***************************************************************** 03/25/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.76 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 TVA workers were not exempt, expert testifies 2 Measuring the pollution in people 3 UPDATE - Cheney - Energy panel to look at nuclear power 4 FACTBOX - Bush rolls back water, mining, forestry rules 5 Nuclear fuel ship arrives in Japan 6 BRITISH SHIP LOADED WITH PLUTONIUM FUEL ARRIVES IN JAPAN AMID 7 MOX fuel unloaded in Niigata 8 German activists protest against nuclear waste 9 Nuclear activists gather to stop train 10 Nuclear activists gather to stop train 11 Greenpeace Founder McTaggart Dies 12 Greenpeace International Founder Dies in Car Crash 13 Greenpeace Helmsman David McTaggart Dies 14 Bill would set up site to store radioactive waste 15 Court asked to reconsider waste ruling 16 Bill protects EPA liaison 17 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: The Science, the Law and the State 18 Yucca tours seen as lobbying efforts 19 Editorial: Alaskans: Not in our back yard 20 Inyo County faces hazardous waste transport issues 21 Letter: Waste shipments - GLENN A. REPP 22 Nuclear waste site proposed 23 Energy producers call Bush's tune 24 U.S.-Led Plant Beset by Delays 25 German Greens torn by revolt over nuclear phase-out plans 26 Temelin Disconnected From Grid Again Because of Leaking Valve NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 Court won't hear appeal to remove bell in Oak Ridge 2 Thurmond presses for SRS project funds 3 Hoya keeps quiet on nuclear dispute 4 Editorial: Penny-Wise 5 South Korea Think Thank: North Korea Has 3,000 Nuclear Experts 6 Lasting and grave consequences of NATO aggression for the Balkan 7 John Mclaughlin's "One on One" - Complete Chao transcript released 8 Russia PM Orders Kursk Sub Recovered 9 Gregoire threatens DOE with lawsuit 10 State threatens Hanford cleanup suit 11 Sailor accused of sabotaging nuclear sub faces court-martial 12 Secret planes that helped America win the Cold War lie buried at Area 51 13 NUCLEAR WORKERS' AID PROGRAM IN LIMBO 14 SRS incinerator poses dilemma 15 Lake City plans meeting to talk about depleted uranium use 16 Nuclear stewardship taken to task 17 Oak Ridge cleanup firm hit with fine over fire last year ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 TVA workers were not exempt, expert testifies March 24, 2001 By Laura Ayo, News-Sentinel staff writer Twenty-nine Sequoyah Nuclear Plant employees were not exempt from receiving overtime compensation under provisions of a federal labor law, an expert witness testified Friday. Kenneth Finchum, a retired senior investigator for the U.S. Department of Labor, did not render an expert opinion as to the other four employees who are suing the Tennessee Valley Authority. The workers claim the federal utility intentionally violated the Fair Labor Standards Act when it implemented a policy on June 10, 1996, that denied them overtime pay when they worked more than 40 hours a week. TVA has argued the workers fell into one or more of the three exemption categories -- executive, administrative or professional. But Finchum, who spent most of his 13 years with the Labor Department investigating labor violation complaints, testified the employees weren't exempt under the executive provision because their primary duties weren't managerial and they didn't supervise two or more employees. The administrative exemption also didn't apply, Finchum said, because the workers' duties did not directly relate to TVA's administrative operations or management policies and the workers didn't regularly exercise discretion or judgment regarding significant matters. "Both prongs must be fully exercised for the exemption to apply," he said. Finchum also rejected the professional exemption, which applied to two workers only, on the grounds that advanced degrees weren't required to perform the work. He described some workers as having clerical duties, while others served as "points of contact" or were production employees. TVA attorney John Slater questioned why Finchum didn't review worker resumes before rendering his opinion, especially since other courts had found their review important in similar cases. "I never found a resume to be helpful," Finchum said, later adding he was taught never to review them because they don't provide details about a person's daily responsibilities and often use "puff" language to enhance the positive. Slater argued the resumes, along with "position descriptions," used language that showed certain employees exercised judgment and discretion in performing their jobs or that they performed management duties. The lawyer also questioned how one worker could be exempt when the single person he supervised was an exempt employee who supervised several others. "One has nothing to do with the other," Finchum responded. Finchum testified just because someone observes the work of another to make sure performance standards and procedures are followed and met doesn't mean he or she is a manager. TVA presented two witnesses before U.S. District Judge Leon Jordan recessed the trial until Monday morning. The judge also took under advisement requests by Slater and TVA attorney A. Jackson Woodall to dismiss the claims of many of the plaintiffs as a matter of law. Laura Ayo may be reached at 865-342-6341 or ayo@knews.com. ***************************************************************** 2 Measuring the pollution in people *Web posted Saturday, March 24, 2001 By Joan Lowy *Scripps Howard News Service* For decades, federal and state agencies have been testing the air, water and soil for pollution, but there has been relatively little effort to determine the extent of toxic substances in the bodies of Americans. On Wednesday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will take a major step toward answering the question: How polluted are people? In a first-of-its-kind survey, the centers tested blood and urine samples given by 5,000 Americans in 1999 for 28 toxic substances: 14 heavy metals, including lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium and uranium; six kinds of metabolites, which reveal exposure to 28 pesticides; seven kinds of phthalates, which are used in the manufacture of plastics and other consumer products, and cotinine, a byproduct of secondhand tobacco smoke. Since the petrochemical industry started around World War II, 85,000 new chemicals have been manufactured and released into the environment and another 1,500 chemicals are introduced each year. Of the 15,000 chemicals in common use today, the vast majority have not been tested individually for human health impacts and virtually none has been tested to discover what impacts may occur in combination with other chemicals, according to the Institute for Children's Environmental Health in Langley, Wash. Many public health experts believe there is a relationship between man-made chemicals in the environment and increased instances in recent years of asthma, Parkinson's disease, reproductive disorders, low sperm counts, genital defects in male infants, breast cancer, childhood leukemia, brain tumors, attention deficit disorder, autism, dyslexia and other chronic diseases. However, there is not enough data available to permit the kind of research that would prove or disprove a direct connection. Except for a handful of toxic substances like lead, there has been virtually no widespread testing for contamination in people. ``I can tell you so much more about the health of a striped bass swimming upriver than I can about the health of a child in New York City,'' said Shelley Hearne, an environmental scientist and executive director of Trust for America's Health in Baltimore, which advocates the establishment of a national health information network that would gather information on the occurrence of chronic diseases and levels of exposure to toxic substances. The 28 substances in the CDC survey are ``just the tip of the iceberg,'' Hearne said. Scientists believe it likely that the majority of Americans have traces of as many as 500 toxic substances in their bodies, Hearne said. Future surveys will eventually be expanded to include as many as 100 toxic substances, the centers said in a briefing paper. ``What the CDC is doing right now is not rocket science,'' Hearne said. ``They could be testing for hundreds of substances in our bodies, but we have never made the investment as a country in having this very easy technology.'' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - http://www.cdc.gov All contents © 1996 - 2001 *The Augusta Chronicle*. All rights ***************************************************************** 3 UPDATE - Cheney - Energy panel to look at nuclear power USA: March 23, 2001 WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney said on Wednesday his energy policy team was considering the future of U.S. nuclear power and that new nuclear plants could reduce greenhouse gases better than a "seriously flawed" Kyoto global warming treaty. "If you want to do something about carbon dioxide emissions, then you ought to build nuclear power plants. They don't emit any carbon dioxide. They don't emit greenhouse gases," Cheney said on MSNBC's "Hardball" program. The 1997 Kyoto treaty seeks to limit industrial nations' emissions of "greenhouse gases," including carbon dioxide which is produced by burning fossil fuels in power plants and vehicles. Such gases help retain the earth's heat and are thought to contribute to global warming. Cheney said the Bush administration opposes the treaty because it treats nations unequally in limiting emissions. President George W. Bush in January put Cheney in charge of a Cabinet-level task force to develop a long-term strategy to increase U.S. energy security. Its recommendations were expected in about six weeks, Cheney said. "A chapter in the report will deal with the nuclear questions and whether or not we want to go forward, but no decisions have been made yet," he said. A senior aide to Cheney said the task force had not yet begun to study the nuclear issue. She said Cheney's remarks were intended as a comment on the greenhouse gas issue and not as a signal the panel would recommend new nuclear plants. But asked whether the panel would study the possibility of building new plants, she said, "they're not going to ignore nuclear generation." No permits to build U.S. nuclear plants have been granted since 1975, although nuclear power provides about 20 percent of U.S. electricity, Cheney said. The 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, a near meltdown of a Pennsylvania power plant that spread low-level radiation over an area near the plant, put a long-term chill on the industry. GLOBAL WARMING TREATY "FLAWED" Cheney drew a contrast between nuclear power and the Kyoto treaty, saying the agreement was "seriously flawed" because it did not place restrictions on developing nations such as China and India. The treaty was signed by the United States under former President Bill Clinton, but not submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification. "We do not support the approach of the Kyoto treaty," Cheney said. "If you're really serious about greenhouse gases, one of the solutions to that problem is to go back, and let's take another another look at nuclear power, use that to generate electricity without having any adverse consequences." Forms of electricity generation such as coal-or oil-fired plants emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Bush last week retreated from a campaign promise to require power plants to limit emissions of carbon dioxide. The European Union responded with concern that the act signaled a U.S. retreat from efforts to fight global warming. Cheney said that Bush made clear U.S. opposition to the Kyoto treaty in his decision last week on carbon dioxide. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush did not include increasing nuclear power in his energy platform during his campaign. But he indicated Bush had not ruled it out. "His charge to them (Cheney's committee) was to look broadly and to look long term," Fleischer said. "We'll take a look at the recommendations in their totality." Story by Randall Mikkelsen REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 4 FACTBOX - Bush rolls back water, mining, forestry rules USA: March 23, 2001 WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has rolled back or delayed several key environmental actions taken during the final days of the Clinton presidency. The following summarizes the measures ordered by President George W. Bush, a former Texas oilman: MINING On Wednesday, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management said it suspended a regulation to toughen environmental standards for gold, silver and uranium mining on public lands. The rule, which went into effect on the final day of the Clinton presidency, forced mining companies in the West to post financial bonds guaranteeing that they would clean up water and environmental damage. It was the first broad revision of an 1872 mining law to add environmental protections. The rule was enacted after four years of public comment, and followed many of the recommendations made in a 1999 National Academy of Sciences study. WATER On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would withdraw the pending arsenic standard for drinking water that was prepared during the final days of the Clinton administration. The rule would have slashed the permissible level of arsenic in water from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. The current federal rule limiting the amount of arsenic in drinking water was based on 1942 data. The EPA said it would seek "independent reviews" of the science behind the standard and the cost estimates for communities to implement the rule. CARBON DIOXIDE On March 13, Bush sent a letter to Republican senators saying he would not limit carbon dioxide emissions by electric power plants because it would force U.S. power prices higher. Carbon dioxide is believed by many scientists to be a major contributor to global warming and climate change. The letter marked a reversal of Bush's campaign promise to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide. The president said carbon dioxide was not listed as a "pollutant" under the federal Clean Air Act and thus should not be subject to mandatory limits. The Bush decision was criticized by EU and Canadian environmental ministers, who support a 1997 U.N. climate treaty to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The pact has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and is opposed by Bush. FORESTS The Bush administration has delayed a Clinton presidency rule to ban new roads in nearly 60 million acres of U.S. forest land, saying more time was needed to review the controversial plan. The roadless plan, finalized during the last two weeks of the Clinton administration, is opposed by logging and oil companies. It was scheduled to go into effect on March 13, but the Bush administration delayed the effective date until May 12 to allow more time for review. The state of Idaho and Boise Cascade Corp filed a federal lawsuit in Boise to try to block the ban on roads. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 5 Nuclear fuel ship arrives in Japan Saturday March 24, 2:19 PM TOKYO, March 24 (AFP) - An armed British ship carrying reprocessed nuclear waste arrived in Japan Saturday as around 300 anti-nuclear activists staged a protest against the controversial cargo. The 5,271-ton Pacific Pintail docked at a private port of a nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc. (TEPCO), the world's largest private electric power company. "The nuclear vessel arrived at the port earlier in the day," said Ichiro Kudo, a spokesman for TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata, located on the coast of the Sea of Japan, about 220 kilometers (136 miles) north of Tokyo. "After unloading the fuel, we will put it in a storage for several days," said Kudo. The ship brought 28 rods of MOX fuel, a mixture of plutonium and spent uranium, he said. Environmental group Greenpeace says the vessel is carrying some 230 kilograms (500 pounds) of plutonium, a quantity it claims is enough to build around 20 atomic bombs. "It is outrageous that TEPCO is bringing in nuclear waste without fully ensuring its safety," Greenpeace's nuclear campaigner Kazue Suzuki told AFP. French nuclear group Cogema SA, which produces MOX fuel, has been insisting the material is not weapons-grade. To secure the safety of the vessel, the Japan Coast Guard dispatched several helicopters and airplanes and police mobilized more than 300 officers to guard the TEPCO plant, which houses seven nuclear reactors. "Since we were dealing with the shipment of nuclear fuel, we set up a security cordon at sea and on land," said a police spokesman in Niigata. The arrival of the Pacific Pintail was met by the anti-nuclear activists, some of whom carried a white banner saying: "We do not need MOX fuel! No to MOX shipment!" But police said the protest was peaceful throughout the day. "Overall there were some 300 protesters. But things were very calm as we had no reports of clash or fighting. We did not have a protest boat from the Greenpeace," the Niigata police spokesman said. The Pacific Pintail left France on January 19, together with the 4,863-ton Pacific Teal. "The Pacific Teal accompanied the Pacific Pintail solely for security reasons. It contained no nuclear fuel but I cannot say its whereabouts," said TEPCO's Kudo. Both ships are equipped with 30 mm cannon and an armed unit of police from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary (UKAEAC), a specially-trained anti-terrorism police force set up to protect nuclear materials in the UK. The vessels are also equipped with fast powerboats which can be deployed quickly at sea. The use of MOX fuel in Japanese power stations became the center of controversy in 1999 after it was revealed data concerning another fuel consignment from British Nuclear Fuels had been deliberately falsified. That MOX fuel has never been used, but anti-nuclear groups say they suspect similar irregularities may exist in the cargo dispatched from France. Copyright © 2001 AFP. All rights reserved. All information ***************************************************************** 6 BRITISH SHIP LOADED WITH PLUTONIUM FUEL ARRIVES IN JAPAN AMID PROTEST AND UNCERTAIN FATE 24 March 2001 Niigata, Japan - Yet another shipment of dangerous plutonium Mixed Oxide, MOX, fuel with an uncertain future arrived at its destination in Japan today after enduring a 30,000-kilometre journey that drew worldwide protest. This is the third shipment of plutonium to arrive in Japan since 1993 and like the past two, it is likely that not one gram of the dangerous nuclear material will be loaded into a nuclear reactor. As the ships Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal neared the port of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa today, about 300 protesters carrying banners proclaiming the MOX fuel to be falsified and dangerous, demonstrated outside the nuclear power plant where the plutonium fuel is supposed to be loaded later this year. The Pacific Pintail with its cargo of MOX fuel docked at the port around 6am. Amidst high security ships, boats and helicopters from Japan's coast guard and police guarded the ship as it entered the port. As with the two cargoes of MOX fuel produced by British Nuclear Fuels and the Cogema/Belgonucleaire group and delivered to Japan in 1999, doubts hang over the quality of this MOX fuel and whether it will be used in a nuclear reactor as intended. The MOX fuel delivered today, consists of 28 assemblies of around 220kg of plutonium, and around 5 tons of uranium, and was also produced by the French/Belgian Cogema/Belgonucleaire MOX fuel group. It is supposed to be loaded into unit 3 of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear power plant in the world, operated by Tokyo Electric Power. Concerns over the safety of the shipment have led to growing opposition along the sea-route and within Japan. The ships were confronted by opposition in the form of a flotilla of protest yachts which had gathered in the middle of the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand. The MOX ships increased their speed and made a wild course change to avoid facing the protest yachts. Protests in South Korea demanded the ship not pass near the peninsula, and last week over 1,000 protestors marched through the streets of Kashiwazaki City to protest against the shipment and Japan's plutonium program. The ships' arrival in Japan comes only hours after the Fukushima District court decided it was not possible to rule on whether or not quality control data for the MOX fuel delivered in 1999 was falsified, due to the lack of information released by Belgonucleaire/Cogema and Tokyo Electric. Consequently they turned down an application for an injunction made by plaintiffs seeking to prevent MOX loading in Fukushima Power plant. Over 1,900 citizens joined a legal action against Tokyo Electric, demanding that quality control data be released by the company. They cited evidence of falsification of quality control data and consequences for nuclear reactor safety. The case launched in August 2000, has been one of the longest of its kind in Japan. The court issuing its decision stated that it was "inexplicable" for Belgonucleaire to withhold data on the MOX pellet diameter, and that citing commercial confidentiality was "not credible." The court had made repeated requests for release of data during the past months. "The plutonium industry is clearly out of control, they defy the courts and public will," said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International. "It is inherently dangerous to ship and use MOX and yet they have just sailed around the world in defiance of international opposition. Not one gram of plutonium delivered to Japan in the last 15 years has been used in a reactor - it's just stockpiled here. Plutonium is not about electricity or energy, its about nuclear waste and bomb-material." Japan's multi-billion dollar plutonium program has been set back by a further year due to the opposition of the Governor of the Prefecture who called in February for a year's consultation with citizens on plans to use MOX fuel. The City Council of Kashiwazaki will Monday 26th debate a resolution opposing the loading of the MOX fuel that arrived today. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: - Kazue Suzuki, Greenpeace Japan (m) +81 90 2249 1502 - in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. - Shaun Burnie, Greenpeace International (m) +81 90 2253 7306 - in Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. - Matilda Bradshaw, Greenpeace International +31 6 535 04 701 - in Amsterdam. Photo available: Greenpeace International picture desk: +31 20 524 9580 Greenpeace Japan picture desk: +81 90 3470 7884 Video available: APTN, Reuters www.greenpeace.org/~nuclear/transport/mox00 ***************************************************************** 7 MOX fuel unloaded in Niigata [The Japan Times Online] Sunday, March 25, 2001 Security tight as British ship docks at Tepco nuclear plant KASHIWAZAKI, Niigata Pref. (Kyodo) Plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel was unloaded from a British cargo ship here Saturday after the vessel arrived at a special port earlier in the morning amid tight security. The 5,271-ton Pacific Pintail, which set sail from the French port of Cherbourg in January with 28 containers of the highly toxic MOX fuel, docked at the private port for Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station at 6:10 a.m. After the unloading, the fuel was transferred to the storage site inside the plant's compound later in the day. The shipment is the second of MOX fuel to Japan. Tepco and Kansai Electric Power Co. took delivery of the first shipment of MOX fuel in the fall of 1999 for Tepco's No. 1 nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture and Kansai Electric's Takahama nuclear power station in Fukui Prefecture. But fabrication of quality control data by British Nuclear Fuels PLC on these shipments of MOX fuel prevented the power firms from going ahead with their respective plans. The Japan Coast Guard and police set up a security cordon at sea and on land before the ship docked on Saturday morning. The Niigata Prefectural Police mobilized 400 police officers to secure the area, while coast guard helicopters and planes patrolled the air. Antinuclear activists from the village of Kariwa have opposed the use of MOX fuel at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant and plan to call for a local referendum on the issue. About 300 activists staged a protest on the coast near the port, chanting slogans and carrying banners reading "Let's stop pluthermal." MOX, a mixture of uranium dioxide and plutonium dioxide in pellet form, is designed to be burned in light-water reactors in a practice known as "pluthermal" use, a nuclear fuel recycling procedure. Plutonium is extracted by reprocessing the spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants. Niigata Prefecture is rapidly emerging as the front-runner to introduce MOX fuel for use in power stations in Japan. Fukushima Prefecture was expected to be the first prefecture to introduce MOX fuel. However, Fukushima Gov. Eisaku Sato said in late February that the prefecture will not accept the use of MOX fuel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant for the time being. It is also unlikely that Fukui Prefecture will accept MOX fuel at the Takahama station within the next few years. Attention is therefore focused on what action local government leaders such as Niigata Gov. Ikuo Hirayama will take. Tepco is still planning to transfer the MOX fuel to the reactor of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant before the end of this year. Fast-breeder reactors were once expected to be the main thrust of Japan's nuclear fuel cycle policy. However, after the 1995 fire at the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, the government placed the pluthermal process at the center of its policy. The Japanese government is planning to introduce the pluthermal process in between 16 and 18 reactors nationwide by 2010. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, which comprises seven reactors, has an output of 8,212,000 kilowatts, the largest in the world. The Japan Times: Mar. 25, 2001 ***************************************************************** 8 German activists protest against nuclear waste March 24, 2001 [Reuters] LUENEBURG, Germany, March 24 (Reuters) - Thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators gathered in a north German town on Saturday to protest against the resumption next week of nuclear waste shipments from France back to Germany. Organisers said they expected up to 15,000 demonstrators to join a march in the town of Lueneburg, which the nuclear waste transport will pass through next week. France is due to start sending nuclear waste back to Germany on Monday after treatment in its reprocessing plant in La Hague and German anti-nuclear activists have already begun protests against the shipment. German police on Friday broke up two camps of activists on private land near the railway between Lueneburg and Dannenberg. Last week they temporarily occupied a watch tower at the nuclear waste dump in Gorleben, south of Hamburg, where the waste material is to be stored. A spokeswoman for the activists said they planned to occupy 52 rail crossings between the northern towns of Lueneburg and Dannenberg, the route along which the waste will be transported. Police expect thousands of demonstrators to try to block the transports. During the last shipments, anti-nuclear activists protested along the route and police fought running battles with groups trying to block the arrival of the waste at Gorleben. The resumption of shipments has been a major headache for Germany's anti-nuclear Greens party, junior partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition. The transports are allowed under the agreement on long-term withdrawal from nuclear power negotiated last year by Greens Environment Minister Juergen Trittin and the environmentalist party has urged members to demonstrate peacefully. *Copyright 2001 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 9 Nuclear activists gather to stop train Guardian Unlimited | Kate Connolly in Berlin Saturday March 24, 2001 The Guardian Thousands of environmental activists will gather on the heaths of northern Germany today in preparation for Europe's biggest anti-nuclear protest in years. Fifteen thousand protesters are planning to halt the journey of a train carrying reprocessed nuclear waste from the French border to Germany's nuclear dumping ground at Gorleben, about 80 miles north-west of Berlin. The train is due to leave La Hague, France, at dawn on Monday. In one of the biggest police actions in postwar German history, up to 30,000 officers with water cannons and teargas are being drafted in to protect the train on its route through the country. Today's meeting is a dress rehearsal for next week's battle. Demonstrators are expected from all over Europe and at least 2,000 local community members will take part, including a strong farming lobby, who have said they are prepared to use physical force to stop transport of the nuclear material. The figure at the centre of the protesters' wrath is Jürgen Trittin, the Greens' environment minister. Mr Trittin has stressed Germany's moral duty to take back the waste produced by the country's 16 nuclear power stations, and sent abroad for reprocessing. "We have legal and political obligations. "We can't simply dump our waste on our next-door neighbour's doorstep," he said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 10 Nuclear activists gather to stop train Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Kate Connolly in Berlin Saturday March 24, 2001 The Guardian Thousands of environmental activists will gather on the heaths of northern Germany today in preparation for Europe's biggest anti-nuclear protest in years. Fifteen thousand protesters are planning to halt the journey of a train carrying reprocessed nuclear waste from the French border to Germany's nuclear dumping ground at Gorleben, about 80 miles north-west of Berlin. The train is due to leave La Hague, France, at dawn on Monday. In one of the biggest police actions in postwar German history, up to 30,000 officers with water cannons and teargas are being drafted in to protect the train on its route through the country. Today's meeting is a dress rehearsal for next week's battle. Demonstrators are expected from all over Europe and at least 2,000 local community members will take part, including a strong farming lobby, who have said they are prepared to use physical force to stop transport of the nuclear material. The figure at the centre of the protesters' wrath is Jürgen Trittin, the Greens' environment minister. Mr Trittin has stressed Germany's moral duty to take back the waste produced by the country's 16 nuclear power stations, and sent abroad for reprocessing. "We have legal and political obligations. "We can't simply dump our waste on our next-door neighbour's doorstep," he said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 11 Greenpeace Founder McTaggart Dies March 23, 2001 ROME- David McTaggart, one of the founders of Greenpeace International, who piloted boats into the teeth of the French navy to disrupt nuclear testing, was killed Friday in a head-on car crash on a country road in central Italy. He was 68. Police said McTaggart was alone in his car. The driver of the other car also died and his wife was injured, police said. The accident happened in Umbria, about 20 miles from Perugia. "Greenpeace would be unimaginable without his force of personality," Gerd Leipold, the organization's interim international executive director, said from Amsterdam, Netherlands. McTaggart, a native of Canada, had lived in Italy for many years and had an olive farm in Umbria. He galvanized the international environmental movement in 1972 by leading protests against French nuclear-testing in the South Pacific. He went on to stir up support throughout Europe for Greenpeace, forging an alliance in 1979 among separate factions of the organization and uniting them under his chairmanship as Greenpeace International. He was chairman until 1991. In a separate incident in 1995, McTaggart and two companions slipped onto the Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific in an inflatable speedboat to disrupt planned French nuclear tests and remained their for two weeks playing cat and mouse with French authorities. As they infiltrated the atoll, French commandos stormed their main vessel, the Rainbow Warrior II. Repeatedly detained by French authorities, his reckless confrontations with authority helped establish Greenpeace's reputation for fighting for the environment. "He was the last medieval knight, capable of great symbolic acts for the environmental cause," said Gianfranco Bologna, a spokesman in Italy for the World Wildlife Fund. Grazia Francescato, president of the Italian Green Party, called McTaggart "a figure of extraordinary force" and "an example for all of us." In a 1991 article, Forbes magazine depicted him as a masterful manipulator and myth-maker who turned Greenpeace into one of the largest environmental organizations in the world and a booming business. Under his leadership, it said, Greenpeace mastered "the tools of direct mail and image manipulation" and indulged "in forms of lobbying that would bring instant condemnation if practiced by a for-profit corporation." McTaggart, sometimes dubbed "the shadow warrior," was "a very difficult person because he was extremely stubborn, extremely tough," said David Newmann, ex-director of Greenpeace Italy, adding he was "a person of enormous courage and determination." Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, McTaggart worked in the construction business for 20 years, then moved to the United States in the 1960s where he became a successful contractor and developer. He retired after an explosion destroyed a resort his firm had built and sailed the Pacific for pleasure. In 1971 he became outraged with the French government's decision to cordon off a vast swath of international waters in the Pacific for nuclear tests. McTaggart was also a driving force behind Greenpeace campaigns to save the whales, to stop the dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean, to block the production of toxic wastes, to end nuclear testing, and to protect the Antarctic continent from oil and mineral exploitation. There was no immediate information on survivors or funeral arrangements. McTaggart had been married several times. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 Greenpeace International Founder Dies in Car Crash Environment News Service: AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, March 23, 2001 (ENS) - One of the most influential figures in the environmental movement, the man widely credited with the first campaign to save whales and to end French nuclear testing, David McTaggart died in a head on car crash near his home in Umbria, Italy, this morning. When news reached Greenpeace International headquarters in Amsterdam this morning, tributes were quick to follow from leaders of the group he helped to found. [McTaggart] David McTaggart. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace/Geier 1996) "We are all deeply shocked by this news," said interim International Executive Director Gerd Leipold. "Greenpeace would not be what it is today without his amazing force behind it." "Greenpeace would be unthinkable without his force of personality. He built up the organization into the international pressure group it is today, opening offices in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, when no one believed it possible. "Not only is he a great loss to Greenpeace, but also to the environmental movement worldwide," added Leipold. "David had an amazing life, he shook the world," said Peter Tabuns, executive director of Greenpeace Canada. "He fought to protect all of us from the nuclear threat - no one did more." In a testimonial to McTaggart, Greenpeace described the 68 year old as "relentless," "controversial," and "a thorn in the side of entire governments and corporations." "He bears sole credit for unifying a group of internally warring hippies into an international environmental force, and the lion's share of the credit for Greenpeace's successful campaigns to preserve Antarctica from oil exploitation and to halt commercial whaling," it continued. "He stood as a living example of the difference an individual can make, from his defiance of a nuclear weapons blast from the deck of his tiny and beloved sailing ship, Vega, to his steadfast refusal to accept that any odds were too great, or that any challenge was too big. "He had the guts to make saving the planet his personal mission, the charisma to inspire others to that task, and the strategic savvy to make you think he just might pull it off. [McTaggart] David McTaggart on board Vega in 1981. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace) "The world will never see another one of him." Born in Vancouver, Canada in 1932, McTaggart ran a successful construction business for 20 years before sailing into a new life of environmental action that began in the South Pacific in 1971. So outraged was McTaggart at the French government's decision to cordon off international waters in order to conduct nuclear testing, he renamed his 12.6 meter sailing craft "Greenpeace III" and sailed to the zone surrounding Muroroa Atoll. Dropping anchor downwind from the planned blast, McTaggart forced the French government to halt its test. A French Navy vessel rammed "Greenpeace III" but McTaggart repaired his boat and returned a year later. On that occasion he was beaten by French military personnel, with the incident captured on camera by a crewmate. The photos helped McTaggart win part of a lengthy court case against the French in 1974, the same year, the French government announced that it would end its atmospheric nuclear testing program. In 1977, McTaggart began organizing support throughout Europe for Greenpeace, by then established in more than a dozen countries. In 1979 he united factions of the organization under his chairmanship as Greenpeace International. Between 1975 and 1991, McTaggart led Greenpeace campaigns to save the whales, stop the dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean, block the production of toxic wastes, end nuclear testing, and protect the Antarctic continent from oil and mineral exploitation. He published numerous articles and two books. Awards for his contributions to environmentalism worldwide include the Onassis Award, The Kreisky Prize, and the United Nations Environmental Programme's Global 500 Award. [friends] David McTaggart (right) with Chris Robinson and Henk Haazen (left) sailing to Muroroa Atoll in 1995. (Photo courtesy Greenpeace/Morgan) In September 1991, McTaggart retired from active chairmanship of Greenpeace International to