuclear and biological weapons, there is considerable debate over whether he has been successful. That is why considerable attention has been focused on the activities of Mahmood and other Pakistani nuclear scientists who have been questioned repeatedly by the Pakistani police over the past two weeks. According to Pakistani officials, Mahmood and his associate, Abdul Majid, told police that they went to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, as part of their work for the Islamic relief organization Ummah Tamer-e-Nau. They said they helped construct a flour mill near the city, and denied passing on nuclear information or materials to anyone in Afghanistan. Mahmood's area of expertise is the production of plutonium, the highly fissile material used in some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. He was transferred to a desk job in the spring of 1999 after publicly advocating increases in the production of plutonium to help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He has also spoken out strongly in support of the radical Taliban movement, which he has described as a "movement of Islamic renaissance." Some Western experts suspect that the Kandahar flour mill could be a cover for some kind of biological or chemical weapons program, which could involve milling bacteriological agents to fine powders. It is more difficult to imagine it being used as a screen for a nuclear program. Correspondent Molly Moore in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 22 Pall License Agreement with U.S. Department Of Energy Reaches Key Milestone Business Wire; Nov 12, 2001 EAST HILLS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2001--Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) announced today a significant sale of AccuSep(TM) inorganic membranes resulting from the Company's license agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy at Oak Ridge, TN and Bechtel Jacobs. British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) will fit new ultra-filters at its Sellafield Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant with filters based on U.S. Government technology and licensed exclusively to Pall. Pall's first major sale of inorganic materials for cross-flow filtration followed a review of other available technologies by BNFL. Similar potential exists at other waste processing sites in the U.S. and abroad. This product marks Pall's entrance into the cross-flow filtration market using inorganic membranes and expands the Company's market potential by up to $100 million. BNFL, headquartered in Warrington, U.K., is an international business with activities in 16 countries and employing around 23,000 people. It provides a range of products and services to the nuclear energy industry, from fuel manufacture, reactor services, electricity generation and spent fuel management through to nuclear cleanup and decommissioning services. Eric Krasnoff, Pall Chairman and CEO commented, "We are delighted that BNFL has selected Pall and we look forward to a long relationship. Our development of technology to meet BNFL's extremely demanding requirements has opened a large market for us and we're eager to build on it. This order also represents a major step forward in the United States Department of Energy's efforts to privatize and commercialize its technology." Pall is the first company to manufacture and sell inorganic membrane products using processes developed by the Department of Energy as the result of several Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADA) with the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel Jacobs. To date, six metal alloy membranes in the microfiltration range have resulted from this partnership and have been released for sale. Additional novel membranes are in development and are expected to be launched over the next six to twelve months. Each generation of inorganic materials developed under the agreements represents significant advances in filtration technology and brings industry new tools for its increasingly difficult fluid separation and purification challenges. Pall has exclusive sales and marketing rights to these eventual products as part of its ongoing agreements. Pall is the leader in the rapidly growing filtration, separations and purification industry. It provides leading-edge products for use in semiconductor; water; aerospace and a host of other industries as well as in other high-growth applications such as genomics, proteomics and biotechnology, and in transfusion medicine. Pall's business is organized around two broad markets: Industrial and Life Sciences, and has annual sales of over $1.2 billion. The Company is headquartered in East Hills, New York and has operations in more than 30 countries. Further information can be found at http.//www.pall.com. This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on current Company expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; regulatory approval and market acceptance of new technologies; changes in product mix and product pricing and in interest rates and cost of raw materials; the Company's success in enforcing its patents and protecting its proprietary products and manufacturing techniques; global and regional economic conditions and legislative, regulatory and political developments; and domestic and international competition in the Company's global markets. Additional information regarding these and other factors is available on the Web at http://www.pall.com and is included in the Company's reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Copies of such reports can be obtained, without charge, at: http://www.sec.gov. For More Information: Please visit our website at: http://www.pall.com CONTACT: Pall Corporation, East Hills Investor Relations Diane Foster, 516/801-9102 dfoster@pall.com 17:03 EST NOVEMBER 12, 2001 World Reporter All Material Subject ***************************************************************** 23 Coalition Disputes Bin Laden's Claim Of Possessing Nuclear Weapons By Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 12, 2001; Page A19 Despite his boasts to the contrary, no credible evidence exists that Osama bin Laden possesses nuclear weapons, according to Bush administration officials who also said yesterday that the Saudi exile's terror network has not shown the ability to turn biological or chemical components into effective weapons. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said it is "reasonable to assume" that bin Laden has access to deadly germs or dangerous chemicals. He said the prospect worries him, but added that delivering the poisons is difficult. "We have a lot of information that they have the first step," Rumsfeld said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "We have less information with respect to the second step." Bin Laden, the suspected terrorist believed to have sponsored the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, told a Pakistani newspaper last week that he possesses chemical and nuclear weapons. He said he considered them a "deterrent" and would use them if coalition forces used similar weapons against him. Bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization have been harbored in Afghanistan by that country's ruling Taliban Islamic movement since 1996. Although bin Laden has been identified as a prime target of U.S. military action, his whereabouts are unknown and there have been no reports that U.S. attacks have come close to hitting him. Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to President Bush, told CNN's "Late Edition": "We have no credible evidence that he has [nuclear weapons] at this point in time, but we're not going to take any chances. Our entire strategy is to go after al Qaeda, to go after the Taliban, because these are very, very bad people and if they acquire anything, we have no doubt that they would try and use it." Britain's defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, told the BBC yesterday that there might be an element of truth to bin Laden's claims. "We are certainly aware that he has some material that could contribute to a nuclear weapon," Hoon said. "We are not convinced at this stage that he is capable of producing a nuclear bomb." Hoon added: "But certainly we have to be very careful. This is a thoroughly dangerous man." On a day when Taliban forces continued to suffer defeats at the hands of opposition forces in northern Afghanistan, Rumsfeld and other Cabinet members said opposition commanders are being told not to turn their attention south and attempt to seize Kabul, the Afghan capital, until a political foundation has been laid for a post-Taliban government. U.S. policymakers and members of the U.S.-led coalition believe the arrival of the Northern Alliance in Kabul before a multi-ethnic provisional government is created could further divide the country, weaken the war effort and harm chances for peace. They say they believe the poorly-organized -- and perhaps vengeful -- opposition is not equipped to govern or to manage the growing humanitarian crisis. Given that the alliance has depended on American air power to make its gains in the north, Rumsfeld said the United States likely has some influence over the rebels' actions. But he said the Americans lack sure control over alliance commanders, some of whom hunger to take the capital they once ruled. "They're going to attack and take Kabul when they feel like it, and when they think they're capable of doing it, and when they think they're capable of feeding the people," Rumsfeld told CBS. He said efforts to establish a workable temporary post-Taliban Afghanistan government will take time. "This is not clockwork," Rumsfeld said. "This is rough, dirty stuff." Ideally, administration officials believe, there would be no alliance takeover before the creation of a coalition that included Pashtuns -- who compose 40 percent of Afghanistan's population -- and the establishment of an international humanitarian aid pipeline. "The big fear is the Northern Alliance commanders move in and there is some sort of horrific massacre, they engage in some kind of cleansing of their opponents. Already many in the U.S. government and human rights groups are nervous," said Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution scholar who specializes in the region. "That's going to undermine any support within the broader population for a broader government that may be backed by the United States and the United Nations," Hill said. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 24 Urgent priority for nuclear terrorism -- The Washington Times November 13, 2001 Steven Chapman He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns ... Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression. — John Hersey, "Hiroshima." Does that passage horrify you? Me, too. But not everyone feels the same way. Osama bin Laden might read it as a lovely vision of New York or Washington after he has acquired and detonated an atomic bomb. This scenario is not just a theoretical possibility. It is something that could actually happen in the next few years if we don't take every measure possible to prevent it. Airline security is vital; combating bioterrorism is important; winning the war in Afghanistan is critical. But success in those areas will be cold comfort if the day comes when tens of thousands of Americans are consumed in a mushroom cloud. Preventing nuclear terrorism therefore ought to be the single highest priority of our government. Even today, it's not clear that it is. Last week, President Bush said that al Qaeda is trying to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear arms. That merely echoes bin Laden, who says he has a "religious duty" to do so and has hinted he may have nuclear weapons already. If his goal is to slaughter and terrorize Americans, as he has said, he couldn't find a better way. Americans have yet to fully grasp the depth and urgency of the peril we face. Maybe that's because, during the Cold War, we grew accustomed to the fact that we could all die in a nuclear war. But that danger was remote, because we had an answer: nuclear deterrence. Deterrence, unfortunately, looks useless against our new foes — who would not leave a return address on the bomb, and who might be willing to commit suicide for their gruesome cause. To even contemplate the risk of this sort of attack is to invite panic or despair. We can be sure there are hundreds of terrorists around the world scheming to get a doomsday device, and we know there are far too many ways they might get it. One source is Russia, which has thousands of warheads, including some that may not be as secure as we would like. Russia also has some 500 tons of enriched uranium lying around that could be used to make bombs. A few years ago, one Russian official said dozens of small "suitcase bombs" could not be accounted for. Russia also has thousands of pounds of fissile material, which may or may not be under ironclad control. If they could smuggle out 50 or 100 pounds of the stuff, terrorists might be able to build a bomb. Once terrorists have such a weapon, it would be almost impossible to keep them from sneaking it into the United States and setting it off. Given all these realities, the situation may look hopeless. It isn't — quite. The good news is that if bin Laden had the bomb, he would have used it already. Those suitcase nukes may never have escaped control. Even if terrorists were able to get one, it's very unlikely they would have the codes and other expertise to detonate it. Nor is it a simple task to convert fissile material into a weapon. MIT nuclear physicist Theodore Postol says the project would require so much in the way of machinery, materials, technical support and funding that no terrorist group would be likely to manage it — at least not without the active help of some government, such as Iraq. But any government that collaborated in a plan to detonate an atomic bomb on American soil would be sealing its own doom, and Saddam Hussein has shown no interest in martyrdom. So the immediate risk is low. But a slight chance of an Earth-shattering catastrophe is too much to accept. During World War II, we moved heaven and Earth in the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb before Adolf Hitler could — because we knew our survival hung in the balance. Today, we have to embrace a similar commitment to averting nuclear terrorism. The questions we need to ask ourselves and our leaders, every day, are these: Are we doing everything humanly possible to prevent a nuclear holocaust on our soil? And if we are not, and if we fail, how will we ever live with ourselves? All site contents copyright © 2001 News World Communications, Inc. ***************************************************************** 25 INTERESTING TIMES: Brilliant pebbles now The Jerusalem Post Newspaper : Online News From Israel - Columns Article By Saul Singer (November 13) This week, US President George W. Bush told an anti-terrorism conference in Warsaw, "We will not wait for the authors of mass murder to gain the weapons of mass destruction. We act now, because we must lift this dark threat from our age and save generations to come." Bush was talking about the prospect of a nuclear armed Bin Laden, but his statement is equally valid toward other mass murderers, such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein. As the