***************************************************************** 03/15/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.67 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 WIPP Cuts Back on Tours 2 New vendor to build Trojan fuel storage 3 Half-lives, half measures 4 TVA to get nuclear fuel windfall from DOE 5 Bush touts commitment to Piketon 6 Maine Yankee tax set at $1.6 million 7 Congressmen ask NRC to delay approval, add conditions 8 Commission allows San Onofre nuke waste to be stored 20 years 9 Residents of towns near Millstone can comment on emergency plans Thursday 10 Committee:Plant buyer should pay 11 Nuclear Power Supporters Optimistic - Again 12 Yankee nuclear power plant lures many potential buyers 13 Duratek Shares Fall 53 Percent (washingtonpost.com) 14 USEC, Tenex, ConverDyn Sign Agreement On Uranium Shipments to Russia 15 New Scientist: Glow for it 16 Senate Bill Offers Boost to Nuclear Power 17 NRC Special Inspection Team at Seabrook Station to look into last 18 Twiddling Turbine 19 Greenpeace claims Australia ill-prepared for nuclear accidents 20 Australia Opposition Demands Govt Update Nuclear Policies 21 British MOX freighters near port 22 Officials rule out new EIA for plant 23 Taipower to absorb costs related to nuclear plant 24 BNFL plant condemned as unsafe by environmentalists 25 Environmentalists Protest Bill 26 PG&E Deals New Card in Energy Talks 27 Russia Plans To Build a Floating Power Plant 28 Two nuclear reactors shut down in Ukraine The Associated Press 29 Iran to Sign Second Reactor Deal with Russia 30 Domenici will support Bush budget -- for now NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 DOE leader eyes Test Site changes 2 Miami man charged in sale of equipment for nuclear 3 2006 Flats closure seen as feasible 4 Regulators say Energy Department funding may not be enough 5 The Danger of Prescribed Burns at Nuclear Sites & Nuclear Wildlife Refuges - 6 UNEP Releases Final Report on DU Impact in Kosovo 7 from DU 'insignificant' 8 Soldiers clear of ‘Balkans sickness’ so far 9 Miniature Cold War for Caspian 10 Book Exposes Israeli Nuclear Policy 11 WHO to Study Health Effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq 12 Nuclear blasts get new lab clarity 13 Plutonium detected in Snake River Plain Aquifer 14 Idahoans push for state control of water 15 Six Sue Over Lab Autopsies **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 WIPP Cuts Back on Tours Thursday, March 15, 2001 Albuquerque Journal--> *The Associated Press* CARLSBAD — The U.S. Department of Energy has cut back on tours to its underground nuclear waste dump near here because it's handling more waste as the repository reaches full operation. Public tours of the surface and underground areas of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant now are offered only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Previously, tours took place throughout the week. Interest in the tours remains high, so people should plan to book two months in advance, the DOE said. "Safety continues to be the primary consideration for all activities at WIPP," said Ines Triay, manager of the DOE's Carlsbad Field Office, which oversees WIPP. "Now that the number of WIPP shipments has increased, we need to decrease the number of tours to continue smooth disposal operations." WIPP buries plutonium-contaminated waste 2,150 feet below the surface of the southern New Mexico desert in ancient salt beds. It opened as a repository March 26, 1999, to take waste from defense sites around the country — such things as contaminated rags, gloves, tools and residues. WIPP also announced that the 100th shipment of nuclear waste from the closed Rocky Flats plant near Denver arrived at the waste dump 26 miles east of Carlsbad before dawn Wednesday. The shipment contained 28 drums of waste in two specially designed shipping containers called Trupacts. Rocky Flats sent its first shipment to WIPP in June 1999. Last week, for the first time, it shipped two truckloads in one day and sent five loads in one week. Shipments are expected to increase from the current average of three a week to nine or 10 a week. The Colorado site will send nearly 2,000 shipments of waste to WIPP by the time it is cleaned up in 2006. The DOE will send 37,000 shipments of waste to WIPP from 23 installations around the nation over WIPP's expected 35-year lifespan. Copyright Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** 2 New vendor to build Trojan fuel storage [Oregon Live] *Design problems with casks to hold used nuclear fuel rods ended PGE's contract with another supplier * Wednesday, March 14, 2001 *By Brent Hunsberger of The Oregonian staff * Portland General Electric has replaced the manufacturer of a storage system for spent fuel from the mothballed Trojan Nuclear Plant after three years of delays and design problems. PGE ended its contract with Sierra Nuclear Corp. last week. The utility has hired New Jersey-based Holtec International to complete the job. PGE owns a two-thirds interest in the closed plant near Rainier. Utility and company officials said they agreed to terminate the contract after working for nearly two years to resolve issues with the design of the TranStor storage casks. "It was a mutual decision," said Rita Bowser, president and chief executive officer of Sierra Nuclear, a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels, which a PGE official once described as the industry's "acknowledged pioneer." Sierra Nuclear no longer will manufacture the casks, Bowser said. PGE closed Trojan in 1993 and is spending $435 million to dismantle it. The utility plans to move 781 highly radioactive spent fuel rod assemblies from Trojan's cooling pool into dry steel casks and store them at the plant until federal officials approve a long-term repository, possibly in Nevada. Regulators delayed licensing PGE's project for a year while investigating cracks in the welds of similar casks manufactured by Sierra Nuclear. In 1999, during the first attempt to load fuel, work was halted for good when a corroded coating inside a Sierra Nuclear cask caused a chemical reaction and clouded visibility within Trojan's normally clear spent-fuel pool. PGE spokesman Kregg Arntson said savings in decommissioning other parts of the plant have kept the project within its $435 million budget. He declined to reveal the cost of the new contract but said it was in line with the Sierra Nuclear agreement. The utility plans to begin moving spent fuel next year and finish by the end of 2003. Holtec has agreements with 16 other nuclear power plants and an interim fuel storage facility proposed in Utah to provide casks that can store and transport spent nuclear fuel. "They're one of the leading companies in the dry-cask storage system business," Arntson said. "Their product is kind of tried and true." *You can reach Brent Hunsberger at 503-221-8359 or by e-mail at brenthunsberger@news.oregonian.com.* Copyright 2001 Oregon Live. All rights reserved. This material ***************************************************************** 3 Half-lives, half measures Albuquerque Tribune Online: News They were promised government compensation, but dying former uranium miners say they get nothing but IOUs Essdras M. Suarez/The Rocky Mountain News Retired uranium mineworker Bob Key, 61, changes his tracheotomy tube at his home in Fruita, Colo. He is one of many who have received IOUs from the government after having applied for compensation under the Radiation Exposure Reclamation Act. By M.E. Sprengelmeyer Scripps Howard News Service Richard Leavell doesn't want to die with a government IOU in his pocket. [XXX] Essdras M. Suarez/The Rocky Mountain News Helen Story of Aztec is the widow of former uranium miner Jerald Story. She and her husband applied for RECA compensation three years ago. Jerald Story died last March at age 59, and she still has not received any funds. A government IOU came after Jerald Story's death. Helen Story now works two jobs to support herself. Like his father, Merle, Leavell helped the United States fight the Cold War from the trenches of the Colorado Plateau. And like his father, he paid a high price. The Leavells were uranium miners, helping provide the raw material America craved for its nuclear arsenal. Only years later did the federal government tell miners about the deadly health risks they faced while blasting and digging through the hills of the Four Corners region, breathing radioactive dust that would take its toll as they aged. After Merle Leavell was left with radiation-related lung damage, the federal government promised $100,000 of "compassionate compensation" under a law enacted by Congress in 1990. But the check didn't arrive until after his death in 1995. Now the same thing could happen to his son because of a funding oversight in Congress last year and a long list of unpaid government IOUs. At 57, Richard Leavell suffers from pulmonary fibrosis and silicosis of the lungs, which leave him gasping for air and tied to expensive, ever-present bottles of oxygen. "I can't do anything," he said. "This is no kind of life." Last year, the government sent him a notice that he qualifies for $100,000 compensation. "Regretfully," the letter said, there's no money to back it up. Doctors aren't sure whether Leavell, who lives in Cortez, Colo., will live another six months or several years, but he says government officials don't seem to be in any hurry. "They told us they accept responsibility, and this was supposed to be some kind of apology," Leavell said. "It's not much of an apology if you don't get it." The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is in a crisis, but even an emergency fix could come too late for many of the 275 aging former miners, nuclear test participants, downwinders or their surviving spouses with unpaid IOUs. Commonly known as RECA, the program got only $10.8 million this fiscal year but needs at least $84 million on top of that to pay all the claims expected to be approved in 2001. Although Congress voted to increase each victim's compensation by $50,000, President Bush put that on hold while he reviews virtually every new regulation approved last year. Bush also signaled he is reluctant to approve any supplemental funding requests while he focuses on a proposed $1.6 trillion tax cut. "Here we've got this huge surplus in Washington, D.C., and the government is sending these IOUs to people who are dying," said Rebecca Rockwell, a private investigator from Durango, Colo., who helps miners compile their claims. "I've lost 10 of my IOU holders since October," Rockwell said. "The problem is people are dying. I've gone to about as many funerals as I can take." Republican Sens. Pete Domenici, of Albuquerque, and Orrin Hatch, of Utah, recently introduced legislation asking for $84 million in emergency appropriations. Rep. Scott McInnis, a Republican whose district includes the mining country of western Colorado, plans to introduce a House version of the emergency funding bill. However, legislative analysts say it's unlikely any new money will be approved before the summer or, more likely, at the end of the fiscal year in October. The IOUs are worse than an embarrassment or inconvenience, said Ed Brickey, co-chairman of the Western States RECA Reform Coalition, a collection of citizen groups that are advocates for victims covered by the act. "It has been an injustice to delay any further appropriations or the regulations because the people that have (IOUs) are dying," Brickey said. The RECA program has long been plagued by complaints about a complex application process that often takes victims many tries and several years to clear. The program got into its current funding mess during the 11th-hour haggling over the budget in late 2000. Ironically, it came just months after Congress amended the law to ease restrictions, cover more medical conditions, add another $50,000 in compensation under a separate program, and allow uranium mill workers and ore transporters to qualify for the first time. The Justice Department estimated it would take $93 million to cover all the claims expected to be approved in fiscal 2001. But that request came too late, and when the budget was approved in December it included only $10.8 million for the trust fund. The shortfall includes about $23 million for those already waiting for their money. The waiting has left many victims bitter and hopeless in the small towns of southern and western Colorado, eastern Utah and northwest New Mexico, where uranium once meant a livelihood. "These guys went underground. They would work their butts off, sometimes 10 to 16 hours a day . . . so the government could get their damned uranium," said Anna Cox of Montrose, Colo. "And how do they get repaid? They die for it, with a promissory note that maybe you'll get something . . . after you're dead." Her 63-year-old husband, Eugene, has lung cancer. He worked 10 years in the uranium mines outside Grants in New Mexico and Naturita, Slick Rock and Gateway, Colo. In the early days, before strict radon monitoring, companies and workers gave little regard to the health risks, he said. "It was work, guaranteed," Eugene Cox said. "You drilled holes with a jackhammer and you shot, blasted out. Then you loaded, either with a slusher or by hand and a scoop shovel." Dust filled the air, but workers never wore protective masks. They used gloves only if they brought their own. Some miners remember days when the only "fresh air" they breathed was what leaked out of the air compressors that ran the jackhammers. "I was a young, healthy man," Eugene Cox said. "I did not know. It was a livelihood for me and my three children and my wife." It took three years for Eugene Cox to verify his work history and qualify his illness for compensation. Last year, he finally got an approval letter, which explained the lack of funding and told him to wait. "I stuck it in a box," Anna Cox said. "That's what good it's doing me." Uranium left its mark on whole communities throughout the Four Corners region. In tiny Monticello, Utah, local newspaper editor Bill Boyle has a map stuck with more than 200 pins, one for each local resident who died or is dying of a radiation-related illness. One pin represents a small, one-story house in the center of town. There, former miner Joe Torres has turned his family's living room into a medical ward, with a bed propped where the sofa should be. Cancer has spread from his lungs to his liver, and a government IOU is doing him little good when he needs to buy more painkilling patches. "I'm very shaken," he said. "I can't do a bit of work. And Social Security doesn't give me enough money to pay for my medicines. . . . I'd like to get at least part of my money to get by." Combined, he and his wife, Vicenta, get just over $1,000 a month from Social Security. The painkillers alone cost $300 a month, and health insurance is coming due soon, she said. Torres, 74, started working in the mines in 1951. "They went in and worked and came back pretty well dusty from head to toe," Vicenta remembers. "But he had no idea that in time it would do something to them." Shortly after talking with a reporter, Torres was hospitalized. Since 1990, the radiation compensation program has relied on year-to-year allocations in the federal budget. Several lawmakers say it should be converted into an entitlement program so payments are guaranteed without a year-to-year budget fight. But they disagree on how to accomplish that. Regardless of the answer, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., says filling the trust fund's coffers should be a national priority. "These people, as you know, have been jacked around for a lot of years," he said. "The statement we would make by providing them with this compensation they're due would be more than the money." Meanwhile, surviving victims struggle to pay high medical bills and widows wait, not knowing when the government's promise will be kept. In the northwest New Mexico town of Aztec, 56-year-old miner's widow Helen Story says she works two jobs -- a day shift and an overnight shift -- taking care of elderly hospice patients to get by. She worked the same jobs while her husband, Jerald, fought the final months against cancer before he died last March at age 59. Jerald Story started working in the uranium and coal mines as a teen-ager. He never built up a pension because, like many miners, he bounced from one company to another over several decades. Health problems forced him to retire and go onto Social Security disability in the early 1980s. "I was having to work as much as I could, which took time away from him," Helen Story said. "Some days you think you just can't take much more." The couple first applied for RECA compensation three years ago. The government IOU came after Jerald Story's death, and his widow has become bitter. "If they weren't going to stand good with the program, they never should have started it," Helen Story scoffs. "It's for sure that if we owed the government, they wouldn't wait this long on us." © The Albuquerque Tribune. ***************************************************************** 4 TVA to get nuclear fuel windfall from DOE March 15, 2001 By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer TVA is about to acquire 33 metric tons of highly enriched uranium from the government's defense stockpile, with plans to convert the material to reactor fuel for the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama. The transaction is part of a project launched by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1990s to find peaceful uses for about 200 tons of strategic uranium no longer needed by the nuclear weapons program. "This was an opportunity to save money as well as help DOE get to recycle this material," TVA spokesman John Moulton said. DOE is not charging TVA for the enriched uranium, which the government spent billions of dollars to produce. TVA, however, will incur costs to process the material to eliminate its weapons potential and to prepare it for reactor fuel. "Our primary mission is to render this non-weapons usable, and we believe this is the lowest cost alternative to the taxpayer," DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said. Wyatt said it would have cost DOE about $1 billion to process the material so that it could be disposed of as waste. TVA tested the effectiveness of recycled uranium fuel at its Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in 1999-2000. Another demonstration is scheduled this fall, Moulton said. The federal utility will receive the enriched uranium from DOE under terms of an interagency agreement. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham already has signed the agreement, but it still must be approved by TVA's board of directors. Moulton said the board may consider the agreement and related contracts at its next meeting, tentatively scheduled for March 28 at Mussel Shoals, Ala. Of the 33 tons to be transferred to TVA, about 12 tons will come from storage vaults at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. The rest will be shipped from DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The enriched uranium initially will be blended with other uranium stocks to reduce the amount of fissionable U-235 (to about 4 percent) and eliminate its bomb-making potential. Then it will be fabricated into fuel assemblies for the two operating reactors at Browns Ferry. Nuclear Fuels Services at Erwin, Tenn., is expected to perform the uranium blending, and Siemens Power Corp. at Richland, Wash., will fabricate the nuclear fuel. Moulton said the material should provide enough fuel to load a reactor 14 times. Each fuel cycle lasts about two years. Browns Ferry plans to begin using the fuel in 2005. The enriched uranium will be transferred to TVA in increments between 2003 and 2007, according to Becky Eddy, a program manager with the National Nuclear Security Administration in Oak Ridge. The NNSA is a quasi-independent agency within DOE that manages the nuclear weapons complex. Eddy said the TVA-bound enriched uranium was previously used at Savannah River reactors to produce plutonium for weapons. The material is considered weapons capable because of the level of U-235, which Eddy said was "more than 20 percent and less than 93." It is not, however, the same grade of uranium used in nuclear warheads, she said. Because of security concerns, Y-12 will ship the material to Nuclear Fuel Services in armored trucks known as SSTs, the same vehicles used to transport weapons parts across the country. That won't be necessary for the material coming from Savannah River because it will be "down-blended" in advance, she said. The agreement with TVA is good for Y-12 because it eliminates material no longer needed and makes more space available for highly enriched uranium accumulating in Oak Ridge from dismantled nuclear weapons, Eddy said. Y-12 no longer has an active facility capable of processing the uranium fuel that came from reactors at Savannah River, she said. DOE earlier reached an agreement to provide 50 tons of surplus uranium to the U.S. Enrichment Corp., with about 10 tons delivered so far. Y-12 ships the materials to USEC on a periodic basis, Eddy said. In the mid-1990s, the Energy Department conducted an environmental review, which evaluated plans for converting the highly enriched uranium to reactor fuels. TVA reviewed the final environmental impact statement, published in 1996, and said it adequately addressed the utility's planned actions. TVA proposes to adopt DOE's environmental impact statement as its own, citing guidelines that allow such sharing among federal agencies. However, Citizens for National Security, a group that monitors activities at Y-12, raised objections in a March 6 letter sent to TVA. William R. Bibb, the group's president, said much has changed since environmental impacts were evaluated six years ago. Bibb, a retired DOE executive, also questioned whether it's proper for TVA and DOE to enter into an interagency agreement for the transfer of enriched uranium. "It is our understanding that interagency agreements were intended for use between federal agencies using appropriated funds," Bibb wrote. "Since TVA will not be utilizing appropriated funds to reimburse the U.S. DOE appropriation, this process needs to be clarified. This is especially important because other utilities will not enjoy this advantage." TVA published its plans in the Feb. 14 Federal Register, and the agency is accepting comment on the proposed adoption of the DOE impact statement until March 19. Comments may be sent to Bruce Yeager at TVA by e-mail at: byeager@tva.gov.Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. 2001 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 5 Bush touts commitment to Piketon But president stops short of long-term assurances *Wednesday, March 14, 2001* Jonathan Riskind *Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief* WASHINGTON -- President Bush's administration has made a "pretty darn strong commitment'' to keeping open southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant, Bush said yesterday. The president stopped short of making any guarantees about the Piketon facility's long-term future. But he told The Dispatch during a White House interview that the $125.7 million infusion announced March 1 by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham shows that he intends to honor a campaign promise to keep the plant open for purposes that could include research and development. Bush was interviewed by nine reporters from mostly regional media outlets as part of his campaign to sell his proposed 2002 budget and 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax-cut plan. The president answered questions for nearly an hour as he sat at a table in the Roosevelt Room, across the hall from the Oval Office. He stressed his desire to hold federal spending to a 4 percent rate of annual growth and to slash taxes for individual Americans, contending that a bipartisan congressional desire to boost spending spiraling upward would lead to fiscal disaster and plunder projected budget surpluses. Many Democrats say that Bush's tax cut could wind up costing more than $2 trillion, too much for a country trying to improve education and health-care programs and come to grips with Social Security reform. But Bush said unrestrained congressional spending by both parties endangers projected surpluses. The House last week approved a $958 billion chunk of Bush's tax-cut proposal, but prospects appear to be more iffy in the evenly divided Senate. Bush predicted, though, that he would be able to sign into a law a ``meaningful'' retroactive tax cut that would help the slumping economy. ``I worry about surpluses, too, because I'm afraid Congress is going to spend all the money,'' Bush said. ``If Congress continues discretionary spending at 8percent, they would be into the Social Security trust.'' Bush said Gov. Bob Taft has lobbied him vociferously'' to spend more federal money on Piketon's behalf. Bush insisted that although the $125 million released so far assures the plant's future only through September 2002 -- the end of the next federal fiscal year -- that doesn't discount his administration's commitment to Piketon. The plant's fate is to be determined by Bush-appointed task charged with developing national energy and end defense policies. Still, ``I would say $125 million is a pretty darn strong commitment,'' Bush said. ``$125 million is, to me, a statement of purpose. That's a lot of money, and I would hope the people of Piketon and the workers there realize that when I said in the campaign that we would work to keep it open and make it viable ... that the $125 million is a pretty strong step in that direction.'' Southern Ohio officials have questioned whether the Bush administration would continue a Clinton administration proposal to pump $630 million into the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon to keep it on standby and launch an initiative to develop new enrichment technologies. ``This doesn't commute our sentence. This only postpones our execution date,'' Greg Simonton, executive director of the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, an economic-development group, said after the announcement of the cash infusion. The plant, which has produced enriched uranium used as fuel in nuclear-power plants, is to be shuttered in June by USEC -- a privatized federal corporation. The Clinton administration plan would have saved at least 1,200 jobs at the 1,700-employee plant. USEC says it can produce a reliable domestic supply of enriched uranium after it completes upgrades a sister plant in Paducah, Ky. However, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, and other privatization critics say Piketon should at least be kept on standby because there is a chance the Paducah plant won't prove capable of manufacturing commercial-grade material by itself. Asked whether he would continue taking more such steps toward assuring Piketon's long-term future, Bush replied, ``I'm not the kind of person to put $125 million out and not mean it; let me put it to you that way.'' Also yesterday, Bush said he's optimistic that a more civil tone in Washington will result in legislative compromises on such issues as the so-called patients' bill of rights, although he maintains his opposition to granting managed-care patients the right to sue their HMOs. On Social Security reform, he said that he's already planning to move forward, perhaps next year, on his campaign proposal to allow younger workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market. He stressed that his plan wouldn't affect older workers and retired people already receiving Social Security benefits. ``I'll be explaining to you why my Social Security reform package makes eminent sense, to let younger workers manage some of their own money in the private markets,'' Bush said, dismissing the possibility that the current turmoil in the stock market would make it more difficult to sell his proposal. ``Markets go up and down, (but) over a 20-year period of time markets go up significantly more than the rate of return that the Social Security trust now generates on behalf of those who put payroll tax money in,'' Bush said. ``The plan is not going to be to let people invest in the lottery mutual fund or take it to the track and hope to hit it right; it's going to be in relatively safe investments.'' Copyright © 2001, The Columbus Dispatch ***************************************************************** 6 Maine Yankee tax set at $1.6 million Mar 15, 2001 "*Serving Maine and Lincoln County for Over A Century*" Vol. 126-No. 11 Greg Foster The Wiscasset selectmen approved a two-year tax agreement with Maine Yankee that will provide the town with $1.6 million this year and $1 million next year. "We're very pleased with this," Selectmen Chairman Ben Rines said. The amount will keep the projected mill rate this fall at about 17.9 and possibly slightly less with municipal and school budgets as they now stand before the annual March 24 town meeting, which will require $2.2 million and $4.1 million in local appropriations respectively. Rines said he consulted with George Sansoucy, a consultant who assesses nuclear power plants who advised the town in past negotiations with Maine Yankee. "He said take it, it's a good deal," Rines said. This past year Maine Yankee contributed a total $2.5 million, including an additional gift based on the difference between the negotiated tax amount and the tax on the agreed upon valuation. The new amounts for each year include the annual gift Maine Yankee provides over and above the negotiated figure. After Maine Yankee's decommissioning is completed in 2004, Wiscasset will continue to collect an estimated minimum of $1 million for the spent fuel storage installation until the federal government furnishes a disposal site for such nuclear waste. The federal Department of Energy continues to push back the date which originally was 1998 but now may not be until 2020 or later. The $1 million in taxes from the facility is based on its assessed value of $37 million for the construction permit, according to Rines. Rines said the 17.9 mills puts Wiscasset in the same ball park as the state average for property taxes, which is currently 16.74 mills. "We are going into the meeting feeling really good about where we're at," he said. Other Business The board appointed Phil DiVece to the waterfront committee to fill the remaining vacancy. The board also appointed Steve Kornacki as an alternate for Wiscasset members of the Public Advisory Committee on the Rt. 1 corridor plans for the state Department of Transportation. Selectmen also signed the warrant for the Fri., March 23 and Sat., March 24 annual town meeting containing 73 articles minus ten school appropriation articles and a few on ordinances changes that were not ready for the warrant at the time of printing. The budget committee at a separate meeting the same night voted to recommend all of the ten school-related articles. Included in their approval of the warrant, was their recommendation for the transfer of total available funds from the high school ball field account amounting to about $29,000 or to use $25,661 from the school roof reserve account for the repair of the library roof. Board members also voted to recommend the closeout and transfer of funds in the original community center account amounting to $1239 to the recreation account. Community Center Giving a report on the Wiscasset Community Center, Recreation Director Wayne Applebee said the center has been bursting at its seams this year with many new memberships, including $28,600 collected in two days during its recent membership drive weekend celebrating its third birthday. "It's wonderful to see the parking lot so full," said Selectperson Joan Barnes. "You're doing a good job." Applebee said that 30 families have taken advantage of the center's new monthly withdrawal system for payment. Applebee reported that revenues to date total $98,203, a 40 percent increase over the time period last year. In an attempt to attract more revenue, he has been seeking funding from Alna, Westport, Woolwich and Dresden to make up the difference between a resident and nonresident membership fee. So far he said he has met a positive response. Upcoming dates The continuation of the public hearing on the two town meeting warrant articles concerning town government change will be held this Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the hearing room of the municipal building. One article is the town manager form of government and the other concerns extending the number of selectmen to five. Elections will he held Fri., March 23 including election of a moderator for the town meeting and the town meeting is Sat., March 24 at 9 a.m. at the high school. The town is still seeking volunteers to deliver town reports this week starting on Thursday. *Editor@LCNews.Maine.Com* Lincoln County News PO Box 36, Damariscotta, ME 04543 Tel: 207.563.3171 ***************************************************************** 7 Congressmen ask NRC to delay approval, add conditions March 14, 2001 BY KATHERINE RIZZO *Associated Press Writer * WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two congressional Democrats asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday to postpone a crucial licensing decision that must be made before the U.S. Enrichment Corp. can close its Ohio processing plant. In a letter to NRC Chairman Richard A. Meserve, Reps. Ted Strickland of Ohio and John Dingell of Michigan said they wanted more assurance that the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant would be up to the job of enriching uranium to the grade used by utilities. Until it's clear that Paducah can handle the work that until now has been done only in Piketon, Ohio, the NRC should require USEC to keep the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in ``hot standby'' condition, the lawmakers said. USEC wants to close the Piketon plant in June. It can't do that until the Paducah plant is licensed to do a greater amount of enrichment. NRC spokesman Pam Alloway-Mueller said the regulatory agency had an internal schedule that sought to complete by Friday a report on its evaluation of whether Paducah can safely handle the extra enrichment duties. But Friday was a goal, not a deadline, she said. ``We're looking at it from a safety standpoint,'' she said. USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said the company expects to get its regulatory approval this week. ``We are confident that the Paducah plant will successfully serve as USEC's sole enrichment facility,'' she said. ``The NRC approval will come after more than 18 months of intensive plant procedural and physical modifications and extensive scrutiny by the NRC.'' Currently, Paducah does the first stage of uranium enrichment, boosting it to a strength of 2.75 percent. Then USEC ships the material to Ohio, where the job is completed and the material is boosted to about 5.5 percent. The lawmakers said they were worried about what might happen if Paducah has problems doing the work now handled in Ohio. ``USEC is taking a gamble,'' they wrote, and ``If USEC is wrong, and the Portsmouth plant already has been shut down, U.S. energy security could be compromised.'' USEC is the largest supplier of fuel for nuclear power plants; American utilities use nuclear energy to produce about a fifth of the nation's electricity, and some states get half of their electricity from nuclear generators. ``We believe that ceasing production at Portsmouth before the Paducah plant proves its ability to enrich to commercial fuel specifications threatens the reliability of our domestic source of enrichment services,'' the Democrats' letter said. ``We urge you to carefully examine these matters before acting.'' The NRC did not have a comment on the lawmakers' letter itself. AP-CS-03-14-01 1845EST --> ***************************************************************** 8 Commission allows San Onofre nuke waste to be stored 20 years sacbee: Cal Report SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. (AP) -- California Coastal Commissioners agreed to allow San Diego County's San Onofre power plant south of here to continue storing nuclear waste for 20 years. Spent uranium rods used by the Southern California Edison-owned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station remain radioactive for thousands of years. The commission on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve construction by 2006 of a permanent facility to hold the uranium waste, despite pleas from residents and environmental groups. "I understand the public's concerns about nuclear safety issues, and I may be in sympathy with them," said commission director Sara Wan. "But this commission's jurisdiction is limited." Commissioners, who met in San Diego on a variety of issues, required that Edison guarantee that it can afford lifetime monitoring of the waste. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to approve the project. San Onofre, a seaside plant south of San Clemente in Orange County, has two reactors that provide energy for 2.2 million homes and are licensed until 2022. Copyright © The Sacramento Bee ***************************************************************** 9 Residents of towns near Millstone can comment on emergency plans Thursday [Geoff Hausman] Published on 3/14/2001 Waterford –- The Nuclear Energy Advisory Council will review emergency preparedness plans for the communities near Millstone Nuclear Power Station when it meets at 7 Thursday night at Town Hall. John Wiltse, director of the state’s Radiological Emergency Preparedness program will be the speaker. The meeting will provide an opportunity for the public to comment on and ask questions about emergency plans that are in place in the event of a nuclear reactor accident. The council will also receive a report on the cracks that were found in the Millstone 3 turbines during the refueling activities there. © 1998-2001 The Day Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 10 Committee:Plant buyer should pay The Concord Monitor Thursday, March 15, 2001 Seabrook The Associated Press The state and electric ratepayers should not get stuck with the cost of decommissioning the Seabrook nuclear plant after it's sold, lawmakers and other representatives told a House committee yesterday. Whoever buys Seabrook must assure the state it can pay to close up the plant, said Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, at a Science, Technology and Energy Committee hearing. Bradley is proposing legislation requiring Seabrook's buyers to pay $58 million dollars up front, as well as monthly payments later. The bill also would ensure costs would be covered if Seabrook is shut down early, he said. The bill also allows for the state to retain significant control over the decommissioning process, said Bradley. The legislation also would relieve customers of a monthly decommissioning fee once the state's electric utilities with an interest in Seabrook sell it. Those utilities include Public Service Company of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative and Granite State Electric. These payments - which amount to pennies a month for every household - go into a fund intended to provide enough money to decommission Seabrook when it's taken out of service. Customers may get a refund if the decommissioning costs are less than the amount collected by the fee. Decommissioning is projected to start in 2026. The federal government has set standards for the decommissioning process, which requires radioactive systems and structures to be decontaminated and dismantled. In addition to federal standards, buyers of the power plant would have to meet even greater regulations set by the state for consumer protection, Bradley said. Those regulations will ensure the plant is dismantled properly and the land be used for commercial and industrial purposes, he said. Bradley said it is in the state's interest for the plant to be sold. He said the bill is an important step in continuing plans to deregulate the state's electric market. Representatives from utilities that plan to sell their interests in Seabrook - as well as groups that will remain owners - said they support the legislation. © Concord Monitorand New Hampshire Patriot P.O. Box 1177, Concord NH 03302 603-224-5301 ***************************************************************** 11 Nuclear Power Supporters Optimistic - Again Power Engineering - power generation technology, Power-Gen Conference [Magazine of power generation, utility deregulation, and the official Power-Gen Conference. ] By John C. Zink, Ph.D., P.E., Contributing Editor Nuclear power supporters believe a window of opportunity may be opening in the U.S. because of several recent developments: + The bursting of the natural gas "bubble," with the subsequent high gas prices and the resulting California energy crisis, has highlighted the need for new large-scale sources of electricity. + Global climate change discussions (although misguided, in my opinion) have focused attention on the favorable clean-air characteristics of nuclear plants. + U.S. utilities' excellent performance in operating their nuclear plants for the past few years, with ever-improving safety and economics, has positioned existing nukes as economically competitive.