a farm in Italy, where he raised organic olive oil and continued to work on whaling and other issues through his own foundation. "He pushed the organization hard, and the organization pushed back hard," said a Greenpeace International statement. "Some of his closest colleagues will still describe him as a cold hearted bastard, and when David retired from active leadership of the organization in 1991, there were those who breathed a sigh of relief. "Many believed the organization had outgrown his leadership, and that the skills of a ragtag pirate leader were simply no longer a match to an organization that had grown so large so fast. "But one thing Greenpeace will never outgrow was David's extraordinary spirit." Another driver was killed in this morning's accident, and a female passenger injured. © Environment News Service ***************************************************************** 13 Greenpeace Helmsman David McTaggart Dies washingtonpost.com: From News Services Saturday, March 24, 2001; Page B06 ROME -- David McTaggart, 68, the founder of Greenpeace International who had made his home in Italy for many years, was killed March 23 in a head-on car collision on a country road in central Italy. Mr. McTaggart was alone in his car, police said. The driver of the other car also died, and his wife was injured. Mr. McTaggart galvanized the international environmental movement in 1972 when he sailed his small boat into a French nuclear-testing site at Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific. He went on to stir up support throughout Europe for Greenpeace, forging an alliance in 1979 among factions of the organization and uniting them under his chairmanship as Greenpeace International. He was chairman until 1991. He continued to be Greenpeace's honorary chairman in the 1990s, but with his health failing, he retired to Umbria to live on a farm producing olive oil. Mr. McTaggart, dubbed "the shadow warrior," was "a very difficult person because he was extremely stubborn, extremely tough," said David Newmann, former director of Greenpeace Italy. Mr. McTaggart was "a person of enormous courage and determination," Newmann added. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. He left school at 17 and became a Canadian national badminton champion before starting a construction company. He spent 20 years in construction before moving in the 1960s to the United States, where he became a successful contractor and developer. An accidental explosion in 1969 at a ski lodge he had built in California left him with a big bill for damages and prompted him to turn his back on business. He bought a boat, the Vega, and sailed the South Pacific islands until 1972, when a chance sighting of a Canadian newspaper advertisement changed his life. The ad, placed by the tiny Don't Make a Wave committee, later renamed Greenpeace, called for volunteers to sail to the Polynesian atoll of Mururoa in a bid to stop French atmospheric tests of nuclear warheads. Mr. McTaggart, outraged by the French government's decision to close off vast areas of the Pacific, responded to the appeal. He renamed his boat Greenpeace III and sailed to Mururoa. He anchored his boat downwind from the planned test, forcing the French to halt the first test and prompting the French navy to ram his vessel. After repairing his boat, he returned to the atoll a year later. He was captured and beaten up by French military officers, an assault that permanently damaged his right eye. He was also at the helm of Greenpeace in 1985 when French agents blew up the group's Rainbow Warrior ship in a harbor in Auckland, New Zealand, killing a photographer. The attack backfired on the French, drawing widespread condemnation and boosting Greenpeace's popularity and presence. Mr. McTaggart was a driving force behind Greenpeace campaigns to save the whales, to stop the dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean, to block the production of toxic wastes, to end nuclear testing and to protect Antarctica from oil and mineral exploitation. He was expelled from France in 1995 for trying to disrupt nuclear tests again. A year later, he was one of a group of Greenpeace veterans that launched a scathing attack on the group's new leaders, saying Greenpeace had lost its way and needed to rediscover its radical agenda. Mr. McTaggart, renowned for his short temper, was a private man who seldom gave interviews. He shied away from the publicity that Greenpeace, under his leadership, courted so brilliantly at environmental flash points around the world. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 14 Bill would set up site to store radioactive waste 03/24/01 Amarillo Globe-News: Texas News: By DEON DAUGHERTY Morris News Service AUSTIN - Texas needs a permanent place to store its low-level radioactive waste safely and economically, several scientists and industry experts told a Senate panel on Thursday. Currently, the state's low-level radioactive waste - much of which is generated and stored at Texas' medical schools and hospitals - is spread across more than 1,200 sites, said Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, the sponsor of Senate Bill 1541. Texas would be fulfilling its obligations under a federal compact with Maine and Vermont to build such a site. Plus, by engaging the compact, the state can limit the quantity of Department of Energy waste imported into Texas. A host county and the private contractor who wanted to build the site would have to meet certain provisions laid out in the bill, including proximity to dense population, rainfall, and groundwater. Dale Klein, vice chancellor for Special Engineering Programs for the University of Texas System, said that while the waste is stored safely, it would be better to store it permanently, he said. Bud Norton, a radiation specialist for M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said the hospital stores its own waste now, and those areas cannot be used for research and treatment - the purpose of the center. "M.D. Anderson agrees a permanent site for low-level radioactive waste should be in Texas," he said. Andrews County officials have expressed interest in being such a host county. Lloyd Eisenrich, an Andrews insurance agent and president of the Andrews Industrial Foundation, said his county could be the solution to Texas' low-level radioactive waste storage problem. Because the area already has a contracted site with Waste Control Specialists for mixed, hazardous waste, the residents are knowledgable on the issue of radioactive waste - and they want the proposed project in their county, he said. Eisenrich said a referendum, which the bill permits a county to call, wouldn't be needed in Andrews, saving money for the area. He pointed to the billions of dollars the area has contributed to both higher education and public education statewide with proceeds from its mineral wealth. "This is the first time we've ever come to the state with anything," he said. "We would like to offer the solution to your problem." Sen. Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, a member of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, represents most of Andrews County. He said he had been surprised to learn of the broad-based support in the county to house a low-level radioactive storage site. However, during an interim trip to the area, he visited with constituents in barber shops and other city stops. He said he didn't come across one person against having the site in Andrews County. However, Reeves County Judge Jimmy Galindo said he is concerned with whether the public would have appropriate input. Reeves County neighbors Ward County, which has land owned by Waste Control Specialists just eight miles from Reeves. He said it wouldn't be fair for Reeves County not to have a say in the matter if the project were put in Ward County, when the site is closer to Reeves than it is to the county seat. Erin Rogers, grassroots coordinator for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, said during the meeting that the group has several concerns with the bill. In particular, she said, the Sierra Club is worried that a loophole in the compact agreement would allow the private company that builds the site to contract with the federal government to import more waste for disposal. Duncan said the compact agreement gives Texas better protection from having to store imported waste if the state fulfills its agreement to build a permanent site. The provision was built into the initial compact agreement, which Congress has ratified, as an incentive for states to manage their own low-level radioactive waste, he said. The natural resources committee is scheduled to hear the bill again next week with open testimony. Rep Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, is the House sponsor of the bill. Amarillo Globe-News ***************************************************************** 15 Court asked to reconsider waste ruling Journalstar.com: Nebraska Mar. 29, 2001 The Associated Press Nebraska has asked a federal appeals court to review an earlier decision that Nebraska can be sued by other states for allegedly trying to block attempts to build a regional low-level radioactive waste dump in the state. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month in the long-running battle between Nebraska and four other states, which formed a compact commission that voted to build the storage site in Nebraska. "We believe the court failed to recognize . . . the commission has no cause of action against the state of Nebraska," said attorney Brad Reynolds on Friday. Reynolds is a Washington, D.C., attorney representing Nebraska in the case. A three-judge appeals court panel made the earlier ruling, which Reynolds is asking to be reviewed by the entire court. The panel upheld an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf, who refused to dismiss the lawsuit filed against Nebraska by several utility companies and the four other members of the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. Nebraska argued it is protected from such lawsuits under the U.S. Constitution's 11th Amendment, which gives states sovereign immunity from most lawsuits seeking monetary damages. Kopf said the state gave up its claim to sovereign immunity when it joined the compact with Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. The appeals court said Nebraska had protection from the utilities but not the other states under a sovereign immunity claim. But it also told Kopf to consider other avenues the utilities could use to pursue their claims. The appeals court ruled earlier that there appears to be evidence that Nebraska officials tried to submarine plans to build the site. Five utilities filed the lawsuit against Nebraska in 1998 for denying a permit to build a low-level nuclear waste storage facility in Boyd County, near the South Dakota border. The lawsuit contends Nebraska did not act in good faith during the licensing process and allowed "political interference with the licensing review thereby tainting it illegally." The other member states of the compact joined the lawsuit later. Reynolds defended the state's denial of the license. "The state of Nebraska held a fair, open and exhaustive review of the Boyd County site and . . . rejected the license application because of legitimate environmental concerns," he said. The plan for the waste site had its genesis in 1970, when Nevada, South Carolina and Washington said they were tired of accepting radioactive waste from the rest of the country. Congress told the rest of the states in 1980 to build their own waste sites or join regional groups to dispose of the waste. Nebraska joined the Central Interstate compact with Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. The other states voted in 1987 to put the waste site in Nebraska and the fight began soon after, with both sides wrestling in court on several issues. The compact wants to build a bunker to hold such things as contaminated tools and clothing from nuclear power plants, hospitals and research centers in the five compact states. Waste generators that sued were the Omaha Public Power District, Entergy Arkansas, Entergy Gulf States, Entergy Louisiana and Wolf Creek Nuclear Operation Corp. of Delaware. Copyright © 2001, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights ***************************************************************** 16 Bill protects EPA liaison DenverPost.com - News: Colorado and Denver Mike Soraghan Denver Post Staff Writer Mar. 23, 2001 - WASHINGTON - The two-man office that forced the Environmental Protection Agency to admit it erred at the Shattuck Superfund site would have independence from the EPA under a bill introduced Thursday. U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard wants to preserve the independence of the EPA's national ombudsman, Robert Martin. Martin maintains he has faced increasing hostility from EPA managers since embarrassing the agency in the Shattuck case and others. "Sen. Allard's goal here was to create an office that was independent and responsive to citizens when they have complaints," said Allard spokesman Sean Conway. Under Allard's bill, the ombudsman would report to EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman rather than the assistant administrator in charge of Superfund sites. Regional ombudsmen would be chosen by the ombudsman and would report to him. The ombudsman could also make reports to Congress. The bill also would au thorize as much as $4 million a year for the office. It would also give the ombudsman's office the authority to investigate any complaint it receives. Whitman said she supports making the ombudsman independent but couldn't say whether she supports Allard's bill until she reads it. "I would support making him independent with all the regulations and all the reporting requirements that go with that kind of independence - that they report to the Congress," Whitman said Thursday while speaking in Denver. Allard has accused the EPA of trying to muzzle the ombudsman's office because of its role in forcing the EPA to remove radioactive waste it had decided to leave at the Shattuck site in the middle of a residential neighborhood in Denver. The EPA has proposed new guidelines that Allard says gives EPA managers too much leeway to block investigations into their own decisions. Allard also criticized the EPA's decision to reassign Hugh Kaufman, the ombudsman's investigator, who conducted many of the interviews with Shattuck decisionmakers. Copyright 2001 The Denver Post. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 YUCCA MOUNTAIN: The Science, the Law and the State Tahoe Daily Tribune VIEWS Sunday, March 25, 2001 4:27 AM *Technology and Research Associates Corp.* The Nevada Legislature is considering a request from the governor to appropriate $5 million which, according to the Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Office, would be used for a public relations education campaign in 43 states that have potential routes for the transportation of spent fuel and high level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. The notion that public concern in transportation corridor states can be raised to a level of hysteria that would cause a sufficient number of such states' citizens to actively petition their elected representatives in the Congress to repeal current law is ludicrous. In particular, prevailing law recognizes the national environmental problem caused by the accumulation of spent fuel at the nuclear generating facilities and has already accounted for the need to transport the fuel rods. Early on, the political decision to ship spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste was made by the Congress with the enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, which was reaffirmed by the Congress in 1987. To think that a state sponsored low budget public relations campaign can raise the kind of national political pressure required to even question this political decision, much less repeal it, is naive at best. At worst, it suggests mere posturing designed to delude the public into thinking that state officials are seriously contesting the federal plan to establish a repository at Yucca Mountain. Furthermore, the political decision to transport the nuclear waste, having already been made by the Congress, will not be set aside by the federal courts. It is well settled that when the federal government takes title to the nuclear waste, it can transport or otherwise deal with its property in a manner which Congress prescribes. The use of interstate commerce is a well settled power which gives the federal government the right to transport its property across state boundaries despite obstacles which may be erected by a state. It is also well settled that a state may not burden interstate commerce or frustrate the Congress' efforts to ship spent fuel and nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain based upon perceived damage to the state's socioeconomic well being. The federal courts would consider transportation issues only in the larger context of disposal and only then if it were shown that the Yucca Mountain site was so unsuitable as to constitute a danger to the health and safety of the state's citizens. Given these legal facts, it is indeed difficult to understand why important state officials support a public relations approach which will be legally ineffective, and which totally neglects obvious safety issues that constitute a clear legal basis for rejection of the site as a high-level nuclear waste storage facility. In this regard it has now been established, based on many scientific studies including those most recently completed at UNLV, that water from deep beneath Yucca Mountain has erupted to the surface on many occasions over the last 5 million years. Further, the geologic environment at the site, which includes numerous active faults within and very near the proposed repository, as well as nearby volcanic cones that have been active during the recent geologic past, indicates that the periodic upwelling of ground water will continue far into the future. Therefore, ground water intrusions into the repository site can be expected during the 10,000 year period in which the radioactive material will be most dangerous. Based on the proposed design of the repository, the spent fuel in the disposal canisters will produce enough heat to raise the temperature of the canisters and the surrounding rock to levels that will vaporize water. Therefore, with an intrusion of ground water it is certain that steam and superheated water would be produced, leading to rapid corrosive breakdown of the waste canisters and the massive release of radionuclides into the biosphere. Since steam would eventually vent from an underground repository, a significant fraction of the 77,000 metric tons of waste material held in the repository could be ejected into the atmosphere and be rapidly spread over the entire planet by prevailing winds. This, all too likely possibility, is not just an ordinary safety issue involving localized contamination of ground water; it is a doomsday scenario wherein contamination from just a single occurrence would be airborne and circulated worldwide for hundreds of years. The consequence would be that many species could not survive such exposure, and quite possibly ours would be among them. Beyond the direct effects of corrosive breakdown of containment and steam ejection of radionuclides into the atmosphere, some of the waste material would be transported away from the repository by return flow of the heated water downward to the water table. In the course of such transport it is likely that concentrates of fissionable material would be precipitated from the water into void spaces in the numerous fractures in the rock. It is therefore possible that fissionable material accumulations of sufficient thickness could be developed which would enable spontaneous fission to occur, as was described by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In this case, as was also shown by these researchers, low yield nuclear explosions could occur which would ensure an even more devastating ejection of stored nuclear waste material into the atmosphere. If this were also to happen, and it certainly cannot be ruled out, the result would be the complete eradication of most species. The accumulation of scientific evidence for geologically recent occurrences of high temperature water intrusions into the proposed repository has prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to request, in January of this year, that the DOE furnish technical responses to a number of questions regarding the safety hazards implied by these observations. The DOE has deferred a response until 2002. It is clearly evident that the NRC recognizes the dire implications of the observations and the impact they will have for repository licensing hearings. This action by the NRC will therefore establish the DOE's position and invite opposing contentions as a safety issue which must be addressed in licensing hearings. During such hearings the state of Nevada must be prepared to present contentions to challenge the DOE's position if the licensing of the repository is to be effectively contested. However, given the fact that the state has made no provision for the support of any legal defense involving this scientific data, it is unlikely that the state will be prepared to make a case involving the associated hazards unless it acts quickly to remedy this omission. If the state does not, the DOE is likely to prevail in the licensing proceeding by the default of the state to adequately participate with vigorous support for its contentions. Another very small window of opportunity is provided by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which permits the governor or the Legislature to submit a notice of disapproval of the Yucca Mountain site to the Congress. No later than 60 days after the president recommends the Yucca Mountain site to the Congress for development, a notice of disapproval accompanied by a statement of reasons must be transmitted to the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate, otherwise the site shall be deemed approved as suitable for an application to the NRC for construction authorization. The Congress has given itself 90 days to override the state's notice of disapproval. The president will make his recommendation upon receiving the secretary of energy's prior recommendation and approval of the site. A draft site recommendation consideration report was issued in December 2000 in anticipation of a final recommendation, which will be issued sometime after a final environmental impact statement is issued later this year. Given the short time frame between the DOE secretary's recommendation and final congressional approval, the governor and the Legislature need to get their act in order. It is evident that they are presently ill prepared to file a persuasive statement of reasons in support of a notice of disapproval. Reasons based on transportation and socioeconomics will persuade few members of Congress, whereas a sound safety case articulated upon the known deficiencies in the site may well give members of Congress pause to consider the kind of peril to which they may be subjecting the world community. In any case, the importance of the statement of reasons does not end with Congress. The state's immediate challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court following Congress' action may be fatally compromised in the absence of a well-articulated basis for rejecting the site as presented to the Congress. Participation in the NRC licensing proceeding and subsequent court reviews will also be damaged. The governor and the Legislature have one and only one course of action available. As soon as is humanly possible they must enlist the resources which are available to perfect a cogent and persuasive statement of reasons to accompany their anticipated notice of disapproval. Harry W. Swainston, special legal counsel to Technology Research Associates Corp. in Boulder Colo., is a former special deputy attorney general for the state of Nevada. Charles B. Archambeau, president of Technology Research Associates Corp., was a professor of geophysics at California Institute of Technology and the University of Colorado. Jerry S. Szymanski, vice president and chief geologist for Technology Research Associates Corp., is a former physical scientist on the Yucca Mountain Project for the U.S. Department of Energy ***************************************************************** 18 Yucca tours seen as lobbying efforts March 23, 2001 By Benjamin Grove LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON -- Energy Department officials at Yucca Mountain last year played host to 4,200 visitors who toured the proposed nuclear waste dump. But the DOE, which by law is required to maintain a neutral stance on the controversial project, won't disclose the identities of people who trekked to the desert for any of the tours. The department manages ongoing studies and site preparation at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and has led most of the hard-hat tours inside the mountain's tunnel. In a few other cases, the nuclear power industry's top lobby group hosted federal and state politicians on trips to Las Vegas for Yucca tours. Critics say those trips offered "propaganda" -- biased visions of the site's ability to safely store 77,000 tons of the nation's nuclear waste. While a Yucca guest list offers a telling sample of the varied interests that have a stake in the project, disclosing the names of tourists is illegal, DOE officials said. "That information is protected by the privacy act," DOE spokeswoman Jacqueline Johnson said in Washington. However, the identity of Yucca visitors is not a complete mystery. Some of them brag about their trips. Georgia Rep. Sue Burmeister took a two-night trip to Yucca in December with a group of lawmakers from Michigan and South Carolina -- a trip paid for by the nuclear power industry's top lobby group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. Upon her return, she promptly penned a letter to