***************************************************************** 05/24/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.129 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Former Sen. Bryan appointed to state nuclear commission 2 Nuclear Waste - Yucca Mountain program presented 3 Citizen Groups Denounce Proposal for High-Level Nuclear Waste 4 Charges Possible in Fuel Rods Case 5 Fuel rods probe may bring charges 6 DynCorp denied extension 7 Texas University Fined for Mismanaged Radioactive Shipment 8 Well samplings find some are safe, some not 9 Paducah plant company joins bid to construct power plant 10 ExxonMobil hit with huge damages 11 EPA ombudsman pledges to examine radiation standards 12 $1 BILLION AWARDED TO FAMILY FROM EXXON FROM RADIOACTIVE 13 Ex-pipe cleaners suing Exxon 14 Exxon to appeal jury award 15 Reactor water leak called no big deal 16 Nuclear Summer 17 Waste the key to convincing world nuclear is clean 18 Cheney, Nuclear Power Execs Hold Love Fest 19 Waste Disposal the Kink in Nuke Power Plan 20 a New Energy Triangle Emerges: Iran-Armenia-Ukraine 21 California Favors Nuclear Plants 22 Editorial: This is hardly a renaissance 23 More nukes? Market, technology, disposal to shape politics 24 New nuclear power push arouses old fears / Three Mile Island 25 Nuking the Atmosphere 26 Nuclear answer to global warming, shortage 27 Let the markets decide the nuclear question 28 Wind Generating Capacity Blows By Nuclear for Second Year 29 -Radioactive material leak at Japan nuclear reactor 30 Former interior secretary endorses Yucca Mountain nuclear dump 31 Politicians divided on disclosing Lucas Heights contract 32 Uphill battle to build new reactor at Lucas Heights 33 Labor called to make a decision on nuclear reactor 34 Lure of EU Membership Persuades Nations to Close High-Risk 35 Finland 1st in Europe to OK Permanent Nuclear Waste Study 36 Activists say officials have no fail-safe plan for radioactive 37 Workers Need Not Worry, BNFL Says Again 38 Government faces legal challenge over nuke plant -- Government 39 Former interior secretary endorses Yucca Mountain nuclear dump 40 Senate control in balance as GOP moderate considers leaving GOP 41 Former interior secretary endorses Yucca Mountain nuclear dump 42 Ombudsman to examine Yucca issue 43 Decision to affect Reid's, Nevada's future NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 opinion: Disagrees with doe stand on recycling 2 New Scientist: Plutonium for sale 3 Listening for secret nukes, hearing giant meteors 4 Terrorists' 'dirty bomb' plot new nuclear threat 5 Thieves dismantle nuclear-powered lighthouse in Arctic Russia 6 U.S. to honor nuclear agreement with Israel 7 Terrorists' 'dirty bomb' is nuclear nightmare ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Former Sen. Bryan appointed to state nuclear commission Today: May 24, 2001 at 10:41:39 PDT SUN CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- Former U.S. Sen. Dick Bryan, who has led the fight against a high-level nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, today was named to the state's Nuclear Project Commission, which oversees the federal efforts to qualify the site. Gov. Kenny Guinn made the announcement and said Bryan, who retired in January 2001 from the Senate after two terms, will replace Tom Warden of Las Vegas, who resigned. Bryan is currently a partner and executive committee member of the Las Vegas law firm of Lionel, Sawyer and Collins. Bryan, as governor, was one of the early leaders in battling the U.S. Department of Energy, which is studying the Yucca Mountain site as a location for the repository. "I can think of no one who has Dick Bryan's depth of knowledge and experience on every aspect of nuclear energy," Guinn said, "and his dedication to serving the people of Nevada is well known throughout our state." The commission was created in 1985 when Bryan was governor. It makes recommendation to the governor and Legislature on nuclear projects and the disposal of radioactive waste. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 2 Nuclear Waste - Yucca Mountain program presented Community Wrap: [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Thursday, May 24, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal At 7:30 p.m. May 31, Congregation Ner Tamid, 2761 Emerson Ave., will host a program on the proposed disposal of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. The program is free and open to the public. For more information, call 733-6292. A panel of speakers will share information about the project and its impact on the Las Vegas Valley. A question-and-answer session will follow. Michael Geeser, weekend anchor and reporter for KTNV-TV, Channel 13 will serve as moderator. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/May-24-Thu-2001/living/16122175.html ***************************************************************** 3 Citizen Groups Denounce Proposal for High-Level Nuclear Waste Transport Through New Mexico CONCERNED CITIZENS FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY PEACE ACTION NEW MEXICO PUBLIC CITIZEN'S CRITICAL MASS ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM NEWS RELEASE *May 21, 2001* Citizen Groups Denounce Proposal for High-Level Nuclear Waste Transport Through New Mexico * Survey Shows Cause for Concern* SANTA FE, N.M. – A proposal to transport high-level nuclear waste through New Mexico to Nevada for permanent storage could pose serious threats to public health, the environment and the economy in the event of a crash or a radiation leak, citizen groups said today. Public interest groups, concerned citizens, and state agency representatives held a news conference today in front of the State Capitol to call attention to the dangers associated with transporting high-level radioactive waste through New Mexico. A public workshop on the topic of high-level waste transportation will be held today from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. in the La Farge Library Community Room (1730 Llano St., Santa Fe). The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is preparing to recommend Yucca Mountain, located near Las Vegas, Nev., as a permanent repository for high-level radioactive waste generated by atomic weapons facilities and commercial nuclear reactors across the country. "Congress is under immense pressure from the nuclear power industry to approve a dump at Yucca Mountain," said Joni Arends, waste programs director with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS). "From our experience with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, we are all too familiar with geologic, safety and transportation problems associated with this type of DOE project." DOE has refused to specify which routes would be used to ship high-level waste toYucca Mountain. However, potential routes evaluated in a draft Environmental Impact Statement include I-40 and I-10 through New Mexico, as well as rail lines. An analysis prepared by the Clark County Comprehensive Planning Division in Nevada found that the waste would have to travel through 734 counties with a total population of 138 million people. Against the backdrop of a full-sized inflatable model of a nuclear waste transport cask, participants at today’s news conference raised concerns about the safety of transporting radioactive waste. DOE risk analysis data indicate that between 70 and 310 accidents could be expected involving waste shipments to Nevada. Lisa Gue, policy analyst for Public Citizen, explained that the transport casks never have been subjected to full-scale physical testing. Rather, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission relies on computer modeling to predict how the casks would perform in the event of an accident. Even without an accident, the high-level nuclear waste shipments would routinely emit radiation equivalent to one chest X-ray per hour. Also today, CCNS and the New Mexico Department of Health released the results of a survey of emergency response personnel along the north-south route to another DOE disposal site for nuclear weapons waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The survey found that 75 percent of the personnel were from volunteer services. Seventy-five percent of the total surveyed said they did not have adequate equipment for handling an incident involving hazardous or radioactive materials, while 72 percent felt inadequately trained to handle a radioactively contaminated patient. The survey and results will be published today at *www.nuclearactive.org*. "We hope the results of the survey will provide a stimulus for emergency responder volunteers to attend the various on-going, free trainings provided by the State of New Mexico," said Bill Mackie, coordinator of the New Mexico Radioactive Waste Consultation Task Force. "There is no practical way to insure that hospitals, police and rescue personnel will have the capacity to effectively respond to radiological emergencies in communities along both the WIPP and Yucca Mountain shipment routes through New Mexico," said Arends. "Our survey results show that the emergency responders need more training, equipment, and written policies and procedures," Transportation hazards are not the only risks associated with the proposal to build a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The site itself is unsuitable, and DOE repository designs rely on the integrity of engineered storage canisters to contain the highly radioactive waste. Scientists in Nevada have pointed to the danger of groundwater contamination if these canisters leak, since the proposed repository would sit atop an aquifer. In addition to gradual corrosion and degradation of the storage canisters, an earthquake could cause them to break open. The chance of an earthquake occurring is far from remote; Nevada ranks third in the country for seismic activity. "The proposal to build a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain does not address the nuclear waste problem," Gue said. "It merely transfers the risk to the state of Nevada and communities that are unlucky enough to be located along nuclear waste transportation routes. The only way to solve the nuclear waste problem is to stop generating it." The event was held as part of the Radioactive Roads and Rails Campaign, a national project of Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), sponsored in Santa Fe by CCNS and Peace Action New Mexico. ***************************************************************** 4 Charges Possible in Fuel Rods Case Today: May 24, 2001 at 4:20:29 PDT WATERFORD, Conn. (AP) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched an investigation into the disappearance of two fuel rods from a nuclear power plant that's been out of operation since 1995. In documents filed with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, commission staff attorney Norman St. Amour wrote that the investigation could lead to criminal charges. Misplacing the fuel rods, characterized as high-level radioactive waste, is unprecedented in the nuclear industry. Each rod is 13 feet long and the width of a pencil. Engineers doing an inventory of the Millstone One Nuclear Power Plant's nuclear waste storage pool in November noticed they were missing. The plant, one of three at the Millstone complex southwest of New London, is being decommissioned. The slightly damaged rods were removed in 1972 and placed in the storage pool. The last reference to the rods was in a 1979 report. Plant officials have been conducting their own investigation, and workers are going through paperwork to determine whether the rods were transferred to nuclear storage sites or to General Electric laboratories for study. With the exception of nuclear plants and military facilities, there is no authorized storage site for high-level radioactive waste in the country. The Millstone complex was sold in April to Dominion, which has ultimate responsibility for the rods. The former owner, Northeast Utilities, is paying for the search. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: http://www.nrc.gov/ Millstone: http://www.dom.com/operations/station-nuc/millstone.html All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 Fuel rods probe may bring charges TheDay.com: Local and National News *NRC is investigating lost nuclear material* By Paul Choiniere Published on 5/24/2001 Waterford — The inability of officials at the closed Millstone 1 nuclear plant to account for two missing fuel rods is the subject of a federal investigation that could lead to the filing of criminal charges. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Investigations is conducting the investigation. In documents filed with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, NRC staff attorney Norman St. Amour states: “The investigation could lead to further actions including, but not limited to, referral to the United States Department of Justice for criminal investigation.” The fuel rods could not be accounted for when an inventory of the plant's spent fuel storage pool was conducted last November. Plant records last refer to the fuel rods back in 1980. Since then, plant officials believe they were either moved to a different spot in the pool and cannot be found or were inadvertently shipped off site to a low-level radioactive waste facility, which would be a federal violation. An internal investigation is continuing at Millstone Nuclear Power Station to try to determine what happened to the fuel rods and why. But six months into that investigation, the whereabouts of the fuel rods and the circumstances of their disappearance remain a mystery. Misplacing the fuel rods, characterized as high-level radioactive waste, is unprecedented in the nuclear industry. With the exception of nuclear plants and military facilities, there is no authorized storage site for high-level radioactive waste in the United States. Millstone 1 last operated in 1995 and has been permanently taken out of service. The waste it generated continues to be stored at the closed plant. A Northeast Utilities spokesman said the company will cooperate in the investigation and looks forward to a resolution of the issue. Word of the federal investigation surfaced as a result of a proceeding involving the storage of waste at the Millstone 3 nuclear plant. To continue operating over the next 20 years, Millstone 3 has to find a place to store 1,860 spent nuclear fuel assemblies that will be used up in the nuclear reactor by the time the operating license expires. It has a license to put only 756 assemblies in the storage pool, and is near that figure. The pool would not have to be enlarged to accommodate the additional fuel. The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, an anti-nuclear group, has opposed amending the Millstone 3 license to allow for the storage of more nuclear waste in the plant's storage pool. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board initially rejected the group's challenge to the license amendment. Two weeks ago, however, the board changed course. It said it would reconsider the argument that Millstone has not demonstrated the ability to handle the increased waste storage. It decided a review was appropriate given the inability to account for the missing spent fuel at Millstone 1. The NRC legal staff, which has supported Millstone in its request for expanding the spent fuel storage at Millstone 3, filed a motion to the licensing board Tuesday asking for a delay in the Millstone 3 proceeding. It cited the federal investigation into the Millstone 1 matter as the reason. In an affidavit filed in support of the motion, Barry R. Letts, field office director for the Office of Investigations in the Northeast region, stated that if the licensing board looks into the Millstone 1 issue at this time it could interfere with or jeopardize his office's ongoing investigation. “Due to the scope of the ongoing investigation, I estimated that the OI investigation and the decision whether to refer the matter to the Department of Justice for criminal consideration will be completed by late summer,” stated Letts in the affidavit. Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the NRC, said neither Letts nor the agency would have any further comment on the investigation. Screnci said she could not say when the investigation began or at whose request it was initiated. Nancy Burton, attorney for the coalition against Millstone, said it would oppose the request to delay the Millstone 3 proceedings. She said she did not agree the investigation was not a reason to delay the argument over the appropriateness of storing more fuel at Millstone 3. The obligation to bring the missing fuel rod controversy to a conclusion rests with the new owners of Millstone station, Dominion Nuclear Connecticut. The company, a subsidiary of Dominion Energy of Virginia, took control of Millstone in April after paying $1.3 billion. Any criminal prosecution or other penalties, however, would almost certainly be directed at former owner Northeast Utilities and its past or present personnel. NU operated the station from 1970 until the sale to Dominion. © 1998-2001 The Day Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 6 DynCorp denied extension This story was published Thu, May 24, 2001 By John Stang Herald staff writer Fluor Hanford won't extend DynCorp Tri-Cities Services' contract at Hanford beyond Sept. 30. "It was not a performance issue. It was a business decision," Fluor spokesman Michael Turner said Wednesday. DynCorp manages the nuclear reservation's roads, buildings, utilities, some equipment and its fire department and supervises about 750 people. About 260 work for DynCorp, and the rest are union workers employed by Fluor. DynCorp President Bob Frix did not know why Fluor opted not to extend the company's contract, other than it was a "business decision." Information on what went into that decision was unavailable Wednesday. A Fluor memo sent to its employees Wednesday said the decision came after "a period of negotiation." Also unavailable was information on if Fluor plans to absorb DynCorp's work or put it out for bid. Fluor told DynCorp about its decision Tuesday. "It was disappointing. Not only did we do a good job at the site, but we also like the community," Frix said. DynCorp earned an average of 92 percent of its potential annual fees from Fluor, Frix said. It also had earned a major federal safety award. "Our decision not to extend the contract will not affect the work force conducting the infrastructure work," Fluor's memo said. DynCorp was one of Fluor's six original major subcontractors when it took over managing Hanford on Oct. 1, 1996. Fluor's and DynCorp's original five-year contracts ran through Sept. 30, 2001. The Department of Energy recently extended Fluor's contract another five years. Today, Fluor has four full-time subcontractors -- DynCorp, Protection Technology, Numatec and Duratek Federal Services. Fluor has extended Protection Technology's, Numatec's and Duratek's contracts. Numatec and Duratek -- which bought the original Waste Management Hanford -- are the only original "inside-the-fence" subcontractors to stay with Fluor beyond Sept. 30, 2001. Another subcontractor, Lockheed Martin Hanford, split from Fluor to become a prime contractor before CH2M Hill bought it. Fluor earlier eased out two other subcontractors with performance troubles. Protection Technology replaced Fluor's troubled "outside-the-fence" security subcontractor B&W Protec and was brought under Fluor's umbrella. Another Fluor "outside-the-fence" subcontractor -- Lockheed Martin Services Inc., which also tackles lots of non-Hanford work -- is awaiting Fluor's decision on a contract extension. If that contract is not extended, DynCorp plans to bid for LMSI's Hanford computer support work, Frix said. Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. ***************************************************************** 7 Texas University Fined for Mismanaged Radioactive Shipment AmeriScan: May 23, 2001 COLLEGE STATION, Texas, May 23, 2001 (ENS) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has proposed a fine of $2,400 against the Texas Engineering Experiment Station/Texas A University System's Nuclear Science Center for failure to secure a shipping container with radioactive material inside. The error could have resulted in transportation workers receiving radiation exposure in excess of federal limits. The shipment, containing radioactive Bromine-82 with a 35 hour half life, was made last December 4 from the Nuclear Science Center, which operates a small nuclear research reactor, to Tru-Tec Services Inc., a company that performs industrial testing. When the shipment arrived in St. Croix, the Virgin Islands, on December 8, the shipping container was found unsecured with the radioactive liquid Bromine-82, packaged in three small containers, resting in a recessed area on top. The 750 pound shipping container should be secured shut with the radioactive material shielded. A number of transportation companies were involved in this shipment. Without appropriate shielding, any individuals standing within a few feet of the Bromine-82 for a few minutes could have received a radiation dose greater than 0.1 rem, which is the federal limit for exposure from licensed material for members of the public. This amount of radiation is not considered sufficient to cause acute health effects. People receive an average of 0.3 rem from natural sources during a year, and radiation workers may receive up to an additional five rem a year from licensed material. The NRC investigation, while acknowledging the realistic likelihood that someone could have been exposed, did not find any individuals who could be verified as having received a radiation exposure in excess of the limit. The NRC staff concluded that the failure of the Nuclear Science Center to install a securing device on the shipping container was one of the causes of the incident. The NRC classified the violations as Severity Level II on a four level scale, with Level I being the most severe. NRC officials decided to reduce the assessed fine by half because the error by the Nuclear Science Center was just one of the contributors to this incident and the Center took corrective actions. These actions included suspending radioactive shipments, a prompt evaluation of the incident, increased management supervision of shipping activities, and improved training of people involved in shipping. © Environment News Service (ENS) 2001. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 Well samplings find some are safe, some not The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP Thursday, May 24, 2001 [Unknown dangers at IAAP] By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye nÊLatest Corps of Engineers test findings to be discussed today. Recent tests of groundwater wells southeast of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant turned up no evidence of explosives contamination in six residential wells, but did find that several "non-residential monitoring" wells contain levels of an explosive 20 times safe levels, the Army said Wednesday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been drilling test wells and sampling existing wells to determine the extent of a pool of contaminated groundwater that has leached off the plant site. Details of the latest samplings, taken in March and April, are expected to be discussed at today's meeting of the plant's Restoration Advisory Board. The RAB will meet at 5 p.m. at The Burlington Apartments, 206 N. 3rd St. The meeting is open to the public. Kevin Howe, Corps project manager, revealed in September that the plume, running in sand 20 to 60 feet below the surface, is about 3,000-feet wide and contaminated with up to 150 parts per billion of RDX, a highly explosive material used to manufacture conventional military weapons. Contamination is more severe at the lower levels. At a contamination level of only 2 parts per billion, RDX-contaminated water is considered unsafe to drink for long periods of time. The Corps has said it does not yet know how far north and south the plume extends, but that it generally runs along U.S. 61, north of the Skunk River, about two miles southeast of the plant boundary. It is thought that contamination is not recent, that it flowed down Brush Creek as many as 40 years ago. On another matter, the Army said Wednesday a team of radiological experts from the Corps of Engineers, has completed its "walkover survey" of two firing sites formerly used by the Atomic Energy Commission to test-fire components of nuclear weapons. The sites were thought to have been cleaned up by the AEC when it ceased operations at the plant in the mid 1970s. However, shards of depleted uranium recently were found at Firing Site 12, and historical documents indicated that similar tests were conducted at Firing Site 6. The firing sites are located on the west-central portion of the sprawling 19,000-acre compound. Although more details were expected to be released at the RAB meeting, there were apparently no dramatic new developments. Because of its low level of radiation, depleted uranium is not considered dangerous unless inhaled or somehow ingested into the body. It can damage the kidneys and other organs. In a press release issued by Col. Bruce Elliott, the commander of the plant, the Army said the surveys of the firing sites were conducted April 30 to May 4. The walkover consisted of using gamma radiation detectors across a 110-yard radius from the Firing Site 12 detonation point, and in a 32-yard radius of the suspected detonation site at Firing Site 6. A total of 20 soil samples were from beneath where the depleted uranium shards and fragments had been found or where radiation levels exceeded normal background levels. Ten to 15 DU fragments were found on the surface at Firing Site 12 and were removed, the Army said. Subsurface depleted uranium is believed not to present a threat because the soil over the DU prevents exposure. In addition the Army has severely restricted access to the firing sites. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk ' ' '| ' ' '319-754-6824 FAX ' ' '| ' ' ' 1-800-397-1708 Outside Burlington [this is a line and that's all that it is] ©' 2000 The Hawk Eye, all rights reserved. ' ' ***************************************************************** 9 Paducah plant company joins bid to construct power plant Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:39 a.m. on Thursday, May 24, 2001 The Associated Press PADUCAH, Ky. -- The company that operates the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is part of a consortium that wants to build a 600-megawatt power plant to provide electricity in the region. The group that includes the United States Enrichment Corp. wants to build the gas-fired facility near the uranium-enrichment plant. The consortium presented its bid to the Tennessee Valley Authority last week and hopes to make the short list expected to be announced July 16, USEC spokesman Elizabeth Stuckle said. Several other competitors for the project have not been identified. USEC's bid is in partnership with Constellation Power Sources, a Baltimore-based power company, and Marubeni Corp., a Japanese company that trades commodities including electricity. In January, TVA asked for proposals to build a 600-megawatt power plant that would operate all year plus smaller plants that would operate in summer to meet high power demands from air conditioning. TVA wants to have summer-peaking capacity of up to 600 megawatts, which would be in addition to the big plant USEC is proposing. TVA will negotiate with companies on the short list until Oct. 15 and plans to sign a contract with the winner bidder by Dec. 14. TVA did not specify where the plants should be located, only that the successful bidder have the ability to deliver the power to the seven-state TVA system. Stuckle said if the USEC proposal is approved, construction would begin within two years and provide hundreds of jobs. The project would be completed in time to begin providing power in 2005. TVA would not own the plant, but would sign a long-term agreement to buy the power that is produced. The power plant would operate at least 30 years and have an undetermined number of "high-paying" jobs, Stuckle said. The power plant would be built on about 120 acres of U.S. Department of Energy land just northeast of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, owned by the department and run by USEC. USEC has asked the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization, which uses Energy Department funds for economic development, to act as leasing agent for the land, said