West debates whether or not Saddam is a target of the war on terrorism, Saddam himself is wasting no time. Just days ago, he told assembled "warriors" of Iraq's Nuclear Energy Authority that "progress has continued and will accelerate" on Iraq's nuclear program. As the US bombs the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iraq is busy with its own Manhattan Project. Saddam clearly believes that the more dangerous he gets, the less the West will be willing to confront him. September 11 was a breakthrough for Saddam in this calculus of fear, because now Americans realize that they are vulnerable on their own soil. The current American campaign in Afghanistan does not frighten Saddam. On the contrary, the repeated American official denials that Saddam is next and the refusal to link him to either Osama bin Laden or to anthrax terrorism confirm to him that being fearsome works, and being more fearsome would work better. To some, September 11 is the ultimate proof that the major threat to the West is not rogue states armed with missiles, but terrorist networks using trains, planes and automobiles - whatever comes to hand. How ridiculous, they say, it is to invest in missile defenses when the real threat is from a nuke in a truck or a boat. What the anti-missile defense crowd does not get is the iron connection between the terror network and missiles in the hands of Iran or Iraq. Missiles are an integral part of the cycle of fear; missiles allow rogue states to intimidate the West into going after their terrorist surrogates rather than the regimes behind them. And the cycle works both ways - missiles provide cover for terrorism, and terrorism makes the use of missiles more thinkable, therefore making the threat from missiles even more potent. The upshot is that a crash program to develop missile defenses is more urgent than ever. THE SHAME is the US could have easily had effective global missile defenses in place by now. In 1991, the first Bush administration decided to build a system called Brilliant Pebbles, so named because they were even smarter and smaller than the "smart rocks" that scientists had envisioned could be used to crash into missiles in flight. Putting 1,000 Pebbles in space would have cost $11 billion - less than one third the cost of a Clinton administration plan for a much less capable ground-based missile defense site in Alaska. Using actual data from the Gulf War, a detailed simulation showed that if Brilliant Pebbles had been deployed, they could have shot down every Scud missile shot by Iraq against Israel and Saudi Arabia. As the former director of the program, Henry Cooper, laid out in the Wall Street Journal (May 8), "all first-generation Pebbles technologies" had been validated in field tests by 1994, despite the cancellation of the program for ideological reasons. Just as Europe had a "nuclear umbrella" during the Cold War, missiles in the hands of rogue states are the umbrella that protects the global terror network. The war on terror cannot be won without neutralizing the terrorists' "missile umbrella." One way to do this is to topple the rogue regimes themselves - an effort that the West must pursue in any case in its own self defense. But going to war should not be the West's only protection against missile threats. Nor should Israel, the only country in the world whose existence could be threatened by missiles, sit idly by waiting for everyone else to wake up. The Arrow program is fine as far as it goes, but Israel should be developing more sophisticated anti-missile technologies on a crash basis with the United States. In the absence of American urgency, it might make sense for Israel to start building its own Brilliant Pebbles system. The Israeli program would ideally become a contribution to an American-led effort. But if Iranian and Iraqi missiles are not enough to jump start a serious American missile defense program, perhaps the prospect of an independent Israeli space defense would be. saul@jpost.co.il [saul@jpost.co.il] 1995-2001, The Jerusalem Post ***************************************************************** 26 Bush, Putin to Reduce Nuclear Arms Las Vegas SUN Today: November 13, 2001 at 7:15:18 PST WASHINGTON (AP) - Nuclear weapons stockpiles are due to be slashed at summit talks President Bush is holding with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both leaders have concluded they have far too many deadly warheads in the post-Cold War era. If any suspense remained before Putin called at the White House it was whether the cutbacks would be mandated in an agreement between the two leaders or be declared by them without a formal accord of the type Bush's advisers scorn as products of outdated bureaucratic haggling of a now-distant era. The summit talks Tuesday in Washington and Wednesday, and Thursday at Bush's Texas ranch, are more likely to be marked by atmospherics designed to inform the world that the United States and Russia no longer are adversaries. Bush told Russian reporters on Monday that he and Putin were on the verge of forging a relationship that "will outlive our presidencies." He said he would respond to Russia's quest for stronger links to Western institutions by asking NATO, which has absorbed former Soviet republics and crept up to Russia's doorstep, to "go beyond the current relationship" with Moscow. NATO is a military alliance that was formed to confront the Soviet Union. Its expansion eastward was - and may still be - a sore point to Russians. But unable to stop NATO's growth, any more than it can stop Bush's anti-missile shield project, Russia has been given limited access to NATO deliberations. Meanwhile, the potential enemy of an alliance that survives and even grows stronger after the end of the Cold War has never been identified. The president suggested in his interview with the Russian reporters that he still had differences with Putin over the U.S. missile defense program. Planned U.S. tests will violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a bedrock of arms control, so Bush will junk it if Putin does not go along with stretching the treaty's terms. Having little choice, Putin has signaled he is ready to agree to a formula that will allow the United States to go ahead with the tests, which White House officials say are more vital than ever with the intensification of a terrorism threat. Bush wants Putin to accept a proposal allowing the United States to proceed with research and development of a missile shield while keeping the Russians informed, administration officials say. In exchange, Putin would refrain from calling the tests a violation of the ABM, according to advisers who helped prepare Bush for the meeting. Officials have said it was possible that Bush and Putin may agree to disagree. That would mean that Bush would be forced to announce, as early as January, that he is pulling out of the treaty with assurances from Putin that the action would not hurt U.S.