***************************************************************** 01/14/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.12 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Editorial: Power plant issue far from over 2 Scharping: No Uranium Risk Proven 3 Greenpeace, Global 2000 Want Immediate Check of Temelin 4 LEGISLATURE FAILS TO PICK WASTE SITE AFTER 20 YEARS 5 MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS PLAGUE NUCLEAR MAINTENANCE PROGRAM 6 Judges look at nuke plan and the law 7 Decision on nuclear plant set to come out on Monday NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 Beryllium disease found in 25 who worked at plant 2 Pentagon sees more Nuclear tests in South Asia -DAWN 3 Nobel winner proposes nuclear rebel Vanunu for peace prize 4 Environmental Woes in Kosovo 5 War Might Kill You 6 Serbia Info News / Committee to monitor depleted uranium 7 MoD secretly tested troops for depleted uranium poisoning 8 The enemy within 9 STINSON: BUILDING 1420 HAD 'BERYLLIUM ROOM' 10 Men are always changed by war 11 OUR TROOPS KNOW WHICH RISKS ARE WORTH TAKING 12 Sick, bleeding and losing nails: the girl who played with Nato uranium 13 Press and military, take note - you just can't trust the MoD 14 Uranium symptoms match US report as cancer fears spread 15 Gulf war file gave uranium warning 16 THE SUNDAY TIMES: NEWS 17 Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing -Doctor 18 U.S. News: Did U.S. weapons in Bosnia make Italians sick? 19 The Western perfidy 20 Cold War Comps 21 Iraq Condemns US, British Use of Depleted Uranium Shells 22 Hoon backs DU weapons 23 Radiation exposure site list raises questions 24 'Well-Liked' Abraham Has 'Big Learning Curve' at Energy **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Editorial: Power plant issue far from over The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-13 SATURDAY, JANUARY 13TH, 2001 The Council of Grand Justices has said that it will announce its ruling on the constitutionality of halting construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant on Monday. Although the ruling is not expected to explicitly state whether scrapping the plant was constitutional, it is, however, expected to state directly that, on major events, the Executive Yuan must report to and obtain consent from the Legislative Yuan. On the surface, the ball will roll back into the court of the Legislative Yuan. However, the ruling will establish a constitutionally mandated framework for executive-legislative interplays. The hope of the Grand Justices is to resolve the current political standoff through interactions of goodwill. What the opposition and ruling parties wish to see is a direct ruling on the issue of constitutionality, so it can be used as a bargaining chip and basis for a no-confidence vote. However, to the justices, their ruling must be capable of ensuring constitutional and political order, so that similar disputes will not be repeated. The ruling is to define "major events," as well as point out that the implementation of the construction project meets this definition. It will also point out that the Executive Yuan must first report to the Legislative Yuan and obtain the latter's consent on such major events. The ruling is very clear, although it deliberately avoids provocative words such as "unconstitutional." The ruling should have the Executive Yuan make up for the procedural step previously skipped, that is, report to the Legislative Yuan, and leave the final discretion to the legislature, so that the people can discuss an issue that concerns their livelihood and properties--this is an outcome that saves face for the Executive Yuan, while allowing the Legislative Yuan to make the final call. The problem is that the DPP has a legislative minority. In view of the strong majority enjoyed by the opposition alliance, it is impossible for the Executive Yuan to stop implementing the budget allocated for the power plant. Responsibility for the loss suffered by Taipower due to the construction halt and the economic decline, as well as the related political and executive accountability must be determined by the Control Yuan and the Legislative Yuan. The ruling in essence emphasizes that major events must be decided only after popular discussions. Even when the Executive Yuan has decided to unilaterally cease implementation, it must make up for the procedural step skipped and leave the issue open for public scrutiny. This is how the present case and all other similar disputes in the future are to be handled. The ruling won't resolve all the disputes. Both sides will find new battle grounds. The opposition can overturn the Executive Yuan's decision to halt construction, as well as demand that the premier step down along with the minister of economic affairs. The ruling party could delay implementation of the budget, so that the premier would not have to resign. They may even invite opposition party lawmakers to join a new Cabinet. As long as the stage is still around, the show is not over yet. We call on both sides to accept the will of the people and end the dispute as soon as possible. Behind the current dispute is a deadlock resulting from a minority government. The hot potato tossed into the hands of the Grand Justices is beyond resolution by them. Must the premier step down after he reports to the legislature? This is an issue requiring goodwill between the opposition and the ruling party. The Grand Justices have established the legal and democratic basis for executive-legislative interplay. Actual political maneuvering requires wisdom by all sides. This story has been viewed 308 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 2 Scharping: No Uranium Risk Proven January 14, 2001 ASSOCIATED PRESS BERLIN (AP)--Germany's defense minister Sunday dismissed concerns that weapons containing depleted uranium pose a radiation risk, saying the "excited debate" about the issue ignores expert opinion that there is no scientific evidence to support such fears. Interviewed on ZDF television, Rudolf Scharping also reiterated he sees no link between reported leukemia cases among German soldiers and the deployment of German peacekeepers to Kosovo, where U.S. forces used armor-piercing shells containing depleted uranium. After consultations with health experts and military staff, Scharping last week stood by the finding of independent examinations in 1999 of German troops returning from Kosovo. Health tests on soldiers sent to Kosovo and those never deployed there showed no differences, he said. The Defense Ministry says the incidence of two cancers - leukemia and lymphoma--among German soldiers was no higher than among the general population in 1999. Scharping has called for a moratorium on use of depleted uranium weapons so more research can be carried out, but he also has criticized media-generated "hysteria" on the issue. A newspaper reported that a second German soldier is now blaming his leukemia on his service in the Balkans. The soldier was stationed in Bosnia in 1996, Welt am Sonntag reported. A Defense Ministry spokesman said he was not aware that the soldier had reported his allegations to the military. Depleted uranium weapons were used in the Balkans by U.S. Air Force A-10 aircraft against Serb armored vehicles. The Pentagon says 31, 000 rounds were fired during the 1999 war over Kosovo. In U.S.-led airstrikes in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, about 10,800 rounds were fired around Sarajevo. ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 3 Greenpeace, Global 2000 Want Immediate Check of Temelin VIENNA, Jan 14, 2001--(CTK - Czech News Agency) The Greenpeace environmental organization proposes that current problems with Temelin nuclear power plant's turbine be used to carry out tests of the plant in accordance with a recent agreement between the premiers of Austria and the Czech Republic. "If the turbine does not function, it has no sense to continue the trial operation until the defect is removed, since no power can be supplied to the grid, the Austrian Greenpeace said in a statement today. In it Greenpeace calls on Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel to propose to his Czech counterpart, Premier Milos Zeman, that the Temelin reactor be put out of operation and its environment impact and security be tested. As early as last November Greenpleace warned that the state of the turbine would not allow for a smooth reactor operation, which, however, Temelin's operator, the electric utility CEZ, dismissed as nonsense. "However, now this was for the first time publicly admitted by the State Nuclear Safety Authority (SUJB) head," the statement says, referring to the latest accident in Temelin, a Soviet- designed plant with western control and safety equipment, which has been launched in south Bohemia since early October, amid strong protests mainly from the neighboring nuclear-free Austria and environmentalists at home and abroad. In the statement Austrian Greenpeace spokesman Franko Petri says that it has turned out that the Temelin turbine works improperly, with oil pipelines not being leak-proof enough. Another environmental organization, Global 2000, too, demands an immediate outage of the Temelin reactor. "Now it is the right opportunity for a longer outage of the reactor and the carrying out og the tests which have been agreed on," Global 2000 spokeswoman Andrea Paukovits told CTK. She said the Austrian government should use the situation and propose to the Czech side to carry out the checks of Temelin on which Zeman and Schuessel had agreed in Melk, Lower Austria, in December. Gerhard Fallent, the Freedom Party's (FPOe) spokesman for the environment, said Temelin's latest problem showed that the reactor is incapable of operating. With Temelin accidents becoming more and more frequent, the danger stemming from the plant's operation intensifies, Fallent said. Referring to JETE director Frantisek Hezoucky, the Czech daily Pravo says Temelin could soon resort to the 1st block reactor outage due to excessive vibrations of the turbine. "We will decide this on Sunday or Monday...There is a vibration at the turbine's low output. We've never met with such a problem in our country so far," Hezoucky is quoted as saying. "We did not expect this. These vibrations were impossible to detect until steam was brought" to the system, Hezoucky said. SUJB chairwoman Dana Drabova told Pravo that "in a long run, the operation of the Temelin block is impossible with the turbine's current technical parameters." ((C) 2001 CTK - CZECH NEWS AGENCY) ***************************************************************** 4 LEGISLATURE FAILS TO PICK WASTE SITE AFTER 20 YEARS MIDLAND REPORTER-TELEGRAM Editor's Note: This is the first of two installments on the possible future of low-level waste disposal in West Texas. By Ed Todd Staff Writer In 1981, the 67th session of the Texas Legislature created the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority to develop a single site for safely storing hazardous radioactive waste. It's not done yet. Twenty years later, the site is still wanting. But there are two potential sites in the Midland-Odessa area--in remote areas west of Monahans in Ward County and west of Andrews in Andrews County. "It is an extremely complex, politically charged, controversial issue, " said Lawrence "Rick" Jacobi Jr., a nuclear engineer who is former director of the Authority. The Texas Legislature abandoned the project in 1999 after the frustrated Authority failed to establish a site largely due to public opposition. Since there is no central site for disposal of the low-level radioactive waste in Texas, the waste is stored in almost a thousand temporary sites, including 53 larger storage sites, from far West Texas to the Gulf Coast, according to the Texas Department of Health. West Texas temporary sites include those in the Midland, Odessa and Fort Stockton areas, Jacobi noted. Concentration of the sites that use and store radioactive material is in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso areas. Groundwork in the 1980s and 1990s was laid for three sites. Each was rejected: one in McMullen County south of San Antonio in 1985 and two in Hudspeth County in far West Texas near Fort Hancock in 1989 and near Sierra Blanca in 1992. Outcries about a fault line, that possibly could lead to an earthquake, killed the Hudspeth County projects, Jacobi said. "That was just ludicrous," he said. "That fault had not moved in 12 million years." The state "agency struggled and struggled and struggled and never could get the legislature to agree to a site," recalled Jacobi. By 1984, the agency, the Authority, was studying 16 possible sites in 16 counties in West Texas and South Texas but none in the heavily- populated and vote-rich East Texas and especially the Dallas and Houston areas east of Interstate Highway 35. ------ Up in arms "Every time they (the Authority) would find a place, everybody (the citizenry) would get up in arms about it, and the legislature would overturn their decision," Jacobi lamented. "The legislature finally got frustrated with that and so they put that agency out of business in 1999." About that time, private-sector waste-disposal companies, including Envirocare, moved into Texas "with the intent to build a disposal site," Jacobi said. Envirocare of Utah, which is affiliated with Envirocare of Texas, operates a major site for disposing of radioactive waste from the military and from industry, noted Jacobi, and annually generates about $90 million in revenue. Of that, the host county, Tooele, is annually paid 5 percent of the gross revenue by Envirocare, which is headed up by Khosrow Semnani. In revisiting the low-level radioactive waste disposal law, the Texas Legislature in its current 140-day session is to modify the law and determine the means of and criteria for selecting the site. "Maybe the whole state will be screened once again for the site" by the Texas Legislature, noted Susan Jablonski, an agent for the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) and who formerly worked with Jacobi on the defunct Authority. The Texas Legislature may designate the site or "make the rules of how" the site is selected, she said. Key legislators in revisiting the bill that created the Authority, Ms. Jablonski noted, are Texas Sen. Buster Brown of Lake Jackson and Texas Rep. Warren Chisum of Pampa. Brown is chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, and Chisum is chairman of the House Environmental Regulations Committee. By law, the site must be owned by either the state government or the federal government, she said. Since the demise of the Texas Low Level Radioactive Disposal Authority, the TNRCC has assumed some of the old Authority's function, Ms. Jablonski noted. By law, an enticement for a "host county" to be site for the storage of radioactive waste for hundreds of years is 10 percent of the gross revenue of the operating company, Ms. Jablonski said. ------ Enriching coffers Based on 5 percent of gross revenue, Envirocare estimated that its proposed Ward County site initially would enrich Ward County by $250, 000 but eventually would increase to $4.4 million per year. If so, that would suggest $88 million in annual revenue for Envirocare in storing the waste. The bunker-like storage site would use above-ground carbon-steel canisters, enclosed in concrete, to hold spent waste from such sources as nuclear power plants, nuclear pharmaceutical companies, medical research facilities, radioisotopes in industry, hospitals that use nuclear pharmaceuticals and research universities. Depending on the will and whims of the 77th Texas Legislature, Envirocare of Texas is banking on developing a site for storage of the waste at Quito Mesa in a remote part of western Ward County near Loving County and about 25 miles from Monahans and about 80 miles from Midland. Northeast of there in Andrews County, Waste Control Specialists (WCS) operates a hazardous-waste disposal facility on a ranch about 25 miles west of Andrews near the Texas-New Mexico border. Like Envirocare, WCS may be a candidate for the site for storing low-level radioactive waste. And west of those two possible sites and about 150 miles west of Midland into New Mexico is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Located deep in salt caverns, it stores high-level nuclear waste such as that from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The optimum site for low-level radioactive waste must be "technically suitable" for safely storing the waste and politically suitable to the local community. "In the 20 years that I have worked on this project, the thing that is always causing you to fail is lack of public acceptance," Jacobi said. "That's a very critical issue." Nationwide, Ms. Jablonski noted that only three states have established central low-level radioactive waste sites: Utah, South Carolina and Washington. Meanwhile, the Texas Legislature, which is to address U.S. Congressional redistricting, education and other critical issues, is to consider updating the low-level radioactive waste law this year. "The question is now who is going to decide which of these private sites is the waste-disposal site," Jacobi said. "There is no current way in the law to do that." In holding to the premise that the management of radioactive waste at one isolated site is safer than the temporary storage at many sites, Jacobi said that "so far, we have had no accidents, no problems. But we are going to have an incident, and it is going to make everybody wake up and understand that we need to quit fooling around and built a low-level waste disposal site" regulated by the state and federal governments. 