* In last month's Nuclear Reactions I discussed the Department of Energy's (DOE) Nuclear Energy Technology Program. To kick off this program, DOE convened a workshop in which a diverse group of experts identified technical issues critical to nuclear power's future. Part of the significance of this workshop, I believe, lies in the fact that participants addressed technology issues with an eye toward public acceptance, not just technical wizardry. Unfortunately, nuclear professionals have not always been good judges of public opinion. The views of politicians, whose livelihoods depend upon staying attuned to public attitudes and priorities, may be a better gauge of possible future acceptance. Here, too, there are hopeful signs. Late last year, in accepting the American Nuclear Society's (ANS) Henry DeWolf Smyth award for Nuclear Statesmanship, Colorado senator Pete Domenici gave this stunning endorsement: "I want to recommit to you that, in spite of my responsibilities in many areas that take a lot of my time and energy, I'm on board saying, 'Let's move ahead with nuclear power.' There's not a big group of people in the Congress that are anxious to stick their necks out with me on this statement. But I can tell you that it's getting better. There are a number of Senators who have walked up to me after we've talked about this and said, 'count me in.' In fact, I think Congress might be ready to approve some really major nuclear energy programs." To support his optimistic outlook, Domenici reviewed some of the positive political developments of the last three years: + In spite of a generally hostile White House, Congress passed the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative, then increased its funding by 50 percent last year. + More significantly, Congress initiated and funded the Nuclear Energy Technology Program mentioned above. + Congress also passed a major nuclear waste bill that would create an interim spent fuel storage facility in Nevada, and fund a DOE program to evaluate various strategies for handling spent fuel. Unfortunately, the Senate failed by a single vote to override President Clinton's veto of this bill.* Even with a more sympathetic administration now in the White House, however, the road to nuclear power's revitalization remains a bumpy one. Nuclear waste remains the most contentious issue, and the political battles that marked last session's ultimate agreement on nuclear waste legislation must be fought all over again. No doubt this issue will continue to create strange alliances. Republicans from Nevada, the potential burial site, will again align themselves with the anti-nuclear Democrats because, to do otherwise, would be political suicide back home. Native-American tribes, which hope to use nuclear waste storage on their barren tribal lands as a tool for economic development, will line up against their traditional Democrat allies. And the professional anti-nuclear agitators will emerge from their slumber to relate their worst nuclear nightmares to an eager press. The nuclear industry will also confront a second major issue: low-level radiation exposure. Research over the past few decades has made it abundantly clear that the linear hypothesis - the assumption that any amount of radiation, no matter how small, is harmful - is unrealistic and excessively conservative. This assumption has formed the basis of many nuclear regulations to-date. Now, the government's General Accounting Office, certainly not a partisan nuclear organization, has issued a report questioning the scientific basis for existing radiation exposure standards, and citing untold money wasted complying with the requirements. To destroy the linear effects myth once and for all, and to codify its antithesis in regulations, would rob the anti-nukes of an emotion-filled public relations tools. Like the waste issue, this one has always been a favorite of the anti-nuclear crowd because it lends itself so well to their typical scare tactics. You can bet they will fight it with every bit of demagoguery at their command. As Senator Domenici said in his speech to the ANS, "We know we're close to the Achilles heel of the anti-nuclear movement because they have come out in droves to oppose new looks at radiation standards." It has always taken an optimist to predict success for nuclear power in the face of the strident opposition it attracts. Perhaps there are some good reasons for cautious optimism, now. *Power Engineering* March, 2001 ***************************************************************** 12 Yankee nuclear power plant lures many potential buyers Thursday, March 15, 2001 By BETSY CALVERT VERNON, VT. — What do you call an aging nuclear power plant? A bargain. That seems to be the attitude of newly deregulated nuclear power holding companies across the country. All of them are circling around the Vermont Yankee — one of the nation's oldest reactors that went up for sale in 1999. The bid price of Vermont Yankee started out at a negative value — $23.5 million minus $54 million to be paid to the buyer by Vermont Yankee toward the cost of decommissioning. Being a regulated industry, however, Vermont Yankee was able to duck out of a bad deal with AmerGen Energy Co. of Philadelphia when sale prices of nuclear plants elsewhere started to rise. The prices began rising as fossil fuel costs soared, California ran out of power, and the nation began to rethinks its energy priorities. "All of the sudden, there were people willing to pay more," said Geoffrey Commons, special counsel for Vermont's Department of Public Services. The department is the state's consumer advocate and recommended against selling to AmerGen. Now there are five suitors for Vermont, one of them — Constellation Energy Group Inc. of Maryland — being the only company ever to ever an extension to a nuclear plant operating license. Vermont Yankee's 40-year license is up in 2012. Anti-nuclear activists are horrified by the renewed interest in old reactors, calling Vermont Yankee in particular in need of shutdown due to its brittle core reactor. Rowe resident Debby Katz, president of Citizens Awareness Network, disagrees with the new corporate opinion that nuclear power is becoming a good deal after decades of exorbitant costs. "I think it's a deception and a manipulation of the market," she said. Vermont Yankee spokesman Robert O. Williams, however, points to the plant's awards in 2000 for safety and efficiency. State regulators also believe the plant has value and is safe, Common said. Most of the companies courting Vermont Yankee are asking that the 540-megawatt plant be sold on the auction block rather than negotiations, Common said. Vermont Yankee's owners are 14 utility companies including several in Massachusetts. They began putting out feelers for potential buyers several years ago when some of the utilities were being de-regulated and needed to sell their generating plants. There were only two bidders then, AmerGen and Entergy Nuclear Inc. While AmerGen's first and later second offer of $40 million were under critical review by regulators, the value of nuclear plants began to rise. Vermont regulators and the plant owners began getting communiqués from other companies saying they would pay more. Soon, all the major players were in, said Williams. By cost comparison, Constellation expects to pay $815 million this summer for two reactors in New York State, admittedly producing three times as much energy as Vermont Yankee. In February, state regulators told Vermont Yankee they would not approve AmerGen's second offer, because it was too low. The Board of Public Services sent Vermont Yankee back to the drawing board to figure out if its owners still want to sell. If so, how do they want to sell? That process is under way right now, Williams said, and the plant's board of directors has set no deadline to finish. Meanwhile, Amergen's William Jones said his company would bid again if the plant is sold at an auction, where the highest bidder actually gets the plant — not another 18 months of regulatory review. Time is money for the holding companies: Passing time means less time to make a profit before licenses run out, or before space runs out for highly radioactive spent fuel. Yankee's space runs out in 2008. © 2001 UNION-NEWS. Used with permission. ***************************************************************** 13 Duratek Shares Fall 53 Percent (washingtonpost.com) *By Sabrina Jones* Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 15, 2001; Page E05 Shares of Duratek Inc., a Columbia firm that disposes of radioactive waste, lost more than half their value yesterday after the company postponed the release of its fourth-quarter and year-end financial results. Duratek stock lost $3.38, or nearly 53 percent, to close at $3.03 on the Nasdaq Stock Market after it delayed its earnings report to review its commercial waste-processing operations. The company had planned to release its results yesterday but learned that it incurred unexpected burial and transportation costs in the fourth quarter, after it ran out of storage space for hazardous waste at its Tennessee facility. The unanticipated costs were driven by the company's need to comply with Tennessee regulations for storage space and its inability to find lower-cost alternatives to bury and transport the waste. Before the financial shortfall the company's Bear Creek disposal plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., was having a record year for waste intake, said Robert E. Prince, the company's chief executive. Last year the plant processed 68 million pounds of waste. The waste-processing division, which has about 500 employees, makes up one-third of the company's operations, and other divisions were not affected by the extra costs, Prince said. The additional costs will hurt the company's fourth-quarter and full year financial results for 2000, and the first quarter of 2001. In the fourth quarter of 1999, Duratek earned $4.06 million (21 cents a share) on revenue of $51.8 million. For all of 1999, the company earned $11.5 million (58 cents) on revenue of $177.2 million. The company said it does not plan to comment further on its results until it completes its review. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 14 USEC, Tenex, ConverDyn Sign Agreement On Uranium Shipments to Russia Thursday March 15, 10:29 am Eastern Time Press Release BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2001--Under the terms of an agreement signed last week, the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), Techsnabexport (Tenex) and ConverDyn will work cooperatively on USEC's return of natural uranium to Russia in connection with the continuing implementation of the U.S.-Russian Megatons to Megawatts program. These new terms, which involve transactions of natural uranium between USEC, Tenex and ConverDyn, will allow for the transfer of natural uranium by ConverDyn directly to Tenex for shipment to Russia. In implementing the Megatons to Megawatts program, USEC acts as executive agent for the U.S. government and Tenex acts as executive agent for Russia. Through a commercial implementing contract, USEC purchases low-enriched uranium (LEU) diluted from highly enriched uranium derived from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads. The LEU is then sold by USEC as fuel for commercial nuclear power plants, thereby turning megatons to megawatts. When USEC purchases LEU from Russia, it pays for the enrichment content and is obligated to return to Tenex an equivalent amount of natural (non-enriched) uranium. While this involves an intricate process of transfers, documentation and logistics, USEC's large strategic inventory of natural uranium facilitates account transfers of this fungible natural uranium. Under the new terms, USEC utilizes account transfers to assist Tenex by giving it the option to take possession of appropriate quantities of natural uranium at the Honeywell conversion facility in Metropolis, Illinois, for return to Russia. ConverDyn, a general partnership between affiliates of Honeywell and General Atomics, is the exclusive agent for conversion sales from the Metropolis plant, the only U.S. facility that converts natural uranium into uranium hexafluoride, the form suitable for commercial enrichment to the level required to fuel nuclear power plants. Tenex, a Russian foreign trade company, provides an outlet to the world market for services and products of the Russian nuclear industry. Tenex is the Russian Federation Ministry for Atomic Energy's executive agent for the Megatons to Megawatts program. The United States Enrichment Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU - news), a global energy company and the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. USEC Charles Yulish, 301/564-3391 or Elizabeth Stuckle, 301/564-3399 ***************************************************************** 15 New Scientist: Glow for it Modified military night-vision goggles show up radioactive spills as a glow in the dark Exclusive from New Scientist magazine One of the problems with radioactive contamination is that it is invisible. Smoke blackens, oil stains, chemicals discolour, but you can't actually see dangerous ionising radiation with the naked eye. But now a British company is working on a system that shows up radioactivity as a glow in the dark. With a pair of modified military night-vision goggles, scientists monitoring radioactive contamination at the scene of a possible spill would be able to spot smears of alpha-emitting radionuclides such as plutonium. The radiation goggles designed by British Instrument Consultants (BIC) in Warrington, Cheshire, are based on an old technique. Early last century, nuclear pioneer Ernest Rutherford saw the flashes of light given off by zinc sulphide when it is struck by alpha particles. The effect, known as scintillation, is commonly used in radiation monitors which convert the flashes of light into electronic signals. BIC wanted to find a way of boosting the weak flashes given off by low levels of radioactivity until they're visible to the human eye. To do this, the company took a pair of night-vision goggles and tuned them to highlight light wavelengths emitted by scintillating zinc sulphide. Nooks and crannies The result, according to BIC spokesman Mike Scott, is that you can see alpha contamination as low as 30 becquerels per square centimetre as an intense glow on the goggles' green monochrome screen. "The main advantage is being able to measure contamination of unusually shaped objects," he says. "With standard probes it's very difficult to get into nooks and crannies." [ ] The goggles, which have been tested at the University of Liverpool, would also enable staff monitoring an area to keep well away from contamination. One disadvantage, though, is that you have to spray zinc sulphide onto the area under investigation. Furthermore, you can only use the goggles out of doors at night because daylight swamps the sensitive electronics, though filters might make it possible to see the glow in ambient light, Scott says. Hot spots Nevertheless, Scott says some of the major players in the nuclear industry, including the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) have already expressed an interest. The goggles could be useful in identifying hot spots of plutonium contamination at the nuclear plants being decommissioned at Dounreay in Caithness and Sellafield in Cumbria, he argues. Scott, a physicist who has specialised in radiation measurement, accepts some people would prefer a device that could detect lower levels of contamination and other forms of radioactivity. But he is confident that he can improve his design to highlight contamination down to 10 becquerels per square centimetre. He is also planning to investigate other materials such as plastics that are susceptible to scintillation from beta, neutron and gamma radiation. Peter Burgess from Britain's National Radiological Protection Board says that while BIC's idea is a clever notion, he is worried that spraying potentially contaminated areas with zinc sulphide might send radioactive particles into the air and worsen the clean-up problem. But the UKAEA believes the technology "sounds very interesting" and could be useful. "But we need to reserve judgement until we have seen it demonstrated," a spokesman says. BNFL takes a similar tack, arguing that the goggles are the "spark of an idea" that needs more work and testing before they would be willing to use them. Correspondence about this story should be directed to letters@newscientist.com 1900 GMT, 14 March 2001 Rob Edwards, Edinburgh New Scientist Online News Sign up for our free newsletter © Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 16 Senate Bill Offers Boost to Nuclear Power Environment News Service: By Cat Lazaroff WASHINGTON, DC, March 13, 2001 (ENS) - U.S. Senator Pete Domenici has introduced a bill promoting nuclear power as the best solution for a host of problems, ranging from energy shortages to global warming. But environmental groups and nuclear watchdog groups say that nuclear energy is still a risky proposition - far more so than renewable alternatives such as solar power. [Domenici] Senator Pete Domenici introduced a bill to promote nuclear energy (Photo courtesy Office of the Senator) The Nuclear Energy Electricity Assurance Act of Nuclear Energy Electricity Assurance Act of 2001 (S 472), which has bipartisan support, contains a comprehensive set of provisions aimed at fostering greater use of nuclear energy while supporting advanced research into technologies to minimize radioactive wastes. "As a nation, we cannot afford to lose the nuclear energy option until we are ready to specify with confidence how we are going to replace 22 percent of our electricity with some other source offering comparable safety, reliability, low cost and environmental attributes," Domenici said in introducing the bill last week. "We risk our nation's future prosperity if we lose the nuclear option through inaction. Instead, we need concrete action to secure the nuclear option for future generations. We must not subject the nation to the risk of inadequate energy supplies." The bill includes five major components to support nuclear energy production, encourage new plant construction, remove barriers to nuclear power plant licensing, create waste disposal solutions, and alter some Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations. The legislation authorizes $406 million for these initiatives, including $120 million for the advanced accelerator applications (AAA) program aimed at reprocessing spent fuel to tap its residual energy. Currently, the federal government allocates $131 million for these programs, including $68 million for AAA and tritium programs. [plant] Davis Bessie nuclear power plant Unit 1 is located 21 mile east-southeast of Toledo, Ohio. Nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases (Four photos courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission) The nation's 103 nuclear reactors provide about 22 percent of the nation's electricity. The operating costs of nuclear energy are among the lowest of any source, Domenici said. The Utility Data Institute recently reported production costs for nuclear energy at 1.83 cents per kilowatt-hour, with coal second at 2.08 cents per kilowatt hour. Domenici noted that nuclear energy is "essentially emission free," avoiding the emission of 167 million tons of carbon last year or more than two billion tons since the 1970's, compared to other energy sources. In 1999, nuclear power plants provided about half of the total carbon reductions achieved by U.S. industries under the federal voluntary reporting program. "Despite contributions to the nation's environmental health and a solid safety record, the United States has basically abandoned its leadership in the field of nuclear energy. We've erected so many regulatory hurdles that there hasn't been a single new nuclear power plant built in more than 20 years," Domenici said. Some environmental groups charge that nuclear energy and "clean energy" do not belong in the same sentence. The nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen says Domenici's bill simply provides the nuclear power industry a $100 million subsidy without answering questions about how to manage nuclear waste, power plant decommissioning and other problems. [Three Mile Island] The Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history "Promoting nuclear power is risky because questions about its safety still abound and we still cannot guarantee safe storage of nuclear waste for the duration of its hazardous life," the group writes in a release. Public Citizen argues that Domenici's bill would subsidize the completion of unfinished reactors that have lain fallow for years and promote the development of reactor designs that lack containment structures to prevent the release of radiation into the environment and surrounding communities. "Senator Domenici's nuclear energy bill is yet another misguided attempt to subsidize this most dangerous and unforgiving technology," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "It is thoroughly irresponsible to promote the use of nuclear power when there is still no technically feasible means of assuring that long lived radioactive wastes can be isolated from the