***************************************************************** 12/16/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.296 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Nev. Loses Round Against Nuclear Site 2 UK Opinion: Nuclear winners and losers 3 UK: Sellafield terror attack warning 4 Scientists study building Nevada nuclear waste dump in stages 5 Norway: Environmental Minister to visit Sellafield 6 DOE denies request to stay Yucca Mountain guidelines 7 Unfinished nuclear plant gets one last look 8 Unitarian Congregation Throws Weight Behind Anti-N-Waste Campaign 9 You've got to give this one to Abraham 10 Boulder City chamber pulls out of group 11 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: DOE denies appeal on site rules 12 NRG retreat from CEZ bid highlights sectoral fears 13 Could nuclear plants be terrorists' next target? 14 Jack Kelly: Dirty deeds 15 CITIZENS GROUP WINS HEARING OVER MOX PLANT 16 Opinion: Editorials: THE TRUTH ABOUT INDIAN POINT 17 Yucca Mountain battle heats up 18 Editorial: Stealth is par for the course 19 licensing of two nuclear plants 20 Poor money management leaves district in trouble (catawba) 21 Nuclear fallout: British Nuclear Fuels is bankrupt - and so is 22 N.B. energy minister confirms British Energy offer to buy Point Lepreau 23 Congress looking to boost funds for thorium cleanup 24 Nuclear Power Plant in East China Celebrates 10-Year Smooth Operation 25 WELLS: Nuclear threat 26 Maine Yankee cited for violations in final safety survey 27 USEC wins in ruling on imports 28 German govt votes to phase out nuclear power over next 20 yrs 29 Thousands to get refund from Entergy 30 Hearing granted on nuclear plant 31 U.N. sponsors Arab tours of U.S. nuclear reactors 32 Blair wants UK to keep nuclear power NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 ABM, Salt and Start. And now the finish. 2 Ammunition plant benefits expanded 3 Wen Ho Lee: Reno, Freeh off the Hook Again 4 Cancer disaster in Iraq 5 Pakistan Releases Nuke Scientists 6 Eligibility Expanded for Nuclear Workers 7 Hanford office gets boost from Congress 8 N Korea Renews Verbal Attacks on U.S. 9 House passes sick-worker amendment 10 Response to Russian Statement on U.S. ABM Treaty Withdrawal 11 Officials begin cleanup of closed tritium laboratory 12 SRS says budget is 'not bad' 13 DOE shipments to require notice 14 Recycling pact due on UF6 in Paducah 15 North Korea rejects nuclear inspection over missile talks with US 16 ABM Treaty Fact Sheet 17 Brookhaven Cleanup Funds Slashed 18 Does Osama bin Laden have a radiological bomb? **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Nev. Loses Round Against Nuclear Site December 16, 2001 Talk about itE-mail storyPrint Energy: Agency refuses to halt rules that favor the use of Yucca Mountain for waste. Denial sets the stage for a state lawsuit. , From Associated Press LAS VEGAS -- The Department of Energy has denied Nevada's request to put off new site guidelines for Yucca Mountain, saying they are appropriate measures to judge whether the site might be developed into a nuclear waste repository. Friday's denial, which came in a letter from the Energy Department's general counsel, sets the stage for a lawsuit Nevada officials expect to file in Washington on Monday seeking to halt the Yucca Mountain project. Gov. Kenny Guinn and state Atty. Gen. Frankie Sue Del Papa issued a statement late Friday expressing their disappointment with the Energy Department's rejection of their request for a stay of the guidelines. "This underscores our belief that the Department of Energy is going ahead with this project regardless of the overwhelming unresolved site issues, not to mention the sentiment of the citizens of Nevada, who are against storing nuclear waste in their backyard," Guinn said. He noted that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's surprise visit to Las Vegas on Wednesday to attend the final public hearing on the Yucca Mountain project "did nothing to change our minds." Del Papa said she was disappointed with the decision on the site guidelines, particularly in light of transportation concerns and a recent draft report by the General Accounting Office that described the project as "a failed scientific process" that will take years to fix. The new site suitability guidelines, which took effect Friday, will be a key element as Abraham decides this winter whether to recommend that President Bush authorize nuclear waste burial in Nevada. Guinn and Del Papa urged Abraham in a letter Monday to set aside the guidelines until they could be reviewed by a federal judge. On Friday, Energy Department General Counsel Lee Liberman Otis responded that Abraham "does not believe a stay of the suitability regulations is warranted," and will not postpone them. Abraham's decision came as little surprise to state officials. "It was all sort of expected," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. Nevada officials continued to prepare the lawsuit Friday. It will allege that the site guidelines do not comply with the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which set standards for the burial of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. The lawsuit, which officials said will probably be filed Monday in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., will argue that the 1982 law directed the Energy Department to rely primarily on the natural geology of Yucca Mountain to contain intense radioactivity from 77,000 tons of decaying nuclear fuel for 10,000 years. Instead, they charge, the department has constructed a plan that relies heavily on "engineered barriers," including corrosion resistant casks and panels to shield the casks from dripping water. State officials say the guidelines were changed to ensure Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, could be declared suitable for the pursuit of licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Otis said the guidelines were changed "because both the science and the law relevant to this project have developed significantly" since site rules were put in place in 1984. For information about reprinting this article, go to http://www.lats.com/rights Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times By visiting this site, you ***************************************************************** 2 UK Opinion: Nuclear winners and losers Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Saturday December 15, 2001 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Paul Brown (Nuclear fallout, December 14) makes clear just what a massive millstone around taxpayers' necks the nuclear industry really is. But even this critique underplays the problem: the atomic devil is in the detail. In a written parliamentary reply, energy minister Brian Wilson told Llew Smith MP that the most recent estimate of "civil" nuclear liablities managed by BNFL are £35bn, of which it is financially responsible for £24bn. "The figures," he said, "represent current best estimates... and do not take account of the potential cost of changes in regulatory and policy requirements" (ie they may go even higher). Moreover, something very odd has happened since October 18 when environment secretary Margaret Beckett said that the value of military atomic liablities is "some £30bn", almost double the figure given six weeks later by the MOD. Some very creative accounting is going on to cover up this mess the nuclear industry is leaving us as its legacy. And next week, BNFL opens its latest nuclear waste-creator, the Sellafield MOX plutonium plant. Happy Christmas to all from BNFL! Dr David Lowry Stoneleigh, Surrey · I was intrigued by the information that a quango is going to take over Sellafield's "assets". What might these be? Several large swimming pools that heat themselves and glow in the dark, a stretch of coastline boasting a unique flora arising from a mutation rate unmatched outside Ukraine, and some hi-tech wizardry which can take a kilogramme of highly toxic radioactive waste and, as if by magic, turn it into 10kg of highly toxic radioactive waste? Dr Martin Juckes Oxford · If we do not build replacement nuclear stations, our nuclear contribution to electricity generation will fall from the present 25% to less than 5% in the early 2020s. Thus the decline of nuclear will almost exactly match the growth in renewables (if the target of 20% generation by renewables by 2020 is achieved). One non-carbon emitter will replace another non-carbon emitter. Could you please explain (Leader, December 14) how this will "help us meet our Kyoto target of 20% cut in emissions"? Professor J E Harris Dursley, Glos jack.harris@lineone.net [jack.harris@lineone.net] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 3 UK: Sellafield terror attack warning Guardian Unlimited Observer | UK News | [UP] War on Terrorism: Observer special Ben Summerskill Sunday December 16, 2001 The Observer [http://www.observer.co.uk] Ministers have been warned that a determined terrorist attempt to fly an aeroplane into the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant could not be prevented because of its proximity to transatlantic flight paths. The warning, from MI5, came after Tornado fighters were scrambled over the plant in response to a reported hijack attempt last month. 'The position at Sellafield is unthinkable,' an intelligence source confirmed. 'If it were hit successfully, everything within 150 miles could go. The position has now been made clear to Ministers.' 'Sellafield is two minutes from the transatlantic flight path. Even if you had a warning that a plane had been hijacked, you would have no real opportunity to intercept a plane flying at 400 or 500 miles an hour. By the time you listened to a call reporting the hijack, it could be all over.' Within days of receiving the advice two weeks ago, Home Secretary David Blunkett - piloting his new terrorism Bill through the Commons - complained: 'Those who tell me we are not [vulnerable] are the ones who do not have the security and intelligence information which, for my sins, I carry.' More than 200 flights a day pass within 50 miles of Sellafield in Cumbria. They come not just from Heathrow, but from continental Europe. Two-mile exclusion zones are enforced around the plant, but these only apply to a height of 3,000 feet. Two miles would provide just 14 seconds warning of an approaching aircraft flying at 500 miles an hour. A spokesman for BNFL, which owns Sellafield, said last night: 'Our buildings are robust and there are the strictest security arrangements. They are built to hold radioactive material.' But a company source conceded that the possibility of an aircraft being deliberately flown into the structures had not been considered when they were constructed. David Learmount, safety editor of Flight International, said: 'You may have slightly more than two minutes, but it wouldn't be more than five. Thankfully, however, if you dive a civil airliner very quickly, it might lose control and miss the building. 'If however it appeared that a plane was intent upon hitting Sellafield, you would have to attempt to blow it out of the sky altogether with the passengers.' Environmental groups have repeatedly complained about a perceived terrorist threat to Sellafield. Friends of the Earth have claimed that any accident could kill two million people. Al-Qaeda 16.12.2001: Bin Laden plot to bomb London discovered 16.12.2001: Bin Laden videotape was result of a sting 16.12.2001: Hazem Saghiyeh: Al-Qaeda loses itself in dream world 16.12.2001: Fighters race for the border Allies divided? 16.12.2001: Allied rifts put planning at risk 16.12.2001: Blair fears split with US over its support for Israel 16.12.2001: Leader: Don't desert Arafat Broadening the campaign 16.12.2001: David L Mack: Iraq after Saddam 02.12.2001: David Rose: The case for tough action against Iraq 02.12.2001: Will Iraq be next? What the experts say 02.12.2001: Secret US plan for Iraq war The campaign assessed 09.12.2001: Focus special: the future of war 09.12.2001: Mary Riddell: The perils of victory The home front: liberties at risk? 02.12.2001: Nick Cohen: Blunkett's anti-terror scam 02.12.2001: Patricia WIlliams: This dangerous patriot's game Observer Liberty Watch special Drugs in Afghanistan special 02.12.2001: Mark Galeotti: Business as usual for Afghan drugs 02.12.2001: Ustina Markus: It's not just the west that suffers Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 4 Scientists study building Nevada nuclear waste dump in stages Las Vegas SUN December 14, 2001 LAS VEGAS (AP) - A National Academy of Sciences panel will study whether a nuclear waste dump could be built in stages to incorporate technological advances and lessons learned during construction. The U.S. Energy Department, which will recommend whether a site in Nevada is suitable for the burial of radioactive waste, commissioned the report from the academy's National Research Council. A 14-member panel of volunteers without ties to the Energy Department met for the first time Sept. 5 in Washington, D.C., and will meet Monday through Wednesday in Las Vegas, panel Chairman Charles McCombie told the Las Vegas Sun. While the Energy Department is funding the meetings and research, the department will have "absolutely no control of what comes out of the report," academy staff member Barbara Pastina said. Members are expected to hear from technical and policy experts, as well as the public, about whether work at Yucca Mountain could be done in stages. "We are not passing judgment in any way on the technical work at Yucca Mountain," McCombie said. "Our job is to get the safest system for a deep geological repository anywhere." He added that the panel is constrained from recommending an alternative to burial. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected this winter to recommend to President Bush whether the volcanic mountain at the western edge of the Nevada Test Site is suitable for the job. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site under study. Abraham has pledged to make his decision based on science and "compelling national interest." The dump would open in 2010 and remain open for 17 years while the nation's 77,000 tons of nuclear waste would be moved into it from more than 100 sites around the country. The project would cost $58 billion, be monitored for decades and remain radioactive for 10,000 years or more. Nevada's state and federal lawmakers strongly oppose the idea and are fighting it on political, environmental and legal fronts. McCombie said his panel intends to focus on ways to make the design and construction of any repository more efficient - at Yucca Mountain or elsewhere in the world. McCombie is a physicist who has served as an independent consultant on nuclear waste projects in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and the United States. "Our job is to review the work and to make a logical framework so the DOE may integrate the work," he said, adding that the panel hopes to report scientific and technological evidence about whether Yucca Mountain is suitable as a repository. Pastina said the panel could have an interim report ready by February 2002. A final report is expected in November 2002. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 Norway: Environmental Minister to visit Sellafield The Norway Post - Doorway to Norway 14. Desember 2001 The Norwegian Environmental Minister, Boerge Brende, will visit the British nuclear reposession plant at Sellafield next week. He will also meet his Irish and British counterparts, NRK reports. On Monday, Brende will meet the Irish environmental minister to discuss the problems related to the radioactive emissions from the Sellafield plant. Both Norway and Ireland have severely criticized of the emissions of nuclear pollutants from the British plant. Later the same day, Brende will meet the British environmental minister in London. On Tuesday, he will visit Sellafield plant in Northwest England. However, according to a press release, the main points on the agenda for the ministerial talks are climatic changes and the North Sea Conference scheduled to be held in Bergen next year. (NRK) Rolleiv Solholm ***************************************************************** 6 DOE denies request to stay Yucca Mountain guidelines Las Vegas SUN December 15, 2001 LAS VEGAS (AP) - The Department of Energy has denied Nevada's request to put off new site guidelines for Yucca Mountain, saying they are appropriate measures to judge whether the site might be developed into a nuclear waste repository. Friday's denial, which came in a letter from the Energy Department's general counsel, sets the stage for a lawsuit Nevada officials expect to file in Washington on Monday seeking to halt the Yucca Mountain Project. Gov. Kenny Guinn and state Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa issued a statement late Friday expressing their disappointment with the Energy Department's rejection of their request for a stay of the guidelines. "This underscores our belief that the Department of Energy is going ahead with this project regardless of the overwhelming unresolved site issues, not to mention the sentiment of the citizens of Nevada, who are against storing nuclear waste in their back yard," Guinn said. He noted that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's surprise visit to Las Vegas on Wednesday to attend the final public hearing on the Yucca Mountain Project "did nothing to change our minds." Del Papa, too, said she was disappointed with the decision on the site guidelines, particularly in light of transportation concerns and a recent draft report by the General Accounting Office that described the project as "a failed scientific process" that will take years to fix. The new site suitability guidelines, which took effect Friday, will be a key element as Abraham decides this winter whether to recommend President Bush authorize nuclear waste burial in Nevada. Guinn and Del Papa urged Abraham in a letter Monday to set aside the guidelines until they could be reviewed by a federal judge. On Friday, Energy Department General Counsel Lee Liberman Otis responded that Abraham "does not believe a stay of the suitability regulations is warranted," and will not postpone them. Abraham's decision came as little surprise to state officials. "It was all sort of expected," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. Nevada officials on Friday continued to prepare the lawsuit. It will allege the site guidelines do not comply with the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which set standards for the burial of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. The lawsuit, which officials said will probably be filed Monday in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, will argue the 1982 law directed the Energy Department to rely primarily on the natural geology of Yucca Mountain to contain intense radioactivity from 77,000 tons of decaying nuclear fuel for 10,000 years. Instead, they charge, the department has constructed a plan that relies heavily on "engineered barriers," including corrosion resistant casks and panels to shield the casks from dripping water. State officials say the guidelines were changed to ensure Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, could be declared suitable for the pursuit of licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Otis said the guidelines were changed "because both the science and the law relevant to this project have developed significantly" since original site rules were put in place in 1984. Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 Unfinished nuclear plant gets one last look The Seattle Times: Local News: By Linda Ashton The Associated Press YAKIMA — Energy Northwest is taking one more serious look at the possibility of finishing Washington Nuclear Project 1 before dismantling it permanently. The public-power consortium has hired corporate consultants Goldschmidt Imeson in Portland to see who, if anyone, might want to complete the nuclear-power plant. "We'll be casting a fairly wide net to develop options for it," Tom Imeson said yesterday. WNP-1, which is about 65 percent complete, was one of four nuclear plants scuttled in Washington state in the 1980s in the failure of a power-buildup program. A fifth plant, now known as the Columbia Generating Station, was finished and started producing electricity in 1984. After years of being derided as a mistake, the 1,200-megawatt plant emerged last year as a reliable and economical source of electricity during the Western power crunch and drought. And that started talk about resurrecting WNP-1, which, like the Columbia Generating Station, is on leased land on the Hanford nuclear reservation, about 10 miles north of Richland. Energy Northwest commissioned a feasibility study. "What do we do with WNP-1? Is there any way to make that into something other than a dead horse?" asked John Cockburn of Seattle, chairman of Energy Northwest's executive board. Although construction on WNP-1 began in 1975 and ended in 1982, it's still technically possible to finish it. Energy Northwest, however, is on the verge of removing parts of the plant that would eliminate that option. The initial phase of the feasibility study estimated it would cost up to $4.2 billion, with financing, to finish the plant. Some at Energy Northwest believed the estimates were high and other studies involving other unfinished nuclear plants suggested it could be done for less. This fall, Energy Northwest's board determined "there wasn't any entity or combination of entities in our region that would be completing that plant. The numbers were awfully high, and there just wasn't really any interest in the region," Cockburn said. But before WNP-1 is written off for good, Goldschmidt Imeson will take another look around, said Imeson, who was partner Neil Goldschmidt's chief of staff when Goldschmidt was governor of Oregon. "I think one should look at this as due diligence on the part of the board, looking at all the options," Imeson said. The report is due in April. "I really think it's a long shot anything will happen," Cockburn said. The Bonneville Power Administration, which backed Energy Northwest in the original five-plant nuclear building plan, supported the WNP-1 study, but that's as far as it goes. "Our position is that even if, through the public process, the region may determine it wants the plant, we don't want anything to do with it — at least financially," said Mike Hansen, a spokesman for BPA in Portland. BPA, a federal power marketing agency, receives all the electricity from the Columbia Generating Station, which was known as WNP-2 until last year. In 1999, Energy Northwest changed its name from the Washington Public Power Supply System. It was commonly called WPPSS (pronounced whoops) after the nuclear-power-plant debacle resulted in a $2.25 billion municipal-bond default. ***************************************************************** 8 Unitarian Congregation Throws Weight Behind Anti-N-Waste Campaign The Salt Lake Tribune -- Saturday, December 15, 2001 BY JUDY FAHYS A Salt Lake City congregation of Unitarians has thrown its support behind the Nuclear-Free Great Basin campaign opposing the storage of nuclear waste in Utah's West Desert and permanent storage at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Its 71-2 vote, tallied last Sunday, marks the first time a Utah religious group has joined the organized opposition to the proposals, one of which would park spent nuclear plant fuel 45 miles from Salt Lake City for up to 40 years. "The congregation is deeply concerned about the environment and sees [nuclear waste] as a spiritual issue," said Rev. Tom Goldsmith, co-minister of First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City. "It is a religious issue that could unite us all." Leon Bear, chairman of the Skull Valley band, said supporters of the waste-storage proposal were not invited by First Unitarian to discuss its position, which focuses largely on the plan's economic value to tribal members and for tribal sovereignty. "It always saddens me when people do not want to hear our side . . . We have a lot of information to give," he said. The anti-nuclear campaign is hardly the only politically charged issue that the Unitarians have embraced. They also have criticized the city's sale of Main Street to the LDS Church and, nationally, supported a woman's right to choose abortion. "That's where the church belongs," Goldsmith said, "right in the thick of this morass of moral issues." The church's environmental ministry, led by Michael Mielke, has worked for about a year to educate the congregation's members about the environmental, political and social concerns behind the Nuclear-Free Great Basin resolution. The primer has included visits from dissident members of the 73-member Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians, whose tribal government has leased reservation land for the $3.1 billion storage facility, as well as participation in a rally on the reservation two months ago where the resolution was first presented. Members explored the impact on the nation's energy policy, the band's economic development efforts, its self-determination rights, the pos- sible risks to Utahns and other factors. "Nuclear waste jeopardizes the most basic human right, which is a clean environment," the resolution concludes. "We commit to end the cycle of abuse that has been initiated by our government and corp- orations." The Rev. Silvia Behrend, co-minister at First Unitarian, said preparing for the vote has helped raise awareness about the ways society sometimes misuses its resources. She said members also learned about the importance of helping the Goshutes find economic alternatives and holding politicians account- able. "It is all part of one piece," said Behrend. Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson offered his support to the congregation's vote Sunday. "If we bond together in Salt Lake City, we can ensure the health of future generations, we can avoid becoming the nation's nuclear waste dump, and we can work toward social and economic justice for everyone," he said in a message delivered at the church Sunday "We need to address this fight, with unrelenting passion, continuing to make our voices heard until all of Utah is safe -- until our government does the right thing and takes responsibility for permanent, safe radioactive waste storage." © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Trib ***************************************************************** 9 You've got to give this one to Abraham LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: OPINION: COLUMN: Steve Sebelius Sunday, December 16, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal COLUMN: Steve Sebelius Although he's been roundly criticized for it, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's surprise visit to Las Vegas Wednesday was a master stroke. For months, Nevada's congressional delegation has assailed Abraham for not attending any of the hearings in the state to gather public comments about a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. What difference his presence at the hearings would make has never been fully explained. There's no doubt Abraham is fully aware Nevadans oppose the dump. If that were a deal-killer, Yucca would be off the table now. On Wednesday, though, Abraham and a retinue of aides flew out to Las Vegas and -- virtually unannounced -- strode into the Cashman Field hearing on the dump. By not announcing his attendance in advance, Abraham accomplished two things: One, he denied Nevada's congressional delegation the opportunity to lead a grandstanding circus of opposition. Two, Abraham was able to see how many people really felt strongly enough about the issue to attend the hearing. (There were charges of coordination because people such as former Gov. Robert List, who has been hired to lobby Nevadans for the dump, and a cadre of pro-industry speakers were there. Did they conspire? It wouldn't be surprising, because the nuclear energy industry and the Energy Department share the goal of building Yucca.) The reaction was comic. Rep. John Ensign was reduced to ordering staffers to call Las Vegas radio stations to try to drum up dump opponents to attend the hearing. Rep. Jim Gibbons objected to a violation of congressional protocol. Rep. Shelley Berkley claimed it was more evidence of government bias toward Yucca. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman rushed to nearby Cashman and promised Abraham a lawsuit. And poor Greg Bortolin, Gov. Kenny Guinn's spokesman, could only sputter about how Abraham's visit "steals the thunder" from Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who was in town that day to visit Hoover Dam. It was a painful way for Bortolin to be welcomed into the big leagues. The only person to come away unruffled was Sen. Harry Reid, a veteran of a thousand political battles. "I'm glad he's there," a temperate Reid said. "I wish he had come earlier, but you take what you get." (Abraham should not delude himself with the notion that Reid will forgo some future opportunity to even the score. He's been Reid's whipping boy before, and will be again.) So what did Abraham's visit actually accomplish? The secretary may have seen that the Yucca project isn't the modern version of King George's tax on tea, as our congressional delegation has suggested. Could the opposition of average Nevadans to the dump be less strident than that of their representatives in Congress? It's not a shocking assumption. Ask most people if they're against the dump, and they'll say yes. But ask most people if they would change their views should the government set up Nevada's version of Alaska's Permanent Fund, paying residents an annual royalty in exchange for hosting a dump at Yucca Mountain, and it's likely the opposition would soften considerably. Reid has said negotiating would make Nevada a whore, and he insists on standing up for the state's virtue. Even if he's wrong, we're not likely to find out about it, since he's said he'd rather dive off the Capitol dome before accepting Yucca. There are many good reasons to oppose Yucca Mountain. No matter how many studies are done, the government will never be able to credibly say the dump is entirely safe. Trucking nuclear waste across the country poses the risk of both accidents and terrorist attacks. And state's righters are frustrated that Nevada has yet to file a 10th Amendment lawsuit, contending the federal government has no right to build a dump here. But those reasons are usually obscured by politics and posturing. Usually it's Nevada scoring the political points. But on Wednesday, Abraham got up on the board. Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at Steve_Sebelius@lvrj.com. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2001 ***************************************************************** 10 Boulder City chamber pulls out of group [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Saturday, December 15, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal REVIEW-JOURNAL The Boulder City Chamber of Commerce announced this week its withdrawal from a national business group that favors burying nuclear waste in Nevada. The Boulder City group of about 250 businesses said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a major trade association and an influential voice in Washington on business issues, failed to solicit input from Boulder City members before endorsing the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The repository would be about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "The primary benefit of a small organization like ours belonging to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is that we would have a stronger voice at the national level," said Beth Walker, executive director of the chamber. "We don't feel our voice is being heard." The Boulder City Chamber of Commerce has not announced its official stance on whether nuclear waste should be stored at Yucca Mountain. No announcement will be made until a polling of members is complete, Walker said. The Boulder City Chamber of Commerce is the third Southern Nevada business group to drop its affiliation with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Yucca Mountain endorsement. The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce in November left the national group, and the Henderson Chamber of Commerce soon followed suit at the beginning of December. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-15-Sat-2001/news/17676489.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-15-Sat-2001/news/17676489.html] ***************************************************************** 11 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: DOE denies appeal on site rules [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Saturday, December 15, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Denial sets stage for a lawsuit Nevada officials expect to file in Washington By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy on Friday denied Nevada's request to put off new site guidelines for Yucca Mountain, saying they are appropriate measures to judge whether the site might be developed into a nuclear waste repository. The denial, which came in a letter from the Energy Department's general counsel, sets the stage for a lawsuit Nevada officials expect to file in Washington on Monday seeking to halt the Yucca Mountain Project. Gov. Kenny Guinn and state Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa issued a statement late Friday expressing their disappointment with the Energy Department's rejection of their request for a stay of the guidelines. "This underscores our belief that the Department of Energy is going ahead with this project regardless of the overwhelming unresolved site issues, not to mention the sentiment of the citizens of Nevada, who are against storing nuclear waste in their back yard," Guinn said. He noted that Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's surprise visit to Las Vegas on Wednesday to attend the final public hearing on the Yucca Mountain Project "did nothing to change our minds." Del Papa, too, said she was disappointed with Abraham's decision on the site guidelines, particularly in light of transportation concerns and a recent draft report by the General Accounting Office that described the project as "a failed scientific process" that will take years to fix. The new site suitability guidelines, which took effect Friday, will be a key element as Abraham decides this winter whether to recommend President Bush authorize nuclear waste burial in Nevada. Guinn and Del Papa urged Abraham in a letter Monday to set aside the guidelines until they could be reviewed by a federal judge. On Friday, Energy Department General Counsel Lee Liberman Otis responded that Abraham "does not believe a stay of the suitability regulations is warranted," and will not postpone them. Abraham's decision to stay on course came as little surprise to state officials. "It was all sort of expected," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency. Nevada officials on Friday continued to prepare the lawsuit. It will allege that the site guidelines for Yucca Mountain do not comply with the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which set standards for the burial of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. The lawsuit, which officials said will probably be filed Monday in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, will argue the 1982 law directed the Energy Department to rely primarily on the natural geology of Yucca Mountain to contain intense radioactivity from 77,000 tons of decaying nuclear fuel for 10,000 years. Instead, they charge, the department has constructed a plan that relies heavily on "engineered barriers," including corrosion resistant casks and panels to shield the casks from dripping water. State officials say the guidelines were changed to ensure Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, could be declared suitable for the pursuit of licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the Energy Department's response Friday, Otis said the guidelines were changed "because both the science and the law relevant to this project have developed significantly" since original site rules were put in place in 1984. Otis cited an August 1995 report by the National Academy of Sciences that concluded it would be preferable to develop standards "taking into account all aspects of the repository, both engineered and natural, rather than evaluating different subsystems." Otis also said the 1982 law directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide for the use of a multiple barrier system when it considers licensing a repository, and the NRC has required the Energy Department to show that natural and engineered barriers will work in combination when it applies for a license. "Given the link between suitability and licensing, it is entirely appropriate for DOE's suitability guidelines to direct the secretary's attention to both kinds of barriers," Otis said. Review-Journal staff writer Keith Rogers contributed to this report. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-15-Sat-2001/news/17677174.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-15-Sat-2001/news/17677174.html] ***************************************************************** 12 NRG retreat from CEZ bid highlights sectoral fears By Andrew Taylor, Sheila McNulty and Robert Anderson Published: December 14 2001 18:19 | Last Updated: December 14 2001 20:29 US utility NRG has pulled out of the bidding for a majority stake in CEZ the dominate Czech power producer, blaming its withdrawal on volatility in the US market following the collapse of Enron the world's largest energy trader. Moody's Investors Service, the credit rating agency, has placed NRG under review for a possible downgrade following the company's recent $1.5bn agreed purchase of four Ohio coal fired power stations owned by FirstEnergy. Moodys said the acquisition prices was significant and that NRG should arrange $1.35bn of new money to fund it. The company this week revealed that its parent, Xcel Energy, had committed, subject to various approvals, contingent equity of $300m to support the FirstEnergy transaction. NRG has now decided it would be unwise to pursue a large European acquisition while it is under pressure in the US. It had been expected to bid with British based International Power for the Czech government's 67.6 per cent stake in CEZ, which controls the high-voltage electricity grid as well as generating most of the country's power. International Power, in the wake of NRG's withdrawal, is expected to co-ordinate bids for various parts of CEZ with Eon of Germany and British Energy, the UK nuclear power company. Under the terms of the tender, 67.6 per cent of CEZ is being sold along with the national grid and six of the country's eight regional distributors. For eight years the package can only be split up between the consortium members. International Power is interested in the conventional power plants, while British Energy wants the Dukovany and Temelin nuclear plants. Eon would like to consolidate its ownership in the distributors. "International Power remains interested in acquiring certain CEZ assets," the company said on Friday. "Our bid is complemented by the bids of others." Binding bids will be submitted on Sunday but it is not clear that International Power's will be considered, given that the government is seeking one offer for shares in the whole package. Electricite de France is the favourite in the tender, followed by a consortium of Enel of Italy and Iberdrola of Spain. The government, which hopes to raise more than $5bn, is due to pick the winner on Monday. ***************************************************************** 13 Could nuclear plants be terrorists' next target? 12/13/2001 - Updated 11:29 PM ET By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY By Jeff Guenther, AP An airplane crashes into Connecticut's Millstone Nuclear Power Station, 127 miles from New York. It ignites a fire that releases large amounts of radioactive particles into the atmosphere over one of the nation's most populous regions. An area the size of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont is uninhabitable for at least 30 years, and some areas remain contaminated for 300 years. Children begin dying from leukemia 5 years after the accident, and tens of thousands of people eventually die of cancer. Such a horrific scenario was once considered too unlikely to worry much about, but Sept. 11's events altered that perception. The threat of a plane dive-bombing into one of the nation's 103 operating nuclear plants or 16 decommissioned plants that store spent fuel cannot be dismissed, say nuclear engineers and scientists. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now studying how to prevent such an attack. Most nuclear power plants are designed to withstand earthquakes and natural disasters. At a few plants near airports, the buildings containing the nuclear reactors are designed to withstand a small plane crash. But none was built to survive hits by larger planes or jets like those terrorists hijacked on Sept. 11. The NRC is aware of that and expects to complete a thorough review of security policies this month, it says. Nuclear plants' reactors are not the only worry. They're typically housed in steel-lined reinforced concrete shells that are at least 18 inches thick at the top and 6 feet thick at the base. Of greater concern are the less protected "spent-fuel pools," where used rods of nuclear fuel that once powered the reactors are cooled and stored for years in pools of water. Some industry watchdogs say even small planes, such as corporate jets, could penetrate the buildings that house many of these pools. Disturbing the water in the pool could cause the fuel rods to get too hot, starting a fire and causing a massive radiation leak. The amount of radioactive material discharged by an accident in the pool of Millstone Unit 3, for instance, would be five times greater than the world's worst nuclear accident to date — at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine in 1986 — says Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies. Ukraine's Health Ministry says 125,000 people have died and 3.5 million people have become ill because of the accident. "A pool fire at Millstone Unit 3 would be a regional and national disaster of historic proportions," says Thompson, a mechanical engineer who has consulted for the Department of Energy. Thompson was hired by the STAR Foundation, a Long Island environmental group, to calculate the effects of a pool fire at Unit 3. The group opposes the plant's application to more than double the pool's spent-fuel capacity. In response to the September attacks, the organization last month sued the NRC, demanding that the agency take action to prevent a "catastrophic spent-fuel pool fire" at Millstone. The NRC has no comment. Pete Hyde, a spokesman for the plant's operator, Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, says security procedures are being reviewed, and the utility supports restrictions on the airspace within a 5-mile radius of all nuclear power plants. The NRC says the pools' security at all nuclear power plants is being studied as part of "a top-to-bottom review" begun after Sept. 11. "There is a threat, and the agency is looking at it," says spokeswoman Rosetta Virgilio. That doesn't satisfy some members of Congress: + The NRC "is still operating in a pre-Sept. 11 world," says Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. "While the NRC and the nuclear power industry has been saying nothing short of 'It can't happen here,' we know all too well that the terrorists of al-Qaeda (suspected of executing the Sept. 11 hijackings) have contemplated and would carry out an attack on a nuclear facility." + Rep. George Gekas, R-Pa., says the government should begin stockpiling supplies of potassium iodide for communities near nuclear facilities. Potassium iodide can prevent the onset of thyroid cancer that could result from radiation poisoning. + A bill introduced in the Senate in late November would create a federal security force for nuclear plants and would require them to establish a plan to defend against air attacks. Presently, plant operators hire private security companies. Since Sept. 11, state and local police and, in some states, the National Guard have been present. "An air attack on a nuclear power plant could result in one of the greatest environmental disasters to ever affect civilization," says Nathan Naylor, a spokesman for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a co-sponsor of the bill. The NRC says it has not learned of a specific "credible threat" against a nuclear power plant since Sept. 11. On Oct. 30, however, the Federal Aviation Administration banned small planes from flying over most plants "for national security considerations." Those restrictions were lifted Nov. 6. On Oct. 17, airports in Harrisburg and Lancaster, Pa., were closed temporarily after the NRC said it received information about a threat against the Three Mile Island nuclear plant outside Harrisburg. The NRC subsequently said the threat was a false alarm. Too remote a threat? Nuclear safety watchdogs say that for many years they have pointed out the dangers of spent-fuel pools, but that the NRC told them the terrorism threat was too remote to make it a major concern. At about one-third of the power plants, the reactor is in one building, and the spent-fuel pool is housed in a second building with only corrugated metal walls and a roof, says David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former power plant consultant. At the rest of the plants, a spent-fuel pool sits in a concrete building that's farther from, but attached to, the reactor building. The corrugated metal structures could be penetrated by a small plane, such as a Cessna, Lochbaum says. The concrete structures, which are at least 6 inches thick, could be penetrated by a larger plane or a jet, Lochbaum and other engineers say. A severe pool fire could render about 188 square miles uninhabitable and cause as many as 28,800 cancer fatalities and $59 billion in damage, Brookhaven National Laboratory said in a 1997 report for the NRC. NRC spokesman Victor Dricks says he can't comment on the study. Storage of spent fuel has been a controversy for decades. A 1982 law mandated that the Department of Energy be responsible for accepting nuclear plants' waste, but no storage site exists. Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents 35 major power companies, says spent-fuel pools are well-protected, and it would be "extremely difficult for a plane to strike directly without major portions of the plane being shredded on the way in." The pools and the reactor buildings have redundant safety systems to protect against loss of coolant, Kerekes says. But he doesn't know what would happen, he says, if a large jet struck either the containment building or the fuel pools. "We've said since Sept. 11 that we can't guarantee we're impervious to every scenario one might envision," Kerekes says. Lochbaum says that many spent-fuel pools are in the open, and if a plane made a direct hit, the back-up cooling system could fail. Spent-fuel pools hold five to 10 times more "long-lived radioactivity" than a radioactive core inside the reactor of an operating plant, says STAR Foundation executive director Robert Alvarez, a former Department of Energy adviser. At some nuclear plants, some of the spent fuel has been removed from the pool and stored in lead-lined concrete casks. These casks, says Lochbaum, could be split open in a crash but are probably less vulnerable than the spent fuel in the pools. The amount of spent fuel stored at nuclear plants is growing, making accidents even more dangerous in the future. Under typical weather conditions, about 46,598 square miles of land would be rendered uninhabitable for at least 30 years — and some for hundreds of years — if all radioactive material were discharged from the current inventory of fuel assemblies in Millstone Unit 3's spent-fuel pool, Thompson says. A similar accident in late 2004 would render about 55,923 square miles — more than the size of New York state — uninhabitable, he says. "I don't think anyone can accurately predict what would happen," says Hyde, the Millstone spokesman. He says the spent-fuel pools, composed of "industrial steel frames with concrete around them," are designed to withstand an earthquake but not the impact of a large jet. If such an accident occurred at the Harris Nuclear Plant near Raleigh, N.C., there would also be great devastation, says Thompson. If all fuel in two of the plant's fuel pools ignited, enough radioactive material would be released to contaminate for at least 30 years 93,000 square miles of land — 8,700 more than the entire state. Keith Poston, a spokesman for Progress Energy, the parent company of the plant's operator, Carolina Power and Light, calls Thompson "a full-time anti-nuclear activist" and says he won't comment on Thompson's calculations. "We're confident our facilities are safe, and they've been deemed to be safe by the federal government," the spokesman says. Poston says, however, that both the spent-fuel pools and the operating nuclear reactor's containment building were "not designed to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 747." Decommissioned power plants, nuclear-safety watchdogs say, may be even more of a danger, because they may be housing more spent fuel and have fewer security personnel than operating reactors. The NRC's Dricks says the agency, by law, has "always considered the possibility of terrorist threats against our nuclear plants." On Sept. 12 an NRC document filed in a licensing proceeding said that "terrorist acts" do not "fall within the realm of reasonably foreseeable events." Dricks says the filing was prepared before Sept. 11. Presently, says NRC spokeswoman Virgilio, the NRC communicates with other government agencies for intelligence information and "reviews threat information" with the new Office of Homeland Security. Airport security a 'prime focus' Lochbaum, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, says beefing up airport security should be "the prime focus." Since Sept. 11, the federal government has taken steps to improve security at major airports, but experts say there are still holes. At small airports, which accommodate private planes and corporate jets, there is very little security, experts say. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which has former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford on its board, says NRC security tests prior to 1998 revealed "significant weaknesses" at 27 of 57 operating nuclear power plants. The NRC's Dricks says all weaknesses found have been corrected. "It doesn't necessarily follow," he says, "that because significant weaknesses are identified, power plants wouldn't be able to defend themselves against (an) attack." Kerekes, the spokesman for the group representing 35 nuclear power companies, says nuclear power plants are well-protected. But, "like any other commercial enterprise, we have to look to the federal government to protect us in acts of war like those that occurred on Sept. 11." USA TODAY, a division of [http://www.gannett.com] ***************************************************************** 14 Jack Kelly: Dirty deeds Does Osama bin Laden have a radiological bomb? Sunday, December 16, 2001 By Jack Kelly Some day very soon, Islamic terrorists may detonate in an American city a bomb that consists of a conventional explosive with radioactive material wrapped around it. Jack Kelly is national affairs writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com). Few Americans will perish from the blast. But thousands will die -- and die ugly -- from the radiation released by the "dirty bomb." And the area affected by the radiation will be uninhabitable long after our grandchildren's grandchildren have grandchildren. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Osama bin Laden's terror network has made greater strides than previously thought toward obtaining radiological weapons. A diagram for a "dirty bomb" was found in an Afghan installation run by the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaida, The Washington Post reported. "In addition, recent U.S. intelligence reports describe a meeting within the last year in which bin Laden was present in which one of his associates produced a canister that allegedly contained radioactive material," said the Post in a story written by three of its most prominent reporters. Pakistani nuclear scientists, working under the direction of a former Pakistani intelligence chief, built the bomb for bin Laden, UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave said in a recent story. "One Pakistani general who has seen the evidence described the device as a 'dirty nuclear weapon'," de Borchgrave said. "One local intelligence source speculated a dirty bomb could have been smuggled out before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." A likely route would be to transport the bomb by truck to the port of Karachi in southern Pakistan, and then ship it in a cargo container. About 18 million cargo containers arrive in the United States each year. Only about 3 percent are inspected by U.S. Customs. Bin Laden's bomb might already be here. A Pakistani rounded up after Sept. 11 died in a New Jersey jail at the end of October. He'd complained of bleeding gums. DEBKAfile, a private intelligence service based in Israel, said this is a sign of radiation sickness. Authorities are not releasing either the man's name, or the cause of death. The Israelis arrested another Pakistani trying to cross into Israel from Jordan, DEBKAfile said. He was suffering from the same symptoms as the Pakistani who died in New Jersey. It is hard to build a nuclear bomb, even a small one, and harder still to build it without detection. But radiological bombs are relatively uncomplicated. And "dirty bombs" require less nuclear material, which can be obtained from a wider variety of sources. Spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors are ideal for making a radiological bomb, but radiopharmaceuticals can provide harmful doses of radiation, as can certain types of industrial waste. The catastrophic consequences that would ensue from the detonation of a radiological bomb mean we should be more worried than we have been about how poorly the war on terror is going at home. The war in Afghanistan has been going well, chiefly because, overseas, President Bush can do pretty much what he thinks needs to be done. But here at home, while the president can propose, it is Congress that disposes . . . or, more often, dawdles. More than three months have passed since the terrorists struck. But at this writing, Congress has yet to complete work on the defense appropriations bill, or to pass the economic stimulus package President Bush had requested in September. No legislative action has been taken to fix an out-of-control immigration system that permitted all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers to enter the country legally, or to beef up security at our borders. But Democrats in the Senate have taken time to snipe at President Bush for the security precautions he has taken. Democrats don't like it that he is holding terror suspects on minor charges; that he has asked recent Muslim immigrants to submit voluntarily to questioning about what they may know of the terror network, or that he plans to try some terrorists captured overseas in military tribunals. Democrats act as if Attorney General John Ashcroft were a greater threat to the liberties of Americans than Osama bin Laden. But Ashcroft does not have a radiological bomb. This is no time for partisan politics. http://www.post-gazette.com/privacy.asp] ***************************************************************** 15 CITIZENS GROUP WINS HEARING OVER MOX PLANT Environment News Service: AmeriScan: December 14, 2001 AmeriScan: December 14, 2001 ATLANTA, Georgia, December 14, 2001 (ENS) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has awarded Georgians Against Nuclear Energy (GANE) the right to a public hearing on a proposed facility that would make nuclear reactor fuel from weapons grade plutonium. The order, issued on December 6, grants a petition filed last summer by the Georgia citizens group. At issue is a proposal to build a factory to manufacture a new type of reactor fuel from weapons grade plutonium at a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons facility on the banks of the Savannah River in South Carolina, near Augusta, Georgia. If built, this would be the first full scale, commercial mixed oxides (MOX) fuel facility in the U.S. The plutonium based MOX fuel to be manufactured at the plant would be burned at four commercial reactors owned by Duke Power in North and South Carolina. In February, Duke Cogema Stone &Webster (DCS), an international nuclear consortium, submitted a construction proposal to NRC. DCS must obtain a license from the NRC before it can build or operate the MOX factory. Under federal law, third parties may intervene in the permitting process and request a public hearing by submitting papers describing their concerns, or contentions, about whether public health and safety and the environment will be protected under the proposed permit. The NRC Board found that eight of GANEΉs 13 contentions meet the agency's rigorous standards. In a hearing scheduled to begin in October 2002, GANE will be allowed to raise a range of criticisms of the application, including its failure to protect the public from excessive radiation doses, inadequate provision for high level nuclear waste storage, poor seismic analyses, lack of a cost/benefit analysis in the environmental review, and security. Chief among GANE's concerns is the design of the MOX factory, which the group says is inadequate to protect against acts of terrorism and sabotage, or to keep the plutonium secure from theft. "The proposed design fails to meet international standards which require physical protection of nuclear material to be taken into consideration in the early stages of facility design," said GANE's technical advisor, Dr. Edwin Lyman. Dr. Lyman is scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute (NCI), a Washington, DC based organization that specializes in problems of nuclear proliferation. ***************************************************************** 16 Opinion: Editorials: THE TRUTH ABOUT INDIAN POINT [Post Opinion] [http://www.nypost.com] Email Updates December 16, 2001 -- The 300 protesters who packed a Westchester County public hearing the other night to demand that Indian Point be shut down would have folks think they fear a terrorist attack on the nuclear power plant. Don't believe it. Both federal and state officials insist the plant is "extremely safe." They cite $3 million in post-9/11 security improvements - including the use of National Guard troops as security guards. Indeed, James Kallstrom - the former top FBI official who now heads Gov. Pataki's Office of Public Security - says the plant is so safe that he dares any terrorist group to try to take it over. Not a wise move on Kallstrom's part. Nothing, after all, can ever be made 100 percent invulnerable - and tempting wackos to try their luck might just encourage them to do so. But, as Mayor Giuliani has noted, "The World Trade Center was not a nuclear power plant." Said Kallstrom of Indian Point: "This is one of the strongest constructed [and] designed containment facilities in the United States, if not the world. I don't believe a direct hit from a major commercial airplane could penetrate the containment dome here." So why are the protestors demanding its immediate shutdown? For one reason, and one reason only. And it has nothing to do with the events of 9/11. Notes a spokesman for the facility's owner, Entergy, the opposition "comes from people who always wanted the plants shut down." That is, the anti-nuclear-energy crowd. They just don't want a power plant like Indian Point anywhere near them, regardless of how safe. Sept. 11 has given them a convenient excuse, and they're trying to exploit it. Just as they did last year when they tried to use a minuscule radioactive gas leak (all radioactive readings in the vicinity remained at normal levels) to press for Indian Point's permanent closure. But that's all it is - an excuse. And one that's being used by anti-nuke ideologues across the nation. Nuclear energy remains an important component in addressing the nation's long-term energy crisis. That crisis, by the way, has been partiuclarly acute in New York state, where the booming economy has sent the thirst for electric juice soaring in past years. Indian Point alone can provide as much as 30 percent of New York's power. Certainly, an honest debate on the merits of nuclear power is fine. An irrational exercise in fear-mongering by dishonest fanatics is not. NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. ***************************************************************** 17 Yucca Mountain battle heats up RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL 12/14/2001 10:57 pm WASHINGTON — State officials say they will start using recent government reports about mismanagement and conflicts of interest at Yucca Mountain in lawsuits attempting to block the Energy Department from moving forward with plans to build the nuclear waste dump. On Monday, Nevada officials said they plan to file a lawsuit in federal appeals court in Washington challenging new Energy Department rules that state officials say make it too easy to site a nuclear waste dump and do not comply with the law. Further litigation is expected if Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommends — as he is expected to do — Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear repository. That decision is expected within three months, and possibly in January. And state officials will open a campaign next year that uses the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a backdrop to highlight potential catastrophes should utilities start shipping 77,000 tons of nuclear waste across the country to Yucca Mountain. “We think we’re in pretty good shape actually,” said Robert Loux, who heads the state’s Nuclear Projects Agency that is attempting block Yucca Mountain as a national site. Abraham’s expected approval of Yucca Mountain would trigger a chain reaction of decisions by President Bush, the Nevada Legislature and Congress, sparking debates on desert geology, millirems of potential radiation exposure, and the value of nuclear energy in general. Although many Nevada officials feel optimistic about tripping up or even derailing the Yucca site, the state is up against the nuclear industry, a pro-energy Bush administration and many states that would like to rid themselves of spent nuclear fuel. Nationwide, nearly 120 operating and decommissioned nuclear power plants are storing their waste on-site in pools and casks as they wait for a nuclear repository to be established. In 1982, Congress passed a law promising to build a nuclear waste site. Only a few sites were proposed, and winnowed down to Yucca Mountain. “We see a decision on (Yucca Mountain’s) suitability as imminent,” said Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. “There’s an abundance of scientific evidence that’s been developed over the past 15 years, and on that basis the decision on suitability will be made.” Abraham - who surprised Nevada politicians Wednesday by showing up unannounced at a Las Vegas public hearing on Yucca Mountain, one of 60 hearings on the site this year - will make a final decision this winter, said Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis. “We’re moving forward with the process unless we’re ordered by a court of law to change our process,” Davis said. In fighting Yucca Mountain, opponents are using: o A report by the Energy Department’s inspector general last month showing that Winston &Strawn - a law firm handling energy’s licensing process - failed to disclose its ties to the nuclear industry. The firm has since withdrawn from the Yucca Mountain contract, but the incident illustrates how politically tainted the process has become, state lawmakers said. o A draft report from the General Accounting Office, the watchdog agency of Congress, showing that energy has spent $8 billion on Yucca Mountain but still has not satisfied nearly 300 technical requirements. The GAO draft recommends that energy defer its site recommendation, but Abraham said his agency had not had a chance to respond and called the report “fatally flawed.” o A public-relations campaign underlining that other states would have thousands of rail cars or trucks carrying nuclear waste passing through their communities every year and that there could be nuclear accidents caused by interstate pileups, train derailments or terrorist plots. The campaign will start in Missouri, Colorado and Indiana. “September 11 just makes (the transportation issue) that much worse,” said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. “Certainly, we’re in a much better position than we were a year ago” to fight the Yucca Mountain site. Ensign and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., agree a long battle is ahead. Even if Bush and Congress approve Yucca Mountain, the site still must go through years’-long licensing by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “This is a long, drawn-out thing,” said Reid. “I think the critical phase started in 1982” when the waste-site law was first passed. Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a [http://www.gannett.com] ***************************************************************** 18 Editorial: Stealth is par for the course Las Vegas SUN December 14, 2001 Last week two Cabinet secretaries from the Bush administration stopped by Las Vegas. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham each carry a considerable amount of political baggage, with neither being viewed as friends of the environment, an image that closely mirrors that of the administration they serve in. Despite the similarities between Norton and Abraham, their visits couldn't have been any more different. Norton's trip to Las Vegas on Tuesday and Wednesday was well known in advance. As part of Norton's tour, she gave a speech at the 18th annual Governor's Conference on Tourism, dropped by a number of federal locations under her department's control -- the Red Rock National Conservation Area and Hoover Dam -- and took time to be interviewed by a Sun reporter. Actually, there wasn't anything remarkable about Norton's visit. Cabinet secretaries are expected to get out and be salesmen for the administration's policies, even when they're controversial. What is remarkable was the stealth used by one of Norton's fellow Cabinet members. Abraham crept into Las Vegas on Wednesday as if he was on a secret mission for the CIA. Abraham didn't tell any officials from Nevada in advance that he would attend a public comment hearing that the Department of Energy was holding on the Yucca Mountain Project. Abraham was criticized widely by Nevada officials for failing to attend the DOE's first Yucca Mountain hearing back in September, a meeting in North Las Vegas that attracted more than 500 people. But instead of going to the earlier meeting -- where Nevadans in overwhelming numbers voiced their objection to the burial of 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas -- Abraham attended the last of the 50 public hearings on the Yucca Mountain Project, a lightly attended meeting made up mainly of nuclear power lobbyists and DOE officials. Arrogance could be one reason for refusing to disclose his travel plans in advance, but another possibility could be that he was afraid to face a large crowd of Nevadans opposed to the federal government's heavy-handed actions on Yucca Mountain. Whatever the reason, Abraham blew it. Abraham didn't take questions from the public, but in a brief statement he pledged to keep an open mind on Nevada's concerns. But who does he think he is fooling? The reality is that the energy secretary couldn't care less about the threat posed to the health and safety of Nevadans by high-level nuclear waste. Abraham insists that the department will be ready to give the president a recommendation on Yucca Mountain by the end of this month despite the fact that scientific studies will not have been completed by then. Abraham's haste also is troubling since the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, has recommended that the DOE indefinitely suspend its work on Yucca Mountain because of its flawed scientific investigation. Abraham is hardly the paragon of impartiality on Yucca Mountain: Even when he was a U.S. senator from Michigan, he str ongly supported efforts to bury nuclear waste in Nevada. During the presidential election campaign, George Bush and the GOP elected officials from Nevada assured the state's residents that Bush would treat the state fairly on Yucca Mountain if he won. Maybe Bush and Abraham should heed what Norton said last week about her department's relationship with Nevadans. "We have a responsibility to listen to the people of Nevada and involve local people in decision-making. That is a philosophy that I want our department employees to answer to," Norton said. "We don't have all the answers in Washington." Indeed. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 licensing of two nuclear plants NC News Wire [newsobserver.com, Raleigh, NC] SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2001 CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Environmental and anti-nuclear groups plan to use the threat of terrorist attacks and questions about the safety of a new fuel to fight 20-year extensions of the licenses of two nuclear power plants. The plants, McGuire on Lake Norman and Catawba on Lake Wylie near Rock Hill, S.C., have operated for nearly 20 years. New licenses would allow them to run into the early 2040s. A licensing board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will meet Tuesday and Wednesday in Charlotte to hear the groups' claims. The board will decide by late January whether any of the claims merit a full hearing in a trial-like setting. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group with an Asheville office, and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, headquartered in Ashe County, are seeking the hearing. The groups plan to argue the consequences of sabotage and terrorism at the plants, such as attacks on cooling-water systems, haven't been fully evaluated, according to papers filed with the commission. Duke Power officials say because terrorist threats apply to all nuclear plants, security issues are too broad to be part of license renewal. The groups also say the utility's plan to use fuel containing surplus weapons plutonium starting in 2007 will increase the aging of reactor parts and would kill 25 percent more people in a severe accident. Duke Power has asked the commission not to consider the use of mixed-oxide fuel, arguing it's a separate issue from license renewal. The commission has indicated it agrees. A three-member panel of administrative law judges, called an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, will hold next week's meeting at the federal courthouse in Charlotte. © Copyright 2001, The News & Observer. All material found on newsobserver.com is ***************************************************************** 20 Poor money management leaves district in trouble (catawba) | The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC The Associated Press "> The Saturday, December 15, 2001 [http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com] The Associated Press | Poor money management has sent one of the state's wealthiest school districts into a situation the new finance director describes as bankruptcy. The Clover school district had a $5.5 million rainy-day fund going into the past fiscal year, Superintendent Betty Riddle said. But administrators had to use the fund to pay underestimated bills, leaving just $362,000 in the account now, Riddle said. "Yes, we're absolutely in a precarious situation," said Ken Love, who joined the district as finance director in July. "If we were a commercial business, we would be filing bankruptcy." The money was mismanaged, not stolen, so school officials have found no grounds for a criminal investigation. Former finance director David Loadholt resigned in February after more than seven years with Clover to work for a district near West Columbia. Loadholt said Thursday his exit had nothing to do with Clover's finances. He declined to counter specific criticisms of his work to The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, referring questions back to Riddle and Love. "Time after time, we would say, `Is this something we're sure we can afford?"' Riddle said. "Always the answer was yes, yes, yes." There are small expenses, such as the 10-year-old computerized flagpole outside the district office. The flagpole uses a photocell to raise and lower the flag with the sun each day, and reportedly cost about $6,000. And there are more costly items. In 1994, Clover built a $5 million, 1,500-seat auditorium, with an elevator and an elaborate lighting system, that some say is more lavish than what area colleges have. The Clover district includes this rural farm town, but also some of the county's nicest homes along Lake Wylie and the Catawba Nuclear Plant, which pay the most property taxes of any business in the county. The plant accounts for $15 million of the district's $33 million budget. "We were spoiled," Love said. "Fourteen or 15 years ago, when the nuclear plant came on line, there truly was more money here than could be spent." But the depreciating plant doesn't generate as much property tax revenue as it once did. As the district's financial adviser, Riddle said, Loadholt should have warned other district leaders to slow spending, informed them when expenses ran over budget and done more to cut costs. With the rainy-day fund nearly depleted, Clover is struggling to deal with budget cuts mandated by the state because of the souring economy. So far the district has managed by docking most year-round employees, including administrators but not teachers, five days' pay. Loadholt said the district always received clean audits. "His audits were not entirely clean," Riddle countered. She and Love cited flaws found in audits in 1999, 2000 and the worst year, 2001 - when revenue was overestimated by at least $173,000 and expenses ran $4 million over budget. Results of the 2001 audit came in late November. State officials are still reviewing it. The mistakes found in the past audits were not considered major, state Education Department spokesman Jim Foster said. They included miscalculations of how the value of district buildings and other properties had fluctuated. All content © 2001 The Sun News ***************************************************************** 21 Nuclear fallout: British Nuclear Fuels is bankrupt - and so is the policy of building new nuclear power stations. What will become of the company now? The Guardian - United Kingdom; Dec 14, 2001 Next time you feel bankruptcy coming on, comfort yourself with the thought that it is nothing more than a "net asset deficit" - the newspeak for what has happened to British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). Patricia Hewitt, the trade and industry secretary, has had to do some fancy footwork to avoid fallout from the state-owned nuclear giant's admission that it has developed a pounds 1.7bn black hole in its accounts. This is how much liabilities officially exceed its assets. It was the confirmation of what critics of the industry had been saying for years. BNFL, employers of 10,000, custodians of the nation's plutonium and uranium stockpiles and an ever-growing mountain of nuclear waste, is bankrupt. So critical had the situation become that to avoid prosecution under the 1985 Companies Act the BNFL directors were forced on November 28 to call an extraordinary general meeting. The purpose was to inform the only shareholder, one Mrs Hewitt, that the company was in Carey Street. Mrs Hewitt responded in a way that must have been well planned in the Jo Moore school of spin doctoring. In a Commons statement late that same afternoon she announced a reorganisation of the nuclear industry. A new Liabilities Management Authority would be created to take control of the situation. It would not cost the taxpayer an extra penny, but the quango would take responsibility for and control of the nation's nuclear waste, including everything currently owned and run by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and BNFL. This would require a white paper in the spring with primary legislation later. At this point BNFL would be stripped of all its assets at Sellafield, as well as its liabilities, and they would fall directly into the ownership of the taxpayer. It took a little time for the implications of what she was saying to sink in, certainly it was too late on statement day for any serious coverage of this extraordinary policy change. In effect, all the nuclear facilities owned and operated by BNFL would be taken back into the direct public ownership of a quango. This means that the two giant reprocessing works, including the pounds 2.3bn flagship Thorp plant, and the yet to be opened mox plutonium plant, will be directly owned by the taxpayer. Any money they make will never be enough to cover the liabilities of the enterprise, with the Treasury picking up what appears to be an ever increasing bill. The current estimate for the cost of dismantling the nuclear dream is pounds 85bn - most of it incurred at Sellafield. That is currently about pounds 4,000 each for every taxpayer, and it is expected to rise. Fortunately for Gordon Brown, the budget does not have to be adjusted to pay that now. The bill will be picked up at the rate of pounds 1bn a year to 2010, with our children paying the bulk of it at some time in the future when the new quango has found somewhere to dispose of all this radioactive rubbish. This is unlikely to be for at least 20 years. It is the lack of attention to this problem that has always been the Achilles heel of the industry. Waste has been piling up, often untreated and inadequately packaged for 50 years. The costs have been consistently underestimated, hence the claim that the true costs of nuclear power have never been properly accounted for. It was a reassessment of the cost of disposing of a tiny part of this waste that pushed BNFL into insolvency. Some waste inadequately stored on the Sellafield site needed to be repackaged at a cost of pounds 1.9bn, exactly pounds 1.7bn more than the company's book value in this year's accounts. The forced reorganisation comes at an embarrassing moment for the Department of Trade and Industry and Tony Blair. Yesterday Downing Street was still briefing journalists that the idea of building new nuclear stations had not been dropped. Mr Blair, we are told, has an open mind as he stands by to receive the energy review he ordered from the Cabinet Office after the election. It is BNFL rather than the privatised arm of the nuclear industry British Energy, which wants no part of it, that has been canvassing the government heavily to build at least a dozen new nuclear stations. BNFL says they are needed to make up for the ones that are due to close in the next 20 years. It is all to stop our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly gas. The company has expanded to the US, where it owns Westinghouse, the US nuclear giant which has new designs for nuclear stations that have caught the eye of President Bush. It saw a golden future building new nuclear stations of its own design on both sides of the Atlantic. The future of these dreams, and the other bits of BNFL enterprises, which make nuclear fuel and have contracts to clean nuclear sites in the US, remains unknown. Once its Sellafield assets have been transferred to the new state quango in 2003, BNFL will be retained to manage the site for a year. After that the company will have to compete for a contract to continue in that role - although who else would be prepared to bid for the poison chalice that is Sellafield is not clear. Mrs Hewitt wisely put back until 2004 any attempt to privatise any remaining profitable bits of BNFL. Only then will the result of all these changes may become clear. In the midst of all this, it is hard to see how the prime minister could believe the company could ever be relied on to build new nuclear stations for the UK. Paul Brown is the Guardian's environment correspondent. paul.brown@guardian.co.uk ***************************************************************** 22 N.B. energy minister confirms British Energy offer to buy Point Lepreau December 14, 2001 FREDERICTON (CP) -- New Brunswick's Energy Minister confirmed Friday that NB Power's board of directors is considering a bid by a British company to purchase the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station.  Jeannot Volpe said an offer by British Energy PLC to buy the power station in southwestern New Brunswick has been received by the Crown corporation.  The British firm made inquiries regarding NB Power's other assets last year.  British Energy has already signed a lease to operate the Bruce nuclear station operating on Lake Huron, about 250 kilometres northwest of Toronto.  Volpe said NB Power won't be making a decision immediately because any sale worth more than $75 million requires government approval.  British Energy is interested in purchasing or leasing the facility, he said.  A $40-million study to determine what would be required to extend Point Lepreau's life to 2032 is expected to be completed by the spring, at which time the utility's board of directors will have to decide what they think should be done with the plant.  The utility has said a complete refurbishing of the nuclear plant -- aimed at extending its life to 2032 -- would cost as much as $750 million. http://www.canoe.ca/copyright.html] © 2001, Canoe Limited Partnership. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 23 Congress looking to boost funds for thorium cleanup Local - Chicago Daily Herald Friday December 14 08:12 AM EST By Jake Griffin Daily Herald Staff Writer Congress is looking to add $225 million to the $140 million it already has spent to help rid West Chicago of thorium and other radioactive materials. Chemical giant Kerr-McGee estimates it will cost $661 million to complete the cleanup. The federal government is responsible for 55 percent of that cost. "(Kerr-McGee) has actually been covering for the government," said U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (news [http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/politics/news/*http://search.news.yahoo.com/searc h/news?p=%22Rep.