PACRO Director John Anderson. If USEC is successful, the plant would represent an economic development partnership among USEC, the reuse organization and the Greater Paducah Economic Development Council, Stuckle said. The bid also reflects an effort by financially troubled USEC, which produces enriched uranium for nuclear fuel, to broaden its revenue base. USEC is doing environmental cleanup work at the plant and has bid on a Department of Energy project to convert thousands of uranium hexafluoride waste cylinders into safer material. "The bottom line is we're looking at a variety of initiatives to diversify the company," Stuckle said. All Contents ©Copyright* The Oak Ridger * ***************************************************************** 10 ExxonMobil hit with huge damages By BRETT MARTEL Associated Press writer NEW ORLEANS -- ExxonMobil Corp. should pay $1.06 billion because of radioactive contamination on 33 acres owned by a former state judge, a jury decided Tuesday. "The jury sent a clear message to Exxon in particular and the oil industry in general that these radioactive materials should and must be cleaned up immediately," Stuart Smith, who represents the landowners, said following the verdict in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. "Evidence in the record indicates that this is a widespread problem affecting oil fields throughout the United States." ExxonMobil, which will appeal, did not deny there was some contamination on land leased from former Jefferson Parish District Judge Joseph Grefer, who lived near the site. In dispute was the amount of radium 226 and radium 228, how much the clean up would cost, and when ExxonMobil first knew there may have been a problem. ExxonMobil said trace amounts contaminated less than 1 percent of the property and that it could be cleaned up for $46,000. Defense lawyer Gregory Weiss said the company did not know about the contamination until the late 1980s and offered to clean it up, but the Grefers refused, opting instead to take the case before a jury. "The question is: Did they want the property cleaned up or did they want money?" Weiss asked. "I believe in the jury process. I think it’s good for most people, but it did not work in this particular instance. The award was obviously very excessive." Smith and co-counsel Jack Harang told jurors that ExxonMobil knew about the potential for contamination since the 1950s but said nothing in hopes of avoiding liability for cleanup costs. The jury ruled the company should pay $56 million for cleanup and $1 billion as punishment for keeping a lid on the radium problem. The Grefers’ land was leased from the late 1950s until 1992 to Intracoastal Tubular Services, a company contracted to clean Exxon’s pipes. Intracoastal was found 15 percent at fault for the contamination, but the jury ruled ExxonMobil should pay their share because only the oil giant could have known that the crust being cleaned from the pipes was radioactive. "When you’re a big company, clearly there’s a perception you know everything," Weiss said. "The reality is that big companies, like small companies, are constantly in a state of evolution and developing new information as research and technological advancements assist them." Lawyers said the judgment is expected to be signed in June, at which time ExxonMobil will appeal. *(Copyright 2001 Associated ***************************************************************** 11 EPA ombudsman pledges to examine radiation standards Today: May 24, 2001 at 11:24:54 PDT By Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN The Environmental Protection Agency's ombudsman has promised to re-examine radiation exposure standards proposed for Yucca Mountain, if it is approved as the nation's nuclear waste repository. Ombudsman Robert Martin agreed to start a preliminary investigation after meeting with Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., on Wednesday, a congressional spokesman said. The EPA's ombudsman is independent of the agency. Martin can investigate citizen complaints and mediate disputes between the public and the government. The ombudsman does not, however, have authority to change an EPA rule. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the lone site under study by the Department of Energy for burying 77,000 tons of commercial spent fuel and defense nuclear wastes. Martin's office confirmed the decision to review the radiation limits. The EPA last year proposed a total radiation limit of 15 millirems that includes a 4-millirem standard for ground water. That is the same standard set for the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Project, a repository for plutonium pits built near Carlsbad, N.M. An average chest X-ray emits roughly 5 millirems. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission offered its own standard of 25 millirems without a separate limit on radiation in ground water. However, NRC officials have said they abide by the EPA's standard in licensing a repository at Yucca Mountain. Nevada officials and dump opponents support the EPA's standard, because it could disqualify a repository at Yucca Mountain. As President Clinton left office in January, the EPA sent its standard to the Office of Management and Budget, where it is being reviewed by the Bush administration. Bush officials could change the standard before it becomes a regulation. While meeting with Martin, Berkley told him the entire process for setting the radiation standards had been compromised, her spokesman Michael O'Donovan said. "She believes elements of the process have been corrupted," he said. Before launching a formal investigation, Martin would likely meet with interested parties in Nevada from Gov. Kenny Guinn to ordinary citizens, an EPA spokesperson said. The Bush administration has featured nuclear power in its national energy plans. A key to that is a solution to the nation's nuclear waste problem. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 $1 BILLION AWARDED TO FAMILY FROM EXXON FROM RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION NOLA Live; Times-Picayune 05/23/01 By Sandra Barbier West Bank bureau/The Times-Picayune A retired Jefferson Parish judge and his family have won more than $1 billion in damages from Exxon Mobil Corp. over radioactivity left behind by an oil-field pipe operation on their land in Harvey. The oil company said the judgment is excessive and will be appealed. A New Orleans civil jury Tuesday ordered Exxon to pay $56 million to clean up the 33-acre tract; $145,000 for lost property value; and $1 billion in exemplary, or punitive, damages to former Jefferson Parish state District Judge Joseph Grefer and his family in what their attorneys say is the biggest judgment ever for a single piece of property in Louisiana. "I think the jury sent a clear message to the oil industry generally and to Exxon in particular that these materials should not be allowed to remain in the open environment any longer," said Stuart Smith, co-lead attorney for the Grefers. Exxon attorney Gregory Weiss said he thinks the company has a substantial basis for appeal. "I don't think that justice was done," Weiss said. Exxon did not deny there was radiation on the land but gave a vastly different assessment of how much "naturally occurring radioactive material," or NORM, was on the land bounded by Pailet Street, Breaux Avenue, St. Joseph Lane and 16th Street. The Grefers, who filed suit in 1997, had leased the land for about three decades to Intracoastal Tubular Services. The company cleaned used oil-field pipe for Exxon. The Grefers said the contamination was extensive and even underground. During the trial their attorneys and attorneys for Intracoastal presented memoranda and other documents they say showed that Exxon officials were aware of the possible dangers of radioactivity in the muddy scale on some pipes, but didn't tell the public or their contractors. The jury found Intracoastal 5 percent responsible for the damages but passed them on to Exxon. The defunct company's owner, John Hooper, said he is "relieved." Attorney Patricia Weeks, who also represented Exxon, said the jury was provided much evidence concerning what was needed to restore the Grefers' land. Weeks said justice was lost in the jury's disregard of that evidence. Grefer's attorneys said the tract's value without any contamination is $1.5 million, but attorneys for Exxon said it is worth $500,000. Nearly all the jurors refused to comment. They said they agreed after the trial that they wouldn't speak to reporters. However, one juror said she did not agree with the amount of the judgment. Grefer, whose legal team included Jack Harang, Michael Stag, Ron Austin and Roger Stetter, said he and his family are happy with the verdict but aren't celebrating yet. "This is a battle, not a war. We won a battle," he said. Grefer said the land will be cleaned. "We started putting the fence around it," he said, adding that if money from the case is not forthcoming, they will pay for the cleanup "as best we can." Sandra Barbier can be reached at or (504) 826-3784. ***************************************************************** 13 Ex-pipe cleaners suing Exxon NOLA Live; Times-Picayune Lawsuit comes after $1.06 billion ruling 05/24/01 By Sandra Barbier West Bank bureau/The Times-Picayune One day after a record $1.06 billion judgment was made against Exxon Mobil Corp. for contaminating land in Harvey with radioactive scale from oil field pipes, 11 men who cleaned pipe for Exxon and other companies have sued, claiming they were exposed to hazardous radiation. The suit was filed Wednesday in Orleans Parish Civil District Court by former employees of the now defunct Intracoastal Tubular Services. Attorney Timothy Falcon said some of the hardened mineral scale contained normally occurring radioactive material, or NORM, that workers and others were exposed to without their knowledge. NORM comes from radium in the ground. Workers are seeking damages and compensation for the fear of developing cancer or leukemia, as well as medical monitoring for potential illnesses and medical expenses. Falcon said the workers don't know if they've been made sick by radiation. "They know they've been exposed to it. It's caused them great concern about themselves and their family members." The workers are Leo Pollard Jr., Ronald P. Williams, Alan William Sr., John Gros III, Eliot Spencer Williams, Jack Roy, Clarence David Ross, Richard Meerman Sr., Earl Williams Jr., Merlin Williams Sr. and John Hendrix. Defendants in the suit are Alpha Technical, Chevron USA Inc., Conoco Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., Homeco Inc., Mobil Exploration and Producing US Inc., Phillips Oil Co., Sexton Oil Co., System Fuels Inc., Shell Western E Inc., Texaco Inc. and Tubular Corp., a forerunner to Intracoastal Tubular Services. The companies are the same ones initially named in a lawsuit by the owners of the Harvey land. Some settled with the owners and others were dropped from the suit. Tuesday's verdict was against Exxon, Intracoastal's major client. The plaintiffs, former Jefferson Parish state District Judge Joseph Grefer and his siblings, contended Exxon knew the danger of the radioactive waste long before it notified its contractor, and that it failed to clean the site as required by law. Exxon disputed the charges and the amount of contamination on the land. The company's attorneys said it will appeal. The jury awarded $1 billion in punitive damages, $56 million to clean the site, and $145,000 for other damages. It was the largest award ever made to an individual for property damage and the sixth largest jury verdict in history, according to Lawyers Weekly USA, a national legal newspaper that tracks jury verdicts. According to the workers' suit, the companies created a hazardous condition, violated safety standards and disregarded public safety in the storage and handling of the material, causing radioactive material to spread through the air and water into the surrounding community. Falcon said he is asking the court to certify the suit as a class action. ***************************************************************** 14 Exxon to appeal jury award Bloomberg News May 24, 2001 NEW ORLEANS - Exxon Mobil Corp. will appeal a verdict by a Louisiana state court jury ordering the largest publicly traded oil company to pay $1.06 billion for radioactive contamination of 33 acres of land owned by a former state judge. "We are extremely disappointed in this unwarranted award and will continue to pursue all legal channels to rectify this outrageous verdict," Exxon Mobil said in a statement Wednesday. A New Orleans jury on Tuesday ordered Exxon Mobil to pay $56 million in clean-up costs and about $1 billion in punitive and other damages. The award is the largest to an individual for property damage and the sixth-largest jury verdict to an individual, according to the newspaper *Lawyers Weekly USA*. Jurors found the company responsible for fouling a site owned by retired Judge Joseph Grefer in Jefferson Parish, part of New Orleans. The award for clean-up costs is about 50 times more than the value of the property, and there's no basis for punitive damages because the Irving, Texas-based company had offered to clean the site, Exxon Mobil said. The radioactive waste, a byproduct of oil-pipe cleaning, was deposited on Grefer's land by Intercoastal Tubular Services, said Ron Austin, Grefer's lawyer. Intercoastal Tubular worked under contract with Exxon Mobil, he said. Five former workers at the site also are suing Exxon Mobil in the same state court, said Exxon Mobil "has no knowledge" of those suits, spokesman Bob Davis said. Copyright 2001, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. USA Today| ***************************************************************** 15 Reactor water leak called no big deal [St. Petersburg Times Online: Citrus County news ] The loss of nuclear core cooling is being well handled and gives no cause for alarm, say experts. By ALEX LEARY © St. Petersburg Times, published May 24, 2001 CRYSTAL RIVER -- Water that had been leaking inside Florida Power's nuclear reactor helps prevent a meltdown, but regulators say the leak was not significant enough to cause alarm. "We're watching it and we have no issues with what they are doing right now," said Steve Sanchez, resident inspector