environment. Further, this will do nothing to solve the current predicament we have with rising electricity costs." The Domenici bill also would approve a shift from formal hearings - which give the public the right to obtain documents through discovery and to cross examine hearing participants - to informal hearings, in which the public can do neither. This would curtail the ability of citizens to participate in the licensing hearings on a proposed "high level" waste repository at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, and on safety issues at more than 100 U.S. nuclear reactors. "Senator Domenici wants to turn Americans into second class citizens by limiting our public hearing and participation rights," said James Riccio, senior analyst for Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Shielding the nuclear industry from public scrutiny will further undermine confidence in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry. If the nuclear industry cannot withstand the rigors of formal hearings, their reactors and nuclear waste dumps should not be built." [Palo Verde] Steam rises from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in the Arizona desert The Domenici bill would extend the Price Anderson Act, which indemnifies the nuclear industry against the financial consequences of a nuclear accident. The bill also would encourage the construction of more reactors while limiting the liability of the nuclear industry in the event of an accident. The bill would allow foreign corporations to own and operate nuclear reactors in the United States, while exercising limited controls over their operations. "I fail to see why the American taxpayer should indemnify foreign corporations whose nuclear reactors threaten the lives and livelihoods of American citizens," Hauter said. "Foreign and domestic corporations that expose the public to the risk of a nuclear disaster should be held financially accountable for their actions. Shielding nuclear corporations from the consequences of their actions will only result in more dangerous nuclear plants and waste dumps." The bill would create an Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research to promote technologies such as the reprocessing of radioactive waste, a controversial program estimated to cost $10 million in 2002 alone. "This does nothing to solve the nuclear waste problem but instead introduces a host of new environmental and safety problems," Hauter said. "It merely serves as a smokescreen to mask the problems that would be exacerbated by the increased reliance on nuclear power that this bill promotes." [Diablo Canyon] The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the California coast has been plagued with security problems and blamed for environmental damage Hauter also objected to Domenici's assertion that increased use of nuclear power would alleviate the current energy shortage in western states. "By propping up a dangerous and failed technology, the legislation ignores proven alternatives such as wind, solar and energy conservation," Hauter said. "The massive subsidies and radioactive waste cleanup costs are so staggering that nuclear power will only increase already sky high wholesale electricity prices." Domenici counters that his bill supports just one aspect of a more comprehensive energy policy needed to provide secure power sources across the nation. "Nuclear energy is not the end all, be all of our energy needs," Domenici said. "In fact, there is no single silver bullet that will solve our nation's thirst for clean, reliable, reasonably priced energy sources. Nuclear energy is just one subset. Our job is to objectively weigh the risks and benefits of this energy source, and take action to tap into that power. I believe it is important to our long term economic and military strength." © Environment News Service ***************************************************************** 17 NRC Special Inspection Team at Seabrook Station to look into last week's "Unusual Event" Press Release - Region I - 2001- 16 - UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 No. I-01-016 March 14, 2001 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610)337-5330/ e-mail: dps@nrc.gov Neil A. Sheehan (610)337-5331/e-mail: nas@nrc.gov A Nuclear Regulatory Commission Special Inspection Team is on site at Seabrook Station looking into last week's loss of off-site power and subsequent reactor trip. Seabrook is operated by North Atlantic Energy Service Company (NAESCO). The plant is located in Seabrook, N.H. On March 5, Seabrook shutdown from full power due to local grid instability caused by a severe snow storm. When power coming into the site was momentarily lost, both emergency diesel generators automatically started and provided power to vital equipment. Operators declared an "Unusual Event" --- the lowest of the emergency classifications. While the plant automatically shut down safely and remained safe throughout the event, several pieces of equipment, including an emergency feedwater pump, did not perform as expected. The NRC has sent a special team to review the licensee's root cause determinations for this event and the corrective actions taken by NAESCO in response. The team also will evaluate the licensee's assessment of the risk associated with the event and perform an independent risk assessment. Three members of the team arrived on site on Monday. A fourth member is supporting the team from the Regional Office in King of Prussia, Pa. An inspection report will be issued about 45 days from the end of the on-site inspection. ***************************************************************** 18 Twiddling Turbine LA Weekly: News Feature: State faces huge energy bill because of San Onofre shutdown by Bill Bradley They said it was a small fire. The reactor automatically shut down as a precaution. Minor damage would be repaired in just a few weeks. The reality, however, is quite different, with enormous consequences. A turbine at Southern California Edison’s San Onofre nuclear power plant, situated right on the coast north of San Diego, just a few miles from picturesque San Clemente, suffered major damage on February 3, just hours after the plant had been brought back on line after 32 days of maintenance and refueling in the midst of California’s unprecedented electric-power crisis. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) won’t release its report on the accident, a report originally promised for last month, until April 21. But whatever the specifics of what happened there, which has been essentially ignored by the media, the effects are huge. The reactor in question, San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 3, produces 1,120 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.1 million households. The NRC says the reactor will remain offline until at least mid-June; an informed source speculates that repairs could take up to a year. Since the reactor had been offline for service before the accident, this means that California will have been deprived of at least five months, and perhaps more, of electricity generation from this linchpin facility during our electric-power crisis. The cost to replace this power on the skyrocketing electricity spot market is enormous, close to $100 million a month. Three days after the accident, the NRC’s little-noticed press release announced that, as a matter of routine, a team of four inspectors had been sent to San Onofre to examine what it called “an unusual equipment failure.” The inspection would take several days, and a public report would be issued in several weeks. “Saturday’s electrical fire caused power to be lost to equipment not vital to the safety of the reactor,” the NRC declared. The situation turns out to be much worse. “Our report,” says NRC spokesman Breck Henderson, “should have been issued last month, but has been delayed by the complexity of the investigation.” San Onofre’s Unit 3 suffered major damage. (Unit 2 remains online. Unit 1 was decommissioned in 1992, and its demolition will produce 66,450 tons of radioactive debris, including 250 tons of spent nuclear fuel, which will be radioactive for thousands of years and remains on-site.) According to an informed source, what was described as a small fire actually lasted for some 30 minutes. The fire is said to have taken place in an electrical-switch gear room, away from nuclear materials. The fire caused an electrical failure, which in turn, according to NRC spokesman Henderson, caused a lubricating oil pump and various backup systems to fail. The loss of these systems caused major damage to the bearings and shaft of a massive turbine. Far from being repaired quickly on-site, as a brief news report assured a few days later, the turbine has actually been disassembled. One 200-ton generator rotor was shipped two weeks after the accident by Edison, in a specially chartered railroad car, to the Virginia facilities of its manufacturer, Alstom Corporation, a British firm. What caused the fire? That information won’t be released by the NRC for more than a month. One knowledgeable source, who would not comment for attribution, says that Edison maintenance practices contributed to the accident. While noting Unit 3’s sound operating record over the past 16 years, Edison spokesman Ray Golden acknowledges that the reactor’s usual 45-day period of refueling and maintenance had been telescoped down to 32 days this time. He says the accident was caused by a malfunctioning electrical-circuit breaker. This short caused a fire, which led to a power interruption and sudden system shutdown. Three backup power systems — two alternating-current power supplies and a direct-current battery — failed in the process. Who will pay for the plant’s repair? The good news for taxpayers and ratepayers is that, under the terms of California’s electric-power deregulation, Edison, other power companies and their insurers are liable. What will it cost to repair the plant? Edison spokesman Golden says the company doesn’t know yet, but Edison has a $2 million deductible, and its insurers will pick up the rest. Bigger questions for the public are who will pay for the cost of replacement power, and how large will the price tag be? The news is not good. According to Robert Kinosian of the California Public Utilities Commission’s Office of Ratepayer Advocacy, the state must find the power and pay for it on the spot market. “Under the terms of AB 1x,” states Kinosian, “the state Department of Water Resources [California’s current agent in the power market] must provide the net short position. When one of the utilities’ units is out, the state is responsible for making up the difference.” The accident at the San Onofre plant comes at a very bad time. With the Edison utility — though not its holding company, which is extremely profitable — reeling from billions in unpaid debts run up for power purchased on the spot market, the state has taken over the task of buying power for the big private utilities that they don’t generate themselves, or getting it from alternative energy sources such as wind, geothermal, cogeneration and solar. California has already committed more than $3 billion from its general fund of taxpayer dollars to buy power for Edison, San Diego Gas &Electric, and Pacific Gas &Electric, but several billion dollars more will be needed before the state issues $10 billion in revenue bonds in late May. The proceeds from the bond sale, the largest municipal-bond offering in U.S. history, will go to fund long-term power contracts negotiated for the state by Los Angeles Department of Water &Power chief S. David Freeman, a volunteer appointee of Governor Gray Davis who was working as the state’s chief negotiator. But the long-term contracts leave a big shortfall this year. Much as many environmentalists may dislike nuclear power and San Onofre, the failure of Unit 3 is a serious blow to California’s power-generation portfolio. Former Sacramento Municipal Utility District director Ed Smeloff — who led the fight to close the Rancho Seco nuclear plant a decade ago, in the only successful nuclear-shutdown ballot initiative in U.S. history — and now heads New York’s Pace Law School energy project, notes that San Onofre has not been viewed around the nation as an especially troubled plant. How valid that perception has been may be clearer when the NRC finally releases its report on the February 3 accident. Getting the power to keep the lights on for 1.1 million California households costs a great deal of money. In the meantime, since the out-of-state power generators that bought the California plants sold by Edison and the other private utilities after deregulation refuse now to sell power to Edison, the state has to find another 1,120 megawatts of electricity. Peak prices are around $250 per megawatt hour. Do the math, and you see that is a whopping $280,000 for every hour during peak periods of electrical use. Fortunately, power costs significantly less during off-peak hours. A good “conservative” rule-of-thumb price over a 24-hour period, according to Kinosian of the PUC and other experts, is $100 per megawatt hour. At that average price, the failure of Unit 3 costs $2.7 million per day. Over the five-month period that the NRC confirms the reactor will have been offline, that adds up to a whopping $400-plus million. If it remains offline longer than that — as some suspect it will — the cost goes even higher. While the Edison utility company is close to bankrupt, its holding company and merchant power-generating arms are more than flush. As part of the 1996 deregulation deal, of which Edison CEO John Bryson was a major architect, Edison and the other big private utilities received more than $10 billion as a bailout for “stranded costs,” a term of art for big, uneconomic investments in the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants. Edison turned around and invested in power plants around the world. Yet Edison’s holding company is not liable for the cost, to taxpayers and ratepayers, of the failure of Unit 3. San Onofre’s state of operational health is important for yet another reason. Right now, the only major transmission connection between San Diego and power plants in the rest of California is at San Onofre. Another transmission-line project has been proposed for the Temecula area in Riverside County, which experts say is necessary because San Diego County is on the verge of exceeding its reliable delivery capability. For some reason, state officials have been very quiet about the problems at San Onofre, despite the huge burden on the state’s deepening power crisis. It is interesting to note that one of Governor Gray Davis’ behind-the-scenes advisers is Van Ness, Feldman, a Washington, D.C., law firm with a big energy regulatory practice. A key figure in the firm is Bob Nordhaus, former general counsel of the Department of Energy under Clinton, and former general counsel of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In between, he was Edison’s lawyer. His wife is general counsel of the NRC. In addition, the governor has three formal power-crisis advisors with strong Edison ties: former Edison president Michael Peevey, Davis’ chief negotiator with the utilities; Edison consultant Vikram Budhraja, a member of the governor’s negotiation team; and the governor’s energy-construction czar, Larry Hamlin, an Edison executive on leave of absence. As they say at Disneyland, it’s a small world after all. ***************************************************************** 19 Greenpeace claims Australia ill-prepared for nuclear accidents ABC News - A Greenpeace report says Australia is ill-prepared for a nuclear ship accident. The report was released this morning in Sydney at the start of a national tour by its author, marine pollution expert Tim Deere-Jones. He says Australia has no plans at all to cope with even a minor nuclear accident at sea and there is major confusion as to which state or agencies would take responsibility for one. Mr Deere-Jones says around two to four nuclear shipments pass through Australian waters every year and that number looks set to rise. He says the vessels that carry hazardous cargo are second rate. "The Australian Government has fallen for the lines sold to them by the international nuclear industry, that the casks that the material is carried in are unbreachable and that the vessels are unsinkable," he said. "My report has found that the vessels are indeed as vulnerable as any other vessel." border="0"> © 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 20 Australia Opposition Demands Govt Update Nuclear Policies Thursday, March 15 4:01 PM SGT CANBERRA (AP)--The opposition Labor Party Thursday demanded the government overhaul its nuclear sea safety policy after a report commissioned by environmental watchdog Greenpeace branded Australia ill-prepared for an accident. The report by British-based marine pollution expert Tim Deere-Jones said there was confusion about which state or federal agency would take charge if a nuclear accident occurred at sea. Greenpeace and union representatives said the report highlighted unacceptable risks to seafarers and the environment. Labor's environment spokesman Sen. Nick Bolkus said Australia wouldn't be able to promptly deal with a nuclear accident at sea and the government had to amend its safety plans. "It's in urgent need of restructuring and it needs to be restructured in a way that should anticipate the worst scenario," Bolkus said. Two nuclear fuel ships traveling from France to Japan passed through Australian waters earlier this month amid environmental and political protests. The government maintains the shipments are safe and has refused to join regional protests against the shipments. "New Zealand's protesting, Samoa is protesting," Bolkus said. "We are the biggest country in the region in terms of international clout and we're just saying we don't care." Copyright © 1994-2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 21 British MOX freighters near port [The Japan Times Online] Thursday, March 15, 2001 NIIGATA (Kyodo) Two armed British freighters carrying recycled mixed oxide nuclear fuel processed in France will arrive at a port in Niigata Prefecture late next week, sources said Wednesday. The vessels carrying the fuel, comprising plutonium and uranium, for Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in the prefecture are scheduled to dock at a port at the plant, the sources said. The ships left the northwestern French port of Cherbourg in January. The cargo, 28 MOX fuel rods produced by the Belgian company Belgonucleaire from plutonium reprocessed by the French state-owned company COGEMA, is expected to be loaded into the No. 3 reactor of the Tepco plant. The two British ships, specially fitted for the transportation of nuclear fuel, are armed with machineguns as protection against piracy. Guards from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority are also on board. The shipment will be the second time MOX fuel has been shipped to Japan using commercial armed vessels. The previous shipment took place in 1999. The Japan Times: Mar. 15, 2001 (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 22 Officials rule out new EIA for plant The Taipei Times Online: 2001-03-15 Thursday, March 15th, 2001 POWER PLANT POLITICS: Hu Chin-piao, the newly appointed chairman of the Atomic Energy Council, says there's no need to conduct a second environmental impact assessment for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER Despite significant changes in the original construction plans for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, there is no need for a second environmental impact assessment (EIA), government officials told the Legislative Yuan yesterday. Speaking in response to legislators' questions, Hu Chin-piao (­JŔAĽĐ), chairman of the Atomic Energy Council, said he wouldn't consider ordering Taipower (Ąxąq) to redo the plant's EIA because the council's EIA committee hadn't received a censure from the Control Yuan over the issue. In 1995, the Control Yuan censured the council, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and several other government bodies for failing to conduct a second EIA after significant changes were made to the nuclear power plant's designs. Chief among the alterations was a change in the plant's power output -- from 1,000 megawatts to 1,350 megawatts per reactor. Hu claims the Atomic Energy Council never received notice of the Control Yuan's censure. The Control Yuan also handed out a second round of censures in 1999. In March 1999, the Atomic Energy Council under the KMT government -- and led by Hu -- issued the plant its construction license, without dealing with the censure first. Also appearing before the legislature yesterday was EPA head Hau Lung-bin (°qŔsŮy), who said he lacked the power to order Taipower to redo its EIA for the plant. Hau said that the EIA Act