-Russian relations. The presidents may wait until they meet Wednesday and Thursday at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch to address the ABM issue head on, aides said. "The ABM treaty is outdated because it will prevent the United States from researching and developing weapons systems that will really reflect the true threats of the 21st century," Bush told the Russian reporters in the Roosevelt Room across the hall from the Oval Office. "The big threat for us and for the Russians is not each other, but somebody developing weapons of mass destruction." Bush said one thing is certain: He will announce his numerical goals for reducing U.S. nuclear stockpiles. "I'll have a number that I will share with him, and it's going to be substantially lower than today's weaponry, and I presume he'll have a number he'll share with me. The point is, what we don't need is the endless hours of arms control discussions," Bush said. "It's a new day when two new leaders step forward and say this is best for stability in the world." Russia, no longer able to afford a Cold War nuclear stockpile, has proposed new limits on U.S. and Russian stockpiles of not more than 2,000 long-range warheads for each country, down from a current total of about 6,000 each. Bush advisers said the president has considered a range of 1,750 to 2,250 warheads apiece. A senior U.S. official said last week Bush's range had dipped below 2,000. Other senior officials said he proposed straddling 2,000 as a ceiling. The United States has 10,500 nuclear weapons, Russia has 20,000, as well as more than 900 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material that the two leaders want to keep secure and out of the hands of terrorists and hostile nations. However, the Bush administration's current budget calls for reducing the funds under the Nunn-Lugar program designed to help Russia rid itself of discarded weapons and to safeguard dangerous material. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 27 If Muslim Extremists Control Pakistan's Nukes, What Will U.S. Do? The Salt Lake Tribune -- Utah's Statewide Newspaper November 12, 2001 GWYNNE DYER "Let me say that all our nuclear weapons are in very, very safe hands," said Pakistan's dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, recently on CNN's "Larry King Live." But Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday that he is "concerned" about Pakistan's stability and the safety of its nuclear arsenal. The Indian government said nothing at all, but you can guess what it is thinking. It is thinking that if Pakistan should fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists as the result of a revolt against Musharraf, most probably from within his own armed forces, then it will have to "preempt" -- destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons on the ground before it can launch them -- within the first hours after a new regime comes to power in Islamabad. And Washington, of course, is thinking exactly the same thing. Seymour Hersh has just published a report in New Yorker magazine, strenuously denied by the Pentagon (but then it would deny it, wouldn't it?), that the Pentagon already has a secret plan to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons immediately if they seem likely to fall into fundamentalist hands. It could end up as a race between the Indians and Americans to see who can destroy the Pakistani nuclear arsenal first -- and Hersh even alleges that a third party, Israeli intelligence's top-secret Unit 262, is collaborating with the U.S. in this contingency plan. This is insanely dangerous stuff even if it is true, as everybody assumes, that the preemptive attack would be carried out using only conventional, not nuclear weapons. Pakistanis in all walks of life would certainly resist, regardless of their attitudes toward Islamic fundamentalists, for they see their nuclear weapons as their last and maybe their only safeguard against far more powerful India. Even a successful preemption that destroyed all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons (not an outcome you could count on) would be disastrous, for at the end of it there would be many dead Pakistani soldiers, and an enraged and terrified country of 140 million people would be solidly behind the new fundamentalist regime. India almost certainly would get drawn into a ground war with Pakistan, and a Pakistani military intervention in Afghanistan in support of the Taliban would also be on the cards. How real is the danger? It's not so much the civilian fundamentalists demonstrating against the West in the streets who pose the danger, but the generation of fundamentalist officers, brought into the armed forces by the late Gen. (and President) Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, who have now risen to command key army formations. Together with many senior officers of Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), the military intelligence agency that basically created the Taliban as a proxy force through which Pakistan could control Afghanistan, they comprise a large fundamentalist presence inside the only Pakistani institution that really works. If they were to overthrow Musharraf (who has fired or demoted several senior officers in recent weeks in an attempt to forestall a coup), then that entire institution, including its dozen or so nuclear weapons, would be at their service. They would doubtless issue instant declarations that they wished no war and would never use nuclear weapons first, but neither Indians nor Americans would be willing to take the chance of believing them. In would go the airstrikes and/or the special forces, and the fat would truly be in the fire. Pakistan doesn't deserve this fate, in the sense that the whole nuclear madness that has brought the subcontinent to within hailing distance of a real calamity is not Pakistan's fault. It was India that prompted the nuclear race by testing a "peaceful nuclear explosive" three decades ago. In terms of India's long-term strategic interests, it was madness. India has seven times Pakistan's population and an even bigger edge in money and resources, so the only kind of war with Pakistan that India could ever lose is a nuclear one. The Indian government's main motive for taking the nuclear lead, on both occasions, was to gain a quick burst of domestic popularity by decking the country out with the symbols of a great power, with little thought to the strategic consequences. But it is having to think hard about them now. Of all the countries in the regions where the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 might set in motion the Islamic fundamentalist takeovers that Osama bin Laden craves, Pakistan is by far the most dangerous. It is an almost-failed state teetering on the brink of a cliff, and one good shove could send it over the edge. When bin Laden addressed a special appeal to the Pakistani people to overthrow their government in his most recent video-cassette message, he knew exactly what he was talking about. © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 28 Nuclear program getting the brush-off Chicago Tribune | November 13, 2001 David Broder, Washington Post Writers Group. David Broder is a syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C Published November 13, 2001 WASHINGTON -- When Sam Rayburn was speaker of the House, he used to say, "There is no education in the second kick of a mule." We are about to learn whether Congress and the Bush administration have realized there is nothing to be gained by ignoring the threat of terrorism twice. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, we discovered belatedly that the government had brushed off warnings from three blue-ribbon commissions that this nation was ill-equipped to defend itself against any form of terrorist attack. Now, we are about to learn whether similarly clear and authoritative warnings about the possibility of Russian nuclear weapons and materials slipping into the hands of terrorists will be treated with the seriousness they deserve. Thousands of lives could rest on the answer. For reasons that seem trivial, and really inexplicable, Bush administration budgeteers are trying to save a few million dollars by holding back a successful, 10-year-old program to assist Russia in securing its vulnerable nuclear materials and assuring that penniless Russian nuclear scientists do not join or assist hostile forces. The program was launched in 1991 by Sen. Richard Lugar, the Indiana Republican, and then-Sen. Sam Nunn, the Georgia Democrat, who between them know almost everything worth knowing about America's national security. Under the Nunn-Lugar program, high-energy uranium and plutonium that could have built 5,000 nuclear weapons have been removed from Russian warehouses and "defused." But the same Energy Department special task force that cited that success last January warned that "much more remains to be done [to counter] the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States, . . . the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation-states." A number of such attempts have been made and thwarted, the report said, but "imagine if such material were successfully stolen and sold to a terrorist like Osama bin Laden." The authors of this report were neither amateurs nor alarmists. They were Howard H. Baker Jr., the former Senate Republican leader and Reagan White House chief of staff, subsequently named ambassador to Japan, and Lloyd Cutler, White House counsel during the Carter and Clinton administrations. They recommended that the Nunn-Lugar program be increased to the point that all nuclear weapons-usable material in Russia could be secured or neutralized within the next eight to 10 years. That would cost about $30 billion--just 1 percent of projected defense expenditures. President Bush, as far back as the campaign and as recently as this month, has spoken of his concern about nuclear weapons or materials falling into terrorist hands. But his budget last winter proposed cutting overall defense nuclear nonproliferation programs by $100 million, with roughly $55 million coming out of the programs focused on Russia. As Nunn told me the other day, there is "a puzzling disconnect between the president's words and his budget recommendations." Nunn delivered a blunt warning of the nuclear-terrorist danger at the National Press Club last March, calling it "America's greatest unmet threat." Now, he said, "it must be apparent to everyone that keeping weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists is our most urgent security need." Lugar agrees. "After 10 years," he told me, "we are at the point where the Russians are ready to push the Nunn-Lugar program further. It is clearly in our interest and theirs to avoid the fatal intersection of nuclear weapons and terrorist groups." Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III told me, "I can't think of a better use of our funds. It is probably some of the best money we could ever spend." Harvard's Graham Allison, a former Clinton Defense Department official, lays out the case at length in the latest edition of The Economist. All this makes it mind-boggling that Congress and the administration are haggling over the miniscule sums involved. The recently passed Energy Department appropriations bill brought the money for Nunn-Lugar to within $10 million of last year's figure, but conferees rejected a move by Rep. Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat, to boost the program by $131 million. The issue faces the House Appropriations Committee again this week. With bipartisan support for expanding the program, Chairman Bill Young, a Florida Republican, was prepared to put $45 million for Nunn-Lugar into the supplemental spending bill. But when Bush read the riot act to legislators last week about staying within his overall budget limits, even threatening his first veto, Young cut back the proposal to $18 million. Spending discipline is important. But if, God forbid, a terrorist ever slips a suitcase nuclear weapon, with stolen Russian materials, into the United States, we will rue the day the government decided this was a good place to economize. Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune ***************************************************************** 29 ORNL lends staff to national security effort By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Senior writer Frank Akers, who heads the national security directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is on special assignment to Washington working on Homeland Security. Akers reportedly is working in the office of John Gordon, director of the National Nuclear Security Administration, and he's expected to remain there for three or four months. ORNL Director Bill Madia said the laboratory was asked for help and volunteered the services of Akers. "He passed with flying colors," Madia said. Other than that, everything is hush-hush. "I cannot discuss his assignment," lab communications chief Billy Stair said. Akers, it appears, would be qualified for many missions. Besides being an associate director of ORNL and coordinating the Oak Ridge work for the Department of Defense, he has headed the advanced technologies effort at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant (managed by BWXT). He is a retired brigadier general in the U.S Army, having held prominent posts - such as chief of staff for the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg and assistant division commander for the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. He commanded a rifle company in Vietnam. Among his assignments in a varied military career: serving as instructor in the Ranger Department at the U.S. Army Infantry School and the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point. Besides his military education, Akers holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. While Akers is in Washington, Harvey Gray is acting chief of national security programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Meanwhile, the laboratory has provided the U.S. Department of Energy with a rather lengthy list of technologies that may be of help in the war against terrorism. Multiple staff meetings were held in October to discuss concepts and research projects of potential use to the campaign. "Several pages of ideas came forward," Madia said. Some of those ideas were submitted to DOE's Office of Science and others went to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. "Those are lists of technologies that are capable of dealing with some of the concerns - be that rapid detection of anthrax to better tracking of individuals around the country," Madia said. * * * Based on the U.S. Senate-House conference report that emerged recently on Energy and Water appropriations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory finally has a "reasonable picture" of its budget for fiscal 2002 (which began Oct. 1), the lab director said. Interestingly, one area of uncertainty is the lab's work on Homeland Security because that funding won't come from the Energy and Water bill. That money will come from an emergency appropriation of $40 billion (half of which is devoted to New York City, the rest to better prepare the country after the Sept. 11 attacks). Overall, the Oak Ridge research budget is positive, according to Madia. "It's got some very good news and some OK news," he said. The best news, of course, is full funding ($291 million) for the Spallation Neutron Source - the lab's No. 1 priority - under construction on nearby Chestnut Ridge. Fiscal 2002 is the peak funding year for the $1.4 billion project, which is due for completion in 2006. "To me, that solidifies the future of the project," Madia said. "Not that we don't worry about the next three years, but we'll need successively less year after year until we start operating, and that's always an easier tack." Oak Ridge officials are anxiously awaiting an upcoming report on SNS from DOE's Inspector General. The report is expected soon and is expected to be critical, reportedly raising questions about the availability of funding to