1/14/2001 sp;c 2001 Midland Reporter-Telegram. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS PLAGUE NUCLEAR MAINTENANCE PROGRAM Updated: Saturday, Jan. 13, 2001 at 17:19 CST BY LEIGH STROPE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON --Management problems have plagued the program to maintain the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, forcing a two-year delay and overruns of more than $300 million, congressional investigators say. A report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, says the problems threaten a planned expansion of the program that will cover much of the warhead stockpile. The Energy Department oversees the refurbishment program. The Defense Programs Office at the Energy Department "has a dysfunctional organization with unclear lines of authority that lead to a lack of accountability," the report said. In the past, the office managed the design, tests and manufacture of new weapons. But it shrunk after the Cold War and now focuses on extending the life of existing nuclear weapons without explosive testing, which was banned in 1992. The Peacekeeper missile called the W87 was the first to be refurbished, but all other weapons in the arsenal must be refurbished to remain safe and reliable. The W87 program experienced design and production problems that increased costs by more than $300 million, or 70 percent, and caused a two-year delay, the report said. At fault was an "inadequate" management process and unclear leadership in oversight of the program, the report said. In the Energy Department's response to the report, officials said they agreed with the findings and already tried to correct some of the problems identified, such as reorganizing its field office. The next warheads for the program are the W76 and W80. AHouse Appropriations subcommittee requested the report over concerns that the program extends the life of nuclear weapons well beyond the intended time. Also, there was uncertainty about how much of the refurbishment could be supported with the program's annual budget of about $4.5 billion, the report said. Much of the infrastructure in the nuclear weapons complex dates to the 1940s and 1950s, making it difficult and expensive to maintain. Also, reductions at the complex in the past decade have made it difficult to hire the necessary number of skilled technicians and scientists, the report said. General Accounting Office: http://www.gao.gov Distributed by The Associated Press (AP) For home delivery of the Star-Telegram, dial (817) DEL-IVER. ***************************************************************** 6 Judges look at nuke plan and the law The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-13 SATURDAY, JANUARY 13TH, 2001 WAITING GAME: Business leaders are holding their breath as they await a decision by the Council of Grand Justices on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant BY RICHARD DOBSON STAFF REPORTER Economic concerns are not factored into the yet-to-be-announced interpretation by the Council of Grand Justices of whether the Cabinet's decision to ax the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project violated the constitution, according to one of the justices. Justice Wang Che-chien (¤ý¿AŲ) said the deliberations of 15-member council had focused on whether the cabinet had adhered to procedure stated in the constitution and not economic or politcal factors related to the issue. "The economic and social impact of the nuclear power plant will be left to the government and the Legislative Yuan to decide," Wang said. He added that the council would announce its decision on Monday at 3pm. Heavy economic losses by the government and shaken confidence in the business sector in the nation's ability to maintain its supply of electricy if the 2,700-megawatt plant is cancelled was reported by some local media to have been weighing on the council's deliberations. But Wang denied the reports, saying that the ruling would be a "very good example of judicial independence. None of my collegaues had any pressure from anyone, including the government." The final outcome of the nuclear plant project, which was axed by the Cabinet in October, has received the sharply focused attention of the nation's industry leaders. Fears among business leaders that cancellation of the plant would lead to power shortages have not been eased by the government's plan to make up the shortfall by encouraging the expansion of independent power production. A ruling by the council that cancellation of the plant, which is already more than 30 percent complete, was in violation of the constitution could precipitate a cabinet reshuffle only four months after the last one over the same issue. According to George Hsu (³\§Ó¸q), director of the Chunghua Institution of Economic Research (¤¤µØ¸gÀÙ¬ã¨s°|), the political unrest caused by such an eventuality would have a "strong economic impact on Taiwan." The political symbolism of a decision by the council to rule the cabinet's action as unconstitutional, undermining the executive authority of the cabinet, would cause further "turmoil in the economy," Hsu said. Hsu's sentiments were echoed by Chen Tien-jy (³¯²KªK), and economics professor at National Taiwan University, who said a "clear cut" decision in favor of the cabinet's action would be the best outcome from an economic standpoint. He said that an ambigious ruling would lead to widely differing interpretations and escalate the current conflict between the government and opposition parties. This story has been viewed 159 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 7 Decision on nuclear plant set to come out on Monday The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-13 SATURDAY, JANUARY 13TH, 2001 BY IRENE LIN STAFF REPORTER The Council of Grand Justices voted yesterday on the constitutionality of the controversial decision to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and scheduled Monday to release their ruling. The ruling is widely expected to be against the Executive Yuan's decision. During a meeting yesterday morning, over two-thirds of the 15 justices noted the Executive Yuan's decision to scrap the power plant had procedural flaws. However, it is expected the final ruling will not declare directly that the decision was "unconstitutional." The council had attempted to issue its ruling yesterday but eventually it decided to wait until next Monday to work through the final wording of the decision and smooth over dissenting opinions among some of the justices. The differences of opinions among the grand justices have been so wide over the last two weeks that they were almost unable to make a ruling on the decision. It was only yesterday that they reached a general consensus on the issue. The justices are expected to hold that the nuclear plant project is of such importance that the Executive Yuan should have informed the Legislature of its decision and gained its approval before it announced to scrap the project. This story has been viewed 244 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Beryllium disease found in 25 who worked at plant Sunday, January 14, 2001 By the Associated Press Hazleton, Pa. - Twenty-five workers at a former northeastern Pennsylvania beryllium plant that closed 20 years ago have beryllium disease, which causes breathing difficulty and can be fatal, a researcher said. The sick workers might be eligible for up to $150,000 in federal compensation. DEADLY ALLIANCE BLADE, THE SISTER PAPER OF THE POST-GAZETTE. THOUSANDS OF COURT, INDUSTRY, AND RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED U.S. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS WERE REVIEWED, AND DOZENS OF GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS, INDUSTRY LEADERS, AND VICTIMS WERE INTERVIEWED. Dr. Kenneth D. Rosenman of Michigan State University said he had identified 714 plant workers who are still alive, and that 522 of them had taken a blood test for beryllium disease. In addition to the 25 who have beryllium disease, one has another type of lung disease and another 69 have a sensitivity to beryllium and are candidates to get beryllium disease later. In all, more than 18 percent of the workers either have or are candidates to get the disease. "That's the highest percentages I've seen," Rosenman said when comparing rates of disease and sensitivity among Hazleton workers to workers from other plants around the country. The federal compensation is to be available because the Clinton administration reversed 50 years of government policy by acknowledging that workers often were not given adequate protection or informed about job hazards in the nuclear bomb-making effort. Last month, President Clinton put the Labor Department in charge of the compensation effort and ordered it to set up rules that make sure the program "minimizes the administrative burden on workers and their survivors." The Labor Department has until May 31 to write the eligibility rules. Rosenman said his discussions with the energy Department had made him conclude that workers must have the disease, rather than just the sensitivity to beryllium, to collect payments. ***************************************************************** 2 Pentagon sees more Nuclear tests in South Asia -DAWN - Top Stories; 14 January, 2001 18 SHAWWAL 1421 WASHINGTON, Jan 13: The Pentagon has predicted that both India and Pakistan may conduct more nuclear tests in the near future and warned that even a minor conflict between the two might escalate into a nuclear war. The US defence department, in its report on proliferation issues in the South Asian region, also predicted more missile tests in the region as both the countries will continue to make advances in the missile programmes - SRBM and MRBM - as each believes it is necessary to respond to any progress made by the other. Both the countries have sizable N-infrastructure which will allow them to improve the sophistication and size of their nuclear stockpiles, it said. The report, however, said that Pakistan may conduct a nuclear test only if India did so first. Summing up the proliferation scenario in South Asia, the report said the potential for the proliferation of technologies and expertise will increase as both India and Pakistan have become more self-reliant in producing nuclear weapons and missiles. Both are expected to become potential suppliers of the technology leading to further proliferation, the report warned. ***************************************************************** 3 Nobel winner proposes nuclear rebel Vanunu for peace prize THE SUNDAY TIMES: FOREIGN NEWS January 14 2001 MIDDLE EAST PETER HOUNAM THE Nobel peace laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire has called for this year's award to be presented to Mordechai Vanunu, who was jailed for treason and espionage after leaking details of Israel's nuclear weapons programme to The Sunday Times. Maguire has nominated the whistleblower because of the personal sacrifice he made after he decided to alert the world to the Israeli arsenal. The move comes as new efforts are made to win parole for Vanunu, who has been in jail in Israel since 1986. He was lured from London to Rome and kidnapped by a team working for Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Vanunu spent more than 11 years in solitary confinement and still has more than three years to serve for his revelations about the nuclear plant at Dimona, where he once worked. Maguire, a joint winner of the peace prize in 1976 for her campaign against sectarian strife in Northern Ireland, said she had been moved by Vanunu's defiant stand. "Although the Israeli government has attempted to silence this courageous voice of truth, it cannot do so," she said. "From the silence of his lonely cell in Ashkelon prison, his spirit reaches around the world, giving each of us new courage and hope, and a desire to recommit ourselves to disarmament and peacemaking." Maguire has been joined in the nomination by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour MP, who is tabling a Commons early day motion calling for the support of other MPs. Part of the animosity towards Vanunu in Israel was caused by his conversion to Christianity, and some of his family disowned him. His brother Asher, who visits regularly, saw him last week and said he was well, buoyed up by hundreds of Christmas cards and messages of goodwill. Avigdor Feldman, Vanunu's lawyer in Tel Aviv, said last week that he had won agreement for a fresh parole hearing to be held in the next two months. "We shall be making a case that Vanunu is not a security risk," he said. "His knowledge is no longer a sensitive matter and it concerns me that he is being punished out of vengeance." There are Vanunu campaigns in America, Israel, Australia and several European countries. The British group holds a vigil every Saturday morning near the Israeli embassy in London. about a licence to reproduce material from The Sunday Times, ***************************************************************** 4 Environmental Woes in Kosovo January 13, 2001 ASSOCIATED PRESS LANDOVICA, Yugoslavia (AP)--The boy wiggles through thick brambles and slides into the bomb crater. He comes often to this spot--a wooded hollow among rolling hills of vineyards--to explore the crumbled bunker or hunt for pieces of the Yugoslav tanks blasted in the NATO bombardment. Nexhat Gashi has never heard of depleted-uranium ammunition. He shrugs when asked about radioactivity. He has no clue his special hide-out is part of a global uproar over possible health risks from the armor- busting shells used by U.S. forces during the 1999 airstrikes. But the 14-year-old is certain about one thing. "The whole environment of Kosovo is sick," he says while poking around the bomb site about 35 miles southwest of Pristina, the provincial capital. "Why isn't anyone trying to fix that first?" The question rings loudly across Kosovo. Worries about possible links between illnesses and depleted uranium have sent a chill through the highest political and military levels of NATO nations. But many ethnic Albanians wonder why obvious ecological calamities in Kosovo--with clear health consequences--aren't getting the same attention. It doesn't take a Geiger counter to measure Kosovo's ecological crisis. Winds carry lead dust. Untreated sewage spills onto village streets. Toxic metals leak from neglected factories. Raw waste pours into rivers, leaving some stretches totally lifeless. Such scenes are not uncommon in the Balkans, but Kosovo suffers particularly. The Yugoslav government made few ecology-minded investments in its province after the majority ethnic Albanians began setting up their own rival administration more than a decade ago. The 78-day NATO attack added to the problems by striking at industrial targets. "It's a catastrophe," said Bejtullah Bejtullahu, an environmental activist in Kosovska Mitrovica, considered