passed in 1994 gave him the authority to review reports on significant changes in the power plant's design, but the boosting of the nuclear facility's wattage by 35 percent wasn't one of them. "The EPA will act in accordance with the law on the EIA issue," Hau said. In addition, Hau said, the EPA could not ask Taipower to conduct a new EIA for review because Taipower's supervisor is the Atomic Energy Council, not the Environmental Protection Administration. In addition to the change in power output for the plant's two reactors, there have been several alterations that could warrant conducting a second EIA. Except for the power output increase, Taipower has been conducting environment impact analyses on changes, sending the results to the EPA for review. According to the administration, one of these reports includes an environmental impact assessment for a final repository for low-level radioactive waste. The repository is to be located on Wuchiu (ŻQËú), an island between Kinmen and Matsu. EPA officials say they are unlikely to keep the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant from going forward because of the lack of a new EIA. But environmentalists say Taipower has made too many changes to the project's original plan -- including adding a temporary repository for radioactive waste at the plant's site -- without conducting the required EIAs. Activists say that a highly controversial, "out-of-date" project that was designed a decade ago should be more closely scrutinized. This story has been viewed 402 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/03/15/story/0000077591] Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 Taipower to absorb costs related to nuclear plant The Taipei Times Online: 2001-03-15 Thursday, March 15th, 2001 By Richard Dobson STAFF REPORTER Additional costs incurred by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, Ąxąq) from the more than three-month halt in construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®ÖĄ|) will not result in higher electricity prices, according to the chairman of the state-run utility company. Taipower Chairman Hsi Shih-ji (®u®ÉŔŮ) told lawmakers yesterday that much of the estimated NT$3.4 billion in additional costs incurred during that time could be absorbed by the company through dipping into the utility's pension fund. Environmental problems * The Atomic Energy Council says it never received note of the censure. * In March 1999, the Atomic Energy Council issued the plant its construction license without responding to the censure first. * The EPA says only the Atomic Energy Council could require Taipower to do a new EIA. Source: Taipei Times "With privatization of Taipower to be delayed, we can afford to withdraw around NT$2.3 billion to offset the losses from the nuclear plant['s delay]," Hsi said. As for the added costs from interest payments on loans and maintaining the site, Hsi said these were all "book losses" and the company had not yet paid out any money. Viewing the total cost from this point of view, it doesn't "actually amount to that much," Hsi said, adding that the NT$3.4 billion sum would not be passed on to power users. But at the insistence of New Party deputy whip Lai Shyh-bao (żŕ¤h¸¶), Hsi estimated that if the additional costs were to be reflected in a price rise, average users consuming around 300 kilowatt-hours of power per month would see their electricity bills increase by NT$6. The declaration by Hsi comes only days after he hinted that power rates may have to be hiked -- which would be the first time in 18 years -- to bolster profits that are plunging on the high costs of oil and natural gas. Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (ŞL«H¸q), who was also at the legislature to answer questions from lawmakers, said the additional costs should be viewed as the "price of democracy." Lin has consistently defended his advice to the government to scrap the plant, saying it was in the best interests of the nation. The beleaguered minister had another chance to defend his stance yesterday under blistering attacks from opposition lawmakers, who said he should take the blame for a misguided policy. "My original reasons for advising a halt to the plant have not changed," Lin said. Lin said the NT$3.4 billion in additional plant costs included NT$500 million in extra fees paid to domestic contractors and another NT$2.4 billion for foreign contractors. Interest payments and the cost of maintaining the plant's work site amounted to around NT$700 million. This story has been viewed 302 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/03/15/story/0000077592] Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 BNFL plant condemned as unsafe by environmentalists FT.com | News and Analysis | World Article By Matthew Jones in London Published: March 14 2001 20:11GMT | Last Updated: March 14 2001 20:29GMT British Nuclear Fuels, the UK atomic services group, was accused by environmentalists on Wednesday of trying to re-open a power plant without taking adequate steps to ensure its safety. Wylfa nuclear power plant in Wales was closed last April when defects were found in some of the welds inside its reactor pressure vessel. BNFL has gained approval from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Britain's nuclear safety watchdog, to re-open the plant without repairing the cracks. Instead it will fit an external restraint system to manage the problem. Greenpeace, the environmental campaign group, told members of the Welsh assembly that the plans presented an unacceptable risk to the local environment and community. John Large, an independent atomic engineer commissioned by Greenpeace, said the cracks were in a safety critical component of the reactor and would make it difficult to predict what might happen in an accident. "I am very surprised to learn that the NII are allowing BNFL to proceed with what I can only describe as an expedient bodge job," he added. BNFL denied that its plans would make the reactor unsafe and said Greenpeace's analysis was flawed. "We constantly have to prove to the NII the safety of a whole raft of things. Mr Large is sitting in his office with little or no evidence for his assertions," said an official. The NII was unavailable for comment. Greenpeace's remarks came as BNFL was forced to evacuate 350 staff at its Dungeness A atomic power plant due to a carbon dioxide leak. No-one was injured and BNFL said there had been no risk of radioactive contamination. ***************************************************************** 25 Environmentalists Protest Bill Thursday, Mar. 15, 2001. Page 5 The Moscow Times Hundreds of environmental organizations have sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin urging him to veto a bill that allows the import of spent nuclear fuel into the country if it is passed by lawmakers. But Putin left Tuesday for a skiing vacation without replying to Monday's appeal from the 650 Russian organizations. "We haven't received any answer to our letter so far, but it is probably too early anyway," said Alexei Yablokov, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and an environmental adviser to former President Boris Yeltsin. "We asked the president to veto the bill if the [State] Duma passes these amendments in two readings in one go March 22," Yablokov said, expressing the fear of many environmentalists that the Duma will rush the bill, which was approved in first reading earlier this year, through the final two hearings. If the legislation is then passed by the Federation Council and signed into law by Putin, it will open the door to a $20 billion project by the Nuclear Power Ministry to import 20,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from 14 countries for reprocessing or storage. Monday's letter is a second attempt by environmentalists to attract attention to the pending legislation that they say will turn Russia into an international nuclear waste dump. The first bid was a national referendum of 2.5 million signatures against the bill. But the Central Elections Commission threw out the referendum after declaring several hundred of the signatures invalid. Interestingly, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal against the elections commission March 22, the same day the Duma is expected to vote on the nuclear bill. ***************************************************************** 26 PG&E Deals New Card in Energy Talks Coastline offered with power lines David Lazarus, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, March 15, 2001 [Diablo Canyon. Chronicle Graphic] [The state might buy land around the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant along with PG&E's power lines. Associated Press, 1996, File Photo] State officials and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. are no longer haggling over how much should be paid for the utility's power lines. Instead, both sides are focused on 14 miles of spectacular Central California coastline stretching from Avila Beach to Montana de Oro State Park - - which just so happens to be home to PG's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Sources familiar with the talks said the negotiations are centered around efforts by PG to drive up its asking price for the power lines by including parcels of land as part of a multibillion-dollar bailout scheme. "Beachfront property would make the public feel a lot better about purchasing a deteriorating transmission system," said Richard Bilas, who sits on the state Public Utilities Commission. Prior to this new element being added to the negotiations, sources said, the state was looking at spending about $5 billion on PG's lines. It is not yet clear how much the inclusion of valuable beachfront property might raise the utility's asking price. Some energy-industry professionals say a total outlay of $10 billion is not out of the question. Gov. Gray Davis already has agreed to pay $2.8 billion for the grid belonging to Southern California Edison. The purchases are intended to restore financial well-being to the two utilities, which are saddled with almost $13 billion in debt. PG is being assisted in its talks by a team of high-priced attorneys from the San Francisco firm of Orrick, Herrington &Sutcliffe, which has expertise in both energy and land issues. Partners at the firm declined to discuss their involvement in the deal without the consent of PG. The utility refused to grant such access. "We or our agents will not discuss issues related to our discussions with the governor," said John Tremayne, a PG spokesman. Sources within PG, however, said the lawyers have been given workstations inside the utility's headquarters and are poring over land deeds and related documents. Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for the governor, said only that the talks with PG are continuing. Sources said the state has not yet decided whether any land obtained from PG would be converted into state parks or simply held in trust. In the case of Diablo Canyon, the majestic beauty of the nearby shore and 11,000 acres of surrounding hills is compromised by the intense security needs of the nuclear power plant. "Traditionally, our security starts at the Avila gate, about 7 miles from the plant," said Jeff Lewis, a spokesman for the facility. "The land is not open to the public." Diablo Canyon security workers, who dress in black fatigues and carry assault rifles, routinely patrol the surrounding countryside to prevent protesters from getting too close. The presence of the nuclear power plant notwithstanding, the land around Diablo Canyon is comparable to Big Sur in terms of environmental bounty. Deer and other creatures roam the hills, while the nearby sea is home to whales, seals and a variety of fish. The city of San Luis Obispo is just a few miles away. Down the coast, the beachfront community of Avila Beach has been completely rebuilt after decades of chemical contamination by tanks and pipes belonging to Unocal Corp. "We've advocated state purchases of utility land across the state," said Bill Magavern, senior legislative representative for the Sierra Club in Sacramento. "We want them under permanent protection, and that pristine coastline near Diablo is one of the gems we're trying to protect." *E-mail David Lazarus at dlazarus@sfchronicle.com.* ***************************************************************** 27 Russia Plans To Build a Floating Power Plant Thursday, Mar. 15, 2001. Page 5 By Yevgenia Borisova Staff Writer Nuclear Power Minister Yevgeny Adamov said a floating nuclear power plant will be built in the northwestern town of Severodvinsk — a move that was immediately branded by environmentalists Wednesday as a breach of federal laws and a danger for locals. Adamov said Tuesday that the plant will generate 70 megawatts of power and 50 gigacalories of heat and supply electricity to Severodvinsk and the Northern Machine-Building Plant, the city's biggest power consumer and Russia's largest submarine builder. Nuclear Power Ministry spokesman Yury Bespalko said Wednesday that the plant will cost $109.7 million. Although he did not say who would finance the project, another ministry source said the investment will be provided by the ministry itself. The Severodvinsk plant will be built under the same blueprints that had been drawn up in 1998 for another floating nuclear power plant in the Far East, the source said. That project, for a station in Pevek, Chukotka, was frozen amid financial problems in the region. It had passed the stage of feasibility studies and parts have even been ordered from the Izhorskiye Plant in St. Petersburg. The Pevek plans, which were prepared by the Nizhny Novgorod-based OKB Mashinostroyeniye factory, will be modified for the Severodvinsk location, the Nuclear Power Ministry source said. Feasibility studies for the Severodvinsk plant are scheduled to be completed by the end of 2001. Environmentalists, who have long campaigned against the Far East project as a violation of the law, said Adamov's announcement came as a shock. "Nothing has changed since then in that law," said Ivan Blokov, spokesman for the Moscow office of Greenpeace. "It still stipulates that 'the location, drafting and construction of nuclear power plants is prohibited … in the vicinity of bodies of water of federal significance.'" The planned Severodvinsk plant is to float on the Severnaya Dvina River near the White Sea. It is located in the Arkhangelsk region, east of Murmansk and Scandinavia. "Undoubtedly, the White Sea and Severnaya Dvina are bodies of water of federal significance," Blokov said. Alexei Yablokov, environmental adviser to former President Boris Yeltsin, added: "In choosing between the two evils, the Pevek station in Chukotka would have been a better evil because it would have caused less damage [if a disaster occurred]. Here, it is too close to the center of Russia and to the Scandinavian countries." Thomas Nilsen, spokesman for the Bellona environmental organization, said he is worried about the local residents most of all. "I was in Severodvinsk a few years ago," he said. "The block of flats are just a few hundred meters away from the place where the plant will be built. It is very dangerous — in the case of even a minor accident that would release radioactive steam from the plant, no one would be able to warn people, or to manage to evacuate them." A ministry source close to the $270 million Pevek project said construction was put on hold purely for economic reasons: The region appeared to be unable to pay for the electricity that the plant was supposed to generate. The impoverishment of the region was not clear in 1995 when the project was initiated, said the source. "http://www.themoscowtimes.com ***************************************************************** 28 Two nuclear reactors shut down in Ukraine The Associated Press KPnews.com -- News about Ukraine 14 Mar 2001 KYIV, Mar. 14 (AP) - Two reactors at Ukrainian nuclear power plants were shut down due to malfunctions, officials and news reports said Wednesday. The No. 3 reactor at the Zaporizhia plant was shut down Wednesday afternoon by automatic safety systems and the cause of the incident is being determined, the state nuclear company Energoatom said. On Tuesday, the No. 2 reactor at the Yuzhna plant was halted due to leak in a steam generator. The defect caused radioactive water to leak from one reactor's circuit to another one in a turbine, the Interfax news agency said. The defect is expected to be repaired by March 21, it said. The radiation level at the atomic plants was reported to be normal. Ukraine was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986 when a reactor at the Chernobyl power plant exploded. The plant was shut down for good in December. © 2000 SputnikMedia.net ***************************************************************** 29 Iran to Sign Second Reactor Deal with Russia Thursday March 15 7:54 AM ET By Konstantin Trifonov St. PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - A Russian official said on Thursday that Iran will sign up for a second Russian-built nuclear reactor once the delayed first one, which has already sparked U.S. worries, has been completed. Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant at the Gulf port of Bushehr. Iran says it is for civil use, but the United States has worried it might help the Islamic Republic, which it dubs a ``rogue state,'' develop nuclear weapons. ``In principle, he (Iranian President Mohammed Khatami) confirmed that as soon as the equipment for the first reactor leaves the factory, a contract for a second reactor will be signed,'' Yevgeny Sergeyev, the general director of the Izhorskiye Zavody plant, told journalists. Khatami, on a visit to Russia, visited the plant in St. Petersburg and met Sergeyev. The plant is making basic equipment for the first reactor, which it plans to deliver in the third quarter of 2001. Sergeyev said the first reactor had originally been scheduled for completion by the end of 2002, but had now been put back to late 2003 or early 2004. Russia and Iran have been in talks before over the construction of a second reactor. Dressed in traditional Muslim cleric's robes, Khatami toured the factory floor while Sergeyev explained the manufacturing process to him. Iran and Russia signed an $800 million deal for the first nuclear power plant's construction in the mid-1990s, but it has since been subject to delays. Last week, the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Assadollah Sabouri, was quoted on state television as criticizing Russian contractors for the hold-ups. Sabouri said the first unit, a 1,000 megawatt power station, was ``about 50 percent completed'' and its main equipment would be installed during the next Iranian year, which begins March 21. The total construction cost of one reactor is between $800 million and one billion. Nuclear Plants, Arms Irritate U.S. The United States has put pressure on Russia to abandon the nuclear power plant project as it sees Iran as one of the ''rogue states'' that it says threaten world stability. It also puts North Korea ( - ) and Libya in this class. It has also urged Russia to drop plans to resume supplying conventional weapons to Iran, although Russian President Vladimir Putin ( - ) told Khatami earlier this week that Moscow was ready to go ahead with the arms sales. Tehran and Moscow insist the nuclear cooperation is of a strictly civilian nature. They say arms will be defensive and the sale does not violate Russia's international treaty obligations. Sergeyev said Khatami was dissatisfied with the nuclear plant construction delays, but added that the hold-ups were not connected with his factory. He said the deal for manufacturing equipment for a second reactor could be signed by the end of 2002 or the start of 2003. After leaving St. Petersburg, Khatami travels to Kazan in Russia's autonomous Tatarstan Republic where he will meet regional President Mintimer Shaimiyev and visit a mosque. Tatarstan is one of Russia's main Muslim provinces. Copyright © 2001 ., and Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 Domenici will support Bush budget -- for now *March 14, 2001* FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS WASHINGTON -- Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici may not win the fight to restore funds that President Bush wants to cut from the Energy Department budget, but he will try to win the war. The New Mexico Republican said Tuesday that he will support the budget plan for now -- and seek to get some of the $700 million cut from the department replaced when Congress gets down to dollar specifics later this year. "My efforts here are to get a good budget resolution completed and to support the president as much as we can," Domenici said. "That means that we start this process by putting before the Senate what he thinks he ought to have." Domenici, whose home state includes the Los Alamos and Sandia national nuclear laboratories, wants more funding for Energy infrastructure, research and development. The department's funding was cut to offset growth in other areas of Bush's budget, which proposed a 4 percent increase in discretionary spending. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Sandia lab in Livermore and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center are Energy Department research sites in the Bay Area. Bruce Tarter, director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, said in testimony delivered Tuesday to a Senate subcommittee that facility money is falling about $650 million short per year across the Energy Department complex. About 40 percent of the lab's work force of about 8,000 employees works in temporary space, and 70 percent of the temporary work space at the lab is "nearing or beyond (the) end of service life," he said. About 14 percent of Livermore Lab office and lab space "is in need of major rehabilitation," he added, and 30 percent needs minor rehabilitation. Domenici had previously stated that he did not think such an increase would adequately support the nation's needs. But in the interest of bolstering GOP support for the budget, he now says he will "hold the line" on the 4 percent proposal. "I will say for myself, that, with reference to certain budget functions, that I don't think they are funded adequately," Domenici said. There are currently not enough votes in the Senate to pass the budget plan incorporating the 4 percent increase, Domenici said. In response to Domenici's vote prediction, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "I have not heard the senator's statements. But I can tell you that the president has said, 'A funny thing about votes -- you never how they're going to go until the voting actually starts.'" If and when the budget proposal makes it through Congress, Domenici will try to use his power as chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development to try to get more funding for the Energy Department. "I have to lobby very hard to get resources under the president's budget moved around so we can get additional money for the Energy Department," Domenici said. Specifically, he said the agency needs $300 million to $500 million a year during the next 17 years to enhance infrastructure for the weapons complex and replace money Bush wants cut from research and development. He plans to write a letter to Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, outlining his discontent with the cuts. "My position is that before you change this you've got to talk to Congress, you've got to talk to some of these people who have been working on these issues," he said. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 DOE leader eyes Test Site changes March 15, 2001 By Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN A plan introduced by a leader in the U.S. Energy Department would increase security at the Nevada Test Site and other field offices and focus on conducting smaller, more sophisticated experiments. Air Force Gen. John Gordon, chief of the DOE's new National Nuclear Security Administration, on Wednesday announced a reorganization plan that would create two new associate administrators who would coordinate the DOE's programs and operations in the field. Apparent security breaches and subsequent investigations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico sparked the federal government to announce plans to secure its facilities and a year ago created the new division led by Gordon. Gordon said he is concerned about safety and environmental issues at the DOE sites, where clear and direct lines of communication and coordination are necessary. The move to smaller scale, more sophisticated experiments will aid security, allowing closer guarding of the research at the remote site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, he said. The goal of the new plan puts the site in the role of an outdoor laboratory for smaller experiments, using electrical pulses and gas-fired guns to test parts of nuclear devices. That keeps the Test Site as a prominent player in the nation's nuclear arsenal. Weapons were tested above and below ground until 1992, when a moratorium went into effect. Since then government scientists have shifted their research to subcritical experiments -- testing nuclear weapons materials underground without allowing them to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. But part of the Test Site's mission is to remain ready to resume full-scale testing at the president's order, spokesman Darwin Morgan said. Gordon said his goal is to provide a safe and secure environment that will allow government scientists to team with university professors and other researchers in conducting experiments to help ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is ready. The University of Nevada system, the Desert Research Institute and the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Research all have roles in the partnership. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 2 Miami man charged in sale of equipment for nuclear bombs Mar. 14, 2001 A Miami man was charged Wednesday with lying to federal export officials in an attempt to sell to foreign clients equipment that could be used to explode a nuclear explosive device. The U.S. Attorney's office charged Miguel A. Barrios, 33, with making a false representation to the Department of Commerce and its Bureau of Export Administration on applications to sell a neutron generator to companies in the United Arab Emirates. At the time, Barrios was an employee of Miami Export Purchasing Co. of Hialeah Gardens. The criminal complaint against Barrios accuses him of violating federal regulat ions that restrict the export of commodities, technology and software from the United States because of national security, foreign policy and nuclear non-proliferation considerations. If convicted, Barrios could be sentenced to 10 years. Prosecutors hope to prove Barrios was trying to get around those restrictions. But his attorney, federal public defender Ken Swartz, predicted his client, who was released on $100,000 bond, would be exonerated on the grounds that he was in over his head when it came to the regulations. http://www.sun-sentinel.com ***************************************************************** 3 2006 Flats closure seen as feasible Denver Rocky Mountain News: Local Goal `doable,' official says as crews ship out waste with no mishaps By Berny Morson, News Staff Writer Rocky Flats officials were more optimistic Wednesday about meeting the 2006 closure goal after the 100th waste shipment arrived at a New Mexico burial ground. "It's doable," said Joe Legare, assistant manager for environment at the defunct nuclear weapons plant. Flats officials were hedging their bets last month, saying closure could be delayed until early 2007, after a series of safety violations and an accident that contaminated 11 workers with plutonium. A report by the General Accounting Office, an arm of Congress, said 2008 would be a more likely completion date. But Legare said the New Mexico shipments, which have gone without a mishap, reflect the growing ability of workers to get the waste into special containers and out the plant door. Two teams of six to 10 workers each are putting the waste onto trucks. Two more teams and another loading facility are in the works, Legare said. "We've built up an infrastructure that will sustain a steady number of shipments," he said. Shipments to New Mexico began June 15, 1999. The first 100 truckloads included about 3,294 drums of plutonium-contaminated materials, including building rubble, tools and clothing. That leaves about 72,000 drums to be moved -- a manageable number, Legare said. Each shipment moves up to 42 drums. The plant for the first time last week shipped five truckloads to New Mexico. By the end of the year, 10 shipments a week will be heading south -- enough to remove 70,000 drums by 2006. Safety is improving in the most contaminated part of the plant, said John Barton, a vice president of the Flats local of the United Steel Workers. He is also one of the workers who measures radiation. "We're seeing a lower level, which is good," Barton said. Barton said Kaiser-Hill Company, the private firm hired to carry out the clean-up, is cooperating with workers on safety issues. Some of the delays in late 2000 occurred when workers called halts for safety reasons. Barton said he isn't sure the plant will meet the 2006 closure goal. "I guess I'd reserve my opinion until 2005 and see where we're at," he said. March 15, 2001 2001 © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 4 Regulators say Energy Department funding may not be enough Ohio Beacon March 14, 2001 CINCINNATI (AP) -- Proposed federal funding to complete years of cleaning up radioactive wastes at a former Cold War uranium processing plant may not be enough to comply with environmental requirements, regulators say. Ohio and federal environmental regulators have told U.S. Department of Energy officials that a proposal of $290 million in annual funding from Washington for the Fernald cleanup project probably won't be enough. They said that amount is insufficient to meet environmental cleanup commitments the department made in a 1991 agreement with the regulators. The department could face fines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if it fails to comply with environmental cleanup commitments made to regulators. The department has submitted various budget proposals to the new Bush administration and is uncertain what level of cleanup funding Congress will authorize, department spokesman Ken Morgan said Wednesday. ``We don't know what we're going to get,'' Morgan said. ``We're committed to meeting all our agreements.'' Morgan said one department budget proposal requests annual funding of $295.6 million for cleanup at the 1,050-acre Fernald site 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati. Butget funding in that range might be inadequate to continue removing radioactively contaminated soil and placing it in ground disposal cells at the site, federal and state regulators said in letters to department officials during the past two weeks. If those projects are shut down, the department runs the risk of losing personnel trained to perform those tasks, wrote Ohio EPA supervisor Thomas Schneider. A federal EPA regulator assigned to oversee the Fernald cleanup also is concerned. ``In the last decade, notwithstanding a few setbacks, U.S. DOE has managed to transform the Fernald site from an environmental disaster into a model cleanup,'' EPA coordinator Jim Saric wrote. ``However, the Fernald site is still a work in progress.'' The Fernald plant processed uranium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Production was shut down in 1989 to concentrate on the long-term cleanup. Department officials said last fall that they want the cleanup contractor, Fluor Fernald Inc., to complete the cleanup by Dec. 31, 2006, at a remaining cost of $2.4 billion. Fluor Fernald's management has said that is an optimistic scenario. AP-CS-03-14-01 1929EST --> ***************************************************************** 5 The Danger of Prescribed Burns at Nuclear Sites & Nuclear Wildlife Refuges - Paula Elofson-Gardine and Susan Hurst Environmental Information Network Paula Elofson-Gardine and Susan Hurst Wednesday, March 14, 2001 In the year 2000, there was a policy change by DOE, to "outsource" certain management aspects of the sites, by having the National Fire Service manage a program for prescribed burns. This includes DOE nuclear facilities such as: Los Alamos, Hanford, INEEL, Rocky Flats, and Savannah River for "weed control and thatch reduction", instead of mowing, cutting, or use of grazing animals to control vegetation. In the case of Rocky Flats, the thatch was not reduced by the burn. It appears that these burns are really intended for the purposes of getting rid of contaminated vegetation to prepare these sites for rapid rehabilitation, possible future development, or wildlife refuges, as currently proposed by Colorado Senator Wayne Allard and Representative Mark Udall. These "feel good nuclear petting zoos" may include hiking trails and walking tours for field trips for school children to observe wildlife habitat. For 50 years, they cut and mowed the vegetation, calling it hand management. Allard and Udall had their kick-off press conference announcing the proposed legislation last September, while standing in the north eastern Rocky Flats Superfund Site "plutonium nitrate field" from the leaking plutonium process waste solar evaporation ponds. A Rocky Flats research cattle herd grazed near this area for 3 months. Tissue from these cattle were compared to tissues from cattle that grazed year round at the Nevada test site. The Rocky Flats cattle were found to be radiologically hotter, due to the radioactive dust resuspension, vegetation uptake, and exterior adsorption of radioactive contaminants. See excerpts of this study at: http://members.aol.com/magnu96196/EINHome.html These are examples of some of the problems of this, and other nuclear sites. Burning radiologically contaminated vegetation causes alpha particles to be inhaled and absorbed by the lungs and lymph nodes. Rocky Flats is the only DOE nuclear facility with a one mile buffer zone to protect the 3.5+ million residents in the Denver metro area, with the closest house being 0.5 miles from the east gate. Realistic cleanup timelines for many DOE nuclear sites have been scrapped so that DOE could "reduce the mortgage", and get out from these sites sooner so the land can be returned to the public. When the cleanup time is reduced by 50 years, many corners are cut. Burning off vegetation is a innovative means to "cleanup" widespread contamination in the areas surrounding these sites. Unfortunately, it merely moves it off the sites and into nearby communities. The President is currently considering a national policy promoting prescribed burns for vegetation control across the U.S. Community health should be the highest priority. The President, or Congress should mandate that prescribed burns for vegetation control at or around DOE nuclear sites be permanently banned. Mr. President, "Just say No". Protect the health of the nation, elders, and children. Last year, in the case of Los Alamos, the National Fire Service had been warned of the danger due to high winds. They were advised not to burn at Los Alamos. They were determined to go forward with it - and it resulted in an unprecedented disaster of biblical proportions. Afterward, they claimed that despite over 50 years of releases and fallout from the facility to the surrounding environs, that there had been no significant contamination transfers by smoke to local communities. This scene was eerily repeated at each of the most highly contaminated DOE sites, Hanford, Idaho National Engineering Lab, Savannah River, and Rocky Flats. Afterward, DOE, EPA, and local health departments announced that there was no danger to the public. There were no significant releases of radioactive or chemical contaminants occurred. This was viewed with incredulity from citizens living near these sites. At Rocky Flats, in April of 2000, a "prescribed burn" of 500 acres was reduced to a "test burn" of 50 acres, due to the furor from local cities and nearby residents. Rocky Flats personnel refused to collect materials and burn this under controlled laboratory conditions (a burn box) to see what was held up in this vegetation and ash. It was burned in the open, with a huge cloud lifting up and traveling up to Boulder, up the canyons, east past Thornton, and all along the front range, south past Golden and Lakewood. Ash acts as a concentrating mechanism of contaminants, and was not tested afterward, as requested by citizens. We have a Radalert, which is a real time hand-held radiation monitor that measures Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and "X" radiation. Before the Rocky Flats Rx burn, "background" radiation (from above ground nuclear testing) was previously established as between 8 to 15 counts per minute (CPM) on this monitor. There was a KMGH Channel 7 film crew at our place filming an interview, when an observer at the site called: the fire service personnel had started the burn, with a giant brown and gray cloud lifting to mixing height and moving out toward the suburbs. In under 40 minutes, this smoke cloud traveled 14 miles through the metro area, south to Lakewood. It was visible from our 2nd floor as it spread over the metro area. Our phone rang nonstop from people in each suburb calling in alarm. Our radiation monitor readings started going up and did not return to "normal to high range" for over several weeks. It kept reaching the highest level of detection, then had to be reset. The person filming the interview was shocked to see that not only could they see the thick smoke, smell it (like a forest fire), the radiation monitor did its job and measured the fact that there was radioactivity contained in the smoke. What were our readings? As any good scientist would, we discarded readings that appeared to exceed the highest limits of our monitor, because it did not stabilize. It went up to 18,000, then 19,999 cpm. Local citizens noted metallic taste in their mouths from the smoke. The readings that were stable enough to be kept as good data, exceeded 4,260 cpm. That is extremely high in anyone's opinion, and it was not the highest reading we obtained - 19,999! The next day it went down to 1,147 cpm, and steadily declined over the next few weeks. The "background" of the metro area has been raised by about 10 cpm that has persisted for nearly a year now. We attribute this to the RF Rx burn, and ongoing demolition at Rocky Flats of plutonium buildings, as concrete acts like a sponge for radiation. Readings taken around the metro Denver area in the last week, now range from 20 to 39 cpm. We did not have extremely high readings like those obtained the week of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility vegetation burn, or since. There is no "official" evidence of what exactly was in that smoke. Unofficially, we know from our extensive knowledge of this site, and our monitor readings, that there were highly radioactive constituents released into the communities from this fire. Should they be allowed to burn off the entire 6,000+ acre buffer zone as planned? Absolutely not. This kind of "land management" must be banned at nuclear facilities. This illustrates the need for funded citizen radiation monitoring networks to be in place in the communities around these facilities. Should these areas be allowed to be renamed to hide the real nature of the hazards? Wildlife Refuges? Please. Let's try a new designation: Restricted Access Nuclear Wildlife Reserve. No trails, no tours, and no burning. Cut it down and contain it. Paula Elofson-Gardine, Executive Director Environmental Information Network (EIN), Inc. 303-233-6677 -and- Susan Hurst, Publications Director, EIN Susan Hurst is the local citizen that took Rocky Flats Clean Water Act violations to the FBI in 1986 (as an owner of a construction company), that Rockwell plead guilty to, in Federal Court in1991 (USA v. Rockwell, Int'l). This was from Rockwell spray irrigating or land applying radiotoxic waste water to the buffer zone around the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility that sheeted off to tributaries, that went to metro area public drinking water supplies. Paula Elofson-Gardine, a biologist, was the chair of the Rocky Flats Technical Review Group for 3.5 years, and has been recognized by the Colorado Business Magazine as "knowing more about Rocky Flats than the DOE". She speaks regularly at CU Boulder, and other venues. Both were founding members of the Rocky Flats Cleanup Commission, an EPA TAG, in 1988. EIN is a nonprofit environmental education organization. For more information, see the EIN Website: http://members.aol.com/magnu96196/EINHome.html ***************************************************************** 6 UNEP Releases Final Report on DU Impact in Kosovo EarthVision Environmental News* GENEVA, March 13, 2001 - The final report of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) on the environmental impact of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition used during the 1999 Kosovo conflict has been released here today. In November 2000, a UNEP field mission visited 11 of the 112 sites that were identified as being targeted by ordnance containing DU, including five in the Italian sector (MNB (W)) and six in the German sector (MNB (S)). The UNEP team, consisting of 14 scientists from several countries, collected soil, water and vegetation samples and conducted smear tests on buildings, destroyed army vehicles and DU penetrators. Remnants of DU ammunition were found at eight sites. Altogether, 355 samples were