for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The nuclear plant has not produced electricity since Friday, when it was shut down for an unrelated valve issue. That problem was fixed, but as the facility was being returned to normal operating temperatures, the leak was noticed. The plant is expected to be down for at least several days. Workers, who are preparing to weld the broken valve, will also perform other maintenance. Officials had known about the leak for more than a year, making one repair in September, but it had grown to six gallons per minute. The limit is 10 gallons. The water posed no risk to employees, Sanchez said, because it spilled into an area where they do not work. The water was collected through a drain and treated to remove the radioactive particles. Florida Power was right to correct the problem now, rather than waiting until a planned shutdown for refueling in October, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group. "It shows that the checks and balances are in place and work," he said. "At some point, you are worried about the pipe breaking all together and it becoming a very large leak." Sanchez explained: "You are always adding water to the reactor coolant system. If you get to a point where you are losing more water than you can make up, you don't want to be there." Indeed, that would be a serious matter. Florida Power, however, has several emergency backups in place, including flood tanks that can dump thousands of gallons of water into the core. © Copyright 2001St. Petersburg Times.All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 Nuclear Summer The Bush Administration lights a fire under the nuclear power industry. But Wall Street will decide whether the sector stays hot BY DANIEL EISENBERG Monday, May. 21, 2001 Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. And don't forget The China Syndrome. With their long, notorious track records of burning money and spewing toxic waste, it's hard to imagine that nuclear power plants could ever again be hot properties. But in Vernon, Vt., some of the nation's largest energy companies are battling to gobble one up. The Vermont Yankee plant, a 28-year-old nuclear war-horse, has become the target of a bidding war. With the price of oil and natural gas escalating, concerns about global warming rising and electricity markets deregulating, these onetime white elephants are starting to look more like cash cows. The Vermont battle, in fact, is just the latest stop on an industrywide shopping spree that is fueling a nuclear resurgence. By the end of the decade, new nuclear power plants could be sprouting up right here at home: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has already approved the next generation of supposedly cheaper, safer plant designs. While California braces for a summer of rolling blackouts and New York City prays that the lights stay on, Washington is helping ignite a fire under nuclear power. As part of the hotly debated national energy plan that he unveiled last week, President George Bush called nuclear energy "a major component" of any solution. Critics, not surprisingly, say the comeback of the $43 billion-a-year industry is a step in the wrong direction that will threaten the environment as well as public health and safety. Nor did the Administration's unexpected recommendation to take another look at reprocessing spent nuclear fuel get a particularly warm reaction. Over the past few years, the nuclear industry's top players, led by Entergy and Exelon (formed by the merger of Philadelphia-based PECO Energy and Chicago native Unicom), have shelled out nearly $4 billion to purchase 15 of the nation's 103 operating plants--including such unlikely prizes as the surviving sister unit of Pennsylvania's infamous Three Mile Island No. 2 reactor. These new nuclear powers, which also include Duke Energy, Southern Co., Dominion Resources and Constellation Energy, have reversed years of mismanagement and cost overruns to turn the plants into the reliable, profitable atomic engines they were meant to be. Their secret? They're better operators than the former owners, publicly owned utilities, and they can use economies of scale to their advantage. Despite the fact that no new plants have been ordered in almost a quarter-century, the nuclear power sector still accounts for 20% of the nation's electricity supply. During the past decade, output has increased 25%, equivalent to building 23 new 1,000-megawatt plants. And the beat will go on: the initial 40-year licenses of a small but growing number of units are being renewed for an additional two decades. As for new plants, Exelon is already working on the next generation, exemplified by a helium-cooled, pebble-bed test reactor it is helping build in South Africa that, theoretically at least, wouldn't ever need to be shut down for refueling and is practically meltdown-proof. Of course, the company would still have to find a place in the U.S. to put it. Many homeowners would sooner burn coal in their own fireplace than live next to a reactor. So rather than try to find converts, the industry hopes to construct new facilities on existing sites, in communities that already depend on plants for jobs. Not surprisingly, the no-nukes crowd, once radiated, is more than twice shy. Nuclear power plants may not, as the Bush Administration has pointed out countless times, emit greenhouse gases, but they carry with them their own, very real environmental risks. Most important, there is the matter of where to put all that spent fuel--40,000 metric tons, at last count--that has to be stored for thousands of years. For the moment, most of it is being kept in on-site storage pools, a costly and--according to many observers--risky proposition. "[Radioactive waste] is still the Achilles' heel of the industry," says Edward Smeloff, director of the Pace University Law School Energy Project. In California, for instance, a new nuclear plant can't even be licensed until the feds come up with a permanent solution. The Energy Department is scheduled to decide later this year whether to go ahead with the controversial proposal to bury the waste deep within Yucca Mountain in Nevada. But with the state's congressional delegation fiercely opposing the idea, the fight could easily drag on for years. If the site could be built, it would still be necessary to find a safe way to move all the fuel there without unduly imperiling the nation's crucial freight rails. The Administration's proposal to reexamine nuclear recycling makes watchdogs even more nervous. Such reprocessing aims to reduce waste by separating plutonium from spent uranium fuel and reusing it as a power source. But this practice hasn't been done in the U.S. since the 1970s, and opponents say it could help put bomb-grade plutonium in the wrong hands. Copyright © 2001 Time Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 Waste the key to convincing world nuclear is clean Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report Comprehensive energy news updated every ten minutes from Reuters, Knight Ridder, UPI, Business Wire, PR Newswire, and more than forty other leading national and international news sources. ( May 24, 2001 ) LONDON, May 23 (Reuters) - Nuclear power, for so long an energy pariah because of its deadly by-products, might be on the comeback trail because it doesn't contribute to global warming. But non-CO2 emitting nuclear energy, given a vote of confidence by President George W. Bush last week, has little chance of being accepted as a genuinely clean, safe energy until its waste can be neutralised, analysts say. The Bush administration said last Thursday that the United States could increase its use of nuclear power by doubling the number of reactors at many nuclear power plant sites. The announcement was interpreted by the nuclear industry as a seal of approval which would improve its prospects of expanding not only in the U.S. but in developing countries. ``The Bush plan should have constructive reverberations around the world,'' said John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association, formerly the Uranium Institute. `People everywhere have a powerful vested interest in seeing countries like China and India meet their rapidly expanding energy needs without building a vast greenhouse gas-producing infrastructure.'' The West's energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that global electricity demand will nearly double by 2020, with much of the new growth coming from developing economies such as China and India. The two countries, which between them account for more than a third of the world's population, currently have only 17 reactors between them out of over 430 worldwide but are committed to a nuclear programme as the only viable alternative to coal. The nuclear industry, so long seen as a net polluter, has portrayed itself as the good guy during international efforts to tackle global warming through the Kyoto Protocol. It has exploited the fact that atomic power plants release into the atmosphere almost no greenhouse gases, seen by many scientists as a contributor to global warming. Industrialised countries agreed in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997 to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012, with a number of ``flexible mechanisms'' set out to allow them cheaper options than having to change deeply entrenched energy usage at home. One of those is technology transfer, where developed nations help build and run clean energy projects in poorer countries under so-called clean development mechanisms (CDMs). Environmentalists, supported by the European Union, have prevented the inclusion of nuclear energy along with renewables such as wind and solar power in CDMs by pointing to the long-term problems of nuclear waste. The nuclear industry, with the backing of Japan and the United States -- before it withdrew from the Kyoto process -- argued that the Protocol states that the parties to CDMs must decide how best to implement them and that a zero-emitting solution like atomic power should be on the table. ``The nuclear industry has jumped on the Kyoto Protocol as their last saviour,'' said Bridget Woodman, anti-nuclear campaigner at the environmentalist group, Greenpeace, in London. ``They are desperate for new orders and the issue of climate change presents them with their best arguments in terms of international politics.'' NUCLEAR WASTE, THE ACHILLES HEEL Peter Beck, nuclear specialist at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs, is prepared to recognise that the nuclear industry now runs safe reactors but he describes waste disposal as the industry's ``Achilles' heel'' in trying to get nuclear energy accepted for inclusion in CDMs. He says the scientific community is still divided on the effects of even low-level radioactivity. ``The answer to all this is we don't know...We need far more biological research on how cancers are formed,'' he said. ``I would say we've got 20 years to do research before one can take really big decisions (on nuclear expansion).'' However, with so many plants already operating, efforts are under way to find a long-term solution to the waste storage problem. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development figures put the amount of spent nuclear fuel in storage in OECD countries -- which accounted last year for 322 of a total 432 reactors worldwide -- at 81,616 tonnes in 1999, half of which was held by the U.S. So as well as pushing for new plants, Bush last week recommended continued study of a deep underground repository for storing spent fuel in Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. By 2010, all the country's used fuel rods from commercial reactors could be stored in the project at a cost of around $50 billion. Sweden and Finland are pursuing their deep storage sites -- the latter having gained parliamentary approval last Friday -- while Germany's plans to use a 800 metre (2,625 feet) deep salt dome at Gorleben have been shelved under its nuclear phase-out plan. The OECD says there is a high level of confidence that geological deposits are technically safe but environmentalists maintain it is impossible to guarantee that such repositories will be secure from human intrusion, intentional or inadvertent, for the tens of thousands of years it takes for radioactive waste to decay. This is especially true, they say, with Yucca Mountain, where water is so limited that future generations may unknowingly drill close to the repository in search of aquifers. ``What you are doing is very consciously creating a problem you know you are leaving to for future generations to deal with,'' says Woodman. ``From a sustainability point of view it's wholly untenable and highly immoral.'' Beck says the waste legacy would be vastly reduced if current research into ``transmutation,'' whereby high level waste is bombarded with neutrons to reduce it to less harmful material, bears fruit. ``That type of research may well be necessary if nuclear is to really expand fast because I really can't see how high level waste can be produced at a rate that it means one Yucca Mountain type unit every two years,'' he said. But such research is expensive and Benito Mueller, of the Oxford Institute for Energy Research, believes that after 50 years, nuclear has already sucked in enough funds, and investment should now be focused on renewables. ``If the same amount of money had been spent on renewables I think we would have much more than what nuclear power generators can deliver right now,'' he said. ``They've supplied electricity but with the risk factor in the form of nuclear waste which is still not solved. ``They've had their chance and I don't think ultimately they have delivered.'' www.powermarketers.com ***************************************************************** 18 Cheney, Nuclear Power Execs Hold Love Fest Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report ( May 24, 2001 ) Vice President Cheney went before nuclear-power executives Tuesday to accept their adulation and underline the Bush administration's enthusiasm for nuclear power. The energy policy that President Bush released last week includes promises to speed up re-licensing for safe and efficient nuclear reactors and take other steps to encourage production of nuclear power, which the report refers