purchase all the necessary instrumentation for the project - the biggest science endeavor under way in the United States. Another big plus was accelerated funding for a new Mouse House, which will be constructed on the west end of the ORNL campus. A groundbreaking for the new facility will be held this week. The Mouse House, as evidenced by its name, will house thousands of mutated mice used in genetics experiments. ORNL expects to be a big player in the next phase of the genomic research program in which scientists begin to better understand the function of genes and how they work. The mice currently are maintained in aging quarters at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a dozen miles from the main laboratory campus. ORNL plans to consolidate all of the biology research activities over the next couple of years. Madia said laboratory officials had been concerned about funding for the Oak Ridge environmental management program, but that looks OK now and most work will continue as planned. Delays in the ORNL cleanup effort could hamper the ongoing modernization of facilities and the stated goal of creating a more open atmosphere. Several areas in the central part of the research complex are still off-limits because of the legacy of radioactive contamination from nuclear work in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Funding for most research programs is relatively flat, but there are lingering concerns about ORNL's energy research programs, partly because so much of the appropriated research money has been earmarked for specific institutions. "That essentially reduces the available (funding) for competitive research," Madia said. Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. Copyright 2001 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 30 Russians Acknowledge Nuclear Security Breaches IHT: Steven Erlanger New York Times Service Monday, November 12, 2001 VIENNA Russian officials have privately acknowledged that in the last year there have been dozens of violations of their own rules regarding nuclear security, that there has been at least one loss of fissile material, that Taliban emissaries have tried to recruit Russian scientists and that there have been at least two efforts by terrorists to stake out a secret Russian nuclear storage facility, according to senior officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western governments. Despite significant improvements in Russian nuclear security in the last few years, some of it with American money and advice, up to half of Russia's civilian and military nuclear stockpiles with weapons-grade material are not well protected. In Aktau, on the Kazakh coast, one ton of plutonium and two tons of highly enriched uranium sit near a now-closed breeder reactor. Ukraine, with 17 nuclear reactors and one research reactor, is considered a country of "serious concern" by officials because of its climate of government corruption and crime. Enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb sat at a research reactor just outside Belgrade throughout the 1999 Kosovo war. Just last week, Turkey announced it had broken up a gang of smugglers who tried to sell 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of what appeared to be highly enriched uranium for $750,000 to undercover police, material they said they had bought several months ago from a Russian of Azeri origin. Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency here in Vienna are deeply skeptical of Osama bin Laden's claim, in an interview published in Pakistan on Friday, that he possessed nuclear weapons. On the other hand, given the vulnerability of material in the former Soviet Union, the increasing professionalism of nuclear smuggling and the relative ease of fabricating a primitive weapon, they cannot rule it out. And they are increasingly concerned that terrorists willing to die could create a "dirty bomb," wrapping more easily stolen radioactive materials used in medicine and industry around a conventional explosive, like dynamite, to try to make a significant area of a city uninhabitable for many years. Russian officials say that their fissile nuclear material is under strict and improving controls. But only 10 days ago, in a discussion with officials of this UN agency, which monitors nuclear programs, Yuri Volodin, chief of safeguards for the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, revealed that in the last year, there were dozens of violations of regulations for securing and accounting for nuclear material, including one loss of nuclear material, an extraordinary admission, which Mr. Volodin described as of the 'highest consequence.'" Mr. Volodin said he could not be more specific about the type of material or the size of the loss. Last month, Colonel General Igor Volynkin, head of nuclear security for Russia's military, said that twice this year Russian forces discovered stakeouts by terrorists of a secret nuclear arms storage facility, although he did not say where. Also last month, an official of the Russian Security Council, Raisa Vdovichenko, said that emissaries of the Taliban had asked "a collaborator of an institution related to nuclear technologies to go to their country and work there in this field." Three of his colleagues have already moved abroad, but he was not sure where, Miss Vdovichenko said. There is continuing evidence of efforts to traffic nuclear material that give many officials deep concern. For example, in January, Greek police found more than 200 industrial radioactive sources buried in a forest by criminals trying to find a buyer. Altogether, the plates contained about 3 grams of plutonium. In April 2000, police in Georgia seized, in Batumi, several hundred fast-reactor fuel pellets, containing 920 grams, nearly a kilo, of highly enriched uranium; in September, at Tbilisi airport, police confiscated half a gram of plutonium. At the end of 1998, the Russians say they thwarted an effort by an organized gang to steal 18.5 kilos, more than 40 pounds, of highly enriched uranium from a military weapons facility in the Chelyabinsk oblast. Still, senior officials in Vienna and in Washington, speaking on background, do not believe that Osama bin Laden or even any state interested in a shortcut to a bomb - from Syria and Iran to Iraq and Libya - have been able to obtain the roughly 25 kilos of highly enriched uranium required to make a simple bomb, or the roughly 8 kilos of 3D20 plutonium, a much more difficult material with which to work. But they also admit that they cannot know for sure. The International Atomic Energy Agency has built a database of incidents of nuclear trafficking since 1993, only counting incidents confirmed by the states involved. Of the 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear material and 201 cases of trafficking in medical and industrial radioactive materials, only some 18 cases involved even small amounts of the fissionable material needed for a nuclear bomb: plutonium or highly enriched uranium (enriched by 20 percent or more). Altogether in all these cases, agency officials say, there have been seizures of about 400 grams of plutonium and another 12 kilos of uranium at varying levels of enrichment, equivalent to only some 6 kilos of uranium-235. Given the variety of incidents, sources and traffickers, these numbers are somewhat reassuring, officials say. And they point out that the most serious cases, involving large amounts of material, took place in 1993 and 1994, when Russian, German and Czech police made large seizures of very highly enriched nuclear material manufactured in the former Soviet Union, usually at nuclear-fuel fabrication plants. Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 31 Opinion - Children's Museum interview with one of Oak Ridge's true atomic pioneers Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 Editor's License Dick Smyser Even before he came to Oak Ridge, Clarence E. Larson got his first strong inkling about the supposedly super-secret U.S. atomic bomb effort from a most unlikely source: Amos Alonzo Stagg, famed college football coach. This and other fascinating aspects of the early years of the urgent World War II Manhattan Project are told by Larson in a 1992 interview for the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge. Jim Overholt was the interviewer and Selma Shapiro, museum director, recently allowed me to borrow the tape. Overholt gleaned a quantity of rich remembrances from Larson who, after pioneering nuclear science at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant, later became director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and then top management official for Union Carbide Nuclear Division, Oak Ridge plant operating contractor from the city's earliest years until 1983. * * * Larson, who died in 1999, left Oak Ridge in 1969 on his appointment as a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to the Department of Energy. In the late 1930s he was a young professor at College of the Pacific in California. At a dinner at the University of California at Berkeley, where he had been previously as a student and would later do research, Larson sat next to Stagg, who by then had moved from coaching at the University of Chicago to coaching at College of Pacific. During dinner conversation, Stagg told Larson that he had just returned from Chicago where Robert Hutchins, university president, had described a secret project that "would end the war." Hutchins was referring to the historic experiment led by Italian physicist Enrico Fermi which, on Dec. 2, 1942, produced the world's first controlled nuclear chain reaction in an "atomic pile" constructed under the stands of Stagg Field, University of Chicago's football stadium named for Coach Stagg. In the Overholt interview Larson tells of the ebbs and flows at Y-12 in 1943, 1944. There was despair when it seemed that the electromagnetic process, Y-12's "entry" in the race to produce enriched uranium (U-235) to fuel a bomb, just wouldn't work. But through it all, Larson says, the persistent optimism of E.O. Lawrence, who had conceived the giant magnets called Calutrons assembled at Y-12, kept them going. The Berkeley scientist, for whom the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory is now named, insisted that they would succeed, as, of course, they did. One of the reasons for success, Larson tells, was the Special Engineer Detachment, the young chemists and physicists, many of them just weeks out of colleges and universities and only recently enlisted or drafted. Responding to a cry for help from the Manhattan Project's older scientists, the Army searched out these talented GI's from basic training camps across the country and issued expedient orders for them to report to Oak Ridge. "The cream of the crop," Larson calls them, and tells how significantly they supplemented the Y-12 team. Larson describes wartime visits to Y-12 by Lt. Gen. Leslie R. Groves, chief officer of the Manhattan Project. The general, he told Overholt, could be severely critical if things were not going well. Scientists, in particular, thought Groves "an S.O.B." although, Larson says, Oak Ridge scientists got along with him significantly better than did those in Chicago. But, Larson felt, the project might never have succeeded directed by someone less demanding. "He never drove his staff any harder than he drove himself," Larson says. On one visit the general was all smiles. It was July 1945 just after the successful bomb test at Alamagordo, N.M. * * * In California in the months just before the start of World War II, Larson did some of the earliest research on radioisotopes found in nature. He would carry them in his pocket wrapped only in lead foil, he said, something that would horrify health physicists today even though the materials were of a very low radioactivity. More risky, however, was Larson's work with phosgene gas as part of early Y-12 experiments. Once he donned a gas mask that had been previously used, getting a snootful that left him short of breath for days, he recalls. There was at least one Oak Ridge fatality caused by this gas in those early Y-12 months, Larson said. * * * Larson begins the interview telling of his boyhood in Cloquet, Minn., a town of about 10,000 just west of Duluth and center for Weyerhauser lumber operations. On Oct. 12, 1918, less than a month before the end of World War I, Cloquet was wiped out by a forest fire. He and his family, along with all residents of Cloquet, were safely evacuated, the Larsons in a freight car. But 400 from surrounding small towns perished, many while trying to flee in the few automobiles owned in those years. Smoke was so thick, drivers were blinded and cars ran off the roads. Larson recalls returning with his family to where their home had been and finding his piggy bank, all of his saved pennies melted. * * * Larson's widow, Jane Warren Larson, still lives in Bethesda, Md., to where the Larsons moved on his appointment to the USAEC. She is the daughter of Dr. Stafford Warren, chief medical officer for the Manhattan Project who directed the building of medical facilities and recruitment of medical personnel in early Oak Ridge. Mrs. Larson was one of the organizers of the Oak Ridge Community Art Center and she and Jean (Mrs. T. E.) Cole, still of Oak Ridge, created the ceramic mural on the facade of the Art Center building on Badger Road as a project for the city's 50th anniversary in 1992-93. (More recently Mrs. Larson, an authority on "cognitive art," has proposed the creation of a "ceramic canvas" depicting "the step by step developments" in Oak Ridge during World War II, "before people forget completely," she says. Clay, she says, endures like few other materials.) * * * So Clarence Larson got his first hint of the atomic bomb effort from a legendary football coach. How then, Interviewer Overholt asked, did he hear of the project's success? He was in his office on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, Larson said. A colleague popped his head in the door and shouted, "They dropped the bomb!" Larson's first reaction was a question: "Did it go off?" -- RDS * * * Correction: In this column last Thursday, I wrote that William A. Arnold, pioneer biophysicist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, lived from Oak Ridge's earliest years until only recently in an original cemesto house on Tabor Road. My "cemesto chauvinism" betrayed me. The Arnolds moved to a newer home on Balsam Road about 30 years ago. Apologies. -- RDS Richard D. Smyser is founding editor of The Oak Ridger. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 32 UN Frets About Ex-Soviet Nukes Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2001. By Steven Erlanger New York Times Service VIENNA, Austria -- In the last year, there have been dozens of violations of nuclear security rules in Russia and at least one loss of fissile material; Taliban emissaries have tried to recruit scientists, and terrorists have tried to stake out a nuclear storage site at least twice, say senior officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western governments. The officials detailed the incidents, citing conversations with Russian officials and verified news reports. Despite significant improvements in nuclear security in the 1990s -- some of it with U.S. money and advice -- up to half of ex-Soviet civilian and military nuclear stockpiles with weapons-grade material are not well protected. Officials of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN body for monitoring nuclear programs, are deeply skeptical of Osama bin Laden's claim, in an interview published in Pakistan on Friday, that he possesses nuclear weapons. On the other hand, given the vulnerability of material in the former Soviet Union, the increasing professionalism of nuclear smuggling and the relative ease of fabricating a primitive weapon, they cannot rule it out. In the Kazakh port of Aktau on the Caspian shore, one ton of plutonium and two tons of highly enriched uranium sit near a now closed breeder reactor. Ukraine, with 17 nuclear reactors and one research reactor, is considered a country of "serious concern" by officials because of its climate of government corruption and crime. Enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb remains at a research reactor just outside Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Just last week, Turkey announced it had broken up a gang of smugglers who tried to sell a kilogram of what appeared to be highly enriched uranium for $750,000 to undercover police officers, material they said they had bought several months ago from a Russian of Azeri origin. Officials are increasingly concerned that terrorists willing to die could create a "dirty bomb," wrapping more easily stolen radioactive materials used in medicine and industry around a conventional explosive, like dynamite, to try to make a significant area of a city uninhabitable for many years. Russian officials say their fissile nuclear material is under strict and improving controls. But only 10 days ago, in a discussion with officials at the UN agency in Vienna, Yury Volodin, chief of safeguards for the nuclear regulatory agency, revealed that in the last year there were dozens of violations of regulations for securing and accounting for nuclear material. Volodin noted one loss of nuclear material, which he called of the "highest consequence." He said he could not be more specific about the type of material or the size of the loss. Last month, Colonel General Igor Volynkin, head of nuclear security for the military, said that twice this year Russian forces discovered stakeouts by terrorists of a secret nuclear arms storage facility, although he did not say where. Also last month, an official of the Security Council, Raisa Vdovichenko, told Russian journalists that emissaries of the Taliban had asked an employee of "an institution related to nuclear technologies to go to their country to work there in this field." There is continuing evidence of efforts to traffic in nuclear material that give many officials deep concern. In April 2000, the police in Georgia seized, in Batumi, several hundred fast-reactor fuel pellets containing 920 grams of highly enriched uranium; in September, at Tbilisi airport, the police confiscated half a gram of plutonium. The Russians say they thwarted an effort, at the end of 1998, by an organized gang to steal 18.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from a military weapons facility near Chelyabinsk in the Urals. Still, senior officials in Vienna and in Washington do not believe that bin Laden or even any state interested in a shortcut to a bomb -- from Syria and Iran to Iraq and Libya -- has been able to obtain the roughly 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium required to make a simple bomb, or the roughly 8 kilograms of plutonium, a much more difficult material with which to work. But they also admit that they cannot possibly know for sure. The atomic energy agency has built a database of incidents of nuclear trafficking since 1993 -- only counting incidents confirmed by the states involved. Of the 175 cases of trafficking in nuclear material and 201 cases of trafficking in medical and industrial radioactive materials, only some 18 cases involved even small amounts of the fissionable material needed for a nuclear bomb -- plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Altogether in all these cases, agency officials say, there have been seizures of about 400 grams of plutonium and an additional 12 kilograms of uranium at varying levels of enrichment, equivalent to only six kilograms of uranium-235. The most serious cases, involving large amounts of material, took place in 1993 and 1994, when Russian, German and Czech police officers made large seizures of very highly enriched nuclear material manufactured in the former Soviet Union, usually at nuclear-fuel fabrication plants. In March 1993, in St. Petersburg, nearly three kilograms of 90 percent enriched uranium-238 was seized; in August 1994, in Munich, the police seized about 360 grams of Russian-made plutonium; in December 1994, 2.7 kilograms of 80 percent enriched uranium-235 was seized, part of a shipment apparently stolen from the nuclear research center in Obninsk, about an hour's drive southwest of Moscow. For context, officials point out, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had only made 1.5 kilograms of bomb-capable uranium before the Gulf War broke out. However, the atomic energy agency's database is only a guide, and perhaps not even a good one. "Are we seeing half the iceberg or only the tip?" said one official, noting that the police consider seizures of drugs, a commodity far easier to secure, to represent only some 10 to 20 percent of what is shipped. Nor does the agency, devoted to civilian nuclear energy, know much about the military programs of states with nuclear weapons. Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a physics professor at Stanford University and co-director of a Stanford center on the physical protection of nuclear materials, said, "It's clear that we're seeing a typical move toward professionalism in this smuggling business, with increasingly fewer incidents of significance, but of greater significance, as professionals are probing the market." He noted that traffickers increasingly are going south, over traditional smuggling routes through Turkey, the Caucasus and especially central Asia, closer to Afghanistan, where borders are extremely long and lax. Matthew Bunn, assistant director of the science, technology and public policy program at Harvard University's Kennedy School and a Clinton White House adviser, says the main source of loose nuclear material remains the former Soviet Union, with some 600 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material stored there outside of warheads. The key question, he says, is to improve the security around military and especially civilian nuclear installations. In as many as half, he said, there are no automatic detectors that sound an alarm if material is smuggled out, and no security cameras where material is stored. "For all the work we've done with Russia, after seven years we still have most of the job to do," Bunn said. "This is a serious threat, and we know how to fix it," he said, urging that Bush agree with Russia at the this week's summit meeting to account for and secure all nuclear material. Although agency officials regard a terrorist nuclear bomb to be "highly unlikely," the likelihood of terrorists compiling the radioactive materials necessary to make a dirty bomb with immense economic and psychological impact is much higher, the officials say. The dirty bomb is an almost ideal instrument of terror, Bunn said. It would not kill many people, but it would terrify, and make a large area unsafe to work or live in, possibly for decades or longer. One official said: "Imagine a dirty bomb on the Washington mall. Do you abandon the White House?" www.themoscowtimes.com ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************