analyzed, including 249 soil samples, 46 water samples, 37 vegetation samples, 13 smear tests, three milk samples, four jackets (specialized parts of ordnance), two penetrators and one penetrator fragment. Transuranic isotopes found Seven-and-a-half DU penetrators were found during the field mission. Low levels of radiation were detected in the immediate vicinity of the points of impact, and mild contamination from DU dust was measured near the targets. There was also some evidence from bio-indicators of airborne DU contamination near targeted sites. In addition to U-238, which makes up the bulk of depleted uranium, the penetrators contained uranium isotope U-236 and plutonium isotope Pu-239/240 (see UNEP press releases of 16 January and 16 February 2001). The presence of these transuranic elements in the DU indicates that at least some of the material has been in nuclear reactors. However, the amount of transuranic isotopes found in the DU penetrators is very low and does not have any significant impact on their overall radioactivity. No widespread contamination No widespread ground contamination was found in the investigated areas. Therefore, the corresponding radiological and chemical risks are insignificant. There were a great number of contamination points in the investigated areas, but there is no significant risk related to these points in terms of possible contamination of air or plants. "These scientific findings should alleviate any immediate anxiety that people living or working in Kosovo may have been experiencing," said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer. "Under certain circumstances, however, DU can still pose risks. Our report highlights a series of precautionary measures that should be taken to guarantee that the areas struck by DU ammunition remain risk-free." Precaution recommended It is highly likely that penetrators are still lying on the ground surface. Although the radiological and chemical risks of touching a penetrator are insignificant, if one was put into a pocket or somewhere else close to the human body, there would be external beta radiation of the skin, leading to quite high local radiation doses after some weeks of continuous exposure. Skin burns from radiation are unlikely. Regarding contamination points, if a child were to ingest small amounts of soil, the corresponding radiological risk would be insignificant, but from a biochemical point of view, the possible intake might be somewhat higher than the applicable health standard. "There are still considerable scientific uncertainties, especially related to the safety of groundwater," said Pekka Haavisto, Chairman of UNEP's Depleted Uranium Assessment Team. "Additional work has to be done to reduce these uncertainties and to monitor the quality of water." Remaining penetrators and jackets that may be hidden at several meters depth in the ground, as well as any on the ground surface, constitute a risk of future DU contamination of groundwater and drinking water. Heavy firing of DU in one area could increase the potential source of uranium contamination of groundwater by a factor of 10 to 100. While the radiation doses will be very low, the resulting uranium concentration might exceed health standards for drinking water established by the World Health Organization (WHO). Although the mission findings show no cause for alarm, the report describes specific situations where risks could be significant. There are also scientific uncertainties relating to the longer-term behavior of DU in the environment. For these reasons, UNEP calls for certain precautionary actions. According to UNEP, this precautionary action should include visiting all DU sites in Kosovo, removing slightly radioactive penetrators and jackets on the surface, decontaminating areas where feasible, and providing information to local populations on precautions to be taken if DU is found. UNEP recommends mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina In order to reduce scientific uncertainty on the impact of DU on the environment, particularly over time, UNEP recommends that scientific work be undertaken in Bosnia-Herzegovina where DU ordnance has persisted in the environment for over five years. This could be done as part of an overall environmental assessment of Bosnia-Herzegovina. UNEP's work in Kosovo was carried out in close cooperation with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR), which assisted with logistics, accommodation, transport and security. The samples were analyzed by the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute (SSI) in Stockholm; AC Laboratorium-Spiez in Switzerland; Bristol University's Department of Earth Sciences in the UK; the International Atomic Energy Agency Laboratories (IAEA) in Seibersdorf, Austria; and the Italian National Environmental Protection Agency (ANPA) in Rome, Italy. The assessment work on depleted uranium has been financed by the Government of Switzerland. IAEA, UNEP and WHO on future cooperation In view of the remaining scientific uncertainties surrounding the long-term effects of the possible health and environmental impacts from the use of depleted uranium, the IAEA, UNEP and WHO, in accordance with their respective mandates, will consider together whether it is necessary to prepare future missions to areas where depleted uranium has been used during military conflicts. Submitted By: UNEP ***************************************************************** 7 from DU 'insignificant' Special report: depleted uranium Peter Capella in Geneva Wednesday March 14, 2001 The Guardian The environmental risks from contamination by depleted uranium ammunition used in the war in Kosovo are insignificant, a United Nations report concluded yesterday, but its authors also said that they remained unsure about the long-term health consequences of DU. The UN Environment Programme's (UNEP) final report on the environmental impact of DU after the Kosovo conflict in 1999 recommended a clean-up of the 112 exposed sites there, which still appears not to have been carried out despite preliminary warnings issued two months ago. Radioactive and toxic contamination to passers-by was rated as "insignificant to non-existent" following tests based on samples gathered from 11 of the sites last November; this finding, however, did not include the cases in which people had had direct contact with the fragments or ingested the particles. At five sites, UN inspectors found virtually intact DU penetrators, the bullet-shaped core and tip of the shell, which had survived explosions because of soft soil. The report also called for an extensive examination of sites in Bosnia, where about three tonnes of DU ordnance used during Nato attacks is thought to have remained untouched for five years, "to reduce scientific uncertainty on the impact of DU on the environment, particularly over time". "There are still considerable scientific uncertainties, especially related to the safety of groundwater in the long term," Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish head of the investigative team, said. Samples had established, however, that drinking water was safe so far. Most of the recent science on the behaviour and dangers of DU has been based on natural uranium, but the scientists from five European radiological laboratories on the team found evidence that pieces of DU were more liable to disperse into the soil and to become soluble. Mr Haavisto said reported cases of leukaemia and other illnesses among western troops in the region were low and could not be linked directly to DU. "Then we come to the crucial question: Are there some other sources, other risks, which we don't know about? We know that some of those servicemen have also been to Bosnia-Herzegovina." While traces of plutonium were found around the sites, it said the amounts were so small that they were less of a hazard than the uranium. There was concern, however, about "huge variations" in plutonium levels in the pieces of munitions. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 8 Soldiers clear of ‘Balkans sickness’ so far The Budapest Sun Online - Story page March 15, 2001 - Volume IX, Issue 11 ONE thousand Hungarian soldiers who have served in the Balkans have thus far undergone medical tests for the effects of depleted uranium (DU) exposure and none have shown any signs of the so-called "Balkan syndrome", according to the head of the Defense Ministry’s medical services. Some 3,731 Hungarian soldiers have been part of IFOR, SFOR and KFOR missions in the Balkan region since February 1996. The 1,000 so far examined have undergone psychological and physical examinations, including tests for heavy metals in the body. All the troops concerned will have been tested by the end of April, according to Major-General Dr László Svéd. He said the presence of heavy metals (such as uranium) could be revealed by a protein in urine. According to Defense Ministry data, more than 500,000 peacekeeping soldiers have served on Balkans peacekeeping missions and of those 71 were known to have developed leukemia and other lymphatic-type cancers. This rate of occurrence, said the Defense Ministry, was similar to that found in the civilian population. Svéd’s announcement coincided with the release of a report on DU exposure by the European Commission’s Environmental Directorate, which concluded that on the basis of current knowledge of the ways in which humans and the environment could be exposed to and ingest the material, "DU could not produce any detectable health effects under realistic assumptions of the doses that might be received." The report also highlighted leukemia and pointed out that uranium was insoluble in the blood and bone marrow and its ingestion would be more likely to cause "solid" cancers such as lung cancer. In addition, the report said, the latency period of cancers meant that the effects of any such radiological exposure would not occur during the first few years following exposure. Contamination of the food chain by DU deposits on vegetation was viewed by the report as a risk, albeit until rainfall washed away any DU traces. Soil contamination was mentioned as a possible risk, especially in terms of direct ingestion by children, or ingestion by livestock intended for human consumption. The report added that the doses resulting from such ingestion would, however, be "extremely low". The report gave no recommendations or guidance towards any discontinuation of the use of DU in the battlefield, nor its handling, although it recommended that straightforward, common-sense precautions be taken by military personnel involved in the handling of DU munitions. Copyright 2001 * The Budapest Sun * All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 9 Miniature Cold War for Caspian Wednesday, March 14, 2001 Iran's relations with Russia have been gradually improving since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they bode to become even warmer. This week Iranian President Mohammad Khatami is in Russia, finding common ground with President Vladimir V. Putin in opposing growing U.S. influence in the energy-rich Caspian Sea region and signing deals--over strong U.S. objections--that will bring Iran access to Russian weapons and nuclear technology. A secret 1995 agreement with Washington bound Russia from selling arms to Iran. Late last year Moscow pulled out of that accord. Now, an Iranian official says, Iran could be on track to buy up to $7 billion in Russian arms. Ignoring U.S. concerns, Moscow also plans to complete an $800-million nuclear power plant in Iran. The U.S. fear is that Iran's nuclear technology could be turned to weapons production. Iran is believed to be moving toward a nuclear capability and a missile delivery system. Both presidents expressed displeasure with U.S. activities in the Caspian Sea region, an area of huge oil and gas reserves. Iran and Russia border the Caspian, as do Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, formerly parts of the Soviet Union. Expanding energy production from these fields will require new transportation routes to world markets. For political and security reasons the newly independent states don't want to rely on Russia or Iran as their only export outlet. Among alternative routes would be a U.S.-endorsed pipeline across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. American energy companies are already active in the Caspian region. Increased Caspian exports could reduce the world's overdependence on Middle Eastern suppliers. Caspian development would also probably boost U.S. influence in the area's newly independent states and help them resist political inroads by Russia and Iran. That prospect is one of the considerations working to bring Moscow and Tehran closer. Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 10 Book Exposes Israeli Nuclear Policy March 14, 2001 JERUSALEM- Israel's nuclear program has avoided domestic scrutiny for decades, but an Israeli author's return from the United States is testing the limits of public debate on the hypersensitive topic shrouded in official secrecy. Unable to get his manuscript approved by Israeli censors, Avner Cohen published his 1998 book, "Israel and the Bomb," in the United States, where he works as a senior researcher at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Though facing possible arrest in Israel, Cohen returned this week and was promptly questioned by the military and police on suspicion of breaking the legal wall of silence erected around Israel's nuclear capabilities. He was released and has not been charged, but will be called back for questioning. Cohen isn't giving interviews during his 10-day stay, but did speak about Israel's nuclear program Wednesday at a Jerusalem institute located next door to the official residence of Israel's President Moshe Katsav. "All nuclear development (in Israel) has functioned as a secret state within a state," Cohen said in an hour-long address. "The entire field has become the black hole of Israeli democracy." Cohen insists he is not seeking a confrontation with Israeli authorities. But his work challenges the core of Israel's policy of "nuclear opacity" - whereby the entire world assumes Israel has nuclear weapons but the government refuses to discuss it. Cohen has argued for a spirited public discussion of nuclear policy. He says his book was produced from information in the public domain, and therefore is not subject to military censorship. Yet he also knows the threat of prosecution for divulging nuclear secrets is not an idle one. Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who worked at Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona, in the Negev Desert, is serving 18 years in prison for giving pictures taken inside the reactor to The Sunday Times of London in 1986. Based on the photographs, experts said Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA has estimated more recently that Israel has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons. According to Cohen, Israel and the United States reached an understanding in 1970 that Washington would look the other way as long as Israel kept a low nuclear profile and did not carry out nuclear tests. U.S. protection has helped shield Israel from international scrutiny, and maintaining this arrangement has overwhelming support among Israel's political and military establishment. Israel's new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is expected to renew this understanding when he meets President Bush in Washington next week, Haaretz newspaper reported. "Opacity has been successful in Israeli eyes, allowing Israel to enjoy a regional nuclear monopoly without incurring the political cost of possessing nuclear weapons," Cohen wrote in his book. "This brought many Arabs to the realization that the conflict could not be settled by military means, but only through negotiation." Arab countries have complained for years, to no real effect, about Israel's special status when it comes to nuclear weapons. Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nor opened its facilities to international inspection. Meanwhile, the Americans have pressed hard to prevent other countries - such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea - from developing a nuclear arsenal. Even nations with otherwise normal relations with the United States, such as Pakistan and India, have been criticized for their nuclear programs. Cohen's book traces the development of Israel's nuclear program from its origins in the 1950s, when it was guided by a young, fast-rising government official named Shimon Peres. Peres, now 77, is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the foreign minister in Sharon's government, and he has maintained his silence on the nuclear program. According to Cohen, Israel first built crude nuclear weapons shortly before the 1967 Middle East war, when the country feared it could be overrun by Arab armies. Ever since, Israel has enjoyed a position of nuclear dominance it doesn't want to declare, Cohen argues. "Israel cannot openly make a case for nuclear monopoly and thus must keep its nuclear status unacknowledged," he wrote. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 WHO to Study Health Effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq *By Howard Schneider* Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, March 15, 2001; Page A20 BASRA, Iraq -- The Iraqi government has for years insisted that the use of depleted uranium shells by U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf War inflicted serious environmental damage here in the southern part of the country. Parts of the desert around Basra remain littered with spent ammunition and the hulls of tanks and other vehicles destroyed by the ultra-hard rounds. Iraqi doctors say the health effects have become increasingly obvious, including abnormal incidence of genetic problems and cancer among children. In a climate of hostility toward the Iraqi government and in particular President Saddam Hussein, these reports have largely been disregarded in the West. But now, with concern rising in Europe about exposure to depleted uranium munitions used in the bombing of Yugoslav targets during the Kosovo war, the Iraqi claims will get a new review. A team of World Health Organization officials will arrive here this month to analyze whether there is a link between the use of depleted uranium shells in the Gulf War and cancer or birth defect rates in this part of Iraq. The WHO study fits with other efforts to see whether the ammunition has damaged the health of those who used it or those against whom it was directed -- in the 1991 Gulf War as well as the Balkans conflict eight years later. Initial WHO analyses in Kosovo, as well as Defense Department and other military studies, have concluded there is no connection between the ammunition and cancer or other health effects, including Gulf War syndrome. A U.N. Environmental Program study released Tuesday showed "no cause for alarm" over radiation from the controversial munitions, but urged monitoring for unknown long-term effects. But mounting concern, particularly among NATO countries whose troops were deployed in Yugoslavia, has intensified the demand for further testing. This has made Iraqis feel the issue is finally getting the attention it deserves. But they are also angry that the United Nations and others did not seem to care when they were the only ones concerned about it. "We have been talking about this a lot, and nobody really listened," said Abdel Karim Hassan Sabr, deputy director of the Hospital for Maternity and Children in Basra. Depleted uranium shells were developed for use against tanks and other vehicles because of their armor-piercing strength. The shells are coated in the residual after uranium ore is processed for use in nuclear reactors or weapons. It is less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium, but in some instances may also contain traces of plutonium or other highly radioactive substances. Independent of its radioactive properties, depleted uranium also has the potentially toxic properties of other heavy metals. Top Iraqi officials have tried, as did their counterparts in Yugoslavia, to maximize the potential propaganda value of the issue. But Sabr and other doctors say that the evidence they see requires further analysis -- a thorough epidemiological treatment, rather than the back-of-the-envelope calculations done to date in southern Iraq. Sabr said, for example, that between 1993 and last year, the rate of congenital defects among live births at the Basra hospital rose from 1.8 percent to more than 4 percent. "Couples here are afraid of getting pregnant," he said. "They are afraid of the birth defects." So far, however, he said, the hospital has not studied the intervening years or prior years to establish a more detailed record. Nor has it had the time or money to try to determine whether postwar population