one of the most polluted areas in Kosovo. Lead levels in the city's air and water have reached up to 200 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines. NATO peacekeepers closed the giant Zvecan lead smelter in August, but lead residue is still carried by the breeze and works its way down to the water table and into the food chain. French soldiers in the city are routinely tested for lead levels and those with elevated readings are moved out and advised against conceiving a baby for several months, U.N. officials said. Another part of the idle industrial complex--which produced fertilizers, batteries and high-quality zinc--leaks dangerous substances such as cadmium, arsenic, nickel and sulfuric acid. A tank containing nearly 160,000 gallons of sulfuric acid ruptured in September, leaking its contents into the Sitnica River and killing tens of thousands of fish. Near the Macedonian border, a cement plant churns out a fine white dust that sometimes comes down like snow flurries. Respiratory problems and tuberculosis are common. An adjacent facility making asbestos products--a known carcinogen--was only recently closed. Makeshift landfills and random dumping dot Kosovo, allowing tainted runoff to reach rivers and water supplies. More than 75 percent of rural homes draw water from unprotected, shallow wells, the World Health Organization says. High levels of fecal contamination have led to a sharp rise in diseases such as hepatitis A. With no real environmental enforcement, there are countless abuses. An old fuel storage tank leaked directly into a bog in the southwestern village of Suva Reka. A pile of dozens of old car batteries was tossed into a roadside ditch near the western city of Pec. Outside Pristina, coal-burning power plants have left a mountain of black ash visible for miles. Strong winds can push the grains into Kosovo's largest city, mixing with exhaust from the many diesel generators and cars with few pollution controls. "We call it the Pristina cough," said Daut Maloku, head of the environmentalist Green Party of Kosovo. "We are living in a toxic place," he added. "There are so many things here to make you ill: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat ... Why are we so worried about only depleted uranium when we have so many more pressing problems?" Yet each day brings more resources devoted to the uranium question. WHO plans to assign a special investigation team and help coordinate a voluntary testing program for citizens. NATO forces have started placing warning signs at 112 known areas hit by uranium shells, which can punch through thick armor at supersonic speed and ignite in a deadly fireball. Experts note there haven't been any in-depth studies of depleted uranium. "A lump of (depleted uranium) sitting on the ground is not especially a problem. The big worry is if any of this material is ingested," said Dave Phillips, an environmental toxin specialist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. "There is just so much we don't know." Along the swatch of southwestern Kosovo where most of the 31,000 depleted uranium rounds fell, doctors have not reported any spike in cancer cases or other possible radiation-linked cases. "It's fine to look closely at this, but I think they should look at the whole picture. Kosovo is an environmental tragedy," said Dr. Bashkim Meqa, director of the Isa Grezda Hospital in Djakovica. "If we don't have clean water and clean air, what is the point in worrying about something that may or may not make you sick?" But the environment is a low priority for U.N. overseers struggling with huge security and administrative matters. Just $1 million of the U.N.'s $250 million Kosovo budget is marked for environmental projects. More money may be sought from donor nations at a February conference in Brussels, Belgium. "It's similar to any developing country where you have to pace the various issues ... to improve incrementally," said Gerald Fischer, one of the top U.N. civil administrators. "I think the emphasis is on incremental." ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 5 War Might Kill You by Anne Applebaum Posted THURSDAY, JAN. 11, 2001, AT 10:00 A.M. PT [I]Over here in Europe, it is being called the worst crisis ever to hit NATO. The Italians are furious, the Portuguese prime minister has "lost confidence" in the United States, the British are howling about a cover-up, and Madeleine Albright has been forced to make calming statements. Have the Russians invaded Germany? Have the Americans pulled their troops out of Europe? Is World War III about to break out? No: The Europeans have just discovered that weapons are dangerous and that war can kill you. This is not to say that there is no substance behind the fuss, which concerns the risks—and possible dishonesty about those risks— to allied soldiers, who took part in peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and who might have been contaminated by dust from some American ammunition used there. The ammunition, made from depleted uranium, is alleged to cause various forms of cancer and kidney disease. Or perhaps "alleged" isn't strong enough. According to the British press this morning the Guardian's), it now seems that a good four years ago, a British army medical report stated that "inhalation of insoluble uranium dioxide dust will lead to accumulation in the lungs with very slow clearance—if any. Although the chemical toxicity is low, there may be localised radiation damage of the lung leading to cancer. Uranium compound dust is therefore hazardous." Predictably, when this story began to break, Britain's ministry of defense failed to make this old report public. Instead, on Tuesday of this week the armed forces minister got up in front of Parliament to announce that the risks posed by depleted uranium ammunition were in 1999, the ministry of defense definitively told him—lied to him, that is—that no weapons tipped with depleted uranium were being used in Kosovo at all. But it is not only the British who are worked up about an apparent cover-up. No less than seven Italians, former Kosovo peacekeepers, have recently died of leukemia; a Portuguese peacekeeper has also contracted leukemia, and another has died of a mysterious brain disease. Other nations have been worried about the issue since the war ended. Due to unexplained "bureaucratic" problems, however, a team of U.N. scientists who asked the United States to identify possible locations of high radiation in Kosovo, were not given that information for more than a year and couldn't begin work until last November. This week, the Germans, the Italians, the Norwegians, and the Greeks all called for a ban on the use of the ammunition until it can be determined whether it is "safe." But although NATO's ambassadors have now voted against the ban, somewhat lessening the danger of an actual break in the alliance, I don't expect that will stop the public grumbling, which has hardly been quieted by the photographs of men wearing white anti-radiation suits and carrying metal radiation counters that have appeared all over television and newspaper front pages in Europe this week. And yet—there is something deeply rotten about the moral outrage, most particularly when it comes from NATO countries like Germany, which enthusiastically backed the Kosovo bombardment at the time. And it points to something deeply disturbing about the current state of the NATO alliance as well. I don't want to downplay the seriousness of the environmental hazard posed by radiation, nor the possible mendaciousness of the various governments who have denied its existence: If we were talking about the risk posed by, say, a commercial chemical plant, the correct response to an apparent American government cover- up would indeed be shock, outrage, and lawsuits. But we are talking about soldiers. They were sent off to a war. In wars, dangerous weapons are used. Sometimes soldiers are killed by the dangerous weapons used in wars, even by the dangerous weapons used by their own side. Throughout history, soldiers who went off to fight in wars were aware of that risk. Or at least they used to be. These days, soldiers are often called "peacekeepers," and wars, or the military occupations which follow wars, are referred to as "peacekeeping operations." These euphemisms might have their uses for the purposes of justifying participation in a conflict, but they have the side effect of forcing everyone to forget that wars do usually result in casualties. The fact that the war in Kosovo caused so few casualties, at least on our side, actually makes that war, by historical standards, an almost freakish exception—although this is something that a number of NATO country leaders appear to have forgotten. In fact, ammunition is never "safe." Weapons are hazardous to human beings, to animals, to the environment. Whole regions of France were uninhabitable at the close of World War I; children in Afghanistan are still stepping on land mines left behind when the Red Army withdrew more than a decade ago. People did die in Kosovo because of the NATO bombardment—most of them Serbs and Albanians—and people may well go on dying. If the leaders of NATO countries want to avoid being responsible for all deaths altogether, they shouldn't fight any wars at all. But if leaders of NATO countries want to go on fighting wars, or at least maintaining their capability to fight wars, outraged protest against "unsafe" American weapons is hypocritical in the extreme. JOIN THE FRAY [I] What did you think of this article? READER COMMENTS FROM THE FRAY:The only way that your argument makes sense, especially considering your other examples (the Red Army in Afghanistan, France after WWI), is if it's summarized as "War is so hellish and awful that any attempt to make it less hellish is pointless, and any protests over someone making it more hellish than it needed to be is whining. The NATO countries had so few casualties in Kosovo that the U.S. could have gunned down a few hundred Brits as they walked to the PX and it still would have been a low-casualty war, so what are they complaining about?" This idea--that war is so nightmarish that it renders all ethics, morals, or civil behavior senseless--is beloved by many novelists, but makes for a truly toxic is a reason that depleted uranium is used in high power munitions. It is a very hard material that can penetrate the hardened steel used in tanks and concrete used to fortify bunkers.The key objective is to kill the person shooting at you before he can kill you. This is a far more urgent problem in a firefight than worrying about whether a minute amount of depleted uranium dust from spent rounds might somehow cause cancer in a tiny portion of a population exposed to the dust.If the Europeans are pissed about the use of depleted uranium rounds supplied by the United States, the solution is simple. Let the Europeans police Europe with their own weapons and munitions Anne Applebaum, a journalist based in London and Warsaw, is a regular contributor to the London Sunday Telegraph and is at work on a history of Soviet concentration camps. You can e-mail her at foreigners@slate.com. Illustration by Robert Neubecker. ***************************************************************** 6 Serbia Info News / Committee to monitor depleted uranium emissions is to be set up WWW.SERBIA-INFO.COM/NEWS January 11, 2001 BELGRADE, January 10 (Tanjug) - The effects of depleted uranium, as well as all other harmful substances, used during the bombing of Yugoslavia were and would be constantly monitored by the Yugoslav Government, i.e. its health and social policy Ministry, it was said at today's consulting meeting of experts from all scientific spheres dealing with this issue. The meeting, organized by the Federal Ministry for Health and Social Policy, was chaired by Minister Miodrag Kovac, the Federal Information Secretariat reported. The experts warned that even the minimum quantities of uranium put the health of the population and the environment at risk. They reported the results of present researches in Yugoslavia, except Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the proposals for the further activities, especially removing of the remains of the ammunition with the depleted uranium, the marking of the contaminated places for the protection of the endangered citizens, the preventive health measures and constant monitoring of the health of the risk categories of the population and the members of the Yugoslav Army and the police. The preciseness of the presently established, explored and announced locations where it was operated with the ammunition with depleted uranium out of Kosovo and Metohija had been confirmed - at eight locations (seven in Serbia and one in Montenegro) - and that was in the wider regions of Bujanovac, Vranje and "Azra" cape at the Lustica peninsula. Apart from these locations the depleted uranium was not used. However, these institutes and authorized institutions examine the consequences of all other materials, thrown on our country during bombing, harmful to the human health and the environment. The Federal Government, which will be informed about all the conclusions of today's meeting, will set up a Committee of experts for monitoring the effects of depleted uranium. One of the major tasks of the Committee, it was underscored, would be informing the domestic and foreign public about all its findings without concealing anything, but also without groundless dramatization, the statement said. Copyright c 1998, 1999, 2000 Ministry of Information ***************************************************************** 7 MoD secretly tested troops for depleted uranium poisoning ISSUE 2060 Sunday 14 JANUARY 2001 BY DAVID CRACKNELL AND RAJEEV SYAL [9 JAN '01] - MINISTRY OF DEFENCE THE Ministry of Defence was secretly testing for radiation poisoning among British soldiers just months before it sent troops to Kosovo with suspect depleted uranium weapons, The Telegraph can reveal. Internal documents show that research by scientists at the military research centre in Porton Down was "ongoing" in November 1998, well before the start of the Balkans conflict. They show that the secret research had been going on for at least six months before then, with references to classified files on the depleted uranium held at the MoD dating back to May that year. At the time, the MoD was refusing to launch an official screening programme for veterans of the 1991 Gulf War who feared that their illnesses were caused by radiation poisoning from expended DU munitions. MoD documents that showed only that officers recognised four years ago that there was a risk of developing lung, lymph and brain cancer from depleted uranium shells. The MoD was so concerned that the documents obtained by The Telegraph had been leaked that they raided the houses of two Gulf War veterans who they alleged had stolen them. Yesterday the MoD refused to comment on the leaked documents. Iain Duncan Smith, the shadow defence secretary, said: "The MoD must make a further statement on the issue of depleted uranium. The fact that they were carrying out secret testing of troops before Kosovo is further evidence of how this episode has been shrouded in secrecy and terribly mishandled." Telegraph has obtained a copy of minutes of a meeting of the MoD's Gulf Veterans' Medical Assessment Programme (GVMAP) on November 9, 1998, which say - contrary to official statements at the time - that "research was also ongoing on depleted uranium and NAPS [nerve agent protection tablets]". The document goes on to refer to work being done at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency at Porton Down into suspected poisoning of troops. The minutes also list five hitherto classified files held in the MoD's database, including a document entitled: "DU testing of UK Gulf Veterans". The Tories last night demanded that these documents also be made public by the MoD. At the time the documents were compiled, the MoD was refusing requests by Gulf War veterans for depleted uranium testing. Former soldiers who complained of mystery illnesses after the conflict had to pay for their own private tests to be done in Canada. It was only in September 1999, after the Kosovo conflict was over and nearly a decade after the end of the Gulf War, that the