her hometown newspaper, the Augusta Chronicle, praising Yucca as a safe site for the nation's nuclear waste, specifically the spent uranium fuel from nuclear reactors in her state. Her husband is an engineer at the Vogtle nuclear plant near their home. "Yucca Mountain and the Yucca Mountain Project are located approximately 100 miles from Las Vegas in the most desolate place I have ever seen," Burmeister wrote in the January letter. "There is nothing there except rocks, dirt, sagebrush and tumbleweed." Several people wrote responses, criticizing Burmeister for suggesting that Nevada is a desolate patch of desert. Burmeister said they had misunderstood her. "I think the desert is gorgeous," Burmeister told the Sun. "I love Las Vegas, but I felt as though it would be a very safe site. My whole reason for going out there was for my own knowledge and to better represent the nuclear industry. We went out there already pro-nuclear, so to speak. It really reinforced my opinion that where we should go in this country is with nuclear energy." That kind of publicity is important to the NEI. The lobby pays for about six trips a year to Yucca for federal and state lawmakers from areas that rely on nuclear power, NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes said. NEI officials hope the Republican president and Republican-controlled Congress this year will spur the Yucca Mountain project toward completion. "We think it makes perfect sense to be able to go to the site and see what the issues are and talk first-hand with the scientists and the geologists who work there," Kerekes said. Kerekes said NEI does not encourage state lawmakers to actively lobby when they return. "That's up to them to do what they see fit with the information," he said. South Carolina Rep. Charles Sharpe, R-Aiken, also went on the NEI-paid trip to Yucca in December. Sharpe, who represents a district that includes the DOE's Savannah River site, which stores and handles government nuclear wastes, said he was concerned the DOE had not yet finished "fighting the state of Nevada" and obtained a permit to dump the South Carolina waste at Yucca. "I wanted to make sure we were on track to move the stuff," Sharpe said. "It was worth the trip because now we can at least tell the people in our state that the federal government is moving in the right direction. I think the federal government has dragged its feet long enough." Sharpe added that they stayed in an inexpensive Las Vegas hotel. "There wasn't any games or shows or nothing," Sharpe said. "It was strictly a business trip." Other clues about Yucca visitors are found in weekly status reports sent from the DOE's Las Vegas office to headquarters in Washington, which routinely list tour groups -- without names. The Sun obtained the reports from the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, the state's DOE watchdog office, which also get copies. The reports show that diverse organizations go to Yucca for tours: curious Nevadans, nuclear-industry executives, media, politicians, church groups, highway patrol officers, hobbyists. "It's very much a worthwhile trip," said John Wirtz, a Nevada organizer of Sam's Radio Hams, a 87-rig group of recreational vehicle and amateur radio operators who travel the Southwest. The group toured Yucca this month. "It's very impressive -- the magnitude of it. It's just enormous, and it's still really just in the testing phase," Wirtz said. Congress in 1987 launched DOE studies at Yucca Mountain to determine if it is a safe place to construct an underground burial site for high-level radioactive waste. The DOE spent $6.7 billion as of September on the $58 billion project. Nuclear industry officials say Yucca is the key to their future. Utilities can no longer afford to store the waste at their plants. Nevada lawmakers say the site threatens human health, the environment and the economy. Tour groups range widely in their opinions of the project, DOE spokeswoman Gayle Fisher said. In a given week, DOE officials may host both vehement anti-Yucca activists and supportive nuclear-industry officials, she said. During a four-week period in February and March, DOE led 296 people in 17 groups through the tunnel and to the top of the mountain, according to reports. The groups included representatives from the Churchill County Planning Commission, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which produces sophisticated intelligence information to the nation's military, and University of Iowa geology students. "We'll give anyone a tour," Fisher said. The daylong tours, which usually run four days a week, are coordinated to not interfere with ongoing work inside the mountain, Fisher said. DOE's tour budget was $280,000 last year, which includes two full-time staffers who schedule and organize the trips. "We feel it's important to let people know about (Yucca) if they are interested," Fisher said. Prominent Yucca tourists include Gov. Kenny Guinn, the first sitting governor to visit the site. He toured Yucca last year and said the trip emboldened his opposition to it. Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera visited the site this month with other county officials. "Part of their strategy, from the moment you arrive at the visitors center, is to make this look like a foregone conclusion," Herrera said. "Obviously, I don't think that's the case at all." But the tours also are informative and offer a valuable up-close look at the site, many agree. Even Herrera recommends the tour. What has many Nevada officials worried are the Nuclear Energy Institute-sponsored trips. "They're propaganda tours," Herrera said. When asked, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects technicians accompany visitors on tours to offer an anti-project perspective, agency director Bob Loux said. But when Loux has offered to tag along on NEI tours, officials decline, he said. Kerekes also declined to say who NEI hosted on recent trips. Some are members of Congress or congressional staffers, according to trip records filed in the House and Senate. Last year NEI spent about $4,200 for trips for four House staffers who work for lawmakers on the House Energy Committee. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 Editorial: Alaskans: Not in our back yard March 23, 2001 Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles is known for his indifference to the environment. After all, Knowles and Alaska's congressional delegation want to open up the environmentally fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and natural gas drilling. It would take something extraordinary, then, to turn Knowles into a veritable "tree hugger." Well, it just so happens that the prospect of England and France shipping nuclear materials to Japan by sea -- via the Arctic Ocean near Alaska -- has him scared silly. What makes this deliciously ironic for Nevadans is that Knowles' fellow Alaskan, U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski, has led the charge to bury 70,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Not only have we had to endure years of Murkowski's malarkey about how safe it is to bury nuclear waste here, but he also has told us how safe it is to ship it clear across the nation to Nevada. That, of course, brings us back to Knowles. The Anchorage Daily News reported Tuesday that Knowles was so troubled about the prospect of radioactive substances spilling into waters near Alaska that he wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell. "Any accidental release of this material could have a devastating effect on the fragile Arctic environment and the health and welfare of the people who live there," Knowles said. Powell wrote back that Japan doesn't currently have plans for nuclear shipments through the Arctic Ocean. But if they did go forward, Powell wrote that the U.S. government would seek to ensure that "they would be carried out safely and without any risk to the environment." Hmmm. That sounds like the same hollow guarantees that Nevadans have received from the federal government (and Murkowski, too) about the Yucca Mountain Project. Good luck, Governor Knowles, you're going to need it if th e government treats Alaska the way it has dealt with Nevada. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 Inyo County faces hazardous waste transport issues *March 24, 2001* CHUCK MUELLER Dangers related to hauling hazardous wastes loom as a potential threat to remote southern Inyo County, compounding a problem growing out of a funding crisis that could shut down the area's fire and ambulance service. Shipments of hazardous waste from California are trucked daily on Highway 127 to a storage site at nearby Beatty, Nev., said Brian Brown, acting chairman of the Southern Inyo Fire Protection District. "And about a quarter of the low-level nuclear waste sent to the Nevada nuclear test site also is hauled by truck along the same route," he said. Some future shipments of high-level radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants also are expected to be transported through the area to the U.S. Department of Energy's proposed Yucca Mountain storage site. The site, 1,000 feet beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, is undergoing a licensing procedure through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It could be opened for storage by 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reports. The Department of Energy also plans to ship low-level nuclear wastes from Nevada to a permanent storage site in New Mexico. To bypass Las Vegas, trucks will haul those wastes along Highway 127, south to Interstate 15, and eventually to Interstate 40 eastward through Arizona to New Mexico. "We need to ensure that local agencies are trained and funded to deal with this issue," said Bob Kennedy, coordinator for Inyo County's Office of Emergency Services. Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, whose congressional district includes Inyo County, is working to ensure that the county receives federal funds linked to the transport of nuclear waste, said aide Jim Specht. Brown said the Southern Inyo fire district budget, now down to about $18,000, was supplemented last year with $25,000 from $300,000 that Inyo County received in connection with shipment of hazardous wastes along Highway 127. It had been hoped, he said, that the money would tide the district over until a bond issue was authorized by voters. It failed, and Brown said the county did not provide supplemental funds this year. Radioactive wastes now stored at commercial nuclear power plants and Department of Energy repositories across the nation would be sent to Yucca Mountain. About 90 percent would be from commercial nuclear plants. Shipments are expected to originate from 35 states with nuclear reactors and government weapons facilities. Hauled in heavily-shield casks, the shipments would be certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withstand extreme accidents, impact, puncture and exposure to fire and water. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste shipments are extremely hazardous and require extraordinary precautions and vigilance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will help states and counties develop emergency response plans, including training and equipping emergency teams and medical staffs to deal with potential problems. ***************************************************************** 21 Letter: Waste shipments - GLENN A. REPP The Dallas Morning News: Letters for Sunday 03/25/2001 Waste shipments Nuclear engineer Ramon L. Ashley implies that cities have nothing to fear from nuclear waste shipments over the Interstate highway system ("Risk of waste shipments is overblown," Viewpoints, March 19. My concerns, as mayor of Duncanville, through which these shipments must pass, are those of a pragmatist: one who understands the concept of cause and effect. During the next 25 years, between 35,000 and 100,000 shipments of nuclear waste are scheduled for shipment to the disposal site at Los Alamos, N.M. All of the waste generated east of the Mississippi River will pass through Duncanville on I-20. This is in addition to all of the hazardous waste *already* routed on I-20, designated a "hazardous cargo route." Between 50 and 260 highway transportation accidents and 250 to 590 incidents are calculated to occur over the operating life of the Los Alamos depository. While accidents severe enough to cause a failure of the "transport cask" and a resulting release of radioactive material are likely to be extremely rare, the potential exists, nevertheless, for serious accidents to occur. The greater concern, however, has to do with the everyday risk of trucks transporting hazardous material through our city on an Interstate highway which has had few, if any, safety improvements since it opened in 1974. While median barriers, which safely separate traffic moving in opposite directions, are scheduled for construction in Dallas County in the next two years, Duncanville still is without service roads along I-20. Consider what can happen when – not if – a hazardous