shifts, intermarriage patterns or other environmental factors might have contributed to the increase. The area around Basra is heavily industrialized, the flat desert horizon frequently broken with the smokestacks of oil refineries and chemical plants, more often than not emitting a thick black or gray plume of pollution. Near the Shatt al-Arab waterway, in low-lying, marshy areas, oily slicks of water are visible from the roadway. For 20 years the region has been a focal point of conflict, beginning with the war against Iran during the 1980s and continuing through the Gulf War and a decade of sanctions. The remnants of those battles are prominent, both in the form of plentiful war memorials -- statues pointing toward the Iranian enemy, an Iraqi soldier slaying a sea serpent -- as well as destroyed vehicles, bridges and buildings. The region remains heavily militarized, with machine guns propped atop Toyota pickups and frequent roadside sentries deployed throughout an area whose Shiite Muslim population broke into open revolt against the largely Sunni Muslim government in Baghdad after the Gulf War ended. The uprising was suppressed with force, a fact that contributed to the U.S. and British decision to impose a "no-fly" zone over this part of the country, as well as over the northern provinces that are home to Iraq's rebellious Kurdish minority. The southern region is also poor, a fact Iraqis blame on international sanctions and the U.S. and British air patrols that nix any hope of private investment. Western officials consider its economic conditions a sign of Baghdad's neglect. But Iraqi health and political officials insist the depleted uranium shells lie somewhere at the root of what they contend is an epidemic. "We have found the relationship between these things and cancer, and we have announced it," said Gen. Abdel Wahab Jabouri, who serves on an Iraqi committee on depleted uranium that has tried to trace health problems among Iraqi troops to service in areas where the ammunition was most intensively used. "The uranium causes these diseases," he said. "The subject doesn't need further evidence. Even Americans are complaining." © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 12 Nuclear blasts get new lab clarity *March 14, 2001* By Glenn Roberts Jr. STAFF WRITER LIVERMORE -- The picture is getting clearer for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists who visualize complex supercomputer codes with high-resolution images. IBM has developed prototypes for a flat-panel computer monitor with images as crisp as a photograph. The effort was paid for, in part, by the Energy Department, which oversees nuclear weapons research labs. Dubbed "Big Bertha," the monitor features a 22-inch display with about 9 million pixels, which is about five times sharper than commercially available 1600-by-1200 pixel flat-panel displays and high-definition televisions. The lab hopes to use such ultra-high-resolution screens to bring supercomputer simulations of nuclear weapons explosions to the desktop, said David Schwoegler, a Livermore Lab spokesman. Schwoegler said wall-size computer displays are typically used at the lab to broadcast supercomputer codes in 3-D images that can be studied and manipulated. But a smaller monitor could do the same job, he said, "if it has enough resolution." The lab's first Big Bertha prototype, delivered in October 2000, cost $80,000, and the Energy Department may buy 70 more of the screens to supply its research labs across the nation, according to a report in Federal Computer Week magazine. Schwoegler said IBM has spent more than $20 million in research and development for the Big Bertha monitor. IBM officials did not comment Tuesday on the effort. While the computer will be useful in bringing data visualization to nuclear scientists, Schwoegler said a bigger market for the technology could be in the medical industry. "The real application for this is medical imagery," he said, such as the production of digital X-ray images. A major challenge in bringing Big Bertha to a wider audience is to find companies that will develop graphic cards that make the monitors compatible with standard desktop computers, Schwoegler said. Norman Bardsley, a researcher at Livermore Lab, will deliver a presentation at a national conference next week about the IBM and Energy Department effort to build Big Bertha. Bardsley will speak Tuesday at the U.S. Flat-Panel Display conference in Texas about the need for industry cooperation in finding markets for high-end products. He will also discuss the difficulties and benefits in partnering with the government to develop applications for high-resolution computer screens. NewsChoice.com ***************************************************************** 13 Plutonium detected in Snake River Plain Aquifer - By N.S. Nokkentved By N.S. Nokkentved Times-News writer IDAHO FALLS -- Water samples once again have shown the presence of plutonium in the aquifer below a radioactive waste disposal site. Samples taken independently from two wells near the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in October 2000 turned up minute quantities of plutonium in the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer below the site. No contamination was detected beyond site borders. Officials can't identify the source, but neither can they rule out the more than 2 million cubic feet of plutonium-contaminated waste dumped haphazardly in pits and trenches -- some of them unlined -- at the INEEL, 580 feet above the aquifer. "We don't know (the source) at this point," said DeWayne Cecil, research hydrogeologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. Still, the amounts of plutonium, found independently by state and federal testers, were just at the detection level and well within drinking water standards, And at those levels, the plutonium presents no health or environmental concerns, said Kathleen Trever of the state's INEEL Oversight Program. The water samples that have turned up plutonium don't show any patterns or trends, she said. But the state's agricultural economy depends on the aquifer, she said, and "that's why we keep a close eye on it." And there is no indication of contamination beyond INEEL boundaries or in the Magic Valley, said Flint Hall, hydrogeologist with the oversight program. In fact, scientists have been finding plutonium and another radioactive element, americium, in the groundwater intermittently since the early 1970s, Cecil said. But there has been no increase in the number of times the radioactive chemicals have been found, or in their concentration. The contamination could be "cross-contamination" from sampling the surface soil during well construction, contamination from the laboratory, from local bomb testing fallout, or from the burial site or other INEEL facilities, Cecil said. The federal government dumped plutonium-contaminated and other radioactive waste at the INEEL from 1954 through 1970 -- most of it from the federal nuclear bomb factory at Rocky Flats, Colo. Another possibility: The results could have been a misinterpretation, Cecil said. Scientists are working to eliminate possibilities from the list. The discovery of plutonium in October was not particularly significant by itself, but it was the first time state scientists and federal scientists found confirmed detections in separate wells at the same time. Officials called a news conference Wednesday to explain that, Trever said. All drinking water wells across the INEEL are tested regularly, said Kathleen Hain, director of environmental cleanup for the Energy Department at the INEEL. More samples will be taken in April, she said. Twin Falls podiatrist Dr. Peter Rickards, a longtime vocal critic of INEEL operations, said the finding raises concerns about the continuing migration of plutonium particles from the buried waste site, which flooded in the past. And the results call into question cleanup plans for another INEEL facility that include a waste dump that would hold plutonium, Rickards said Wednesday. State and Environmental Protection Agency officials last week denied Energy Department requests to extend cleanup deadlines for the buried waste at the INEEL's Pit 9 by 88 months. Times-News environmental reporter N.S. Nokkentved can be reached at 733-0931, Ext. 237, or by e-mail niels@magicvalley.com ***************************************************************** 14 Idahoans push for state control of water IdahoStatesman.com Thursday, March 15, 2001 By Faith Bremner Statesman Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Idaho's all-Republican congressional delegation is pushing for legislation that water experts say would radically change Western water law and make it harder for the federal government to get water for endangered species, wilderness areas and Indian tribes. Sen. Mike Crapo, who practiced water law before coming to Congress in 1992, introduced the State Water Sovereignty Protection Act in the Senate earlier this month on behalf of himself and Sen. Larry Craig. Rep. Mike Simpson is expected to introduce an identical bill in the House, co-sponsored by Rep. Butch Otter. "This bill would have a dramatic impact on how easily the federal government could meddle in water supply," said David Haddock, who litigates environmental and constitutional law cases for the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif. "It's a two-edge sword. It's great for farmers and those who use water. But it's possible that those who care more about fish protection may be left in the lurch," Haddock said. Crapo and Simpson introduced the same bill in previous years, but it never got out of committee. They hope to gain momentum this year, but don't expect passage. "It's difficult, with Congress being divided as it has been for the last few years, to move ahead on such a significant piece of legislation," Crapo said. Historically, states have controlled how water is used and distributed within their borders, and in the early 1900s they largely ignored water for wildlife and recreation. Since the 1970s, the federal government has gotten more involved in how states, particularly arid Western states, manage their water. Using myriad federal laws -- including the Endangered Species, Clean Water and Federal Land Policy Management acts -- federal agencies have twisted arms to get Western states and their big water users -- mostly farmers and cities -- to set aside water for wildlife and recreation. Sometimes states voluntarily surrendered the water; sometimes the federal government had to sue to get it. The Crapo-Simpson bill would require the federal government to stand in line like everyone else to get water allocations. Abolished would be the concept of federal implied water rights, carved out by federal courts to ensure that federally reserved lands get the water they need to serve the purposes for which Congress and presidents set them aside. Federally reserved lands include Indian reservations, military and Department of Energy facilities, national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas. Simpson said the Idaho Legislature has been responsive to federal requests for water for the Snake River and for salmon recovery, allowing the federal government to lease water from willing sellers. "The people of Idaho care about clean water, salmon recovery, our national parks and wilderness," Simpson said. "That's why we live here, because we want clean water." Steve Malloch, a lawyer for Trout Unlimited, said the bill is a back-door attack on parks, national monuments and wilderness areas. Because water is so precious and contentious in the West, Congress and presidents seldom specify that such areas are entitled to water, so they have had to rely on the implied reserve water right, he said. Idaho has been hostile toward setting aside water, and the water sovereignty bill will make things worse, Malloch said. On Feb. 22, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled the Deer Flat National Wildlife Refuge, parts of which were first set aside in 1909, does not have an implied federal reserve water right. If that decision stands, the federal government will have to ask the state for a water right that will be junior to those owned by farmers. The Justice Department has yet to decide whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Trout Unlimited is very interested in trying to promote healthy rivers, and the biggest threat to rivers is the lack of water," Malloch said. "Idaho is an extremely difficult state to work in and to try to protect flowing rivers." Crapo said he did not intend to include Indian reservations in the list of federal lands that would lose their implied reserved water rights and said the bill may have to be amended. In an attempt to exclude Indian reservations, the bill says it does not interfere with any "treaty or other international agreement to which the United States is a party." But not all Indian reservations were created by treaties. In Nevada and California, they were created by executive order, for example. The rest of the bill would put the federal government at the mercy of the states whenever a federal entity wanted to create a new park or facility that would need water. That could make it difficult, if not impossible, for the federal government to build projects that face strong local opposition, such as nuclear waste dumps and military testing facilities, said Joseph Sax, a professor of water law at the University of California, Berkeley. "It would be like saying no federal project will go forward in any state unless the state wants it," Sax said. "In essence, it would shut down the constitutional notion of federal supremacy." For example, the bill could give the state of Nevada more ammunition in its battle to keep the Department of Energy from building a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. If it ever opens, the repository will receive highly radioactive waste that now is being stored all over the United States. Last year, Nevada's water engineer denied the Department of Energy groundwater it needed to build and maintain the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, citing threats to public health, safety and the state's tourism-based economy. DOE appealed the decision to a federal court, which last fall ruled that state courts should decide the matter. The decision is a victory for Nevada, because it is believed no state judge -- all of whom are popularly elected -- will ever overturn the state engineer's decision. Simpson said Nevada and other states should have sovereignty over their water, even if it means the Yucca Mountain dump isn't built and states, including his own, must continue to store their high-level nuclear waste. "If it interrupts it (Yucca Mountain development), that's the way it is," Simpson said. "I suspect the federal government will have to do some serious negotiating with the state of Nevada." Crapo said that if the bill becomes law, Congress still could force Nevada to supply water for the site by saying it is a national priority. While the federal government could still help itself to states' water from time to time, Crapo said, "I'm trying to get Congress to do so less regularly and to do it in thoughtful ways." ***************************************************************** 15 Six Sue Over Lab Autopsies Thursday, March 15, 2001 Albuquerque Journal--> By Jennifer McKee *Journal Staff Writer* It's been 42 years since Katie Kelley Mareau's father absorbed a massive amount of radiation, died and had his brain and spinal cord cut from his body, stored in a mayonnaise jar and sent to Washington, D.C. It's been five years since Katie Mareau and her mother filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging that neither she nor her mother had any idea the body they buried at her father's funeral was missing 8 pounds of organs, tissue and bones. She claims an estimated 500 autopsied bodies like her father's were illegally used in a secret Los Alamos National Laboratory study to find out how much radiation lab workers and town locals absorbed and how their bodies processed it. Their families were never told, she says. Five other survivors like Mareau have signed on to the litigation. Lawyers are working on a settlement, said Richard Hughes, a Santa Fe lawyer for the six named plaintiffs. Hughes and other lawyers are spending this spring trying to track down and contact the next of kin for the hundreds of deceased who were part of the study. When the case was first filed, Mareau and her mother, Doris Kelley, both of Edgewood, took on the University of California regents; the company that now owns the Los Alamos Medical Center; and Clarence Lushbaugh, the pathologist who autopsied Cecil Kelley, and in a deposition years later said God gave him permission to remove Kelley's organs. Lushbaugh testified that he put the parts in a mayonnaise jar. The two women also sued Norris Bradbury, the former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Today, Bradbury, the pathologist, and Kelley's wife, Doris, are deceased. Five new plaintiffs have signed on — Ermelinda Williams, Nasario Lopez, Lillian Starzyk, Olivama Sandoval and Erlinda Trujilla, all of Cordova, Hughes said. He said all are relatives of people who were autopsied at Los Alamos; only one of the deceased worked at the lab. The suit also added defendant Michael Stewart, Los Alamos' former pathologist who now, in his late 60s, is retired in Alaska and not in the best of health, according to his lawyer. The crux of the suit has not changed: Scientists took tissue samples from hundreds of people like Mareau's father for a Los Alamos lab radioactivity study. Did their families know? Did they need to know? Or, as lab spokesman Kevin Roark argued, should this study be viewed and judged by the standards of the time, standards that didn't always include "informed consent." Mareau was 7 years old when her father died in one of the nation's most well-known radioactivity accidents. Cecil Kelley's job involved separating plutonium from a stew of other substances, according to Los Alamos Science, a lab publication. On Dec. 30, 1958, he turned on a mixer containing what he thought was a small fraction of plutonium and a glob of other undesirable materials. He was wrong. The concoction contained roughly 200 times more plutonium than Kelley believed. The radioactive material clumped together and released a short, massive amount of radiation. Kelley absorbed a lethal dose, enough to turn elements of his own body, like sodium, into radioactive isotopes. For 35 hours, Kelley see-sawed in and out of consciousness. Eventually his bone marrow turned watery, his white blood cells disappeared and Kelley died. His death shed first light on the path of plutonium in the body, Roark said. "The motto of pathology is, 'From death comes light,' '' Roark said. "We can't learn anything without studying." Lab scientists studied tissues from Kelley's body. They learned plutonium stays longer in the liver and the lymph nodes, for example, than in the lungs. But they also learned they needed more information, especially from bodies that didn't receive such enormous doses of radiation. Hence, the Los Alamos Human Tissue Analysis Program was born. "The whole purpose was to develop the occupational and public safety standards," Roark said. "There was absolutely nothing sinister about it." Lawyers for the lab and the plaintiff agree on this much: Between 1959 and the late 1970s doctors at the Los Alamos hospital routinely provided tissue samples taken from locally autopsied bodies to lab scientists for study. According to Gary Gordon, Stewart's lawyer, all of the autopsies were conducted either with the consent of the family or at the request of law enforcement. Organs are removed, studied and weighed in the course of most autopsies. Pathologists routinely remove tissue and send it to other doctors for analysis. Gordon said Stewart wasn't the only pathologist involved, and that he did nothing more than follow the autopsy protocol. Stewart stored small bits of tissue in a hospital freezer provided by the lab and lab scientists periodically picked up the samples. "This was in no way secret in the community," Gordon said. "It was in no sense classified or secret." But according to Hughes, the families who signed the autopsy release forms were never told of the study and never informed that snippets of their relatives would end up in the hands of government scientists. "The (autopsy) permit used in this case, all it does is permit an autopsy to discover the direct and indirect causes of death," Hughes said. Kelley got the toughest postmortem treatment, Hughes said. While most of the other bodies involved only a small amount of tissue or in a few cases whole organs, he said Kelley had his brain, spinal cord, lungs, liver, bone samples and pounds of other matter removed. Copyright Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************