MoD finally relented to pressure and agreed to retest a small number of veterans for depleted uranium. Ministers last week staged a dramatic U-turn and relented to pressure for an official, full-scale screening programme for depleted uranium for troops who had served in either the Balkans or the Gulf. It emerged ammunition used on some of its warships after the American manufacturers stopped producing the shells because of safety concerns. The Telegraph has also learnt that nearly 100 Gulf veterans are to sue the MoD over their exposure to depleted uranium, in a test case that could cost tens of millions of pounds. Peter Bright, a senior partner at solicitors Nash and Co, based in Plymouth, said the proceedings will be issued in the light of recent evidence that shows the MoD had full knowledge of the risks of depleted uranium. He represents veterans who claim they were exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf while serving in Operation Desert Storm. Some of the veterans also saw service in the Balkans. Around half were medics in the field, who claim that they were exposed to the materials as they tended Iraqi and British soldiers. in Balkans exposed to depleted uranium ***************************************************************** 8 The enemy within ISSUE 2060 Sunday 14 JANUARY 2001 BY CHRISTINA LAMB MoD secretly tested troops for depleted uranium poisoning AS Rui Alpalhao arrived at the house of his girlfriend, Tanya, clutching a stray kitten which brought delight to her eyes and earnt him an affectionate kiss, the couple looked like any young sweethearts with their lives ahead of them. Except that Rui leant on the wall, exhausted by the few steps from the car to the door, and Tanya had tears in her eyes, later confessing fears that he will not be around to see the kitten become a cat. For Rui has leukaemia and, at just 22, his life has been put on hold. Days that once consisted of working as an engineer in the police, then going for long runs, followed by a beer with his friends, have turned into a round of chemotherapy sessions and resting in bed at his home in the central Portuguese town of Abrantes. A shy, soft- spoken man, he would clearly prefer to have undergone all of this in private. Instead, he has become a national figure in Portugal and at the centre of the row sweeping across Europe over alleged links between cancer and depleted uranium ammunition used in the Balkans. Rui was one of 10,000 Portuguese peacekeepers sent to Kosovo in 1999 after the Nato bombing campaign had ousted Yugoslav troops. A paratrooper on his second year of military service, photographs of him then show a strong healthy young man with a full head of hair, almost unrecognisable as the thin bald man that he is today. Stationed in Klina in central Kosovo, his work consisted of patrols, guarding a local convent of Serbian nuns from reprisals by ethnic Albanians, and repairing vehicles. On the road between Pec and Pristina, Klina was one of the most heavily bombed areas. The streets were littered with bits of shells from American A10 tankbuster planes that had been tipped with depleted uranium, which is 1.7 times denser than lead and thus able to pierce armour plating. "I was shocked by the amount of devastation," Rui recalled. "Every day, we passed wreckage of bombed tanks and anti-personnel carriers." His company was not told of any risks, nor issued protective masks or clothing against radiation, even though it now appears that at least some Nato members, such as Britain, were well aware of reports that inhaling depleted uranium dust increases chances of contracting cancer. Rui said: "We were in daily contact with this stuff. People were picking up fragments of shells as souvenirs; no one told us anything." It was some time after Rui returned from Kosovo that he fell ill. "I started to get headaches and fevers. Anything I did tired me out and I lost my appetite. To start with, I thought it was flu but I lost so much weight - about 10 kilos [22 pounds] - that I was very weak." Sent to Lisbon for tests, he was shocked when the doctors told him last October that he had leukaemia. "To me, that was a death sentence. I was too young." When he came out of hospital, he found himself praying in the local church. "I hadn't wanted much, just a simple life doing my job servicing vehicles, and a wife and children. Sometimes I wish I had never heard of Kosovo." So far, he is responding well to treatment and hoping to go ahead with plans to marry Tanya, although doctors have warned against having children. Rui became suspicious that his illness might be linked to his time in Kosovo last month only when he heard that another soldier stationed in Klina with him had died and a third was seriously ill with similar symptoms. For the past two weeks, he has read almost daily in the newspapers of victims from other countries - 30 soldiers dead so far, including seven in Italy and five in Belgium - and prays that he does not join their numbers. He said: "It seems more than coincidence that soldiers all across Europe are dying or suffering the same symptoms. I think, at the very least, depleted uranium should be banned while they investigate. When you are one of the victims, it seems arrogant on the part of Nato not to at least do that." Two hundred and fifty miles away, in the pretty riverside town of Vila Nova de Cerveira in the far north of Portugal, the father of the first Portuguese soldier to die is convinced that it is no coincidence. Dressed in black in mourning for the loss of his only child, Hugo, 47-year-old Luis Paulino is an angry man. Brandishing two box files of papers amassed from research, the manager of a hotel for subsidised holidays for state employees and pensioners is in touch with victims across Europe. "I have no doubt that my son died because of depleted uranium," he said. Such claims of a link are disputed by an impressive array of organisations, including Nato, the Ministry of Defence, the Pentagon and the World Health Organisation. The MoD says that it has carried out extensive tests on depleted uranium ammunition because of concerns over its use in the Gulf and argue that there is as much risk of radiation from depleted uranium shells as "from using a hairdryer". It also points out that statistically the number of cancer cases among soldiers in the Balkans is no higher than that in any section of the population. Some of the families of the Italian victims are now blaming the use of benzene to clean weapons, a claim that is rejected by the Portuguese, who say they did not come into contact with it. Despite the lack of medical evidence, the public perception in Portugal is that Nato is hiding something. Pointing at a map of Kosovo, he claimed: "It can be no coincidence that the Portuguese, Italians and Belgians who have had the most deaths were stationed in the most shelled areas. I'm sure the Americans and British knew of the risks and stationed their men in the less shelled areas." It is largely due to him that Portugal, once one of the world's great powers but in latter years a quiet, subservient country, has been at the forefront of demands for an international investigation. Through Mr Paulino's continued lobbying, depleted uranium has been on the front pages of the Portuguese papers every day since Christmas and has become the main issue in today's presidential elections, with candidates falling over each other to denounce Nato. A Portuguese mission is in Kosovo investigating radiation levels, and last week the country began a widespread screening programme, not only of peacekeepers but also journalists and aid workers who spent time in the Balkans. Mr Paulino first became concerned about his son's health when Hugo telephoned him from Kosovo complaining of headaches. He said: "I thought it was because they were sleeping on the ground, so I sent him a pillow. I wasn't really worried because he sounded happy building the camp and going on patrols. He liked guarding the nuns because they kept cows so gave him milk and cheese, and he told me about all the orphaned children that the local women were looking after and how he would play football with them." However, Mr Paulino was shocked when Hugo came back to Portugal last February after six months in Kosovo. "He had always been very strong and sporty but when he came back he was suffering headaches and nausea, and had no energy, sleeping non-stop for 22 hours." Mr Paulino drove his son to the military hospital in Lisbon. On the way, Hugo had a convulsion and when they arrived was put under sedation. He never regained consciousness, dying three weeks later. He was 24. When the doctors were unable to give him a cause of death and the military authorities refused to release the postmortem, Mr Paulino became suspicious. "One day they said it was meningitis, another encephalitis caused by herpes of the brain. It was all very strange." Eventually, he hired a lawyer to fight for access to the report. A friend in Belgium told him that Belgian television had run an item on how dust from depleted uranium ammunition might contaminate water supplies. He remembered Hugo telling him of the soldiers using water from the river to wash and to clean their teeth, and contacted doctors at the Belgian military hospital who discussed the suspected link. On the internet, he read of cases of Gulf War veterans who had also been exposed to depleted uranium. Nine months later, when Mr Paulino obtained his son's postmortem on December 29, his suspicions increased. It stated that while "more detailed studies are needed to characterise the cause of the illness, it is already possible to confirm that there can be no causal relation between the illness and his military service, specifically on that mission in Kosovo". "How could they not know the cause of death yet know that it is not linked to Kosovo?" he demanded in a press conference. Questioned on television, General Martins Barrento, the head of Portugal's armed forces, accused Mr Paulino of "wild inventions". But, with other cases such as that of Rui Alpalhao emerging, the public was in no mood for such remarks. Portugal's outgoing President Jorge Sampaio called for the general's resignation; the Prime Minister, Antonio Guterres, said Portugal would think twice about trusting Nato again; and a poll found that 71 per cent of the population thought Portugal should not send further troops to the Balkans. Mr Paulino said: "The little people have spoken,". "With the internet, it is no longer easy for Nato and governments to hide things. In future, people will demand to know the risks before joining such operations. They will ask is it worth the life of their son to save the life of one Kosovan?" ***************************************************************** 9 STINSON: BUILDING 1420 HAD 'BERYLLIUM ROOM' MySanAntonio: Express-News: Roddy Stinson Express-News: Roddy Stinson San Antonio Express-News On the Kelly/Beryllium Mystery trail ... Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy released a list of sites around the country where the "deadly metal beryllium or radioactive materials" were handled, and DOE officials urged sick workers who were employed at the facilities to contact the government. One of the 317 sites was Medina Base (now Lackland Annex) on San Antonio's Southwest Side. Through the 1950s and into the mid-1960s, the base was under the control of the Atomic Energy Commission, and workers disassembled nuclear weapons and stored nuclear components at the site. The mention of Medina Base and the federal government's sudden concern for employees exposed to hazardous materials decades ago were intriguing. But the reference to "the deadly metal beryllium" was more interesting to this columnizer because it brought to mind a 1998 item in which I told readers that beryllium had been found in the groundwater at Kelly AFB. In Saturday's column, I asked: "What was the source of the beryllium? "Which Kelly employees worked with the 'deadly metal'? "Could workers in nearby areas have been harmed?" My phone began ringing early Saturday morning. "I worked in the Special Weapons Directorate at Kelly in the '70s," said one caller — a South Side Kelly retiree — who had a fascinating story to tell. "One of my jobs involved mixing a classified compound that was highly radioactive and included beryllium. "My boss was assigned to the base's Radiation Safety Committee, and one day he asked me to represent him at a committee meeting. Whoever was in charge that day talked about beryllium and how dangerous it was. "That got my attention because there was one room in my building (1420) where there was so much beryllium that it was referred to as the 'Beryllium Room.' "In that room, there was a work table, an oven and a big machine where the classified compound was mixed. "The beryllium that was used in the compound came in a can — about the size of a paint can — and it looked like very fine black powder. "We used a hand-scoop to move the beryllium from one place to another, and we did this without any protection. No gloves. No masks. Nothing. "In the late '70s, there were so many complaints that people who worked in the Beryllium Room were given rubber gloves, face shields and breathing gizmos." But that wasn't the end of the health hazard, the retiree said. "At the other end of Building 1420, there were a lot of administrative offices, and because the Beryllium Room was one of the few quiet places in the building, people would go in there to eat their lunches and relax. That went on for years. "That's why the part of your (Saturday) column about the man who never worked with beryllium was a real mind-bender." (He was referring to the mention of an AP story out of Yakima, Wash., concerning a nuclear reservation worker whose blood samples revealed exposure to beryllium even though he never worked around the metal. The worker assumed "that he worked in a building for a few months where the element had once been used.") "There was a lot of cancer in 1420," the Kelly retiree said. "A lot of people who worked in that building are dead." And if that story isn't chilling enough, I will throw in this non- beryllium report from another former Kelly employee who called Saturday morning: "I worked in the painting/corrosion unit in buildings 375 and 365, and for one seven-year period, I scraped and painted elevator counterbalance weights used in the C-5 horizontal stabilizer. "My fellow employees and I were eventually informed that the weights were radioactive and that we had been exposed to harmful radiation. "Some of us were asked to go to a lab at Brooks Air Force Base to be tested. "When I asked the base radioactive officer if he was going to make an accident report to show that we had been exposed to radioactive materials, he got mad and said, 'You don't have to go!' "We never received a report of the tests, and the matter was quickly covered up. "When I retired, I had a physical exam, and I reviewed my medical file. "There was no mention of the incident in any document in my folder. "The same thing happened to a buddy of mine who was also in the painting/corrosion unit." As I was about to ask the caller how to contact his friend, he added: "He died a few years ago. "Stomach cancer." To leave a message for Roddy Stinson, call 250-3155, or e-mail rstinson@express- news.net. 01/13/2001 ***************************************************************** 10 Men are always changed by war ISSUE 2060 Sunday 14 JANUARY 2001 BY DR JAMES LE FANU The row of the past fortnight about a link between depleted uranium shells and leukaemia is, of course, an absurdity. But the reaction of those determined to make an issue of it is useful in revealing a wide spectrum of contributors to the modern scare story. The physical effect of radiation on human tissue is determined by physical laws as rigorous as the movement of the Earth around the Sun. The minimum amount of radiation that can cause leukaemia by inducing malignant change in the white blood cell precursors in the bone marrow was established in the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is 0.1Gy - pronounced "grey", a measurement of the absorption of radiation by the body. This is 100 times the dose of natural radiation from rocks and other sources to which we are exposed every year. If depleted uranium shells are