to as a "clean and unlimited source of energy." Cheney, the policy's architect, was greeted by two standing ovations from the 375 attendees at the Nuclear Energy Institute's annual meeting. He said the nuclear industry is letting electricity be generated "efficiently, safely, with no discharge of the greenhouse gases or emissions." The Vice President estimated that one out of every five American households depends on electricity generated by nuclear plants. The nuclear executives seemed in a buoyant mood, after enduring 20 years of mainly hostile public attention. Conference organizers handed out super balls that glow in the dark. "Up until the last few months, it was not polite to talk about nuclear energy," U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue noted. Cheney lashed out at those who charge that the White House plan all but ignores other energy options, such as conservation or renewable resources, like solar or wind power. He said more of the 105 White House recommendations are devoted to conservation and renewable energy remedies than on ways to boost power supply. "That's simply not true," Cheney said of the critics. "Anybody who says that clearly hasn't read the report." He said that while Bush's policy assumes "very significant" savings from conservation and increased use of renewable energy sources, that won't be enough to meet U.S. energy needs. "That means it's going to be coal-fired, it's going to be gas-fired or it's going to come from nuclear power." Cheney conceded that safe sites haven't been identified for radioactive waste generated by nuclear power, a sticking point for congressional Democrats, environmentalists and some scientists who fear that increased nuke use could lead to accidents. www.powermarketers.com ***************************************************************** 19 Waste Disposal the Kink in Nuke Power Plan Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report ( May 23, 2001 ) WASHINGTON - Beneath the dark, volcanic rock of a mountain that lies 90 miles west of Las Vegas, Nev., a U-shaped tunnel stretches for five miles - the skeleton of a dump that may someday hold the radioactive debris from the cores of the nation's nuclear reactors. The federal government has tried to build this dump at Yucca Mountain for almost 20 years. Construction has not even started. President Bush wants to make nuclear power a cornerstone of his national energy policy. Yet the plan he announced this week makes only passing reference to radioactive waste, whose disposal has become so entangled by politics that after two decades, attempts to find a final resting place for it have been paralyzed. Ever since 1980, when Congress began trying to build more dumps to take nuclear waste, politicians, the courts and public outrage have killed or stalled every attempt to do so. "If we don't have a solution right now to the waste problem, what are we going to do with all that new waste (from new power plants)?" asked Allison Macfarlane, senior research associate at MIT's Security Studies Program. A spokesman for Bush did not return calls. On Thursday, Bush called for construction of a nuclear waste depository, but he did not name Yucca Mountain. Environmental groups say radioactive materials such as plutonium - a carcinogen - may find their way into the water people drink or the air they breathe. The nuclear industry argues that even if the most dangerous radioactive particles escaped from a dump, they would be no more dangerous than the radioactivity people absorb from the environment every day. But about two things there is no argument: The nation has no dump to put the highly radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. And the one dump where most states now send less radioactive debris will shut its doors in seven years. There are nuclear plants in 31 states. Since 1982, when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Department of Energy has tried to find a dump for high-level waste - the filters, resins and assemblies that come from the core of a nuclear reactor. Though it settled on Nevada's Yucca Mountain, it missed a 1998 deadline to open the dump, partly because of safety concerns and partly because of Nevada's fierce opposition. And even if it is built - presumably in the next decade - many experts agree the dump will be full before even existing reactors are shut down. As for low-level waste - the clothing, tools, soils and building materials used in and around the reactor - Congress for more than two decades has prodded states to find or build more depositories for the debris. But politics, courts or public outrage have killed plans in Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and, most recently, at Ward Valley in California's Mojave Desert. On average, each reactor produces enough low-level nuclear waste each year to fill one sport- utility vehicle. Hospitals and research laboratories also generate this debris. "What we're seeing is that it is far more difficult to develop new (depositories) than the (government) assumed," said Paul Genoa, senior project manager with the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the nuclear industry. High-level waste is now being stored at the nation's 103 reactors, either in 45-foot-deep pools, or in thermos-shaped, concrete containers that are lined with steel. There are more than 500 such containers at nuclear plants across the country. But there are problems: Although some radioactive materials are dangerous for thousands of years, the government acknowledges the containers can last only about a century; some states are limiting the number of containers at plants, and plant owners are suing the government because it costs money to store the waste; and when water reacted with the carbon coating of a container in Wisconsin - and produced an explosion that lifted the container's 6,600-pound lid - safety questions arose. "The (regulatory commission) hasn't put a lot of thought into what they're going to do next," Macfarlane said. "These (containers) aren't going to last forever." Low-level waste is sent to dumps in South Carolina and Washington state - often at great expense. But in 2008, South Carolina will stop taking waste from all states except itself, Connecticut and New Jersey. The Washington dump only takes waste from northwestern states. A final dump in Utah takes only low-level nuclear waste from uranium mills - not all low-level waste. www.powermarketers.com ***************************************************************** 20 a New Energy Triangle Emerges: Iran-Armenia-Ukraine Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report ( May 24, 2001 ) Tehran - Armenia has suffered severe energy shortages since 1991 and has long been looking to Iran to relieve its energy needs. Last year the European Commission decided to back a project for construction of a pipeline from Iran into Armenia. Discussions have now begun with Ukraine concerning the possibility of Iranian natural gas transiting Armenia and Georgia, then traveling either overland through Russia or under the Black Sea into Ukraine and onward to European markets. Turkmenistan's President Niyazov must now face Russia and Iran as potential competitors for the European market. Unless Niyazov decides to build the trans-Caspian gas pipeline, both Russia and Iran will have a stranglehold on Turkmenistan's gas and oil exports. BACKGROUND: Iran and Armenia signed an intergovernmental agreement in 1992 (amended in 1995) to construct a 140-kilometer pipeline with a volume of one billion cubic meters (bcm) per year. This pipeline would straddle the two countries' short common border, crossing the Megri corridor that separates Azerbaijan proper from its exclave Nakhichevan. In mid-1999, Iran's foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi suggested constructing a gas pipeline to Ukraine via Armenia. The Ukrainian ambassador replied by proposing to connect the Iran-Armenia pipeline with a Turkmenistan-Ukraine pipeline. Ukraine's newest former Deputy Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, who was recently forced to resign, had long propounded the idea for the trans-Caspian gas pipeline (TCGP) to carry Ashkhabad's gas westward into Ukraine. Such a pipeline, after going under the Caspian Sea and through Azerbaijan, would continue westward under the Black Sea to join the pipeline system in Ukraine at Fedosiya. Ukraine has indicated its willingness to take gas from Turkmenistan piped through Iran via Armenia. Financing even for the short pipeline from Iran to Armenia has been difficult to find under any plan. Gazprom expressed an interest in mid-1999 but then withdrew at about the same time that Gaz de France danced a similar hesitation-waltz. The joint venture Armrosgazprom held discussions with the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) in mid-February 2000 and agreed on a price of U.S.$ 90 per thousand cubic meters, but that is over a quarter again as expensive as the same quantity from Russia. The World Bank nevertheless expressed interest in the project and construction began only to be halted in mid-March once more for lack of funding. In April, the World Bank explicitly refused to subsidize the excessively high interest rate that China demanded for the U.S.$ 80 million loan it had offered to Armenia for the project. In mid-July, after the project consortium was restructured to include Armrosgazprom, NIGC, the National Gas Corporation of Greece (DEPA) as well as Gazprom, a significant trilateral meeting occurred in Yerevan among the European Commission, Iran and Armenia. The European interest in the pipeline from Iran to Armenia stemmed originally from its nuclear safety program for the new post-Soviet states. It desired to shut down Armenia's Medzamor Nuclear Power Plant, but Armenia refused to do this until an alternative source of energy was identified and made available. Iranian natural gas would satisfy that requirement. At the Yerevan meeting, however, the European Commission decided to sponsor the Iran-Armenia pipeline project under its INOGATE program. INOGATE, an important and comprehensive if little-known initiative to address questions of multi-modal transportation throughout the former Soviet area, stands for interstate oil and gas transportation to Europe. Iran, oddly, is the only participating country or observer country at INOGATE that has not signed the European Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) that forms the basis, in all of Europe and beyond the Urals, for non-discriminatory harmonization of national energy sectors. The current practices in the Iranian oil industry make Ukraine look like sparking spring water. IMPLICATIONS: Contacts among the European Commission's President Romano Prodi, Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the end of September 2000 initiated strategic discussions of the possibilities for long-term European participation in the development of the Russian energy industry, especially the natural gas sector. The EU intends to increase the proportion of natural gas in its fuel consumption mix over the long term, for environmental reasons. The European move on Iran is from one standpoint just a maneuver to pressure Russia on price. Yet Europe has declared itself willing to take from Iran whatever amounts of gas Russia is unable to sell. There are some problems with the idea of piping Iran's natural gas to Europe via Ukraine, whether the route goes overland through Russia or under the Black Sea. If the pipeline goes across Russian territory to Ukraine rather than under the Black Sea, then this would give Russia a still greater potential stranglehold upon the EU's natural gas supplies. Ukraine and Russia have long been at odds over the question of Ukraine's alleged pilfering of natural gas exported across its territory from Russia to Europe. Such problems may be expected to continue so long as the Ukrainian energy sector remains fundamentally unreformed, and would certainly affect Iranian gas transiting the country as well. Indeed, in early 2000 Tymoshenko had accused the state oil and gas concern Naftogaz Ukrainy of siphoning gas out of Russian pipeline, and declared that the country's net debt for gas was U.S.$ 1.7 billion, or twice what Naftogaz Ukrainy had claimed. Later that year, in mid-August, after continued denials of the pilfering, President Leonid Kuchma created a sensation when he told the German magazine Der Spiegel that gas thefts were being carried out on the order of Ukraine's government. The Russian side thereupon claimed Ukraine was more than U.S.