material incident shuts down I-20 within our city limits. Remember the collision involving an ammunition truck on I-635 in an uninhabited section of eastern Dallas several months ago? All westbound traffic was held up for six hours. Because there are no continuous service roads, affected traffic will naturally divert to our city streets, creating a monumental traffic jam. Everything will come to a standstill awaiting response from the Department of Energy Albuquerque Field Office Emergency Operations Center which is in charge of any incident involving shipment of transuranic waste, regardless of where it occurs. We are not crying "nuclear wolf"! The danger we fear is not radiation, but traffic bottlenecks. The solution lies in the construction of continuous service roads along I-20 throughout the metroplex. The funds should come from the governmental institutions, federal and state, that caused the situation by designating it a "Transuranic Waste" shipment route. It is unfair and inappropriate for the citizens of Duncanville to bear this burden alone. GLENN A. REPP Mayor, Duncanville Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/editorial/letters/320469_secondsundayle.html © 2001 DallasNews.com ***************************************************************** 22 Nuclear waste site proposed HoustonChronicle.com *March 24, 2001, 12:03AM* Foes decry effort for radioactive dump in West Texas By KRISTINA SHEVORY Associated Press AUSTIN -- Texas could become the nation's largest nuclear waste dump under a bill that sets up the state's first radioactive disposal site, environmentalists say. "This bill would make West Texas a nuclear mega-mall," said Erin Rogers, grass-roots coordinator for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. Some lawmakers disagree. They say that the bill allows Texas to meet its requirements to contain the waste under a compact agreement with Maine and Vermont. The compact -- passed by Congress in the 1990s -- is part of a nationwide plan to store low-level radioactive waste regionally. Low-level radioactive waste is produced as a byproduct of medical, research and industrial activities and through the operation of nuclear power plants. "This bill tries to meet the obligations of Texas under the compact, and to meet the needs and demands of the state," said Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, author of Senate Bill 1541. The compact protects the states involved from having to accept waste from other states. Maine and Vermont are close to capacity, while Texas has no permanent site. Under the bill, a county would be able to contract with a private company to build a storage facility. The state would own the land where the site is located, as well as the waste itself. The contractor would be paid with fees charged to waste producers. The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission would manage and license the operation to ensure the safety of the state. The Sierra Club's Texas chapter sees problems with this arrangement. Environmentalists say that Texas taxpayers will assume all liability for the waste after 20 years. The Senate Natural Resources Committee, of which Duncan is vice chairman, heard testimony on the bill last week to learn more about the proposed waste site. Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, has introduced a companion, House Bill 3420. The proposed waste site would be the state's first permanent storage facility. There are 59 radioactive waste generators in Texas, according to the state Bureau of Radiation Control. Many of these sites must store their waste at their own locations in specialized containers. Nuclear power plants send some of their waste to a site out of state, but in eight years that facility will be closed to Texas radioactive waste producers. Duncan's bill would allow these producers to send their radioactive rubbish to one centralized storage site. One contender lobbying hard to be home to that facility is Andrews County, located northwest of Midland. "There is no place in Texas or the U.S. with a better educated citizenry, who has a real understanding of this issue," said Lloyd Eisenrich, president of the Andrews Industrial Foundation. "We offer ourselves as a solution to your problem." The AIF is an organization devoted to economic development in Andrews County, whose sole industry is oil and gas. Eisenrich said residents of the single-community county supported the bill -- numerous organizations there had signed resolutions calling for the waste site -- and that the county had been educating its citizens about the proposed facility. Over the next 35 years, Texas, Maine and Vermont are expected to produce 2.7 million cubic feet of waste. Approximately 75 percent of it will come from dismantling nuclear power plants, according to the TNRCC. HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Local This article is: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/857995 ***************************************************************** 23 Energy producers call Bush's tune [Thestar.com] Mar. 25, 12:34 EDT David Crane STAR COLUMNIST WHEN JOHN Kennedy ran for president against Richard Nixon, he made a big point of claiming there was a ``missile crisis.'' The Soviets, he said, had a big lead over the United States and, thus, the Americans were vulnerable to a devastating nuclear first strike. The missile crisis turned out to be a phony crisis. Now, we have President George W. Bush claiming the U. S. faces an ``energy crisis.'' This, too, is a phony crisis. There is no global shortage of oil, new supplies of natural gas can and will be brought onstream, and dealing with current shortages of electricity and gasoline refining capacity are manageable challenges. And if the Bush administration was serious about energy - or the environment - it would be putting energy efficiency at the heart of its energy policy, not tax breaks and weaker environmental policies to boost supply. What's driving the Bush administration is quite different - a payoff to the U.S. oil, gas, coal and utility industries, which want tax breaks, subsidies and relaxation of environmental constraints and which contributed heavily to the Republican party in last year's U.S. presidential and congressional elections. These industries form something called the U.S. Energy Association and, according to the Wall Street Journal, contributed more than $20 million (U.S.) to the Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee and ``are likely to have a strong influence over the administration's new energy policy.'' The energy group recently called for a wide range of tax and regulatory incentives to boost production. It also opposed the Kyoto Protocol requirements for greenhouse gas emissions, saying any action by the energy industry should be voluntary. The New York Times has noted that oil, gas and coal industries gave ``record-breaking sums'' to Republicans last year, adding that while environmentalists will be lobbying against the supply-driven energy plan, the powerful oil, gas and coal industries are not too concerned. What these corporate interests lack in their ability to mobilize the grassroots, ``they make up for in money and powerful connections,'' the paper said. Bush himself is a failed oil company promoter while Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice have strong ties to energy producers. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who for years as a senator tried to have the U.S. energy department abolished, has been a critic of federal gasoline taxes and the single largest recipient of political funding from the auto industry. And the energy industry has already scored some victories, with the Bush administration endorsing a Republican energy bill in the U.S. Senate that's loaded with benefits for the energy companies, including opening up wilderness areas to oil and gas exploration. In addition, Bush recently broke an election pledge, stating that he will not require coal-burning power plants to meet tougher standards for carbon dioxide emissions despite the threat of climate change. The American people, in the meantime, are being conditioned for Bush's massive payback to the energy industry for its investment in last year's Republican victories. In a recent speech, Abraham declared that the United States was now faced with ``the most serious energy shortage since the days of oil embargoes and gas lines.'' And, he solemnly warned, ``the failure to meet the challenge will threaten our nation's economic prosperity, compromise our national security, and literally alter the way we live our lives.'' For a gullable public, this is scary. And it will be reinforced by skilful public relations manipulation by the energy companies as well. It is true that the U.S. has some problems, most particularly in California where ill-conceived policy, enacted by Republicans in response to industry lobbying, has created a shortage of electrical generating power. But that doesn't constitute a national energy crisis. And Americans do have to renovate their electric power distribution system after years of neglect. But none of this requires an array of tax giveaways and environmental deregulation to increase supply, especially given today's much higher prices for oil and gas. It is hard to take the U. S. seriously when Bush claims the way to address future needs is to boost supply, instead of re-examining the greedy American appetite for energy. Instead of tax breaks for oil companies to find more oil, the answer should include higher energy taxes to encourage energy efficiency, with less damage to the environment. But this is one price signal the Republicans oppose. *David Crane is The Star's economics editor. His column appears Tuesday to Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. He can be reached at crane@interlog.comby e-mail. contact us or send email to Webmaster@thestar.com. ***************************************************************** 24 U.S.-Led Plant Beset by Delays (washingtonpost.com) [KEDO] Tetrapods at a nuclear reactor site in North Korea being built by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO). (KEDO) *By Doug Struck* Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, March 25, 2001; Page A1 SEOUL – For five hours, a powerful South Korean ferry churned toward the eastern shore of North Korea last week and unloaded an unlikely cargo: 207 men from Uzbekistan, brought to the impoverished country to replace striking North Korean construction workers at a U.S.-led atomic power plant site. Their arrival was a sign of the latest trouble at the project. Seven years after the United States promised to build two "safe" nuclear plants in a deal to end North Korea's nuclear program, the project is beset with ills. Planned to be finished in two more years, it will not be completed until the end of this decade – if then. Meanwhile, the United States and other countries must supply fuel oil to North Korea at costs that have quadrupled. North Korea faces a crucial requirement of revealing its nuclear past before the first plant can be finished, and when the plant is completed, it may not be able to plug into North Korea's feeble power system. The Bush administration is looking skeptically at the project, some key Republican senators are demanding changes, and North Korea is rumbling with propaganda threats mentioning "war" if the project is not carried forward. But despite all those woes, almost no one involved with the project expects it to be abandoned. "There's just no alternative," said Chang Sun Sup, the South Korean ambassador and chairman of the board of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, known as KEDO. The full extent of the delays, confirmed in recent interviews but not yet publicly acknowledged by KEDO, threatens to increase costs and make an empty promise of the agreement touted as the Clinton administration's greatest foreign policy achievement in Asia. There are many critics on all shores who think it will never be done. "This is mission impossible," said Jhe Seong Ho, an international law expert in Seoul and a government adviser on KEDO. "It's now in the seventh year, and not much has been done. Realistically, this KEDO plan doesn't look like it's going to work." "KEDO is almost dead," agreed Yukiko Fukawgawa, a Korea expert at Aoyama University in Tokyo. "It makes no sense," said Henry Sokolski, head of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington. President Bush drew the biggest question mark over the project March 7 when he said he does not believe the North Koreans can be trusted. "I do have some skepticism about the leader of North Korea," he said at a news conference with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung. "We're not certain as to whether or not they're keeping all terms of all agreements." But even aides to Bush, despite the president's remarks, acknowledge there is no evidence of North Korean cheating. Experts on both sides say the agreement has been honored more strictly by North Korea than by the United States. "North Korea has lived up to their part" of the agreement, said