to be implicated in the death from leukaemia of the Portuguese corporal Hugo Paulino three weeks after his return from Kosovo, he would have to have been exposed to levels of radiation 30,000 times greater than that which the body can tolerate in a year. This is clearly impossible. Indeed, depleted uranium is apparently no more radioactive than a household smoke detector. A study by the US Department of Defence of 33 Gulf War veterans walking around with fragments of DU shells in their bodies failed to show any evidence of damage to internal organs. Needless to say, the scaremongering circus of politicians, green activists, special interest groups, academic opportunists and sensationalist journalists is indifferent to such mundane but important facts. Every good story requires a villain and, in Britain, the MoD has been duly cast in this role. There have been attempts to draw parallels with the Gulf War Syndrome, about which the MoD was indeed initially sceptical. But there is no comparison between the death of a young man from a well-recognised disease such as leukaemia and the long-term adverse health effects after active military service. These have been observed as far back as the American Civil War. In 1918, 50,000 British, Canadian and American troops returned from battle "changed men", suffering from breathlessness, grinding fatigue, headaches and insomnia. They were almost all unfit for further duty and five years later only one in five had recovered. Many would undoubtedly have been exposed to chemical gases, but astonishingly it was never suggested that these might be the cause of their symptoms, probably because, at the time, chemicals were viewed much more favourably. By contrast, chemicals nowadays have an undeservedly tarnished reputation and, although the levels to which combatants in the Gulf and Kosovo were exposed were less than during the First War, it seems "obvious" that they should be to blame for the illnesses reported by veterans. Yet, despite an amazing $112 million of research, no specific group of chemicals has been identified as a cause of their symptoms. The similarity of these post-conflict syndromes over so long a period and in so many arenas of war would suggest rather the single unifying factor of a stressful reaction to exceptional and life-threatening events. But, while this might account for neuro-psychological problems, such as sleep disturbance, impaired concentration and depression, it is stretching the boundaries of the mind's influence over the body to argue that they might also account for physical symptoms such as aches and pains, skin rashes, diarrhoea and weight loss. For the moment, these issues remain unresolved, which is why the revelation of exposure to some new chemical - especially a radioactive one such as uranium - is so readily seized on as the "hidden" explanation for not only illness such as leukaemia, but also all the other post- conflict physical symptoms that have been reported. ***************************************************************** 11 OUR TROOPS KNOW WHICH RISKS ARE WORTH TAKING The Sunday Telegraph - Opinion Sunday 14 Jan 2001 Issue number 2066 BY JOHN KEEGAN We should respect their fears of depleted uranium, says JOHN KEEGAN IS war becoming too dangerous to fight? Might soldiers down tools unless battlefield conditions improve, or are at least stabilised? These are not nonsensical questions. The current furore over the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Kosovo is not just an issue about pollution. The demands made by servicemen, who may have been exposed to its effects, for information and investigation raises indirectly the whole question of how nasty weapons can be made before those whose work is on battlefields decide that the environment prevailing there is too dangerous for their further presence. Depleted uranium (DU) was not intended to frighten soldiers off battlefields or even to have anti-personnel effects. The qualities that made it attractive to military technologists are its high weight-to-mass ratio and its rigidity, both desirable in a metal required to penetrate armour. Last week, a leaked MoD report intensified the debate over the side effects of DU. Veterans claim they have contracted cancer and other diseases. The MoD denies there is any evidence to support their claims. Central to the debate is what happens inside an armoured vehicle after penetration. A DU missile vaporises once inside, filling the interior with tiny lethal particles. Some of the particles, however, are dispersed outside, particularly if the round does not penetrate. It is these particles, also associated with spent rounds lying on the battlefield, or with armoured hulks, that have given rise to concern. Even though the risk of irradiation is statistically small, soldiers - and civilians living in the combat area - who develop the appropriate symptoms naturally conclude that DU is to blame. The Ministry of Defence strenuously contests the connection. It points out that the type of radiation (Alpha) emitted by DU cannot penetrate clothing, or even human skin, and has harmful effects only if eaten, breathed or introduced into the body via a wound. It emphasises that exposure only marginally increases the chances of developing cancer, which in any case might take decades to appear. The ministry's position thus equates to the one it constructed around the issue of Gulf War Syndrome. There, to be fair, there was no proof at all that symptoms had any military cause (though one may now be emerging). The principle, however, was the same in both cases: steadfast denial of responsibility. This is a historic position, and not exclusively associated with the Ministry of Defence. It has been adopted and maintained by the Ministry of Agriculture in its denial that organo-phosphate sheep- dip, whose use it has long recommended, causes injury to farmers. Indeed, denial of responsibility is not associated with any particular ministry at all. It comes as automatically to civil servants as expectation of oxygen in the surrounding atmosphere. The very idea that a government might have to compensate individual citizens for its mistakes violates official beliefs about the relationship between the governing class and the governed that go back to Cardinal Wolsey. Civil servants are not only horrified by the financial implications of government having to pay for its errors, they are outraged by the very idea of citizens catching government out. DU is therefore likely to be a long-running story. It may, however, only be the beginning of another story altogether, with universal rather than merely domestic implications: the desire for the disinvention of advanced military devices. The desire would be military, not civilian. Part of the reason for that is that the two sides of any governmental military aparatus - those who conceive and design weapons, those who use weapons in action - exist in completely separate spheres of being. Soldiers have rather mundane demands to make of those who supply them with the tools of war - boots that don't leak, radios that work on demand, rifles that fire when the trigger is pressed. Civilian technologists, by contrast, are forever pushing forward the frontier of the possible, out of sheer curiosity. The results are often horrific. When they appear on the battlefield, soldiers unanimously wish such things hadn't been invented. Anti-personnel mines are an excellent example of the unwanted military development. Unknown until the middle years of the Second World War, their adoption by the Wehrmacht then resulted in the removal of a foot from many young infantrymen invading Hitler's Germany. They got nastier. Their use, particularly by non-state forces in Third World contries, got more widespread. By the Nineties their effects, particularly on children, had become an international scandal. Thanks in great measure to the late Diana, Princess of Wales's espousal of the cause, the anti-landmine campaign had by 1997 achieved their outlawing. It was a magnificent humanitarian effort. It also carried the unspoken support of all soldiers who had ever had to place their feet on unswept soil. The ban caused suprise. There is a widespread belief that arms control efforts are doomed to failure. That is not so. Widely forgotten is the highly effective outlawing of chemical weapons, also loathed by soldiers, as early as 1925. There have, admittedly, been breaches - Saddam used gas against his own population - but much more remarkable is how well the law has been upheld. Is it possible to predict what other types of weapon might be taken out of, or not brought into, use because of the abhorrence they arouse? There are grounds for optimism. I remember predicting to a conference of armaments manufacturers, held in a pleasant Bournemouth hotel in the Eighties, that public distaste would soon bring an end to the manufacture of anti-personnel mines, to be met with collective disbelief. That exchange encourages me to suggest that blinding agents will not be deployed. Experiments with battlefield lasers are already far advanced and there are prototypes. No government has yet, however, added a developed weapon to its armoury. There are strong grounds for hope that the anticipated odium, and soldierly fear of such an obviously double-edged device, will deter any from doing so. Very high fragmentation projectiles, cluster bombs and air-fuel explosive weapons might also be put on the list. All have "overkill" characteristics which make them repugnant to the soldier on the ground. It may seem odd that a man who has agreed to risk his life should have views about what means may be used to kill him. But that is a civilian's delusion. Soldiers make utterly rational judgments about which risks are fair and which unfair. DU ammunition has just been added to the unfair category. It will not be the last addition. ÿSir John Keegan is Defence Editor of The Daily Telegraph ***************************************************************** 12 Sick, bleeding and losing nails: the girl who played with Nato uranium Independent By Robert Fisk in Bratunac, Bosnia 14 January 2001 Sladjana Sarenac remembers the pieces of a depleted-uranium bomb that she picked up outside her home in Sarajevo. "It glittered and I did what all children do," she says. "I was six years old and I pretended to make cookies out of the bits of metal and the soil in the garden. Then I hid the pieces on a shelf because my puppy Tina was playing with it." Sladjana is now 12 and has been seriously ill ever since. Her nails have repeatedly fallen out of her fingers and toes. She has suffered internal bleeding, constant diarrhoea and vomiting. When her Serb parents fled their home in the Sarajevo suburb of Hadjici after the Dayton Accord, she took her dog with her. It had three puppies. Then Tina died. Then the puppies. Sladjana has a desperately pale face and tired eyes. Everyone tells her she will be all right. I tell her that too. Sladjana's parents spend 450 German marks a month (œ140) for her medicines - she takes 2mg of Benesedin twice a day, 600mg of magnesium tablets once a day - but the family are too poor to pay the bills. In their refuge home in Bratunac the electricity has been cut off. The landlady wants them out. And, needless to say, no one from Nato has bothered to enquire about Sladjana's mysterious sickness. Nato's raids followed the shelling of the Sarajevo marketplace and the Serb massacre of thousands of Muslim refugees in and around Srebrenica. Sladjana did not see the American A-10 aircraft that dropped the bombs around her home in the summer of 1995, including the round that exploded on her family's small farm. She was hiding downstairs. But her father Jovo watched the planes, so low that he could see the pilot of each aircraft as they dived. "The houses in our street were very close to a [Serb] army base which made the bombing very intense," he says. "From 30 August to 15 September 1995, we not only got Nato bombings but also shells fired by the [Nato] Rapid Reaction Force on Mount Igman. The pilots were breaking the sound barrier and Sladjana never slept." Sladjana's sickness yet again places a heavy onus upon Nato to disclose all it knows about depleted uranium munitions and to start an immediate investigation among Bosnian Serbs from Hadjici about how those closest to the bombings in 1995 became so frequently the victims of cancer and leukaemia. Nato has already acknowledged that ingestion of DU particles in the immediate aftermath of a bomb explosion can have a serious effect on health. Here are civilians who clearly were only metres away from DU explosions who are suffering a devastating incidence of cancer, who would willingly speak to Nato investigators, but who Nato has not made the slightest effort to talk to. Jovo and his wife, Sretanka - and Sladjana herself - believe that her fascination with the bomb parts was her undoing. "She was playing with them like all children do," Sretanka says. "Out of curiosity, we all went to see what it looked like after the bombings. We went into the fields where the craters were. Then in the middle of October Sladjana had this kind of yellow sand under the nails on her hands and toes. Then the skin round the nails became red and it hurt her a lot. She was upset, crying a lot, vomiting and suffering diarrhoea." That's when Sladjana began her calvary of hospitals; a clinic in Sarajevo, a clinic in Bratunac, medical examinations in Belgrade. Sretanka produces a wad of fading, thin carbon copies of typed hospital reports. In a hospital at Blazuj, she was given two-days of blood transfusions. Doctors told her she had somehow been irradiated. Her fingernails and toenails fell out. She spent 30 hours in a coma. "In the early stages, we didn't think it was anything to do with the bombing," her father says. "Now we are aware of the kind of bombs that were fired and of what happened to other people from Hadjici." Up to 300 men, women and children who lived close to the site of the bombings in 1995 have died of cancers and leukaemia over the past five years. It does occur to me - though I do not say so - that there are doctors aplenty in S-For, the Nato force now controlling Bosnia. And that those doctors must know all about depleted-uranium munitions and its risks. I have a feeling they will not be visiting the dark house in Bratunac where Sladjana lives. ***************************************************************** 13 Press and military, take note - you just can't trust the MoD Independent Almost half a century ago, a select group of journalists was invited to travel to the Pacific Ocean to watch Britain's first hydrogen bomb test By Joan Smith 14 January 2001 One of them was William Connor, better known as the Daily Mirror columnist Cassandra. "No special protective clothing is required, " he was told, but it was suggested that "observers should take a change of clothing for evening wear". Having duly packed their dinner jackets, the reporters witnessed the test from a distance of 30 miles and were astonished by the impact of the megaton explosion. The "hellish glare of white-hot heat" seared their closed eyelids, and they felt a warm flush spread through their bodies. Twenty-five years later, the journalists and national servicemen who attended the tests started to ask anxious questions about their experience. Like the veterans of recent conflicts in the Balkans and the Gulf, they too wanted to know whether the event could be responsible for a range of illnesses, from cataracts to leukaemia, that seemed to have afflicted them in unexpectedly high numbers. What happened next - confident denials from the government, leaked documents, more official reassurance, widespread distrust - set a pattern that is being repeated to this day. Last week, the British Government insisted there was little danger to troops following the use of depleted uranium (DU) shells in the Balkans. Then there was a U-turn and a voluntary screening programme for veterans was announced. The officially stated purpose was reassurance, the line being that there was no evidence of a link between exposure to DU and tumours. Then, with magnificent timing, someone leaked a four-year-old report warning the British army that soldiers exposed to dust from DU ammunition risked developing lung, lymph and brain cancer. The Government responded by dismissing the report as inaccurate, but could not dispel suspicions of a cover-up. The World Health Organisation says there has been no rise in leukaemia among Kosovan Albanians, who have had to live with the debris of some of the 31,000 rounds of DU ammunition fired by US warplanes during the conflict. Yet Nato troops were photographed in white radiation suits and masks last week as they checked a site where a Yugoslav tank had been hit by a DU warhead. So does the debris pose a danger or not? Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands have reported a spate of cancer cases among Balkans veterans. Italy and Germany have led calls for Nato to abandon the use of DU ammunition until tests establish whether or not there is a health risk. Portugal's prime minister, Antonio Guterres, has sent three cabinet ministers to Kosovo to conduct an inquiry after a soldier died of a brain disease and another developed leukaemia. Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, has been reported as saying that the conflicts that occurred in Bosnia and Kosovo had created "a horrible environmental problem". This leaves Britain and the US isolated. It has not helped that Nato's spokesman on these matters, Mark Laity, is a former BBC defence correspondent who was widely seen as too sympathetic to his future employers during the Kosovo conflict. Mr Laity claimed last week that the medical consensus was that DU did not pose health problems. "It's got less radiation than the normal uranium that can be found in your own backyard, " he said. This is a wearily familiar and misleading claim. It has been known for a long time that a proportion of cancers is caused by background radiation, though no one can point to a particular case with confidence. It is sensible to restrict additional exposure as much as possible, a principle that seems not to have been applied with sufficient rigour in former Yugoslavia and during the Gulf War. What does seem clear is that those speaking for the British Government have been issuing soothing statements for decades, while the health risks posed by state-of-the-art weapons have not been sufficiently understood. Back in 1950, RAF commanders were assured there was no risk to aircrew whose job was to fly through the atomic cloud to collect samples after a nuclear test. It was only after three explosions that the truth was recognised: the operation was an "unexpected radiation hazard" not just for aircrew but for ground staff dealing with the planes once they landed. The sampling canisters from the first Totem test in 1953 were so radioactive they sent Geiger counters off the scale when they were taken into the laboratory for analysis. The moral for service personnel and journalists alike, I'm afraid, is don't trust the MoD. Decades after her husband watched that H- bomb test in 1957, the widow of Cassandra wondered whether her husband's subsequent ill health had been linked with what seemed, at the time, like the assignment of a lifetime. Reporters who covered the wars in Kosovo and Iraq may one day have the same thought. ***************************************************************** 14 Uranium symptoms match US report as cancer fears spread Guardian | PETER BEAUMONT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS EDITOR SUNDAY JANUARY 14, 2001 THE OBSERVER Inhaling depleted uranium particles causes acute symptoms identical to those claimed by sick servicemen from the Balkan and Gulf conflicts, according to a US government toxicology report. The 1998 report by the US Agency for Toxic Substances describes symptoms which include fatigue, shortness of breath, lymphatic problems, bronchial complaints, weight loss, bleeding and unsteady gait. Italy is investigating the suspicious leukaemia deaths of six of its peacekeepers from Kosovo, where the weapons were heavily used by US pilots. Cases of cancer have also been reported among Belgian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers. Governments across Europe have rushed to test their peacekeepers, with Turkey the first country to announce it had detected contamination in two of its soldiers. Britain - one of the last European governments to offer screening last week - continues to deny any significant health risk. Veterans have accused the Ministry of Defence of a cover-up. The American report will put further pressure on the MoD to announce a moratorium on the use, manufacture and testing of DU ammunition. It follows the disclosure that the US Navy has already phased out DU weapons for its Phalanx anti-missile gun on safety grounds, forcing the Royal Navy to announce on Friday that it was following suit. A MoD spokesman said yesterday: 'The US manufacturers have decided not to manufacture depleted uranium rounds any more. They are moving to alternatives. We have no choice but to do the same. All current and proposed future buys of Phalanx ammunition will be of the tungsten variety.' The Navy's move came as newspapers published a leaked Pentagon document from 1993 which warned: 'When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk... that increase can be quantified in terms of projected days of life lost.' Another warning in the early Nineties came from an official at AEA Technology, the trading name of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, in a document looking at what might happen if all the DU fired in the Gulf War by tanks - about 8 per cent of the total DU used there - were inhaled. If that happened, it said, there could be half a million deaths as a result by 2000. Experts in DU poisoning claim that some Iraqi crewmen in tanks hit by DU weapons died not from uranium shrapnel but from acute depleted uranium poisoning on the spot. The New York Times revealed last week that the Pentagon had urged all Allied forces in Kosovo to take special precautions when approaching the remains of DU ammunition. The document - called 'hazard awareness' - was issued by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and recommended health screening for some personnel. Last week brought claims by three prison officers from HMP Featherstone, near Wolverhampton, that they had tested for raised levels of uranium following two fires in the last four years at the adjoining Royal Ordnance factory that produces the shells. þAdditional reporting by Nick Paton Walsh Guardian Unlimited c Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 15 Gulf war file gave uranium warning THE SUNDAY TIMES: NEWS January 14 2001 BRITAIN WARNINGS that depleted uranium (DU) from weapons used in the Gulf war posed serious health risks have been revealed in leaked documents from the government's adviser on nuclear safety, writes Jonathon Carr-Brown. The Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) prepared a risk assessment and calculated that, if all the DU dust used was inhaled, up to 500,000 people could "theoretically" die. It admitted that this could not happen in practice, but added: "It does indicate a significant problem." The paper was sent to Royal Ordnance, the military's principal ammunition supplier, by AEA Technology, part of the Atomic Energy Authority, which advises on nuclear issues. Last week Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, repeated the government's position that DU ammunition is safe. However, the AEA document and others show the risks have been known for at least a decade. Sean Rusling, from the Gulf Veterans Association, said: "There is now too much documentary evidence for the government to ignore. The precautionary approach demands we stop using these weapons as they clearly cause indiscriminate damage to health - and that's been known about since they invented DU munitions." The paper, marked "restricted", calculates that at least 5,000 tank rounds were fired by the US alone during the Gulf war. This would mean 50,000lb of DU would have been left on the battlefied either in shrapnel or dust. Using formulas from the International Committee of Radiological Protection, it calculates the maximum deaths possible and warns of "potential hazards" from the possible "spread of radioactive and toxic contamination as a result of firing in battle". Another section states: "Inhalation of airborne DU dust particles can lead to unacceptable body burdens and manufacturers of DU munitions take precautions to ensure that their staff are not exposed to undue risk for this reason." DU shells flare when they are fired, leaving a vapour trail of radioactive dust along the shell's trajectory. Once the shell hits its target, the DU is reduced, under extreme temperatures, to a fine cloud of low-level radioactive dust. The "threat report" was distributed among personnel at Royal Ordnance, the Ministry of Defence and sent to the UK's ambassador in Kuwait. A covering letter accompanying the report, written by Paddy Bartholomew, a business development manager, says: "The whole subject of the contamination of Kuwait is emotive and thus must be dealt with in a sensitive manner. It is necessary to inform the Kuwait government of the problem in a useful way." ÿ Ray Bristow, a Gulf war veteran, was last night prevented from ÿtravelling to Iraq when the Foreign Office refused to allow his ÿchartered plane to leave Britain. Bristow wanted to see the alleged ÿeffects of DU on children in the south of Iraq. about a licence to reproduce material from The Sunday Times, ***************************************************************** 16 THE SUNDAY TIMES: NEWS January 14 2001 BRITAIN EXTRACTS FROM "THREAT REPORT" COMPILED BY THE UK'S ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY AFTER THE GULF WAR TO ASSESS IMPACT OF USING DEPLETED URANIUM SHELLS. "An accurate figure for the quantity of DU fired is difficult to acquire. A best estimate is that the US tanks fired more than 5000 DU rounds, US aircraft many 10s of thousands and UK tanks fired a small number of DU rounds. The tank ammunition alone will amount to greater than 50,000lbs of DU, which is equivalent to approoximately 360 GBq of radioactivity....If the tank inventory of DU was inhlaed, the latest International Committee of Radiological Protection (ICRP) risk factor of 5 x 10 (-2) per Sv calculates 500,000 potential deaths. Obviously this theorectical figure is not realistic, however it does indicate a significant problem." "Inhalation of air borne DU dust particles can lead to unacceptable body burdens and manufacturers of DU munitions take precautions to ensure that their staff are not exposed to undue risk for this reason." "The limit of intake for members of the public [of DU] is less than 2.2 x 10h 3g in one year and this could easily be exceeded if special arrangements are not made. This would equate to a radioactive doese of ImSv per year, the limit that has been proposed by the ICRP. Exceeding the does puts the public at risk." LETTER FROM PADDY BARTHOLOMEW, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, DEFENCE, AT AEA INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY (COMMERCIAL ARM OF THE UK'S ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY) TO J.Y SANDERS AT ROYAL ORDNANCE DATED 30 APRIL 1991. MARKED UK RESTRICTED "The whole subject of contamination of Kuwait is emotive and thus must be dealt with in a sensitive manner. It is necessary to inform the Kuwait Government of the problem in a useful way and this Mr Alastair Parker, Regional Marketing Directorate1, Defence Export Services has suggested is probably best done in conjunction with the UK Ambassador in Kuwait" EXTRACT OF MEMO FROM US ARMY CHEMICAL MEDICAL SCHOOL ON DEPLETED URANIUM SAFETY TRAINING DATED 18 AUGUST 1993 WRITTEN BY COL ROBERT G CLAYPOOL DIRECTOR OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICES "When soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust, they incur a potential increase in cancer risk. The magnitude of that increase can be quantified (in terms of projected day of life lost) if the DU intake is known (or can be estimated)." "Expected pysiological effects from exposure to DU dust include possible increased risk of cancer (lung or bone) and kidney damage." "You are correct in your assessment that much of the needed data on DU does not exist" EXTRACT OF MEMO MARKED SECRET FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY OUTLINING THE NEED TO MAKE THE SAUDI ARABIANS AWARE OF THE EFFECT OF DU WEAPONS DATED 8 SEPTEMBER 1990. "Additionally Maj Knipple related that the spent rounds emit low level Alpha radiation which can be washed off after contact, but prolonged exposure could cause illness" "In the meantime, all efforts should be made by the I MEP to 'lay the cards on the table' to the Saudis on the DU round radiation characteristics." REPORT PREPARED FOR THE US ARMY PRODUCTION BASE MODERNISATION ACTIVITY, PICATINNY ARSENAL, NEW JERSEY ON THE PROS AND CONS OF USING DU SHELLS VERSUS TUNGSTEN SHELLS IN THE GULF WAR DATED JULY 1990. Material Properties sp;Heavy metal, radioactive... sp;Heavy metal, not radioactive ... Combat bsp;Exposure to military personnel may be greater than those allowed in peacetime, and could be locally significant on the battlefield. Cleanup of penetrators and fragments, as well as impact site decontamination may be required. Public Relations bsp;Public relations efforts are indicated, and may not be effective due to the public's perception of radioactivity. Fielding and combat activities present the potential for adverse international reaction. bsp;Public relations efforts are not needed. sp;Increased costs can be expected for Du public relations when compared to tungsten. Potential Health Hazards bsp;Low level alpha radiation emitter which is linked to cancer when exposurers are internal, chemical toxicity causing kidney damage. Health hazards (i.e. uranium) have been extensively investigated. "It is our initial hypotheses that impacts to civilian populations will not be significant from combat use [of DU], including post combat impacts. However, aerosol DU exposure to soldiers on the battlefield could be significant with potential radiological and toxicological effects. These health impacts may be impossible to reliably quantify even with additional detailed studies." INTERNAL MEMO FROM DEFENSE NUCLEAR AGENCY DATED MARCH 1991 "Toxic war souvenirs, political furor and post conflict clean-up (host nation agreement) are only some of the issues tht must be addressed. Alpha particles (uranium oxidants) from expended rounds is a health concern but Beta particles from fragments and intact rounds is a serious health threat, with a possible exposure rate of 200 milliruds per hour on contact." about a licence to reproduce material from The Sunday Times, ***************************************************************** 17 Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing -Doctor SATURDAY JANUARY 13 1:19 PM ET By Gordana Filipovic BELGRADE (Reuters) - A Yugoslav pathologist said on Saturday about sites) with depleted uranium shells in 1994 later died of various forms of cancer. Doctor Zoran Stankovic, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine of the Yugoslav Military-Medical Academy in Belgrade, linked the deaths--which totaled about 10 percent of the community--to radioactive weapons. Some of the victims had worn flak jackets made from shells with depleted uranium (DU), he told Reuters in an interview. ``Four hundred people died of various forms of cancer in the past five years. They were part of a community of some 4,000 Serbs from Hadzici (near Sarajevo) who moved to Bratunac north-east of Sarajevo, '' Stankovic said. ``The death pattern was easy to follow in an isolated population, particularly with an increased occurrence of malignant diseases and deaths,'' Stankovic, who performed some 4,000 autopsies, said. Many of the Serbs from Hadzici had worked in a factory repairing tanks and armored vehicles that was heavily bombed by NATO in 1994. At the time, DU shells found on the ground were recycled and used to produce flack jackets. ``Some of these Serbs wore the jackets and died,'' Stankovic said. He said no organized multi-disciplinary study had been launched to establish links between DU and health hazards. But he said he strongly felt the link existed. DOUBTS DU IS HARMLESS He was commenting on reports by experts from some Western countries that denied any link between