%20John%20Shimkus%22&c=&n=20&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw] - bio [http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/politics/bio/*http://politics.yahoo.com/politics/ congress/house_of_representatives/list_of_members/233/] - voting record [http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/politics/vote/*http://politics.yahoo.com/politics /congress/house_of_representatives/list_of_members/233/vote.html] ), a Republican from Collinsville who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "They haven't been getting, by law, the government's share." Shimkus is sponsoring the bill that passed unanimously in committee on Wednesday and is expected to be heard on the House floor by the middle of next week. Cost overruns on the project were caused by stricter environmental standards in recent years, officials said. The chemical company has had no way of recouping losses because the government's fund is capped at $140 million. The cleanup project has been ongoing since the early 1990s, and Congress already has boosted its appropriation twice from the original $40 million set in 1992. West Chicago Mayor Michael Fortner said the allocation would move the project several steps closer to a conclusion. "Any roadblocks about where the money's coming from won't be there anymore," he said. "We're looking forward to seeing the remaining parts cleaned up." Most of the town has been cleaned, but work on Kress Creek and ground water remains. Bonnie Zahn - who lives next to the old Kerr-McGee factory site and had her house's foundation excavated and replaced this summer when a uranium leak was discovered - was taken aback by the cost of the project. "Those figures are just beyond my imagination," she said. "I'm telling you there's been an awful lot of work and it's taken an awful lot of guys to do it." Shimkus praised House Speaker Dennis Hastert for helping move the work forward. "To that area's credit, they are very blessed to have the speaker of the House who lives nearby and who is very committed to the project," he said. Officials in Hastert's office said the chemical company has agreed this allocation will be the last needed to finish the job. Any cost overruns will be the responsibility of Kerr-McGee. If the project comes in under budget, the money will be returned to the government and be used to clean other contaminated sites. The West Chicago problem began in the 1930s when the factory began manufacturing thorium to be used in gas light mantles. The government later tried to use the thorium - and urged the company to manufacture uranium - during World War II. Kerr-McGee was stuck with the problem when it bought the site more than 30 years ago. The plant was shut down in 1973. "It's being responsible for a well-intentioned (plan) that was created to win a war," Shimkus said of the government's role. "While we benefited from the science and research ... we have a responsibility to clean up the site." The money comes from a special fund that draws revenues from the utility industry. •Daily Herald news services contributed to this report. File: 'wckerrmcgee' in 'jgr' Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! and ***************************************************************** 24 Nuclear Power Plant in East China Celebrates 10-Year Smooth Operation Xinhuanet 2001-12-15 17:03:31 HANGZHOU, December 15 (Xinhuanet) -- China's first self-designed, constructed and managed nuclear power plant Saturday celebrated its establishment anniversary after 10-year smooth operation. Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant, located in Haiyan County, ZhejiangProvince in east China, has produced 16.78 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity since it started operation on December 15, 1991, making China the 7th country worldwide capable of independently constructing nuclear power stations. The plant has successfully made five refuelings and has nuclearwaste discharge as well as radioactive level at the plant meeting relevant world standards, sources with the plant said. The power plant has become a professional base for China's nuclear power industry as well as realized a profit amounting to some 4.88 billion yuan (588 million U.S. dollars) over the past ten-year period. Copyright © 2000 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 25 WELLS: Nuclear threat Friday, December 14, 2001 The old terror is still there What's the most dangerous nuclear terror facing the United States? A bomb built by a rogue state such as Iraq or North Korea? Some al-Qaida fanatic sneaking a dirty nuke over the border in a suitcase? Wrong. Even though President Bush said Thursday that “the Cold War is long gone,” the most dangerous nuclear threat to the United States still is a missile launch from Russia. That's according to Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington D.C., and former senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. Mr. Blair deals in threat assessments. For 13 years at Brookings he was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program. He is an expert on the security policies of the U.S. and Russia, specializing in their nuclear command and control systems. His experience is more than academic. From 1970-74 he was an Air Force Minuteman ICBM launch control officer with the Strategic Air Command — one of the people with his finger on the button. Last week he addressed a group of editorial writers during a seminar on the world of terror. He told us that to understand the risk of nuclear assault, we should understand just who controls the forces. In this country, it is likely to be two guys in their 20s sitting in a bunker under the Wyoming prairie with 500 high-yield warheads at their fingertips. For them, the cold war has never ended. The missiles still are aimed at the same Eastern Bloc targets they always were (even though the Eastern Bloc isn't there any more). These guys still operate as though the security of the American way of life depends on their ability to fight large scale nuclear war on a moment's notice. Actually, two moments' notice — that's how much time is supposed to elapse between the order and when the missiles leave the silos. Mr. Blair notes that in the 25 years since he was a missileer in such a bunker the protocols for unleashing world-ending destruction remain unchanged. Those protocols weren't affected by Thursday's announcment that we no longer need the 1972 ABM Treaty. Each side could fire 4,000 missiles with the combined power of 80,000 Hiroshima bombs. All they have to do is run down the checklists. Under Cheyenne Mountain, the Colorado control center made famous in Fail Safe, others stand watch, looking for possible launches from “the other side.” They go through the drill two or three times a day. Sometimes what they see are communication satellites or missile tests. There is a three-minute assessment to see if the situation is serious enough to call the president. If the president got such a call, it would be followed by a briefing from a duty officer at SAC headquarters in Omaha. There are 30 seconds allocated for the briefing. The president then gets 12 minutes to decide if he wants to get our missiles off before they are hit by what might be incoming. A big safeguard on this system is the high level of skill, training and alertness of all the people involved. But now look at the other side. Somewhere in Russia is another missile bunker, manned by another pair of young soldiers with similar hair-trigger protocols. According to Mr. Blair, the Russian rocket force suffers from a high level of alcoholism. It is also underpaid, which means many of the soldiers manning the silos spend their off-duty hours working a second job. So when they come on duty, there is a good chance they might be tired or hung over. Not exactly the level of alertness we might hope for to prevent an accidental holocaust. The scariest part of the assessment is that few people disagree with it. The day after hearing the talk, the same group of editorial writers asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to respond to Mr. Blair's risk estimate. He acknowledged the seriousness of the threat. The good news is that the Russians aren't the bad guys any more. Presidents Bush and Putin realize their biggest worries aren't are each other. With that in mind, maybe it would be a good idea to reassess our launch protocols. If we no longer have to fear a first strike from Russia, let's ease the hammer down on the nukes.Why not give those guys in the silos 10 minutes instead of two? Let's give the presidents an hour to think instead of 12 minutes. Then let's make our top priority the people who really want to hurt us, instead of those who might just do it by mistake. Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com. Cincinnati.Com keyword: Wells. Copyright [http://cincinnati.com/copyright] 1995-2001. The Cincinnati Enquirer ***************************************************************** 26 Maine Yankee cited for violations in final safety survey By Associated Press, 12/14/2001 08:27 WISCASSET, Maine (AP) Operators of the shuttered Maine Yankee nuclear power plant have been cited for three instances of willfully failing to follow government procedures during a safety survey conducted in August 2000. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the three incidents occurred during the plant's final safety survey, which involves taking soil and other samples around the site and determining whether they are radioactive. In one instance, workers failed to follow the policy for checking instruments used to monitor the Wiscasset site for radiation, according to documents and a commission official. The commission will hear Maine Yankee's response before issuing an enforcement action, said Ronald Bellamy, an assistant to George Pangburn, director of the NRC's Nuclear Materials Safety Division. Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes disputed that the NRC's finding that the incidents were willful but an anti-nuclear critic said the violations are yet another example of problems at the plant. ''Our fear is that under pressure to meet schedules, workers may be asked or coerced to take shortcuts,'' said Ray Shadis, spokesman for Friends of the Coast Opposing Nuclear Pollution. ***************************************************************** 27 USEC wins in ruling on imports The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Saturday, December 15, 2001 U.S. tariffs will be imposed on two European companies that sold enriched uranium at unfair low prices. By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 Two European companies that compete with USEC Inc. are selling enriched uranium in the United States at unfair low prices, the U.S. Department of Commerce has ruled. The final ruling issued Friday is essentially the same as a preliminary ruling issued last summer, and is a victory for USEC. The company filed a complaint a year ago with the Department of Commerce and the U.S. International Trade Commission. The ruling says Eurodif, S.A., a firm controlled by the French government, and the British operation of Urenco Ltd. will be assessed higher import duties to make their prices competitive with USEC, which operates the nation's only uranium enrichment plant in Paducah. The investigation found that the companies charged prices below those charged in their home countries or below their cost plus a reasonable profit. In some cases, they found the prices were low because of government subsidies. An extra duty of 32.78 percent will be applied to the value of imported enriched uranium from France and an extra duty of 2.26 percent will be applied to imports from Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, according to the ruling. The International Trade Commission on Jan. 18 is scheduled to issue a final ruling on its investigation of the effect the low-priced uranium had on USEC. Earlier this year, the agency's preliminary ruling was that the low-priced imports threatened to harm domestic production of enriched uranium. The higher duty is expected to help protect jobs at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and the Honeywell plant in Metropolis, Ill., which produces raw product for Paducah. Together, they employ 1,800 people. Urenco Ltd. revealed earlier this week that it is considering building an enrichment plant in the United States that would provide even more competition for USEC. The company said it could begin preliminary environmental approval next month. It hasn't picked a site for the $1 billion facility. ***************************************************************** 28 German govt votes to phase out nuclear power over next 20 yrs AFX (UK); Dec 14, 2001 BERLIN (AFX) - Parliament voted in favour of phasing out nuclear power in Germany over the next two decades, giving a victory to the ruling Social Democratic/Green coalition. Under the new law, which imposes a maximum length of operations of 32 years, all of Germany's 19 nuclear reactors, which are mostly more than 10 years old, will be shut down over the next 20 years or so. The new legislation also phases out the highly disputed transportation of nuclear waste to reprocessing centres in France and the UK, with the final convoy to roll on June 30, 2005. All opposition parties voted against the law and the opposition Christian Union parties aim to reverse the decision, should they win the general election next year. nb/cmr World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright ***************************************************************** 29 Thousands to get refund from Entergy [NOLA.com: We're all over New Orleans] [The Times-Picayune] N.O. panel OKs settlements 12/14/01 By Frank Donze Staff writer/The Times-Picayune Some postholiday financial relief is on the way for tens of thousands of New Orleans utility customers thanks to a $38.2 million package of settlements that was agreed to Thursday by the City Council and two subsidiaries of Entergy Corp. The bulk of the money, $27.6 million, will go to about 170,000 residential and commercial electricity customers of Entergy New Orleans, which serves the city's east bank. Under an agreement approved Thursday by the council's Utility Committee, the average Entergy New Orleans residential ratepayer can expect a refund check of $50 to $60 to arrive by mail as early as January. As part of the same agreement, another $6 million will be set aside to help thousands of poor, elderly and handicapped utility customers pay their bills and to finance a new program designed to provide financial aid to ratepayers who make their homes and businesses more energy efficient. Under terms of the plan, Entergy will use no more than $150,000 from the settlement to pay for administrative costs associated with getting the refunds to customers. Ratepayers with accounts that are more than 30 days past due might not receive a check. In those cases, Entergy will credit the refund toward the delinquent balance. If the refund is greater than the amount due, the customer will receive a check for the difference. In an effort to minimize the administrative costs of issuing checks, company officials said refunds of less than $2 will be credited to either January or February bills. On Thursday, the council's Utility Committee also approved a separate $3.3 million settlement that affects only Entergy New Orleans' 138,000 commercial and residential gas customers. Under that agreement, which adjusts the costs associated with past gas purchases, the average residential ratepayer will see a one-time reduction of about $12 on January bills. A third settlement totaling $1.3 million affects only the 22,000 commercial and residential electricity customers in Algiers served by Entergy Louisiana Inc. Under that agreement, which addresses past overcharges, the average ratepayer will receive a one-time credit of about $32 on February bills. As part of the same settlement, Algiers gas customers will receive $59,000 in one-time credits that the council's advisers said will amount to only pennies in savings on February bills. All three agreements still need approval from the full council, but that is expected to be a formality. The issues are set to be voted on Thursday. The $33.6 million refund is the second installment in a legal settlement stemming from a 1995 electricity rate increase granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to System Energy Resources Inc., or SERI, an Entergy subsidiary in Jackson, Miss., that manages the company's Grand Gulf nuclear plant at Port Gibson, Miss. Calling it a "joyous" occasion, Councilman Eddie Sapir, who chairs the Utility Committee, said completion of the settlement culminates six months of work by the committee's legal advisers and Entergy. "Our plan gets real money directly into the hands of ratepayers and at the same time invests in the future of this city," Sapir said. "We believe this approach creates the best result for ratepayers." For many Entergy customers, Councilman Troy Carter said, the refund checks will arrive at the perfect time, "right when the Christmas bills come in the mail." Councilman Marlin Gusman said he was happy that part of the settlement is being reserved for energy conservation. "That's important," he said, "probably as important as the refund checks." Last August federal regulators ruled that the rate increase for SERI they had authorized was in fact excessive, as the City Council had alleged. SERI sought the increase to cover its projections for unexpectedly high costs to take the nuclear project out of service. The company also said it wanted to cover higher-than-expected depreciation costs, accounting changes and the higher risk that the financial markets associated with investing in electric power companies. A FERC review of those and other factors determined that Entergy should refund a total of $44 million. Working closely with the council, which regulates Entergy's utility monopoly in New Orleans, the company agreed last spring to advance $10.4 million from the settlement. At that time, the council allocated $2 million to help low-income utility customers who were still struggling to pay extraordinarily high heating bills from last winter. The remaining $8.4 million was credited to the accounts of residential and commercial customers. Frank Donze can be reached at [fdonze@timespicayune.com] or at (504) 826-3328. © The Times-Picayune. Used with permission. ***************************************************************** 30 Hearing granted on nuclear plant [charlotte.com] Published Friday, December 14, 2001 SRS SITE IN S.C. Opponents say facilitywould be vulnerableto attacks by terrorists By BRUCE HENDERSON A Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety board has granted a hearing on environmental challenges to an S.C. plant that would blend weapons plutonium into fuel for the two nuclear power plants near Charlotte. The plant's ability to withstand terrorism, insider sabotage or theft of plutonium will be among the issues analyzed at the hearing by an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The hearing is scheduled for October. The board could recommend that the plant not be built, say the parties involved. More likely, said Don Moniak of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, is that the board would require design modifications. The hearing will focus on claims by Blue Ridge and Georgians Against Nuclear Energy that the facility planned for the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., is unsafe. The threat of terrorist attacks will be the major issue, said Glenn Carroll of the Georgia group. The facility's design doesn't meet international standards on protection of nuclear material, the group claims. "It can no longer be argued that terrorist attacks are not reasonably foreseeable," the board wrote. A spokesman for Duke Cogema Stone &Webster, the business group that will design and build the facility, said it will be "hardened" like nuclear power plants. "Everybody wants to build a safe facility," said spokesman Todd Kaish. "We feel we are doing that, and `safe' to us is compliance with NRC requirements for nuclear facilities." DCS expects to begin construction of the plant in mid-2002 and will apply for an operating license late next year. ***************************************************************** 31 U.N. sponsors Arab tours of U.S. nuclear reactors WorldNetDaily: DECEMBER 12 2001 'Field trips' part of training course taught by Energy Department lab By Paul Sperry © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON -- To help fight nuclear terrorism, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham last month pledged $1.2 million in additional funds to a United Nations agency that sponsors foreign nationals -- including some from Arab terrorist states -- to tour U.S. nuclear reactors. The tours are part of a little-known federal course that trains foreign nationals in security techniques used at U.S. nuclear sites. Security experts from Sandia National Laboratory, one of the Energy Department's three nuclear-weapons research labs, teach the two-week course every other spring. Despite the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the course will be offered again this spring, a lab spokesman told WorldNetDaily. "Plans remain in place for the International Training Course to be offered April 28 through May 16," said Rod Geer of Sandia. Under a nuclear nonproliferation law signed by President Carter, Energy is obligated to share physical-protection technology with the 133 member states of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headed by Mohamed el-Baradei and based in Vienna, Austria. Six of IAEA's members -- Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba and Sudan -- show up on the State Department's terrorist blacklist. Afghanistan also is a member. Since 1978, Albuquerque, N.M.