$2 billion in arrears, including fines for late payments. The same vested interests in the Ukrainian energy sector that did not favor Tymoshenko's policy of monetizing resource flows also oppose a TCGP to Ukraine, because this might mean leverage in favor of demands for greater transparency in accounting and business methods. One of the reasons for Tymoshenko's recent ouster was her insistence on implementing fundamental reform in Ukraine's energy sector. As far back as last August, Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko suggested that parts of Ukraine's gas transportation network might be sold off or given to Russia as payment for the Ukrainian gas debt. Tymoshenko's recent forced departure may easily make it more likely that Gazprom and Itera will come to control, if not own outright, parts of Ukraine's gas transportation network. CONCLUSION: The INOGATE program was originally established to promote cooperation between the EU and the newly independent states. A pipeline in the INOGATE framework has also been suggested from Turkey to Greece, channeling gas from the Caspian Basin, and Iran in particular, to Europe. Turkey is moving slowly on this idea because it still believes in the TCGP from Turkmenistan under the Caspian Sea. The disadvantage to Turkmenistan of going through Iran is precisely the same as going through Russia: The transit country with control over the taps is a competing gas supplier to the ultimate consumer. It is noteworthy that the definite moves by the European Commission to back the Iran-Armenia pipeline came only after the TCGP negotiations all but collapsed early last year. In November last year, Turkmenistan's acting oil and gas industry minister stated that his country still gave priority to the TCGP project over the Iranian route for Ashkhabad's gas to Europe. Delays in the Blue Stream project for Russian natural gas to go under the Black Sea to Turkey, and in the Shah-Deniz project for Azerbaijani gas to enter Turkey through Georgia, have both recently encountered delays for complicated technical and engineering reasons. This gives Niyazov an unexpected window, which was on the verge of closing, to make a deal for the TCGP. The Iranian option to Europe has to impress Niyazov even more forcefully that if he does not build a TCGP to somewhere, then he will be left with only one buyer, Gazprom, which would then be in a position to dictate the price. Niyazov's only choice is to bite the bullet and agree to build the TCGP with minimal further delay. www.powermarketers.com ***************************************************************** 21 California Favors Nuclear Plants May 23, 2001 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A surprising 59 percent of Californians now support building more nuclear plants, according to a poll released Wednesday. The pollsters said the findings suggest how deeply the power crisis has affected people in the state, which has been hit by rolling blackouts and soaring electric bills over the past few months. The last time the organization polled Californians about nuclear energy was 1984 - five years after the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania - and it found 61 percent opposed to nuclear power. "In my interpretation, the current energy crisis has some bearing on the public's changed attitudes on nuclear power," said Mark DiCamillo, spokesman for the Field Institute, a nonpartisan polling organization. "The public is searching for clean ways to add to the capacity. I think the poll is saying that nuclear should be included in that consideration." The Field poll comes as the Bush administration pushes for a renewed look at nuclear power. Vice President Dick Cheney, who heads the president's energy task force, has promoted nuclear power as essential to America's energy needs and said that at least some of the 65 power plants that need to be built annually to meet future electricity demand ought to be nuclear. No utilities have ordered any new nuclear power plants in the United States since 1978. California has two nuclear power plants currently producing energy - the 2,254-megawatt San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente and the 2,212-megawatt Diablo Canyon plant near San Luis Obispo. One megawatt is enough to power about 750 homes. The poll of 1,015 California adults was taken May 11-20. It showed that 59 percent of Californians favor nuclear power and 36 percent are opposed. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. Carl Zichella, the Sierra Club's regional staff director for California, Nevada and Hawaii, said Californians have not thought about nuclear energy for about 20 years and do not have as much information as they did around Three Mile Island. "I think this number really reflects a lack of knowledge on the part of the public about the problems that drove nuclear power underground," he said. "The more people know about nuclear power, the less they're going to like it." All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 22 Editorial: This is hardly a renaissance Today: May 24, 2001 at 9:41:44 PDT When the nuclear power industry is jubilant, Nevadans should be worried. And if the giddiness displayed this week by nuclear power executives at their annual meeting in the nation's capital is any indication, this state will have to prepare for an even tougher battle as the industry renews its push to bury its lethal waste inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Vice President Dick Cheney, the architect of the White House's energy plan, was greeted as if he were a conquering hero Tuesday when he spoke before the Nuclear Energy Institute's gathering in Washington, D.C. Cheney, who received two standing ovations from the adoring crowd, reasserted the president's view -- outlined in his national energy strategy last week -- that a repository must be built if nuclear power is to thrive. Since Nevada is the only state under consideration, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand what harm this could mean for Nevada. In light of the public's previous uneasiness with nuclear power, and the reality that it would be unsafe to store nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, the industry's turnaround is stunning. As the New York Times reported in a Wednesday story about nuclear power's political resurgence, even these energy executives were surprised at how the Bush administration has embraced their controversial industry. Earlier this year, the newspaper reported, the industry was concerned that nuclear power wouldn't play a prominent role in the president's energy plan. In response, many of them in March met with the president's top political adviser, Karl Rove, to push for Bush's advocacy of nuclear power. They weren't disappointed. "In my wildest dreams, when I was over at the White House in March, I couldn't imagine them getting so behind us," said Christian Poindexter , chairman of the Constellation Energy Group. The Nuclear Energy Institute's adopted slogan for this year's convention is "A Flourishing Renaissance." If a green light is given to nuclear power, and Bush goes forward with storage of deadly nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain, then Nevadans would have a decidedly different view. For us, the more fitting slogan would be "A Return to the Dark Ages." All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 23 More nukes? Market, technology, disposal to shape politics sacbee Voices: *(Published May 24, 2001)* Nuclear power is out of the political closet. President Bush's new energy plan supports new nuclear generating plants. So do national polls. So does a new survey within environmentally minded California, where a recent Field Poll found nearly 60 percent of the populace comfortable with more nukes. What should one make of these numbers, or of Bush's new nuclear agenda? For now, not much. Public perceptions have a way of changing as knowledge deepens, details emerge and the inevitable trade-offs get explored. Ultra-efficient plants powered by natural gas, for example, are generally cheaper than nuclear power, and will become even more so if Bush is successful in expanding the supply of gas. They can be built to produce as much power as a nuke (although generally they're about half the size). And then there's the issue of location. Nuclear plants need cooling water, which means that siting them inevitably raises local resource issues not directly associated with nuclear power itself. All this said, there may be a real nuclear debate some day. The charge won't be led by politicians, but by shareholders convinced that nuclear power can compete in the marketplace. All of today's nuclear facilities were built during an era of regulation. The Bush plan calls for the private sector to build the next wave of plants. While the nation's nuclear industry is busy distributing encouraging poll numbers, it is not rushing to file applications to actually build power plants. It's following the guiding hand of the market, which is telling American firms to test new technologies overseas first and to buy up U.S. plants once run by regulated utilities or public-power agencies. This country is producing a lot more nuclear power than before even though not a single new facility has been constructed for years. The key has been to run the plants more efficiently by reducing down time. Output increased by 25 percent during the 1990s, according to Time magazine, as private companies began to buy and operate more of the plants. Meanwhile, these same companies, particularly Exelon, have begun building the next generation of nuclear facilities in countries such as South Africa. These plants can be cooled with helium, not water, which allows them to be constructed away from oceans and rivers. Using pebbles of enriched uranium rather than the traditional rods, the design allows plants to operate without the periodic shutdowns for fuel replacement. As other countries test-drive these new technologies, there can be no serious debate here until Bush finds a place to store the radioactive waste from existing plants. He may be forced to decide between nuclear power and some precious electoral votes in Nevada, home of the proposed (and unpopular) Yucca Mountain disposal site. Until then, and until nuclear technology demonstrates to Wall Street that it can compete with other methods of power production, expanded nuclear power will remain more a talking point than a serious energy supply. Copyright © The Sacramento Bee ***************************************************************** 24 New nuclear power push arouses old fears / Three Mile Island accident, Nevada waste site opposition Thursday, May 24, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle URL: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/whatsnew.htm An entire generation of Americans has gone from birth to college graduation since the last time nuclear power's future looked bright. Now, 22 years after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania devastated the American atomic industry's prospects, President Bush hopes to revive the commercial nuclear power business as part of his energy plan. And a new Field Poll shows that 59 percent of Californians support building nuclear power plants. That is a huge shift from the 60 percent opposition reported by a Los Angeles Times poll in February. The upsurge presumably reflects anxiety over California's power crisis. A nuclear revival, however, will face decades-old obstacles: Can commercial nuclear power be made safe and as cost-effective as other energy sources, from oil and natural gas to solar, wind, biomass and conservation? And how will the nation safely discard all the waste generated by nuclear power plants? Industry hopes of turning the Nevada desert into a nuclear burial ground have foundered because of state political resistance and technical obstacles. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will make a recommendation next year on whether to proceed with the site under Yucca Mountain. Since late March, Vice President Dick Cheney has campaigned to give nuclear power a second chance. On Tuesday, Cheney told a meeting of nuclear industry executives that the administration wants to "increase the resources devoted to safety and enforcement as we prepare to increase nuclear generating capacity in the future." "Safety" is a crucial buzz word in nuclear circles. The nuclear power industry's apparent lack of safety threatened its ambitious prospects for growth in the late 1960s and '70s. The worst incident on American soil occurred in 1979, when the Three Mile Island reactor near Harrisburg, Pa., underwent a partial meltdown. Through the 1970s, nuclear power experts had repeatedly insisted that nuclear plants were highly unlikely to experience such an accident because of careful training of personnel and computerized instrument controls. Three Mile Island undermined the nuclear industry's appeal to the public and to many U.S. utilities. So did anti-nuclear entertainment such as the 1979 Jane Fonda film "The China Syndrome" and various skits on "Saturday Night Live, " including one in which then-President Jimmy Carter grew to enormous size after stepping inside the Three Mile Island reactor. Cost overruns alone might have doomed the 1970s nuclear boom in any case, critics charge. Federal energy officials projected that the industry would spend $45 billion to construct 75 U.S. reactors between 1966 and 1977; the final bill was $145 billion, three times higher. "The largest managerial disaster in history," Forbes magazine called it. Nuclear power is "an economic black hole," says Scott Denman, executive director of the Safe Energy Communications Council, a consortium of anti- nuclear groups including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. "We shouldn't go down that black hole a second time when we've got safer, cleaner and cheaper alternatives." But nuclear industry officials say they learned their lesson from Three Mile Island and have greatly improved safety standards ever since. Even so, they complain, the media badly over-emphasized the risks of the accident. "TMI showed some of the impacts that a major nuclear power accident could have, but it didn't kill anybody," says Andrew Klein, a member of the board of directors of the American Nuclear Society in Chicago, who also runs the nuclear engineering department at Oregon State University. "My parents still live 40 miles downwind (from Three Mile Island) and they're healthy and in their 70s," he said. What is more, today's nuclear power plants are far safer, and technical innovations can make them cheaper to operate, nuclear advocates say. "There have been tremendous improvements in the way nuclear plants are run, (such as) the streamlining of control rooms so they're more user friendly," says Rod McCullum, senior project manager of Used Fuel Management at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, D.C. A special source of excitement is the "pebble-bed" reactor, which would generate nuclear heat from tiny pieces of uranium sprinkled inside thousands of billiard ball-size spheres of graphite, slowly moving through a reactor like gum balls in a gum ball machine. The technology is being developed in South Africa, with help from U.S. nuclear scientists, engineers and industry officials. The pebble-bed reactor would be cooled with helium gas rather than water, the coolant used in most existing nuclear reactors. Nuclear experts describe the pebble-bed reactor as "inherently safe" or "passively safe." In other words, they say, the laws of physics would prevent it from undergoing a Three Mile Island-like meltdown. "We're all trying not to get too excited, because a lot of decisions have to be made (before it's put into operation). But it's a very promising design and we're all really pulling for it," said Russ Bell, senior project manager of business services at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Others are skeptical. It's too early to jump to conclusions about the merits of pebble bed reactors, warns David Lochbaum, a former nuclear safety engineer who now works for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D. C. To date, "no (fully operational) reactor like that has ever operated anywhere on the planet." ". . . Boeing doesn't start building a new plane before test-flying it," he said. Meanwhile, the federal attempt to find a final burial place for radioactive waste from existing nuclear reactors has acquired a Sisyphean aura. The Energy Department has long hoped to establish a permanent burial site for highly radioactive waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, north of Las Vegas. Facing intense resistance from Nevada residents, the department has fought back by conducting intensive scientific studies of the site. The goal: to prove that radioactive waste can be safely buried there, 1,000 feet below ground, for thousands of years without significant risk of the "hot" stuff leaking into the environment. In recent years, research revealed that water would sink from the surface to the depth of the stored waste in about 50 years, much faster than previously thought, said Bob Loux, director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects. Groundwater could carry radioactive fragments for unknown distances. The Energy Department has responded by proposing the placement of a water- resistant titanium shield over the waste -- too-hot-to-touch nuclear fuel rods encased in nickel-alloy tanks. Cost: an extra $12 billion. Even so, state- financed experiments indicate that the shields and containers could be quickly eroded by groundwater and underground chemicals, Loux warns. ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle   Page A - 3 ***************************************************************** 25 Nuking the Atmosphere Motherjones.com -- President Bush and the nuclear energy industry want you to believe that nuclear power doesn't produce a whiff of greenhouse gases. Too bad it's not true. by Mark Francis Cohen May 23, 2001 Nuclear power plants like this one in Limerick, Pa., aren't so atmospherically friendly. "Many Americans may not realize that nuclear power already provides one-fifth of this nation's electricity, safely and without air pollution," President George W. Bush declared to a raft of business leaders in St. Paul, Minn. last week as he introduced the administration's new energy program. "By renewing and expanding existing nuclear facilities, we can generate tens of thousands of megawatts of electricity at a reasonable cost without pumping a gram of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere." Of course, Bush isn't the only one trumpeting nuclear power as the atmospherically-friendly energy source. The nuclear power industry itself has blanketed dozens of magazines and newspapers, including the *Washington Post *and *The New York Times*, with ads touting its product as greenhouse-gas free. Electricity that doesn't cause global warming? Sounds great! Unfortunately, it's not true. The argument that nuclear power plants don't produce greenhouse gasses is one of the theories upon which the National Energy Policy-- a 163-page report designed by Vice President Cheney and his task force -- rests. True, the reactors themselves don't emit greenhouse gases, and so strictly speaking they don't contribute to global warming. But creating nuclear energy is a five-step process, the last of which is generating electricity from the reactor. At every other step in the process, pollution is emitted -- including substantial amounts of greenhouse gases. Uranium, the fuel base of nuclear power, must be mined, milled, converted, enriched, packaged, sent to reactors and splitto produce the heat and steam that generate electricity. The uranium enrichment process in particular, in which the radioactive material is made more radioactive, generates greenhouse gases galore. "It requires a tremendous amount of electricity," explains Elizabeth Stuckle, a spokeswoman at the US Enrichment Corporation, the company in charge of altering the uranium for the reactors. To get that electricity, she says, "we are having to rely on fossil fuels." In fact, the enrichment process is so electricity-intensive that when nuclear power plants were being built in this country in the 1950s, new coal-burning plants were also constructed for the sole purpose of powering the nuclear enrichment stations. For example, the Clifty Creek coal-burning plant in southeastern Indiana was erected to power an enrichment facility in Portsmouth, Ohio. The Clifty Creek plant emits more than 9 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. (The Portsmouth facility stopped enriching uranium this month.) The nearby enrichment facility in Paducah, Ky. -- the only other such facility currently operating in the US -- until recently also got much of its power from a coal-burning plant. Since September, it has largely switched over to the Tennessee Valley Authority grid, which gets about 60 percent of its electricity from coal. Christopher Sherry, research director for the Washington, D.C. based- Safe Energy Communication Council, estimates that all told, uranium enrichment in the US currently generates about 14 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. That's why in 1998 the Council of Better Business Bureaus and, later, the Federal Trade Commission found that the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade association, was misleading consumers by advertising nuclear plants as an "energy source that produces no greenhouse gas emissions, so they help protect the environment." "You can't just tell a part of the story when a critical piece of information contradicts it," says Andrea Levine, director of the CBBB's advertising division. "We were concerned about the uranium enrichment process, which relies on coal energy and which does produce greenhouse gas." Undeterred, the NEI recently launched a slightly more ambiguous ad campaign. One features a spikey-haired teen-ager in a Walkman headset surrounded by white cottony clouds, under the banner "Clean Air Is So 21st Century." Scott Denman, the executive director of the Safe Energy Communication Council, says his public interest group is considering filing a complaint over the new ads. (The CBBB has yet to look at these ads, says Levine.) Aside from greenhouse gases, nuclear power pollutes the environment in several other ways. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, uranium mining results in groundwater pollution because of the heavy metals and radioactive materials present in mine waste. The group notes that "half of the people employed by the uranium mining industry work on cleaning up the mines after use." Many nuclear facilities also suck up millions of gallons of water every day to cool their reactors. That heated water is dumped back into surrounding waterways, killing sea life and disturbing the environment. There's also the industry's most famous emission -- radioactive waste, something no country has yet figured out what to do with. Not to mention other safety hazards; the accidents at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Japan's Tokaimura nuclear facility proved disasters can, and do, happen. Nuclear is also not necessarily as affordable as Bush would like the public to believe. Jerry Taylor, the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, notes: "Were it not for government subsidies, there wouldn't be one nuclear power plant in this country. The nuclear story tells you that no matter how many subsidies you throw at an industry, it won't make it economically competitive." Nor will all the spin make it greenhouse-gas free. Story last updated at 11:11 a.m. on Thursday, May 24, 2001 To The Oak Ridger: I have to disagree with your view that Secretary Richardson's suspension of recycling of volumetrically contaminated metals was "wrong." I still affirm my view which I stated to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in November '99, which said, in part: "I would cite several examples as reasons for my opposition to recycling the contaminated metals. Locally, there are two former salvage yards, the DuPont Smith yard in Oak Ridge, and the David Witherspoon yard in nearby Knoxville. "Both acquired salvage materials from Oak Ridge Operations, both were later found to have contaminated equipment. Last year, a large piece of equipment, I believe a vertical turret lathe, was purchased at auction from ETTP (the former K-25 site), and was found to have internal contamination, despite being "green-tagged" for public release. About two years ago, barrels of rad waste, destined for out-of-state shipment to a proper disposal site, were found to have been misdirected to Y-12's burial grounds. The well-publicized destruction of documents at INEEL and other sites (including Y-12) make verification impossible. The acknowledgment of plutonium at Paducah, the cancer clusters around Brookhaven Lab, and the almost unbelievable contamination releases from Hanford solidify the assertion that we haven't done a very good job of containment to date, even at the site level. "Heaven help us if we release these materials to the unsuspecting public. This is not the proper approach to population control." I have written several letters to the press, labor unions, Congress, and DOE, including Secretary Abraham, since then. Historically, practically every operation, whether production or cleanup, has involved some contamination or exposure to workers. I firmly believe this risk should not be taken with the public. Secretary Richardson made the suggestion that this material be used to make shipping and storage containers, thus not contaminating "clean" containers. This would provide a use for the material, as well as keeping jobs locally. I think it's worth considering. Glenn Bell Oak Ridge EM budget hit will have big OR effect To The Oak Ridger: The East Tennessee Environmental Business Association (ETEBA) has followed the current DOE Environmental Management budget process with great concern. If the 2002 budget request passes as currently proposed, cleanup activities on the Oak Ridge Reservation will take a $90 million hit. One of our concerns is that the 15-year momentum we've gained in the DOE environmental management program will be slowed dramatically. We are at that stage in the cleanup process where we are "moving dirt." The studies are, for the most part, finished, and we're remediating sites, the last step before reindustrialization. Another concern is that the pool of companies that have invested in Oak Ridge will leave the area, taking their highly skilled employees with them. The impact of a $90 million budget hit will be felt by many ETEBA companies involved in the cleanup effort. In addition to DOE's obligation to clean up its environmental legacy, this community should think about what will happen to its cleanup industry. Please consider that these companies: + Have been doing business in Oak Ridge for over 20 years, and they have worked hard to stay here. + Have world-class capabilities that include engineering, environmental remediation, decontamination and decommissioning, remedial design and construction, environmental health and safety, radiation protection, waste management. + Have a concentration of technical skills that make Oak Ridge a center of entrepreneurship found in only a few of the larger cities in the United States. + Have almost 6,000 highly trained employees, many of whom live in Oak Ridge, send their kids to school here, and pay taxes. + Have a payroll of $110 million. + Are large businesses with hundreds of employees, small businesses with one or two employees, women- or minority-owned, and in many cases are associated with national and international corporations. + Generously support community events, organizations and schools because they want to give back to a community in which they have prospered. In short, ETEBA companies add to the rich industrial fabric of our community. Most importantly, they are helping Oak Ridge by doing the work required to clean up damaged sites. From this base, they are establishing operations from which they can grow and compete for work throughout the United States and the world. They are bringing business to Oak Ridge at the same time they are providing essential services in environmental cleanup. It behooves us to pay attention to these budget cuts and help our senators and representatives improve the numbers substantially. A highly technical industry worth $110 million is in jeopardy. Isn't that worth fighting for? Jenny M. Freeman Executive Director East Tennessee Environmental Business Association All Contents ©Copyright* The Oak Ridger * ***************************************************************** 2 New Scientist: Plutonium for sale Smuggling of radioactive materials is rife, new research reveals Exclusive from New Scientist magazine The nuclear arms race has left the world with a terrifying legacy: 3 million kilograms of bomb-grade plutonium and uranium. A terrorist would need no more than a few kilograms to make a devastating bomb, so you'd think this material would be kept under guard in secure military installations. You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Radioactive materials are going missing, border controls are almost non-existent, monitoring equipment doesn't work and smuggling is rife. This was the frightening picture painted at a conference of nuclear experts in Stockholm earlier this month organised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Interpol and the World Customs Organization. It seems only a matter of time before a terrorist group acquires the ultimate bargaining chip. Mass disruption Terrorists don't even have to get hold of enough to make a nuclear bomb, says Friedrich Steinhäusler, a physicist from the University of Salzburg in Austria and a former member of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. They could steal radioactive isotopes from unprotected research and medical facilities with "relative ease" and combine them with conventional explosives to contaminate large areas, or simply spread them through the ventilation system of an airport, office complex or shopping mall. "Such a potential future scenario emphasises the low-tech terror of 'mass disruption' rather than 'mass destruction'," Steinhäusler says. Today's leading terrorist groups, however, may have the means and the determination to achieve mass