radioactive weaponry and cancers after a renewed DU scare swept many European states whose soldiers serve in Kosovo, where NATO fired thousands of missiles containing the radioactive substance. ``If it is so harmless as some people say, I would like them to collect all the remainders of the DU shells, take them to a nice house somewhere in Brussels, store the shells in the cellar and have their children playing in the house,'' Stankovic said. Cases of cancer have been reported among Italian, Belgian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers who served a peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO faces a potential split over the long-lasting health impact of using the armor-piercing depleted uranium shells which critics blame for cancer among the troops. Britain, NATO and the United States insist there is no evidence of a link between DU weapons and cases of leukemia among Italian soldiers. But Italy has demanded a probe into the deaths of at least seven of its soldiers from leukemia after duty in Bosnia and Kosovo. Stankovic said DU munitions were inflicting physical and thermal damage on human beings, while exposure to their ionizing radiation was seen as affecting bone marrow and the reproductive tract and causing congenital anomalies. Particles from DU explosions were contaminating the soil and underground waters, posing threat to plants and animals, he added. UN MUST INVESTIGATE DU HAZARDS ``The Americans have studied effects of the Gulf war on their soldiers. Their study showed that 76 percent of their descendants were born with physical anomalies. Some were born with six fingers, some without an arm or a leg,'' he said. organize a study of possible links between DU weapons and health hazards, as the world organization was directly responsible for the use of the depleted uranium weapons. But the study should take time because an illness takes time to develop, he said. ``NATO will have to finance the research. NATO will have to pay for regular medical screening of the local population. If we want to help the people, they must be screened every six months. NATO must also send its experts to collect the leftover DU shells, because we don't need them,'' Stankovic said. NATO says it had fired 31,000 shells containing DU during its 1999 three-month bombing of Yugoslavia to halt Belgrade's repression in Kosovo. Most hit Kosovo, southern Serbia and Montenegro. The Yugoslav Army has so far reported no cases of cancer among its members who served in Kosovo during the air strikes. It says screening of 1,000 soldiers had negative results. But Stankovic said the 1,000 soldiers represented less than one percent of some 150,000 troops deployed in Kosovo. He also said he had received reports of two cases of eyeball cancers. ``These two soldiers had served in the area where thousands of shells fell. My question to international medical experts is how does the surface of the eye-ball reacts when exposed to the DU dust and does the dust causes the cancer.'' reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is ***************************************************************** 18 U.S. News: Did U.S. weapons in Bosnia make Italians sick? DEPLETED CREDIBILITY Did U.S. weapons make Italian soldiers sick? BY RICHARD J. NEWMAN Radiation. Cancer. The two words are so synonymous that when 30 Italian peacekeepers who had served in Bosnia and Kosovo came down with serious illnesses, including six who died from cancer, suspicion immediately centered on "depleted uranium" rounds NATO had fired during bombing raids in 1995 and 1999. The 30-millimeter-long projectiles, fired from the cannons on A-10 tank-killing jets, are made from the substance left over when natural uranium is "enriched" to produce material for nuclear reactors and atomic weapons. To be sure, "DU" rounds are not benign. The uranium's density allows it to penetrate armor at high velocity. Upon contact, small particles break off and ignite spontaneously. The question is whether such "atomization" of the weapon produces lingering toxic substances. Last week, Italy called for a ban on the use of DU weapons while researchers study the health effects. The United Nations, meanwhile, has gathered data from 11 sites in Kosovo where DU rounds were fired, and it plans to release findings in March. But the odds seem slim that DU will be fingered as the ailments' cause. After DU made its first battlefield appearance in the 1991 Persian Gulf War-as an aerial weapon and as a larger antiarmor round fired by the Abrams tank-private and government scientists did numerous studies into whether it could have caused the various health problems known as "Gulf War illness." "The available evidence, " concluded one Pentagon report, "indicates that . . . adverse radiological health effects are not expected." And there are plenty of other ways to get ill in the Balkans. After several wars, and decades of unchecked industrialization, the region oozes toxic pollution. Many old industrial sites have served as NATO facilities. At a French garrison in Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, NATO troops got sick so frequently that commanders ordered environmental testing of the surrounding area. Toxicity from a local battery plant turned out to be several thousand times American tolerance levels. "My guess is that when all this is over," says a former Army commander in Bosnia, "we will find that people who served in the Balkans were exposed to extraordinary health risks. But none having to do with DU." ***************************************************************** 19 The Western perfidy BY Mubarik ShahAt no point in time has the display of western perfidy in short supply, though. But what should take the cake now is the furor currently rocking various European capitals over serious illnesses suspected to have been caused, in cases fatally, to their troops by the use of depleted uranium-tipped weapons in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The storm has been triggered off by the death of seven Italian soldiers due to an unexplained cancer. They had fought in Yugoslavia and Rome insists they were potentially affected by the toxic dust released in the atmosphere by these weapons. Since soldiers of other nationalities who had participated in the Yugoslavia operation are now being discovered to have suffered similar unexplained leukemia and other serious diseases, the bug of what has come to be called the Balkan Syndrome is biting everyone and everywhere in those countries. Their publics are agitating and aghast; their media are angry; their human rights activists and environmentalists are livid. Their governments are being asked difficult questions which they find difficult to answer and they are being rolled on the mat for hushing up the matter. Their military establishments are on the defensive, failing to assuage the public outcry as to why they let their soldiers be exposed to such health hazards. Just contrast this with what was the reaction in these very western nations when soon after the 1991 Gulf War the Iraqis came out with reports that their doctors were receiving patients with unfamiliar diseases and babies born with deformities never seen before. They said they suspected some kind of nuclear weapons were used by the allied forces led by the United States during that war. But they were dismissed summarily and disdainfully. The political leaderships of the western nations involved in that operation rejected the Iraqi contentions out of hand. Their military commands laughed off Baghdad’s suspicions about the use of nuclear weapons. Their media dubbed it all as just another propaganda gimmick of Saddam Hussein and not fit for investigation. And that special breed of omnipresent western human rights workers and environmentalists found Iraq not worth even a visit. Truly, when it comes to the value of human life, the West has its own standards and criterion. On that scale, the American lives figure on the top, followed by those of the west Europeans. All the rest value no more than flies in the western eyes, which can be swatted down to death or swatted off to fly, depending on the will of the masters of the West. Just recall that famous statement of Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State. When reminded that the crippling UN sanctions were exacting a heavy toll in life on the Iraqis, especially their children, without batting an eyelid she snapped, for stripping Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction, death of even one million Iraqi children was a small price to pay. The madam succinctly summed up the western view of human life. Nothing could be more reflective of that view than the contrasting responses that these western capitals have displayed to the distressed Iraqi civilians and to the travails of their own soldiers. Both have been the victims of the same calamity. But in the case of the Iraqis, even as the scale of the havoc of radioactivity was horrendous, these western nations were absolutely apathetic. But now that they have discovered a few of their own soldiers similarly afflicted, they all are afire at the calamitous consequences of the use of depleted uranium-tipped weapons But that is not the end of the western perfidy. Even at this hour of its distress, the community is being still more perfidious. Just note, all the uproar is about the health and well being of its own soldiers. There is not even a word of concern about the people where those depleted uranium-tipped missiles and bombs were dropped and exploded. The soldiers who took part in those operations and stayed in the war theatres during and after the fighting might have been exposed to the toxic dust for a while. But what about those people who are the inhabitants of those areas? They were there during the fighting and are still there after the war ended. Surely, they have inhaled much more of that deadly dust than those soldiers. They may have even otherwise been affected by the released radioactivity. Is there anyone in the West even thinking of those wretched souls? No. Certainly not. After initial hesitation and procrastination, the European nations who had sent troops for fighting in the Balkans have given in to the public pressures and have started testing their soldiers for any affliction from depleted uranium. But nobody over there is even talking of similar tests for Iraqis, Kuwaitis, Bosnians and Yugoslavs, for instance. The tanks possibly penetrated by the depleted uranium- tipped missiles and bombs are still rusting on the roadsides, residential districts, highways and countryside of Yugoslavia. Those are virtual death traps; but for unknowing innocent children they are the favourite playthings. How many of those poor things are getting affected is anybody’s guess. In the Gulf War, the allied forces rained tons of bombs and missiles on Iraq and in Kuwait to vacate the Iraqi aggression. Arguably, the munitions used included depleted uranium-tipped weapons. The locations that bore the attacks with such weapons must have been rendered extremely dangerous for human living. An atmospheric research study conducted on Kuwait City after two years after the war indeed showed depleted uranium particles in the air. The situation in Iraq that received a heavy bombing punishment must be far worse. But nobody in the west seems bothered about that. Ironically, the assailants are getting all the concern, attention and sympathy from there. The assailed are not even mentioned. This is callous. Whatever the sins of their rulers, the peoples cannot be made to receive the punishment like that for their crimes. And yet the West boasts of being a community of feeling human beings. What a joke! ©Copyright 2000 The Frontier Post ***************************************************************** 20 Cold War Comps The Register Citizen By ANDREW BLEJWAS, Register Citizen Staff January 13, 2001 The Torrington Comapny NORTHWEST CORNER - TWO AREA COMPANIES ARE ON A GOVERNMENT LIST GIVING THEIR COLD WAR ERA WORKERS A CHANCE TO QUALIFY FOR COMPENSATION IF THEIR JOBS MADE THEM SICK. THOSE TWO COMPANIES, THE TORRINGTON COMPANY IN TORRINGTON AND NEW ENGLAND LIME COMPANY IN CANAAN, ARE ON A LIST OF FACILITIES DEVELOPED AS PART OF THE ENERGY EMPLOYEES OCCUPATIONAL ILLNESS COMPENSATION ACT OF 2000. That act established a program to provide compensation to individuals working at a wide variety of companies throughout the nation. The program is intended to "provide compensation to individuals who developed illnesses as a result of their employment in nuclear weapons production-related activities and at certain federally-owned facilities in which radioactive materials were used." On Dec. 7, 2000, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order directing the Department of Energy to list facilities covered under this act in the Federal Register. Listed on the register were 317 sites that employed 600,000 people in 37 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Marshall Islands. Of those 317 sites, 11 were in Connecticut including those in Litchfield County and locations in Seymour, Danbury, and Hartford. The U.S. Department of Energy divided facilities on the list into three different categories depending on the type of work they did. Compensation options and mechanisms were defined differently for each of the categories: atomic weapons employer facilities, department of energy facilities, and beryllium vendors. Both the Torrington and New England Lime Companies are on the register as atomic weapons employers. This broader category includes facilities in which the primary work was not related to atomic weapons, and as a result they are not known as atomic weapons facilities. The energy department facilities are defined as any "facility handling radioactive materials or beryllium in which the Department had management operation, management and integration, environmental remediation, or construction and maintenance contracts." Firms listed as beryllium vendors include private firms that processed, produced, or provided beryllium metal for the D.O.E. The atomic weapons employers are also listed as companies that "processed or produced ... materiel that emitted radiation and was used in the production of an atomic weapon." Department of Energy officials said Friday they are currently working on a location specific list of how each facility was involved in nuclear weapons production-related activities which is expected to be made available by the end of the month. Dwight Keeney of the Torrington Company, a division of Ingersoll- Rand, said Friday the company was surprised by the information and was looking into how it made the energy department's register. By late afternoon it had determined that its atomic weapons employer designation was the result of a "small-scale experiment for another firm," it conducted in the early 1950s. Torrington Company officials said they were unaware of the experiment and didn't know of any other involvement it may have had with radioactive materials. The experiment conducted for Bridgeport Brass between 1951 and 1953 was a manufacturing experiment on uranium rods. Officials said the experiment involved "a limited quantity of material for a short time period." Atelephone number and spokesman for New England Lime could not be located Friday. Jeff Sherwood of the Department of Energy said the register, which extends back to the Second World War, covers businesses that played both large and small roles in nuclear weapons related production. The energy department has established a toll-free number, 1-877-447- 9756 at its Office of Worker Advocacy. The Torrington Company is encouraging any employees who may have had any involvement with the experiment to contact the Department of Energy. (The Associated Press contributed to this report) cThe Register Citizen 2001  Copyright c 1995-2000 PowerAdz.com, LLC. Zwire!, AdQuest, AdQuest Classifieds, AdQuest 3D R are Trademarks of [*]PowerAdz.com, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 21 Iraq Condemns US, British Use of Depleted Uranium Shells Sunday, January 14, 2001, updated at 20:22(GMT+8) War, and demanded those responsible be brought to trial for "perpetrating crimes." In an editorial, Ath-Thawra, mouthpiece of the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party, said that the U.S. and Britain dropped a total of 944,000 depleted uranium shells in Iraq during the six-week Gulf War. "The radiation of these fatal shells has caused 120,000 cancer cases and other diseases in Iraq," the editorial said. Iraq has long blamed the radioactive shells for a sharp increase of cancer cases in the country since the Gulf War. It urged the international community to move quickly to bring to trial related U.S. and British officials "for perpetrating crimes against humanity" and ban the manufacturing, marketing or use of this kind of bombs. Baghdad repeatedly condemned the US-led Western allies for dropping depleted uranium shells in the south and other parts of the country which caused an environmental disaster. As early as in 1998, Iraq filed a formal complaint to U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan in 1998, reserving the right to demand compensations from the U.S. and Britain for the use of depleted uranium shells during the Gulf War. It said those shells had caused harm to the health of people and contaminated the environment. In This Section ÿ An official Iraqi daily on Sunday condemned the use of depleted uranium shells by the United States and Britain in the 1991 Gulf War, and demanded those responsible be brought to trial for "perpetrating crimes." Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 22 Hoon backs DU weapons BBC News | UK | Sunday, 14 January, 2001, 16:40 [I] A Yugoslav scientist checks the radioactivity of DU ammunition Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has warned that banning the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons would put British servicemen's lives at risk. Mr Hoon said the controversial weapons were "astonishingly effective" and had saved lives in the Gulf War and the Balkans. His comments come 24 hours after the Royal Navy revealed it was phasing out DU ammunition because the manufacturer had ceased production. The governments of several European countries are investigating claims that DU - which is toxic and radioactive - has affected the health of servicemen and women. On Monday there is to be a House of Lords debate on the issue, which coincides with the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of the Gulf War. We've always recognised that there was a limited risk to the use of depleted uranium weapons.[I] Geoff Hoon Mr Hoon said it was "inappropriate" to ban DU-tipped ammunition because there was no scientific evidence to support claims that it caused illness, including leukaemia, in military personnel exposed. He told Sky News: "We've always recognised that there was a limited risk to the use of depleted uranium weapons. We have always instructed members of the armed forces accordingly. "Beyond that specified, limited risk there are no risks associated with depleted uranium and certainly no proven link between its use and any illness. [I] Geoff Hoon: "They are astonishingly effective" "The best scientific evidence we have been able to secure indicates that there is no link between the consequences of the use of depleted uranium and any specific illness." Mr Hoon said the British armed forces would continue to use DU weapons because they were "astonishingly effective" and: "In that sense are protecting British forces in time of war." He promised that if "clear scientific evidence" emerged which convinced him there was a link between their use and illness then he would take the appropriate decision. But he added: "In the absence of such evidence it would not be appropriate to put British lives at risk." Labour peer Lord Morris of Manchester, who is sponsoring Monday's debate in the Lords, warned the government that it had a "compelling duty" to act justly towards those who fought for their country. SCREENING PROGRAMME There have been claims that contaminated land in Kosovo where DU was used by Nato in tank-busting missiles. Armed Forces Minister John Spellar told parliament last week DU-tipped ammunition was safe if used correctly but he announced a voluntary screening programme for any military personnel who had served in the Balkans. [I] British soldiers who served in Kosovo will be eligible for health checks The Navy has been forced to phase out its use of DU-tipped weapons because the US manufacturer has ceased production. The shells will be replaced by more expensive but equally effective tungsten-tipped alternatives. The ammunition is understood to be used in the American-designed Phalanx anti-missile system, which is fitted to the Navy's Type 42 destroyers and three other vessels. The Royal Navy's stocks of DU ammunition will be exhausted by 2003, although the shells may well be withdrawn before then. The US Navy has been phasing out DU for a decade and it is believed the ammunition has been replaced totally by tungsten. ***************************************************************** 23 Radiation exposure site list raises questions Buffalo News - GOVERNMENT REPORT By JOHN F. BONFATTI News Staff Reporter 1/13/01 Bill Le Van walked around with a cigar dangling from his mouth but never lit it, according to his widow. In fact, as long as Dorothy Le Van knew him - and they were married 50 years - she never saw him smoke. Yet he died of lung cancer last July. And he also had skin cancer, the extent of which stunned his doctors. "Something did it to him, I'll tell you that much," Le Van said Friday. She suspects her late husband's illness might have been related to his employment at the defunct Simonds Saw and Steel Co. in Lockport, where the government acknowledged workers were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in the 1940s and 1950s. Now, former workers at Simonds - or their survivors - and 316 other sites around the country where private contractors did nuclear weapons work for the government might be eligible for compensation. The compensation could be substantial, a lump sum of $150,000 or compensation for lost wages, as well as reimbursement for medical expenses. An estimated 600,000 people worked at the plants. Simonds is one of five Niagara County sites named by Department of Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Thursday after department staff reviewed 60 years of records. The other four are: Titanium Alloys Manufacturing, Hooker Electrochemical and Electro Metallurgical, all in Niagara Falls; and the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works in the towns of Lewiston and Porter. Erie County landed seven sites on the list: Utica St. Warehouse, Linde Air Products and Bliss & Laughlin Steel, all in Buffalo; Seaway Industrial Park, Linde Ceramics Plant and Ashland Oil, all in Tonawanda; and Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna. The other Western New York site on the list was the West Valley Demonstration Project in Cattaraugus County. Several former Simonds workers or their survivors contacted Friday said they weren't sure whether they would start the process of seeking compensation. "I really don't know," said Claude Bullard, 73, who worked at Simonds from 1948 until 1982. Bullard said he and some of his children may have medical conditions related to radiation, although he didn't provide specific details. "I'm going to collect as much information as I can." Burton Stamp Sr., 67, of Medina, said he had asthma before he started working for Simonds in 1953 but wonders whether sucking up radioactive dust might have exacerbated his condition. He indicated that he wouldn't pursue the compensation, but he said he knew "a lot of guys that worked on the mill (who) just passed away this past year around Thanksgiving." Ed Cook said he worked in the 16-inch bar mill where radioactive uranium and thorium were milled for the government after World War II. He's 85, has shortness of breath and has trouble walking. He believes those problems are more a function of age than his previous employment, although "I know there are a group of people who claim they are affected by it." One former Simonds worker who said he will pursue compensation is Paul Stoddard, 65, of Gasport. Stoddard said he's had a couple of lumps removed from his body, although doctors told him they were noncancerous. "I'm going to go after them," he said. "I think I deserve something." Stoddard said he's upset because he was never told that the material he was working on was dangerous. "They just said everything was all right," he said. Le Van said she's not sure what she will do. She can't clearly recall when her husband worked for Simonds and where he worked in the plant. That's not necessarily a problem, according to Pete Turcic of the U.S. Department of Labor, which will administer the compensation program. Turcic said those who believe they may be eligible should call a toll-free number, (877) 447-9756, and they will be interviewed by staff in the Department of Energy's Worker Advocacy Office. Department of Energy spokesman Jeff Sherwood asked callers to be patient. "The hotlines are overwhelmed," he said. Workers will search government records to determine when and where a potentially affected worker was employed. "If they needed to have a dose reconstructed, the Department of Health and Human Services is developing a procedure to reconstruct those doses," he said. "Based on that dosage, a determination would be made as to whether that cancer was likely caused by radiation exposure, and the Department of Labor would make a determination on benefits." It will be at least until July before claims begin to be processed, Turcic said. Dan Guttman, a Washington lawyer who headed up the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Activities, said the framework and procedures for filing claims are still being worked out. "The money should be there if you're sick," he said. " There is an administrative lag because there is no structure. At this point, you're sending your claim into a black hole because people haven't been appointed." Guttman called the government's compensation attempt "remarkable stuff. It's a credit to the country that we look back and do these things." ***************************************************************** 24 'Well-Liked' Abraham Has 'Big Learning Curve' at Energy (washingtonpost.com) By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 14, 2001; Page A06 In June 1999, at the height of congressional concern over security at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) told House and Senate committees, "I hope whoever is elected president in the year 2000 selects a secretary of energy that has some national security background, and some, hopefully, technical backgrounds." Republicans and Democrats applauded that suggestion, made by the man who chaired an acclaimed study by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board of alleged espionage at the labs. On Jan. 2, 18 months after Rudman's statement, President-elect Bush appeared to ignore the suggestion and picked former senator Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) for energy secretary. Abraham was a lawyer, a deputy chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and a politician before coming to the Senate. In his one term in the Senate, the closest Abraham got to Energy was in April 1996 when he and three other Republicans sponsored legislation that would have abolished the department and put the nuclear weapons complex inside the Pentagon. In 1999, when charges of espionage at the labs were rampant, he joined in reintroducing that legislation. Nonetheless, because he is a "known quantity and well-liked across party lines, nothing will deny him the job," said one Democratic aide. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who will chair the confirmation hearing on Thursday, has said he will vote for Abraham. "The people who made the most noise about qualifications to run Energy have been Republicans," said one Democrat, noting criticism of President Clinton's choices of Hazel R. O'Leary and Federico Peña. "Abraham has the same big learning curve to climb." In naming Abraham, Bush never referred to the troubled nuclear weapons complex inside the Energy Department, although it makes up one-third of the agency's $19 billion budget and its national labs have been at the center of almost two years of controversy. Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on energy, whose state contains two of the nuclear labs, has announced his support for Abraham. "He knows he is taking a difficult job in a difficult time," Domenici said. "The crisis facing the country now is energy and not the weapons complex, and Spence Abraham can do that fine." The General Accounting Office recently released a report that highlights a raft of problems needing attention in the Energy Department's $4.5 billion nuclear stockpile stewardship program that maintains the reliability and safety of the nation's 6,000 deployed bombs and warheads. For example, the GAO found a cost overrun of $300 million to extend the life of the W-87 warhead, which sits atop the Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile. The cause, the GAO reported, "was lack of an effective management structure and leadership." Vacancies in the office handling defense programs grew from 17 percent in 1996 to almost 65 percent in 2000. Retired Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also reported to Clinton that "a dedicated infrastructure revitalization fund should be established" for the Energy Department to bring up to needed standards the nuclear production facilities and labs that have deteriorated over the past decade. Another multibillion-dollar decision facing the incoming secretary will be whether to begin development of a facility to produce the plutonium triggers, called pits, that are used to create the thermonuclear explosion in U.S. strategic warheads and bombs. Although the size of the strategic nuclear force of the future will rest with Bush, it will be the department that determines how many pits are needed and produces whatever number is decided. Abraham's lack of experience all but guarantees that Gen. John A. Gordon, the newly approved administrator of the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) and undersecretary of energy, will be able to establish a stronger separate identity for his organization than he could under Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who was concerned about its semiautonomous status. The NNSA was established last year because of congressional concerns about upgrading security; Gordon's post was given a three-year term. Gordon "will be able to operate a bit more independently and more effectively," said one senior Energy official. There also is a move to repeal a congressionally mandated rule that requires 15,000 department employees who deal with nuclear materials and data to be polygraphed, far more than the department's former head of counterintelligence thought was needed. The polygraph program has become so controversial within the labs that some senators have forced a National Academy of Sciences study of the practice. But Gordon will still need the support of the new energy secretary to get the White House to back additional funds and legislation "to raise morale, recruitment and retention of the lab work force," this department official said. As structured, the NNSA is very much like the Defense Nuclear Programs Agency that was called for under Abraham's 1996 and 1999 legislation to dismantle the Energy Department. The legislation would have established a new undersecretary of defense for defense nuclear programs who would serve as the principal adviser to the president and the defense secretary on all matters related to the military use of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. But for now, Congress wants to keep the NNSA within the department. Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has chaired the energy panel and will hold that position after Jan. 20, greeted the Abraham nomination by saying his former colleague "will make a great secretary of energy." But a current top department official painted a different picture: "Abraham may lose control over the weapons complex to Gordon and oil and gas policy to the White House, leaving him little more than efficiency standards for refrigerators and air conditioners." c 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************