-based Sandia has presented the course 14 times to more than 400 participants from 57 countries, Geer says. Islamic countries represented include Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, says Sandia's Basil Steele, a course instructor. "We have everybody coming here," he said, with the last group passing through in May 2000. The international security classes, which used to run three weeks, are held at the Marriott Hotel in Albuquerque. They cover sensors, cameras, entry and access controls, response-force communications and other methods to protect nuclear facilities and materials from sabotage or theft. After classes, participants are taken on "field trips" to some of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's facilities, Steele says. "They go out to an NRC site to tour it, to see security there, and understand how they practice security," he said. Steele would not name the nuclear-reactor sites they visit, other than to say they're west of New Mexico. Palo Verde nuclear-power plant in Arizona is the closest to New Mexico. It's one of 86 nuclear sites protected by a no-fly zone recently ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration in the wake of the hijackings. A spokeswoman in IAEA's New York office acknowledges the risk of sharing security techniques with potential Arab terrorists, who may be using the U.N. invitation only to scout U.S. nuclear facilities for weak areas to penetrate. But she says the agency weighs that against the benefit of helping foreign nationals safeguard nuclear materials in their countries from terrorists (even though some of the countries themselves sponsor and harbor terrorists). She says IAEA does not blackball any member from participating, and provides rosters of participants to Energy. "We encourage our member states who host such meetings to allow entry for all nationalities," she asserted. Steele says Energy does not vet the rosters for suspected terrorists. "It's up to IAEA to screen their participants," he said. The IAEA spokeswoman demurred that the State Department is the final check, since it grants visas to those on its roster. Steele says that, to the best of his knowledge, federal authorities haven't scrubbed the roster of 400-plus foreign nationals who have participated in the course over the past 23 years, for matches to terrorist watch lists. Authorities recently audited another Energy training program, started by the Clinton administration, that teaches Yemenites, among other Arabs, security techniques at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. Former Energy security officials say they repeatedly expressed their reservations about letting "rogue-state types," as one put it, inspect security systems at U.S. nuclear sites under the IAEA program. "We objected on a number of occasions to the kinds of things they were training these guys," said a former senior Energy official, who says his warnings fell on deaf ears at Energy's headquarters during the Clinton administration. He says the course materials overlap with a lot of the security procedures in place at Sandia and other nuclear labs. "The labs pulled heavily from the procedures in the books that they prepared for the course. So when you went through that course, you pretty well knew what was going on with security at the labs," he said. "I mean, you could see the procedures and overlays." He said a supplement to the basic course includes "identifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities" in commercial security systems. "We raised some issues about training some of these foreign nationals, particularly ones from the Middle East," the official said. "They were teaching them to black out systems, which they could use against us at the labs." Steele says Washington OKs all materials used by Sandia, which is run by Lockheed-Martin Corp. Its subsidiary, Sandia Corp., runs security at the lab. "We scrub materials with DOE," he said. "We say, 'This is what we want to teach the international world. Is everything cool?' And they say, yes or no." We raised some issues about training some of these foreign nationals, particularly ones from the Middle East. They were teaching them to black out systems, which they could use against us at the labs. --Former senior official at U.S. Department of Energy A spokeswoman in IAEA's New York office acknowledges the risk of sharing security techniques with potential Arab terrorists, who may be using the U.N. invitation only to scout U.S. nuclear facilities for weak areas to penetrate. Former Energy security officials say they repeatedly expressed their reservations about letting 'rogue-state types,' as one put it, inspect security systems at U.S. nuclear sites under the IAEA program. © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ***************************************************************** 32 Blair wants UK to keep nuclear power Independent News © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Colin Brown and Geoffrey Lean 16 December 2001 Tony Blair will this week order the Government to keep open the option of building a new generation of nuclear power stations, despite receiving a report calling for much more investment in green sources of energy. He and Energy minister Brian Wilson are determined not to close down nuclear energy in Britain, and will draw on passages in the report – prepared for him by his own Performance and Innovation Unit – that support this. Environmentalists, citing selective leaks from the report, claimed last week that it condemned nuclear power, and would finish off the industry in Britain. In fact it is more balanced and says that "policy should keep the nuclear option open". But it recognises that, at present at least, nuclear power plants are likely to be too expensive to be built. The report – a copy of which, dated 10 December, has been obtained by The Independent on Sunday – has been the subject of a fierce battle behind the scenes between the pro-nuclear Mr Wilson, who chaired an advisory group of ministers, and critics Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister, and Michael Meacher, the Environment minister. It also appears to have been heavily modified by officials in its final stages, to soften its approach on nuclear power and to make its emphasis less green. Earlier drafts stressed that protecting the environment should be the overriding principle. But the report now suggests that "economic and social objectives" could be given equal weight. Nevertheless, the report emphasises the urgency of adopting "a radical agenda to enable the UK to put itself on the path to a low-carbon economy" – minimising the burning of fossil fuels which emit carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. It pushes for a massive increase in electricity from renewable sources such as wind, sun and waves, saying that, as a target, these should provide a fifth of all power generated in Britain by the year 2020. This is lower than a 30 per cent target earlier considered by the unit, which reports to the Cabinet Office, but would still represent an eightfold increase over the proportion now generated in this way. But it tacitly acknowledges that the Government has not made enough progress towards its present target of generating 10 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2010. It makes recommendations on removing obstacles, including "the working of the planning system", which have held up progress. The report also calls for a "step change in the nation's energy efficiency". Energy conservation in homes should be increased by 40 per cent by 2020, "approximately double the existing rate of improvement". This in turn, would help combat fuel poverty. When the review was set up under Mr Wilson's leadership, nuclear companies believed that its report would revive their fortunes. British Energy and British Nuclear Fuels, which run the UK's 15 nuclear power stations, have been pressing to build new reactors as the present ones close. The report takes an even-handed approach. It says new reactors should get the same incentives as other sources of power that do not emit carbon dioxide. But it also suggests that the industry should also meet the costs of waste disposal and reactor decommissioning – almost certain to make it uneconomic. The report says that nuclear power is likely to be too costly for many years to come, and points out that no country has ever chosen to build reactors under free-market conditions. It calls for the development of cheaper reactors that produce less waste. The Prime Minister, however, is said to be committed to retaining nuclear power as an insurance policy against the threat of oil or gas imports being cut off in the future by wars in the Middle East. What Blair's advisers said... On nuclear power: "Policy should keep the nuclear option open while ensuring that the energy system can respond flexibly to a new environment ... The Department of Trade and Industry should take the necessary action to keep open the nuclear option." On cost: "Nuclear power seems likely to remain more expensive than fossil-fuelled generation." On competitiveness: "Nowhere in the world have new nuclear power stations yet been financed within a liberalised electricity market." Faster planning appeals for new plants: "The DTLR proposal for the reform of planning will address the current concerns which investors have concerning the planning process applicable." On fuel poverty: "The UK still stands out as a country where, in contrast to the position of our Northern neighbours, many people spend a substantial proportion of their income of fuel, largely as a result of the age and energy inefficiency of the housing stock." On renewables: "If renewables are ever to become a major feature of the UK energy balance, the industry needs the assurance that demand will continue to grow." ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 [toeslist] ABM, Salt and Start. And now the finish. Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 13:32:44 -0600 (CST) Matthew Engel in Washington Friday December 14, 2001 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,618496,00.html ABM, Salt and Start. And now the finish US shuns world opinion to set unilateralist course America's formal notice of its decision to withdraw from the anti-ballistic missile treaty came as an untheatrical written notification, hardly noticed amid the rush of events. Nonetheless, it is a big moment: the announcement marks the end of a 38-year era, dating back to the 1963 test-ban treaty, through various incarnations of ABM, Salt and Start. Now it's finish. "I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks," President George Bush said. Throughout the closing three decades of the cold war, American and Russian leaders would warily face up to each other - sometimes finding it hard to conceal their mutual incomprehension - but the process produced treaty after treaty that reduced, with surprising steadiness, the world's fear of mass destruction. Now there is a total reversal. On the one hand, George Bush and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, are best buddies, having established what anthropologists call a joking relationship over a Texas barbecue. On the other, the US is abrogating an international treaty, which is unprecedented in modern history. In normal times, such a move would have thunderous domestic political consequences. Under present circumstances, it is hard to imagine what Mr Bush could not safely announce, as long as it could somehow be spun as a measure in defence of the American people. There are opposing voices, including important ones in the Senate, but they are neither loud nor resonant. The diplomatic effects will be muted too. But on that front the consequences are easier to envisage. Very slowly, but nonetheless surely, the US is spending the international reserve of sympathy and goodwill it accumulated on September 11, and it is now possible to imagine a moment - a long way off yet - when bankruptcy might ensue. Russian sources here are quite frank that this is part of the thinking behind their calculated calmness. If the worst came to the worst, and they had to start increasing their nuclear weapons, they believe they could do so by adding extra warheads to existing missiles. But they don't anticipate that, so they are perfectly happy to have the moral high ground. This announcement, and the Russians' stoic reaction, gives the Putin government further leverage in western Europe that may come in very handy in the coming months and years. The Bush government's intentions and instincts are a shared concern, right across Europe and Asia, not necessarily excluding the UK. Outside the state department, this is a matter of little immediate concern here. "The Europeans have always been very conservative in their approach to anything that might upset equilibrium," retired general Bernard Trainor, a pro-Bush military analyst, sniffed yesterday. Perhaps Europe will get the message from this: the administration did not change fundamentally on September 11. Karl Rove, the president's political strategist, said it out loud this week: "He is the same president now as he was before. What you see is what you get." What we saw, from the moment the Bush team moved into the White House in January, was that international opinion and, indeed, commitments were secondary considerations. This decision comes from the same mindset that has kept the US away from everyone else's line of thought on global warming. You might call it unilateralism, though the Bushites would prefer to call it self-reliance. And it did not waver in the weeks of coalition-building that followed the attacks. The traditional free world had to join the coalition, because the casus belli was beyond dispute. Countries that might have wavered - Russia, China, Pakistan - were kept firmly on side because the US was able to offer massive inducements on the one hand and some alarming threats on the other. There was never a hint of apology for what many saw as the White House's earlier instinctive contempt for the outside world. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Quit now for Great American Smokeout http://us.click.yahoo.com/0vN8tD/9pSDAA/ySSFAA/NJYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: toeslist-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 2 Ammunition plant benefits expanded Omaha.com December 15, 2001 BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) - Survivors of former nuclear weapons workers at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant could receive expanded compensation benefits under the defense bill President Bush has said he will sign. The benefits are included in the $343 billion dollar defense bill approved by Congress on Thursday. The plant, about 10 miles west of Burlington, assembled, packed and shipped nuclear weapons during the Cold War. The benefits measure allows adult children of nuclear workers who died from exposure to hazardous materials to receive a $150,000 compensation package written by the Department of Energy. Under previous Department of Labor rules, surviving children could receive compensation for family members that worked at the ammunition plant only if they were under 18 years old when that family member died. "This measure corrects a critical flaw in the Department of Labor rule," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. Harkin co-sponsored the original legislation to compensate workers at nuclear weapons plants who are shown to have cancer, beryllium disease, or silicosis, from exposure at their work. ©2001 Omaha World-Herald. ***************************************************************** 3 Wen Ho Lee: Reno, Freeh off the Hook Again NewsMax.com: , Dec. 14, 2001 Former Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh won't have to explain the government's investigation of Wen Ho Lee because a judge ruled today that such depositions might hurt nuclear security. Attorneys for Notra Trulock, the Energy Department's former chief investigator, wanted to take depositions from the two Clintonoids and two FBI agents in hopes they would help show that Trulock did not focus the espionage investigation on the Taiwanese-born Lee because of his race, the Associated Press reported. The Justice Department "doesn't want Freeh and Reno to testify because they have something to hide," said Thomas Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which is representing Trulock. The FBI's bungling of the Lee case was one of many major embarrassments for the bureau in recent years. Trulock is suing Lee and two government investigators because he says accusations they made of racial profiling defamed him. However, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee today in Arlington, Va., decided that the deposition request was too broad and that nuclear secrets might be spilled. The attorneys have narrowed their request, AP reported. Now it is up to the Justice Department. NewsMax.com Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 4 Cancer disaster in Iraq 13/12/2001 18:54 - (SA) Iraq - An Iraqi physician on Thursday warned that the people of southern Iraq faced a "humanitarian disaster" due to increasing cases of cancer which Baghdad has linked to depleted uranium (DU) dropped by US-led forces during the 1991 Gulf War. "Cases of cancer, especially leukaemia, have been increasing in the years since the aggression against Iraq in early 1991," Jenan Ghaleb said from Basra, 560km south of Baghdad. "Southern Iraq is threatened by a real disaster", given its proximity to the battlefield, she said. Daily cases of babies born with dreadful deformities "show that the humanitarian disaster [is real]", said Ghaleb, who heads the cancer department at the Ibn Ghazwan Children Hospital in Basra. Ghaleb said 192 children that she had treated for cancer died within four months, and women in the area were now "terrified" to give birth to babies with congenital malformations. Iraq says the number of cancer cases has quadrupled in the south of the country where the bombing was heaviest during the Gulf War. It says the United States and Britain fired more than 940 000 armour-piercing DU projectiles during the conflict. - AFP About News24 - all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 5 Pakistan Releases Nuke Scientists | Sat, 15 Dec 2001 12:55:05 EST CBS News | Since the attacks on Sept. 11, fears of a nuclear attack have been raised. Find out how a nuclear bomb can destroy, what effect radiation has on the human body, where nuclear sites are located in the U.S. and what you can do to protect yourself. Law enforcement and investigative agencies worldwide will work together to unravel who is behind the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Find out how they will do it. There is continuing concern in the United States about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the possibility that al-Qaida could have obtained expertise or nuclear materials from the Pakistanis (AP) Two nuclear scientists who had been detained on suspicion of sharing technical information with Osama bin Laden have been freed, government officials and relatives said Saturday. Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mehmood and Abdul Majid worked for Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission until retiring in 1999. They then managed a charity organization, Tameer-e-Ummah, or “Nation Builder,” and made several trips to Afghanistan, where they met bin Laden. Both denied transferring any nuclear-related information to Afghanistan and said they only ran education programs and helped poor Afghan farmers. Mehmood claimed he talked with bin Laden about plans for the rehabilitation of Afghanistan. Mehmood, who helped Pakistan become nuclear power in 1998, was picked up on Oct. 23 and was held for weeks until he was released after suffering a mild heart attack during interrogation. After a few days, he was taken to a safe house of Pakistan's main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. Majid was taken into custody after Mehmood's arrest, and six members of their non-governmental organization also were detained. Authorities said Mehmood and Majid defied service rules that apply to government scientists even after retirement, and of violating travel restrictions. They have been barred from talking with reporters or making public speeches. “My father, with all six detained members of his NGO, has been released,” Dr. Mohammad Asim, Mehmood's son, told The Associated Press. An Interior Ministry official on Saturday also confirmed the releases. Pakistan was the closest ally of Afghanistan's now-vanquished Taliban militia until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which bin Laden allegedly orchestrated. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf then joined the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism and changed the leadership of the spy agency, which had been close to the Taliban. However, the ranks of the ISI and other Pakistani agencies are believed to be filled with Taliban and bin Laden supporters. That has led to increased concern in the United States about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and the possibility that al-Qaida could have obtained expertise or nuclear materials from the Pakistanis. © MMI The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material ***************************************************************** 6 Eligibility Expanded for Nuclear Workers U.S. Newswire 13 Dec 14:27 Congress Changes Survivor Definition; Eligibility Expanded For Compensation From Nuclear Workers Program To: National Desk Contact: Stuart Roy of the U.S. Department of Labor, 202-693-4650 WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Congress has enacted legislation that changes the eligibility requirements for children of workers who died after contracting certain work-related illnesses in work performed for the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons program. "This amendment will help the department fairly compensate workers and their families for their sacrifice in protecting America during the Cold War," Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao said. "The thousands of families that Congress had in mind when it created the program will now be eligible for help." The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) went into effect on July 31, 2001, to compensate nuclear weapons workers who became ill as a result of exposure to radiation, beryllium or silica on the job. Chao presented the first compensation check to Clara Harding of Paducah, Ky., on Aug. 9, 2001, whose husband was a nuclear weapons worker who died of abdominal cancer. The amendment that was passed changes the definition of "survivor" in EEOICPA to also include adult children of nuclear weapons workers. As the law was originally written, surviving children were eligible for compensation only if, when their parent died, they were under the age of 18, full-time students under age 23, or any age but incapable of self-support. Eligible survivors receive a lump sum payment not to exceed $150,000 per family ($50,000 for survivors of uranium workers). The definition of "survivor" was an issue at more than 50 town hall meetings held throughout the country during the summer with nuclear weapons employees and their surviving family members. Because of the long latency of the diseases covered by this program, many of the people who attended these meetings were adults when their parent died. In addition to changing eligibility for EEOICPA compensation, the amendment also: -- Adds a type of leukemia to the list of cancers for which certain workers can receive benefits and makes it easier for claimants who are suffering from silicosis to meet the eligibility standard; -- Changes attorney fee provisions and clarifies what workers with pending lawsuits against certain employers must do to be eligible for benefits under this program; -- Requires the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to study residual radiation and beryllium contamination in certain facilities where nuclear weapons are no longer produced. NIOSH is to determine whether the residual contamination is significant and could have caused or contributed to cancer in a covered employee. --- U.S. Labor Department news releases are accessible on the Internet at http://www.dol.gov [http://www.dol.gov] . The information in this release will be made available in alternative format upon request (large print, Braille, audio tape or disc) from the COAST office. Please specify which news release when placing your request. Call 202-693-7773 or TTY 202-693-7755. Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire ***************************************************************** 7 Hanford office gets boost from Congress This story was published Fri, Dec 14, 2001 By the Herald staff WASHINGTON -- A joint U.S. House-Senate committee recently approved extending the lifespan of the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection to 2010. On Thursday the House approved the compromise, tucked in Congress' annual defense spending authorization bill. Several weeks ago the House approved the same measure, but the Senate defense bill did not contain that language until the recent conference committee meeting. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., expects the extension to survive an upcoming Senate vote. In the late 1990s, Hastings sponsored a bill that created the Office of River Protection as a separate DOE office specifically to tackle the radioactive wastes in Hanford's tanks through 2004. This year, he pushed to extend the office's existence through 2010. Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 8 NKorea Renews Verbal Attacks on U.S. Las Vegas SUN December 15, 2001 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Escalating renewed verbal attacks on the United States, North Korea accused President Bush on Saturday of trying to stifle the communist country and said it was ready to fight a war with the Americans. "If any enemy comes in attack on the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea, its army will not allow him to go back alive," said Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party. North Korea has increased its anti-U.S. rhetoric since Bush warned early this month that Iraq and North Korea would be "held accountable" if they developed weapons of mass destruction to carry out terrorism. North Korea's 1.1-million-member military is the world's fifth largest. It is suspected of having stockpiled weapons-grade plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs. Bush demands that North Korea allow U.N. experts to inspect the North's nuclear program, and the North has responded with verbal attacks. Saturday's commentary - carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA, and monitored in Seoul - said U.S.-North Korea relations have worsened to the "point of explosion." North Korea should maintain "the highest degree of vigilance" against the United States, it said. In a separate article carried by KCNA, Minju Joson, another state-run North Korean newspaper, accused the United States of trying to "spread the 'anti-terror' war now under way in Afghanistan to any part of the world." The United States keeps 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea under a mutual defense treaty. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 9 House passes sick-worker amendment Daily Southtown: Serving Chicago area's Southland Bill lifts age restriction on compensation eligibility for laborers' families Friday, December 14, 2001 By Paige Fumo Fox Staff writer More survivors of workers who became sick after working with beryllium and radioactive materials at Argonne National Laboratory, Joliet's Blockson/Olin and William E. Pratt Co. plants and other factories during the Cold War would be eligible for compensation under legislation passed Thursday in the U.S. House of Representatives. Surviving children of workers who died after developing cancer, lung disease and other illnesses would have to meet no age restriction in order to be eligible for compensation under an amendment added to the federal defense spending bill. Last year, Congress enacted a law allowing the employees who got sick or their survivors to receive $150,000 lump-sum payments. In instances when the employee had already died, the spouse would receive the payment. If the spouse were also dead, only children who were minors at the time their parents died would have been eligible. U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-13) of Hinsdale, who fought for the initial bill and for the change approved Thursday, said the compensation program will help adults who cared for their parents who became sick because they worked on the Manhattan Project and other defense projects during the 1940s, '50s and '60s. In many cases, workers developed diseases that lasted for decades, and their children were grown when they died. Lifting the age restriction will help more people, Biggert said. "This is really exciting," she said. The compensation program, and the work the men and women at Blockson/Olin and other plants did, will seem even more important to some people in light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Biggert said. "It was a war effort then as it is now," she said. "Things happened to people. These people sacrificed their lives or became ill. "We look (after) all our veterans to make sure they've been taken care of," Biggert said, and this program helps those who worked on defense at home. The U.S. Department of Labor, which administers the payments, did not have an estimate Thursday on how many people would be eligible for the compensation or on how much the program would ultimately cost. But by October, more than 10,000 applications for compensation had been filed based on the initial law that went into effect in July 2001. Biggert said she was calling some of the adult survivors who had contacted her in the past. She knew of one woman who dropped out of graduate school at age 23 in order to support her parents because her father had become sick. Without Thursday's amendment, that woman wouldn't have been able to claim any benefits because she was older than 18. The amendment is expected to pass easily in the Senate, Biggert said. The legislation also applies to workers who got sick working at facilities in Dolton, Harvey, 14 sites in Chicago, and other plants throughout the country that held similar defense contracts. For years, the federal government hid the fact that beryllium, used to build casings for atomic bombs, was dangerous. Employees at other factories became sick working with uranium or other radioactive materials used in manufacturing weapons. Workers weren't told they were at risk and typically worked with little or no protection from the radioactive material. Crest Hill resident Karen Simon's father, Gordon Surges, worked at Blockson for 40 years. Eight years after he retired, cancer struck him. When Simon learned her family wouldn't qualify for the benefits under the old law because she and her siblings were in their 40s and 50s when Surges died, she was disappointed. "These guys were old," Simon said. Most of the factory workers' children would have been grown. She said now that it looks more likely her family will see a settlement, she's pleased. "I'm happy for Dad's sake. I wish he was alive to enjoy it," Simon said. "It would be nice, but I won't count my chickens before they're hatched." Paige Fumo Fox may be reached at pfumofox@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5965. ***************************************************************** 10 Response to Russian Statement on U.S. ABM Treaty Withdrawal For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary December 13, 2001 Statement by the Press Secretary The United States welcomes President Putin's statement. We agree with President Putin that the decision taken by the President of the United States presents no threat to the national security of the Russian Federation. We have worked intensively with Russia to create a new strategic framework for our relationship based on mutual interests and cooperation across a broad range of political, economic, and security issues. Together, the United States and Russia have made substantial progress in our efforts and look forward to even greater progress in the future. The United States in particular welcomes Russia's commitment to deep reductions in its level of offensive strategic nuclear forces. Combined with the reductions of U.S. strategic nuclear forces announced by President Bush in November, this action will result in the lowest level of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by our two countries in decades. We will work with Russia to formalize this arrangement on offensive forces, including appropriate verification and transparency measures. Russia's announcement of nuclear reductions and its commitment to continue to conduct close consultations with the United States reflect our shared desire to continue the essential work of building a new relationship for a new century. ***************************************************************** 11 Officials begin cleanup of closed tritium laboratory [http://www.contracostatimes.com/] Published Friday, December 14, 2001 By Greg Cannon STAFF WRITER With its federal funding dried up, the National Tritium Labeling Facility, a longtime target for local activists, has hosted its last researchers and is being shut down. But wrapping up decades of work with radioactive material is not simply a matter of turning out the lights and closing the door. A monthslong, $1 million-plus cleanup and decontamination project is under way. With the help of everything from out-of-state radioactive waste dumps to soap and water, it will rid the former tritium lab of most of its hazardous material, radioactive and otherwise. Lab officials are hoping for state approval to have the lab subject some of its mixed waste to a novel treatment process. The September announcement that the National Institutes of Health would stop paying for the tritium facility was a blow to lab officials but a blessing to longtime critics, who contend the lab posed an undue health risk. Critics claimed victory, brushing aside official explanations that shifting science and economic priorities, not community pressure, led to the closure. But their celebration is muted by continued concern over tritium that will linger for decades in the environment outside the laboratory's walls . "It's a big relief," Gene Bernardi of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste, said of the closure. "But we need to be concerned about all the contamination that's still there." Of particular concern to lab critics now are groves of eucalyptus trees behind the tritium lab. In the past, tritium-contaminated trees were felled for fire control and exported to Asian pulp mills. Lab officials say that has stopped, and felled trees now are chipped and left on site. But Councilman Kriss Worthington is not comforted by those assurances and points to the lab's request that the Department of Energy rule on acceptable tritium levels in trees that could again allow them to be shipped off site. Worthington wants the City Council to keep close watch on the lab to ensure that it and the surrounding environment are cleaned up and no more tritium-tainted trees are exported. The city must be vigilant because of what Worthington said is the lab's history of understating the extent of pollution. "They basically try to put this rosy picture on everything," he said. Lab spokesman Ron Kolb said officials have always provided information "sufficient to make a rational judgment" about the facility's operations and impacts. In October, City Manager Weldon Rucker wrote a letter to lab and NIH officials asking that the cleanup be adequately funded, open to public review and scrutiny, and conducted in accordance with federal, state, and local environmental laws. Gary H. Zeman, the lab's radiological control manager, said he is preparing a letter to assure the city that he plans to speak in public about the closure and that it will be done with proper oversight. Zeman also assured the continuation of a program for monitoring tritium in surrounding trees, soil and ground water that is overseen by a task force that includes city and community group officials. "Those programs have been in effect and will continue to be in effect," Zeman said. While it was operating, the tritium facility was a relatively small part of the sprawling Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory complex. It accounted for $1 million of the overall lab's $415 million annual budget and employed just five of its 4,000 workers. But this tiny program drew significant protest thanks to its role as the lab's biggest single user of radioactive materials. During the tritium facility's 19 years of existence, researchers used the radioactive hydrogen material to label medicines' molecules, allowing scientists to track the medicines' paths inside the body. Now, Zeman leads a team charged with safely shuttering the tritium facility. The facility will be dismantled in three phases following guidelines of the DOE, the federal agency that oversees national labs, including the ones in Berkeley and Livermore. Money has been committed to remove the chemical and radioactive wastes and dismantle the lab's research apparatus of stainless steel piping, uranium beds and radiation monitors. While research that produces tritium waste has ceased, officials hope to study a new method of treating some of it that could prove a cleaner alternative to traditional incineration. They are seeking permission to spend a couple of months subjecting chemical and radioactive mixed waste to a process called catalytic oxidation in hopes that it will enable them to destroy the chemical waste, leaving only tritium waste. Funds have yet to be budgeted for the final phase, in which the facility's four laboratories, heating and air conditioning system, and office furniture will be decontaminated. When the time comes, much of that final work will be accomplished with simple solvents such as soap, water and glass cleaner, Zeman said. The more delicate work of shipping tritium and hazardous chemicals out of state for reuse or disposal is expected to be completed by year's end. It's nothing new for lab workers who routinely deal with chemical and radiological cleanups when research programs end, Zeman said. The process requires sampling various metals, poisons, organic and inorganic chemicals to ensure that bottles contain what their labels say they do. Chemicals are also randomly tested for radioactivity. The movement of tritium to and from the facility has been a regular occurrence during the life of the lab. A new supply arrived last spring from the DOE's Savannah River, Ga., site and the lab's spent supply was returned there. The remains of that spring shipment, however, will be sent to Livermore. Lab benches and office furniture contaminated with various levels of radiation will be cleaned for reuse or tossed out at a hazardous waste site, most likely the DOE's Hanford, Wash., facility, Zeman said. With space at the lab at a premium typical of Bay Area real estate, Zeman said the tritium facility's four laboratories will be quickly snapped up by other research programs. Greg Cannon can be reached at 510-262-2713 or gcannon@cctimes.com [gcannon@cctimes.com] . headlines from ContraCostaTimes.com ***************************************************************** 12 Metro:SRS says budget is 'not bad' 12/15/01 Augusta Georgia: $1.5 billion in proposal is sufficient, official says Web posted Saturday, December 15, 2001 By Brandon Haddock [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] Staff Writer Although money would be tight, the nation's proposed defense budget would not hamstring operations at Savannah River Site, an SRS official said Friday. "It's a little less than we had hoped for, but it's still not bad," said John Pescosolido, the Department of Energy's chief financial officer at the federal nuclear-weapons site. "As of today, this budget doesn't have any really significant impacts either in the work force or in programmatic work," Mr. Pescosolido said. The site would receive about $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2002 under the budget, submitted as part of the 2002 Defense Authorization Bill. President Bush is expected to sign the bill, which would fund national defense efforts through September. Besides SRS funding, the bill includes a pay raise of 5 percent to 10 percent for military personnel. And the bill would require the Energy Department to provide 30 days' notice to South Carolina before it ships any plutonium to SRS. The agency also would have to submit by Feb. 1 a plan for disposing of surplus plutonium, including the means to remove it from SRS. The provisions, introduced by South Carolina's congressional delegation, are intended to prevent the state from becoming a de facto permanent storage site for plutonium, as Gov. Jim Hodges and other politicians have feared. The Energy Department has given repeated assurances the state won't be asked to store plutonium permanently, but the two sides have not been able to establish a formal agreement on the issue. "I don't believe the Energy Department will ship plutonium to the state until we have an agreement, but I'm not taking any chances," Lindsey Graham said in a statement. In recent years, the SRS budget has hovered at about $1.5 billion, although last year's budget topped $1.6 billion. The site's environmental-management programs, which work to treat radioactive wastes and pollution at SRS, would receive about $1.07 billion under the 2002 bill, Mr. Pescosolido said. The site had hoped for about $60 million more, he said. The site's defense programs, which work both to maintain the nation's nuclear-weapons stockpile and eliminate surplus bomb materials, would receive $230 million to $235 million, Mr. Pescosolido said. The bill would fund several key projects, the official said, including an effort to replace a failed $489 million waste-treatment plant at the site. The budget proposal also would pay for preliminary work to close the site's massive "F-Canyon" plant, Mr. Pescosolido said. Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] . 1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. ***************************************************************** 13 DOE shipments to require notice Augusta Georgia: Metro: Web posted Saturday, December 15, 2001 Associated Press WASHINGTON - South Carolina will get 30 days' notice before the Department of Energy ships plutonium to the state, and the agency must have a plan on how to dispose of the material, according to a defense bill on the president's desk. The provisions were included in the $343 billion bill passed by the House and the Senate on Thursday. President Bush is expected to sign the bill into law. "I don't believe DOE will ship plutonium to the state until we have an agreement, but we're not taking any chances," said U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. By Feb. 1, 2002, the bill says the Energy Department should submit to Congress: + Thirty days' notice prior to shipping the material. + Options considered for disposal, including the preferred option supported by the agency. + Proposed time line for construction and shipping of materials. + Means of removing the material from South Carolina. Gov. Jim Hodges and other state and federal leaders became concerned this fall that nuclear material about to be shipped from Colorado to the Savannah River Site near Aiken would permanently stay in South Carolina. Their concerns grew after The New York Times quoted unnamed sources as saying the Energy Department might abandon the project to convert plutonium from nuclear weapons into fuel for nuclear power plants. Mr. Hodges said indefinite storage at SRS was unacceptable, and he threatened to lie down on the highway if necessary to block the trucks from entering South Carolina. The shipments have since been postponed. Mr. Hodges said Friday he "appreciates our delegation holding the feds' feet to the fire," but still remained concerned about DOE making SRS "the nation's plutonium dumping ground." Attorney General Charlie Condon said the bill "was good news" for the state. "I'm certain that the president will see to it that this material is not permanently stored in South Carolina, but we do have to work out the details," said Mr. Condon, who spoke about the issue with Mr. Bush when the president spoke at The Citadel on Tuesday. 1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. ***************************************************************** 14 Recycling pact due on UF6 in Paducah The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Saturday, December 15, 2001 Bids from three firms have been under review for a year, and a contract will be awarded Jan. 15. Numerous new jobs are expected. By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 A contract to recycle more than 14 billion pounds of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6) at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant will be awarded on Jan. 15 by the U.S. Department of Energy. "We've been looking forward to this announcement for a long time," said Ken Wheeler, chairman of a local task force promoting the project and others related to the plant. "Not only is it going to have a direct impact on the jobs it will create ... but we feel it is one of the key elements to getting major research and development activities in Paducah." Members of Kentucky's congressional delegation were informed Friday that the contract will be awarded. Bids from three firms have been under review for about a year. Officials did not say which firm will get the contract. Awarding the contract will be a positive step that the recycling plant will finally be built, Wheeler said. "Once they get a contract, they are going to be obligated to go through with it," Wheeler said. "It is really good news, but it has been far too long to get to this point." Wheeler noted that an $800,000 grant was awarded last summer as seed money to create a research consortium that includes the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville, and the Kentucky Community and Technical College system. Wheeler's group wants to transform the Paducah Information Age Park into an energy and environmental research center. He anticipates the need for significant research activities related to the recycling of the UF6, which hasn't been done in the United States. Depleted UF6 is hazardous and contains low-level radiation. It has no established commercial use, but the facilities would convert the waste into safer material. "We have to find some uses for the end product," Wheeler said. Potential applications range from reusing fluorine in the nuclear fuel industry to making a concretelike material out of uranium oxide for managing and storing spent nuclear fuel. Officials estimate that the fluorine alone could be worth more than $1 billion. Wheeler also noted that it will take up to two years to design the plant and begin construction. The consortium might receive grants to help in design research. Wheeler anticipates other significant research and development opportunities related to cleanup operations and environmental issues at the plant. The potential also exists to provide some of the research for a more efficient method of enriching uranium for use as a nuclear fuel. Once built, the plant will employ up to 300 people. Members of Kentucky's congressional delegation — led by U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell — have been battling DOE and administration officials for more than three years over repeated delays in the project. Some delays have been caused by questions from administration officials over whether the recycling project should be a high priority, while other delays have been the result of questions over the wisdom of recycling the material that has a low level of radiation. The UF6 is stored in more than 60,000 cylinders, two-thirds of which are in Paducah and the rest at closed enrichment facilities in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn. Some of the cylinders have been at the Paducah plant since production began almost 50 years ago. In 1998, McConnell and Whitfield guided legislation through Congress earmarking $373 million and requiring that recycling plants be built in Paducah and Portsmouth. The three finalists for the contract are: American Conversion Services, formed by USEC Inc., which operates the diffusion plant, and environmental firm CH2M Hill. Jacobs COGEMA, formed by Jacobs Engineering Group and COGEMA. Jacobs is a partner with Bechtel National in Bechtel Jacobs, which beat Foster Wheeler and others to become the Paducah plant’s lead environmental contractor. COGEMA, a French firm, is a world leader in nuclear fuel services and already operates conversion facilities. Uranium Disposition Services, formed by Framatome ANP (Advanced Nuclear Power) Richland, Duratek Federal Services, and Burns and Roe Enterprises. Framatome, of France, is a world leader in nuclear reactor production. Duratek, a Maryland firm, has advanced nuclear waste disposal technology. Burns and Roe is a New Jersey-based architectural and engineering firm. ***************************************************************** 15 North Korea rejects nuclear inspection over missile talks with US Ananova - North Korea have rejected an inspection of its alleged nuclear weapons program and talks on its missile development. It is accusing the US of plotting to use them as an opportunity for military provocation. North Korea has increased anti-US rhetoric since President George W Bush warned this month that it and Iraq would be "held accountable" if they developed weapons of mass destruction to carry out terrorism. Bush demands that the North allow UN experts to inspect its nuclear program. The North is believed to have stockpiled enough plutonium to make one or two atomic bombs. "There is neither condition nor need for the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea to accept the 'nuclear inspection,'" said Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Party. "The same is the case with the 'missile issue.'" The US president has also expressed frustration over the North's silence to his proposal in June to resume dialogue and discuss the communist country's missile program and conventional arms. "The US is going to use the dialogue with the DPRK as a lever to pressure and an opportunity to find a pretext for military provocation," said Rodong, carried by the North's official news agency, KCNA, which was monitored in Seoul. The North has been accusing the United States of scheming to make it the next target after Afghanistan, using anti-terrorism as a "good pretext." North Korea, which is on a US list of countries sponsoring terrorism, maintains a 1.1-million-member military, the world's fifth largest. The United States keeps 37,000 troops in South Korea to deter North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. Copyright © 2001 Ananova Ltd ***************************************************************** 16 ABM Treaty Fact Sheet For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary December 13, 2001 Statement by the Press Secretary Announcement of Withdrawal from the Abm Treaty The circumstances affecting U.S. national security have changed fundamentally since the signing of the ABM Treaty in 1972. The attacks against the U.S. homeland on September 11 vividly demonstrate that the threats we face today are far different from those of the Cold War. During that era, now fortunately in the past, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in an implacably hostile relationship. Each side deployed thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the other. Our ultimate security rested largely on the grim premise that neither side would launch a nuclear attack because doing so would result in a counter-attack ensuring the total destruction of both nations. Today, our security environment is profoundly different. The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Russia is not an enemy, but in fact is increasingly allied with us on a growing number of critically important issues. The depth of United States-Russian cooperation in counterterrorism is both a model of the new strategic relationship we seek to establish and a foundation on which to build further cooperation across the broad spectrum of political, economic and security issues of mutual interest. Today, the United States and Russia face new threats to their security. Principal among these threats are weapons of mass destruction and their delivery means wielded by terrorists and rogue states. A number of such states are acquiring increasingly longer-range ballistic missiles as instruments of blackmail and coercion against the United States and its friends and allies. The United States must defend its homeland, its forces and its friends and allies against these threats. We must develop and deploy the means to deter and protect against them, including through limited missile defense of our territory. Under the terms of the ABM Treaty, the United States is prohibited from defending its homeland against ballistic missile attack. We are also prohibited from cooperating in developing missile defenses against long-range threats with our friends and allies. Given the emergence of these new threats to our national security and the imperative of defending against them, the United States is today providing formal notification of its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. As provided in Article XV of that Treaty, the effective date of withdrawal will be six months from today. At the same time, the United States looks forward to moving ahead with Russia in developing elements of a new strategic relationship. - In the inter-related area of offensive nuclear forces, we welcome President Putin's commitment to deep cuts in Russian nuclear forces, and reaffirm our own commitment to reduce U.S. nuclear forces significantly. - We look forward to continued consultations on how to achieve increased transparency and predictability regarding reductions in offensive nuclear forces. - We also look forward to continued consultations on transparency, confidence building, and cooperation on missile defenses, such as joint exercises and potential joint development programs. - The United States also plans to discuss with Russia ways to establish regular defense planning talks to exchange information on strategic force issues, and to deepen cooperation on efforts to prevent and deal with the effects of the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery. The United States intends to expand cooperation in each of these areas and to work intensively with Russia to further develop and formalize the new strategic relationship between the two countries. The United States believes that moving beyond the ABM Treaty will contribute to international peace and security. We stand ready to continue our active dialogue with allies, China, and other interested states on all issues associated with strategic stability and how we can best cooperate to meet the threats of the 21st century. We believe such a dialogue is in the interest of all states. ***************************************************************** 17 Brookhaven Cleanup Funds Slashed Newsday.com - By Keiko Morris and Ann Givens STAFF WRITERS December 15, 2001 Funding for an aggressive plan to clean up radioactive waste at the Brookhaven National Lab was slashed recently, when the Department of Energy announced that the lab's budget is expected to be cut by $46 million in the next three years. After years of intensely lobbying the federal government, community groups, environmentalists and business leaders thought the funding was in place to accelerate several projects to remove contaminated soil and protect the groundwater supply. The U.S. Department of Energy would not discuss the cuts, officials there said, because the budget is not final yet. When the government cut $10 million from these projects earlier this year, a bipartisan effort restored that money and pushed the completion date ahead of schedule, from 2006 to 2005 or sooner. Now that date for finishing all of the lab's cleanup projects likely will be delayed to 2008 or 2009. And the federal government, activists say, is in danger of losing the community's hard-won trust if the money is not restored. "Brookhaven has had a very difficult time with the local community," said Scott Cullen, legal counsel for Standing for Truth About Radiation, a Long Island environmental group. "They've come a long way and some of the past problems have been corrected. It would be a big mistake to do this. It's just unconscionable for them to yank away the cleanup funds." The lab had been promised $35.6 million in 2003, $43 million in 2004 and $44.7 million in 2005, but word on budget reductions had been circulating since the spring, said Les Hill, the lab's director of environmental management. He said the DOE has now indicated that the lab will receive a flat rate of $25.7 million, continuing through 2009. The lab will give its highest priority to those projects posing an immediate risk to public health and safety, Hill said. Efforts focused on removing contaminants threatening the groundwater supply and restoring the Peconic River - whose head waters start on the laboratory's grounds - will remain on schedule. But other projects, including the decommissioning of the lab's Graphite Research Reactor and removal of underground storage tanks long emptied of radioactive waste, will have to be put off. Hill predicts the delay of these various projects will increase the cost of cleaning up the lab by possibly $10 million. The budgets for the next three years have yet to be finalized, Hill said. And there is the chance some extra federal money could be added to the clean-up projects. But the process of funding the projects annually makes any long-term planning difficult, Hill said. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has made the lab one of his signature causes, will continue to fight to restore funding, said Bradley Tusk, the senator's communications director. And local activists are set to turn the heat up once again. "The community's priority hasn't changed," said Adrienne Esposito, associate executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. "They still want clean drinking water, clean soil and a clean Peconic River." Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 Does Osama bin Laden have a radiological bomb? Jack Kelly: Dirty deeds Sunday, December 16, 2001 By Jack Kelly Some day very soon, Islamic terrorists may detonate in an American city a bomb that consists of a conventional explosive with radioactive material wrapped around it. Jack Kelly is national affairs writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com). Few Americans will perish from the blast. But thousands will die -- and die ugly -- from the radiation released by the "dirty bomb." And the area affected by the radiation will be uninhabitable long after our grandchildren's grandchildren have grandchildren. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Osama bin Laden's terror network has made greater strides than previously thought toward obtaining radiological weapons. A diagram for a "dirty bomb" was found in an Afghan installation run by the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaida, The Washington Post reported. "In addition, recent U.S. intelligence reports describe a meeting within the last year in which bin Laden was present in which one of his associates produced a canister that allegedly contained radioactive material," said the Post in a story written by three of its most prominent reporters. Pakistani nuclear scientists, working under the direction of a former Pakistani intelligence chief, built the bomb for bin Laden, UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave said in a recent story. "One Pakistani general who has seen the evidence described the device as a 'dirty nuclear weapon'," de Borchgrave said. "One local intelligence source speculated a dirty bomb could have been smuggled out before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." A likely route would be to transport the bomb by truck to the port of Karachi in southern Pakistan, and then ship it in a cargo container. About 18 million cargo containers arrive in the United States each year. Only about 3 percent are inspected by U.S. Customs. Bin Laden's bomb might already be here. A Pakistani rounded up after Sept. 11 died in a New Jersey jail at the end of October. He'd complained of bleeding gums. DEBKAfile, a private intelligence service based in Israel, said this is a sign of radiation sickness. Authorities are not releasing either the man's name, or the cause of death. The Israelis arrested another Pakistani trying to cross into Israel from Jordan, DEBKAfile said. He was suffering from the same symptoms as the Pakistani who died in New Jersey. It is hard to build a nuclear bomb, even a small one, and harder still to build it without detection. But radiological bombs are relatively uncomplicated. And "dirty bombs" require less nuclear material, which can be obtained from a wider variety of sources. Spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors are ideal for making a radiological bomb, but radiopharmaceuticals can provide harmful doses of radiation, as can certain types of industrial waste. The catastrophic consequences that would ensue from the detonation of a radiological bomb mean we should be more worried than we have been about how poorly the war on terror is going at home. The war in Afghanistan has been going well, chiefly because, overseas, President Bush can do pretty much what he thinks needs to be done. But here at home, while the president can propose, it is Congress that disposes . . . or, more often, dawdles. More than three months have passed since the terrorists struck. But at this writing, Congress has yet to complete work on the defense appropriations bill, or to pass the economic stimulus package President Bush had requested in September. No legislative action has been taken to fix an out-of-control immigration system that permitted all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers to enter the country legally, or to beef up security at our borders. But Democrats in the Senate have taken time to snipe at President Bush for the security precautions he has taken. Democrats don't like it that he is holding terror suspects on minor charges; that he has asked recent Muslim immigrants to submit voluntarily to questioning about what they may know of the terror network, or that he plans to try some terrorists captured overseas in military tribunals. Democrats act as if Attorney General John Ashcroft were a greater threat to the liberties of Americans than Osama bin Laden. But Ashcroft does not have a radiological bomb. This is no time for partisan politics. Copyright © 1997-2001 PG Publishing. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************