destruction. These groups include Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult. Poor safeguards According to Steinhäusler, up to 100 countries may hold radioactive materials that they can't safeguard properly. Steinhäusler, working with colleagues at Stanford University in California, has just completed a study of nuclear security in 11 typical countries: the US, China, Germany, Austria, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh. It reveals gaping holes in their ability to detect nuclear smuggling, worrying flaws in their audits of radioactive materials and serious shortages of trained staff, equipment and resources. None of the 11 countries has any radiation monitoring equipment covering its unfenced borders, where there are few roads, railways or settlements. One of the countries had no radiation monitoring equipment at any of its borders. No registers Although the study does not point the finger at any particular country, it discloses that around a quarter of them do not keep registers of radioactive sources that may have been lost from laboratories or hospitals. Half of the countries knew of unlicensed radioactive material, and in nearly a third nuclear material has been stolen from licensed sites in the past 10 years. The material that is intercepted may be just a fraction of what is actually being smuggled. Ian Ray, a forensic nuclear scientist from the Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, Germany, estimates that only 5 to 10 per cent of the illegal traffic in radioactive materials is detected. Nuclear authorities are starting to call for action. The Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate wants the IAEA to set up a unit to combat smuggling. And experts are meeting in Vienna this week to discuss plans to strengthen the IAEA's Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. A full length version of this story is featured in the 26 May issue of New Scientist magazine Correspondence about this story should be directed to letters@newscientist.com © Copyright New Scientist, RBI Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 3 Listening for secret nukes, hearing giant meteors CNN.com - - May 23, 2001 Los Alamos researcher Rod Whitaker checks an infrasound station By Richard Stenger (CNN) -- Intelligence scientists listening for covert nuclear blasts had their ears rattled by other explosive sounds -- the detonation of meteors as they streaked over the Pacific Ocean. The Earth eavesdropping, conducted by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was intended to detect atomic weapons tests by rogue nations or organizations in remote locations. Instead, the Los Alamos listening stations picked up the sound of two large meteors as they plunged into the atmosphere off the coast of Mexico, the Los Alamos lab said this week. The space rocks raced across the sky in April and August. But the lab waited to announce its findings until other U.S. space scientists last week confirmed the two objects. Meteoroids, meteors and meteorites Confused by the space rock terms? A meteoroid is a pebble or stone in space. A meteor is the bright flash of light that a meteoroid produces as it streaks across the sky, and also refers to the stone itself while in the atmosphere. A meteorite is a meteoroid that survives its fiery atmospheric entry and strikes the Earth's surface. The meteors were unusually big, between 6 and 10 feet in diameter. The first one created an explosive pressure wave with as much energy as 2,000 to 3,000 tons of TNT, according to Los Alamos researchers. The second, larger one could have produced a shock wave equivalent to 8,000 tons of TNT. "Had anyone seen the April 23 event, they would have seen quite a show. That meteor was one of the five brightest ever recorded," Los Alamos scientist Doug ReVelle said. Each year, listening stations at the lab record an average of 10 meteors 6 feet in diameter or greater. Those that appear as huge fireballs in the sky, like the April and August specimens, are known as bolides. Bolides make dazzling displays dozens of miles above the planet. Fortunately, most explode into thousands of pieces or burn up entirely before they reach the surface. If these two survived, they probably smacked into the ocean, well away from populated regions, the scientists said. [image] Scientists think that two sizable meteors exploded into huge fireballs like the Yukon meteorite, which left this smoke trail in January, 2000 The destructive capability of bolides that strike land is considerable. An extremely large one blasted the huge Meteor Crater in Arizona. The unaided human ear cannot detect the low frequency pressure waves when at a great distance. But specialized microphones at four Los Alamos monitoring stations in the United States can both detect the infrasonic waves and help plot their locations. The infrasonic information takes minutes or hours to reach the stations, which therefore cannot provide advance warning about approaching large meteors. However, the Los Alamos scientists welcome the opportunity to monitor falling space rocks, which allows them to fine tune the instruments to use to detect nuclear blasts. [ width=] [ width=] ***************************************************************** 4 Terrorists' 'dirty bomb' plot new nuclear threat Irish Newspapers - Irish Independent Online -Sunday Independent * : Fri May 25th 01 NUCLEAR smugglers are operating around the world with impunity, according to research by the International Atomic Energy Authority, which warns that the risk of atomic terrorism against civilians has never been greater. The biggest danger is not that a terrorist group will produce a 'suitcase bomb' - a self-contained portable nuclear weapon considered beyond the capabilities of independent organisations - but that they could set off a 'dirty bomb', a conventional bomb covered in highly radioactive material. This could contaminate a city or a region's water supply. Authorities in former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Kazakhstan, have recently seized quantities of plutonium and uranium from would-be smugglers - but the IAEA said that these cases could be the tip of the iceberg. You need eight kilos of plutonium or 25 kilos of enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb but the fact that these materials are in the black market at all is troubling, because it means that these people have access. John Large, a British independent nuclear consultant, said: "If one of these groups got a large enough amount of plutonium and got the explosion to vapourise it, so that it was spread widely, then a bomb set off on the top of Canary Wharf (the tower in east London) could contaminate everything for three kilometres around." Building an atomic weapon is almost certainly beyond the capability of any independent group; even Saddam Hussein was unable to do so despite spending billions of dollars over 10 years on the project. Though Iraq developed the detonation systems needed, it could not accumulate enough weapons-grade products to make a bomb. But that would not stop such groups using radioactive substances for a high-profile attack. America currently monitors 130 terrorist organisations that it believes might use such weapons if they acquired them. * Independent News Service ***************************************************************** 5 Thieves dismantle nuclear-powered lighthouse in Arctic Russia Associated Press *May 24, 2001 * MOSCOW (AP) - Four unemployed men in search of scrap metal dismantled generators at a nuclear-powered lighthouse in Russia's Far North, exposing themselves to dangerous doses of radiation, an official said Thursday. Viktor Kozlov, an adviser on nuclear safety in the city government in Kandalaksha, a port on the White Sea, said the men removed the lead covers on the generators that power the lighthouse. He said they intended to sell the metal for scrap. The Russian Navy confirmed that the theft had taken place and that the lighthouse was no longer operating, but declined to provide details or say when it would be repaired. Two of the men were hospitalized with radiation sickness, while another two are in jail, ORT television reported. The men hoped to earn 3,000 rubles (dlrs 103) each from the sale of the lead, the station said. Vera Lisovskaya, a doctor at the local hospital in Kandalaksha, told ORT that the two who were hospitalized had burned their hands and eyes during the theft. Kozlov said the dismantled lighthouse presented no danger to the environment or to people outside its immediate vicinity, but ORT said the roads leading to the lighthouse were blocked off. Scavenging for nonferrous metals is a widespread and dangerous practice in Russia, with railroads, electric and telephone cables and public monuments all frequent targets. The country's energy monopoly, UES, says hundreds of thieves are electrocuted each year. Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 6 U.S. to honor nuclear agreement with Israel Haaretz Daily Newspaper - English Internet Edition *Thursday, May 24, 2001* *By Aluf Benn* *Ha'aretz Diplomatic Correspondent* The Bush Administration will honor the energy cooperation agreement signed by the Clinton White House in February 2000 with Israel, U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham told the director-general of the Atomic Energy Commission, Gideon Frank. Some in Israel were initially concerned that Abraham would not honor the pact signed by his predecessor, Bill Richardson, who had close ties with Israel. But Abraham made it clear in a meeting two weeks ago in Washington that, despite the administration change, the White House will continue Clinton Administration policy. The bilateral energy cooperation agreement is an umbrella pact covering research and development in various fields of energy technology. The U.S. and Israeli nuclear authorities will cooperate in "not secret" matters relating to the prevention of the spread of weapons of mass destruction, arms control and regional security. The Americans are interested in developing a dialogue with the nuclear institute in Israel, while Israel is seeking international recognition of its nuclear program. The U.S. promises to supply Israel with advanced methods for neutralizing and supervising reactors, and will include Israeli experts in the development of these areas. copyright 2001 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 7 Terrorists' 'dirty bomb' is nuclear nightmare Independent News © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Charles Arthur, Technology Editor 24 May 2001 Nuclear smugglers are operating around the world with impunity, according to research by the International Atomic Energy Authority, which warns that the risk of atomic terrorism against civilians has never been greater. The biggest danger is not that a terrorist group will produce a "suitcase bomb" ­ a self- contained portable nuclear weapon considered beyond the capabilities of independent organisations ­ but that they could set off a "dirty bomb", a conventional bomb covered in highly radioactive material. This could contaminate a city or a region's water supply. Authorities in former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Kazakhstan, have recently seized quantities of plutonium and uranium from would-be smugglers ­ but the IAEA said that these cases could be the tip of the iceberg. David Kyd, a spokesman for the IAEA, said: "The amounts being moved are typically a few grams, whereas you need eight kilos of plutonium or 25 kilos of enriched uranium to make an atomic bomb. But the fact that these materials are in the black market at all is troubling, because it means that these people have access to them and could come back with more." John Large, a British independent nuclear consultant, said: "If one of these groups got a large enough amount of plutonium and got the explosion to vapourise it, so that it was spread widely, then a bomb set off on the top of Canary Wharf [the tower in east London] could contaminate everything for three kilometres around." Building an atomic weapon is almost certainly beyond the capability of any independent group; even Saddam Hussein was unable to do so despite spending billions of dollars over 10 years on the project. Though Iraq developed the detonation systems needed, it could not accumulate enough weapons-grade products to make a bomb. But that would not stop such groups finding some way to use radioactive substances for a high-profile attack. America currently monitors 130 terrorist organisations that it believes might use such weapons if they acquired them. The IAEA recently held a conference to discuss the risks of nuclear smuggling, which has worsened as the economies of many former Soviet republics have slumped. In April 1998, the British Government took a shipment of five kilograms of weapons-grade uranium and irradiated reactor fuel from Georgia because it was considered at risk of being stolen from the former military reactor where it had been held. In the 1990s, the US also bought nearly 500 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from former Eastern bloc countries to reduce the risks of proliferation. Even so the danger appears to be escalating, according to Mr Kyd. He said: "As long as there is a willing buyer or intermediary for these materials, there will be a risk," he said. *New Scientist* magazine reports today that a study of 11 countries including the US, China, Germany, Austria (the home of the IAEA), Romania, Switzerland, Israel, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh found that none had radiation- monitoring equipment for the unfenced parts of their borders. One of the 11 had no radiation monitors on any part of its borders. "Airports and ships customs officers must be horrified that these things can cross borders so easily," said Professor Large. However, the IAEA hopes that terrorists will still prefer to use germ, chemical or conventional weapons because they carry less risk to the person carrying a bomb than with nuclear products. Also from the Science section Mammal the size of a paperclip offers key to evolution The future of waste disposal Test-tube foals lead to fresh GM fears Can we ever reach for the stars? You think you drive a gas-guzzler? Try warp speed ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************