Han Sung Joo, South Korea's foreign minister when the deal was negotiated. "The question is, has the U.S. moved the goal posts along the way?" Defenders of the project say that despite the delays in construction, the plan already has paid handsome dividends. "This has kept the nuclear activities of North Korea frozen for seven years. And it has been the initial stage of a sea change in Korea," Desaix Anderson, the executive director of KEDO, said in a telephone interview from New York. "You can stop it now only if you want to pay the cost: a strong risk of military conflict," he said. Even critics say the project is irreversible – in some form – to avoid returning to a tense standoff with North Korea. "Even the conservatives in Korea think cancellation is too dangerous," acknowledged Jhe. As the debate simmers, about 1,000 workers – most of them South Korean – have been carving into land at the site 20 miles north of Sinpo on the North Korean coastline to prepare for construction of the first plant. They have leveled part of a mountain to get to bedrock, built roads and bridges to haul in equipment, and constructed a breakwater for the barges expected to bring reactor components from Japan, South Korea and the United States. And they are building the housing, water pumps and purifying plants for up to 10,000 employees who may work there at the peak of construction. They labor in a country in dire need of electricity. North Korea's factories have been idled and its homes routinely blacked out as both the economy and the country's old Soviet-made infrastructure have crumbled. The project was born in a close brush with war. In 1994, President Bill Clinton ordered battle plans and reinforcements readied to attack North Korea over suspicions that it had removed fuel rods from a small nuclear power plant to reprocess them for weapons. According to the accounts that emerged later from participants, Clinton and his cabinet were close to giving the approval to move troops into position when former president Jimmy Carter raced to Pyongyang and brokered a settlement. The eventual result was called the Agreed Framework. North Korea promised to shelve its nuclear power operations. The United States, Japan and South Korea promised to construct two light water reactors, a design that experts say does not produce plutonium that can easily be converted for weapons, at a cost of $4.6 billion. The first nuclear reactor was to be finished by 2003. The supply contract outlining the construction was supposed to be finished in six months. It took two years. And that was only the start of the delays. There is plenty of finger-pointing about who is responsible. The North Koreans proved to be intractable negotiators, wrangling for months over the tiniest details, to the bewilderment of their counterparts. "They need the power so badly, it would have been far better for them just to accept any condition and get the power plant a lot sooner. But making concessions is not in their culture," said an official involved in the negotiations who requested anonymity. Unexpected political crises also buffeted the schedule. In 1996, a furor arose when a North Korean spy submarine accidentally ran aground off South Korea, leading to gun battles with the crew. In 1998, North Korea fired a Taepodong rocket over Japan. In 1999 North and South Korean gunboats exchanged fire on disputed waters. Each incident chilled contacts between the parties for a period, further slowing progress. "All of these eroded the political support for the project," said Chun Yung Woo, former chief manager of South Korea's KEDO office. "They took the steam out of it." But there were delays by the United States, too. To the amazement of those who knew the crisis that produced it, the project seemed to quickly move to a back burner in Washington. A key provision of the agreement, highly sought by North Korea despite its public belligerence toward Washinton, was a promise by the United States to relax sanctions and improve ties with Pyongyang. It didn't happen. Only in 1999, after North Korea threatened to fire a second Taepodong long-range missile, did the United States begin to formally end trade sanctions in return for a missile test moratorium by Pyongyang. North Korea remains on the U.S. list of states sponsoring terrorism, locking it out of much-needed aid from international financial organizations. Equally problematic was the U.S. pledge to provide North Korea with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil annually until the first reactor is built. Congress has balked as the increase in oil prices boosted the cost from about $25 million in 1995 to $100 million this year. The Clinton administration scrambled to find other donors – "We went with a tin cup, even to Vietnam," said one official – but there is no guarantee Bush will do the same. The most recent blow came when General Electric, which was supposed to supply the main turbine generators for the reactors, pulled out of the project in December. GE demanded that the United States and South Korea take all the risk for liability if there were any nuclear-related accidents at the plants, and the governments refused. "Two years were unnecessarily wasted over the liability issue," said Chun. "The United States went to extreme lengths to avoid any legal liability. And when the direct party to the agreement is so obsessed with avoiding any responsibility, Japan and South Korea could hardly do more." GE's place was filled by a Japanese corporation, Hitachi-Toshiba, which is not so demanding about liability. "It seemed the Americans lack the will to carry out this agreement," said Jhe. "North Korea has kept its promise word for word. They have frozen their nuclear program" said Hak Soon Paik, a North Korea specialist with the Sejong Institute in Seoul, an independent think tank. "But the Americans haven't kept their promises." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said the administration will honor the deal, in a statement widely seen here as revealing divisions in the Bush administration over Korea policy. But key Republican senators want the United States to replace the plans for a nuclear plant with coal burning generators, and they say they think Bush will agree. "Bush's insistence on verification will make it very unlikely that the nuclear reactors will ever be completed in North Korea," Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said in a recent speech in Washington. KEDO and its contractors blanch at the idea. They say such a replacement would not save money or time; all the agreements won after years of torturous bargaining would have to be rewritten, contracts would be broken and new sites would have to be picked for smaller coal-fired plants. Furthermore, South Korea, which is paying 70 percent of the cost and also getting most of the contract business, would balk. "It is just not feasible," agreed Ambassador Chang. The substitution is urged by opponents such as Sokolski, writing in The Washington Post, who warned that the KEDO project, "when fully implemented would result in a massive expansion of North Korea's nuclear materials production base. It could produce between 75 to 150 bombs' worth of nuclear material annually." "That is sheer nonsense," said Cheon Seong Whun, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification and a skeptic of North Korean intentions. "It's so misleading it makes me mad." Such extraction is hugely difficult and would require a large reprocessing effort far beyond North Korea's technical or financial means, he and other experts said. And the fuel in the plant will be under strict control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). North Korea has reacted angrily to the prospect of a unilateral change in the deal. Such a move would be "tantamount to a declaration of war," Radio Pyongyang and Korean Central Radio said Monday. Observers dismiss that as shrill propaganda. But they do not dismiss Pyongyang's past pattern of provoking a crisis to engage in brinkmanship bargaining. Even without a change, the project faces more hurdles. North Korea must meet IAEA standards before crucial nuclear components will be delivered. That will involve allowing "special inspections" of sites where IAEA experts may find evidence that North Korea lied when it denied it had diverted plutonium to try to make fuel for an atomic bomb. Some say North Korea will balk at those inspections. Others disagree. "All it takes is for Kim Jong Il to 'discover' that their past statements were in error" when they denied they had diverted plutonium. "It's not like he cares about his international reputation, or that he needs to 'spin' it for domestic consumption" to account for the inconsistency, said one official. North Korea also needs to find a way to rebuild its power grid. There is universal agreement the grid is so decrepit that hooking a reactor to it risks a nuclear accident. KEDO has refused North Korean requests to do the work, roughly estimated to cost between $300 to $700 million. Anderson, who is ending a 3½-year term as executive director, is unperturbed. He said he believes Pyongyang will get financial help from somewhere to rebuild the grid in time, or a technical solution involving grid-sharing with South Korea and China might be devised. "Its inevitable that a complex situation like this would not go perfectly," he said. "But everybody needs this." © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 25 German Greens torn by revolt over nuclear phase-out plans ISSUE 2130 Sunday 25 March 2001 By Tony Paterson in Berlin THOUSANDS of anti-nuclear protesters are planning a demonstration tomorrow to disrupt the first shipment of reprocessed atomic waste to Germany for four years. They will be met by more than 15,000 riot police and border guards who have been drafted in as an armoured train takes the radioactive waste to a storage depot near the village of Gorleben, in Lower Saxony. Officials fear violence, and dozens of temporary prison cells in portable cabins have been set up for arrested troublemakers. The demonstration has been organised by Germany's powerful anti-nuclear movement, which says that the federal government of Social Democrats and Greens has not been radical enough in its . The action is a particular embarrassment to the Greens in the coalition, who have hailed the resumption of shipments of German waste from a French reprocessing plant as an important step in the nuclear phase-out plan. Jurgen Trittin, the Green Party Environment Minister, maintains that the return of spent fuel heralds "the beginning of the end of nuclear power" in Germany. "No other industrial country is abandoning nuclear power more quickly," he said last week. Mr Trittin's appeals, however, have failed to convince protesters, who oppose such shipments. Wolfgang Ehmke, a veteran protester from the Gorleben area, said: "The Greens in government no longer consider themselves part of the anti-nuclear movement. We will not allow ourselves to be gagged." Demonstrators are expected to descend tomorrow on Gorleben where they will try to block the progress of the train carrying the waste in reinforced steel containers. The region was the scene of previous anti-nuclear protests before the government called a temporary halt to such shipments four years ago. This time, officials are attempting to defuse potential unrest by dispatching 130 police "conflict managers", dressed in bright red anoraks, who will be on hand to negotiate with protesters. Early signs of trouble came last Wednesday when masked protesters attacked the Berlin offices of German Rail, which will ship the nuclear waste. They shattered 78 windows, threw tear gas grenades and fled on bicycles. It was the ninth attack on railway buildings since plans for the nuclear shipment were announced. The protest movement's website carries detailed instructions on how to use grappling irons to cripple the railway's overhead power cables, damage lines and tunnel under roads to prevent nuclear waste shipments by lorry. Opposition is not confined to militants. Jochen Flasbarth, the director of Germany's environmental umbrella group, Naturschutzbund, said: "We will continue to exert pressure because the dangers of atomic energy have not been reduced." The Green Party had not bargained for this rank-and-file rebellion which has split the environmental movement and may cost the party votes in the next general election, due in 2004. The party sees the scrapping of nuclear power as one of its main policy objectives. Despite considerable opposition from within the nuclear industry, Mr Trittin was able to announce last year that he had achieved a consensus with energy providers, establishing a basis for a complete end to atomic power over the next 20 years. Under the arrangement, the industry agreed to end nuclear reprocessing by 2005. The first part of the deal involves Germany fulfilling its legal obligation to France by taking back nuclear fuel rods sent to a plant at La Hague for reprocessing. The waste remains highly radioactive and must be carefully stored. In an attempt to placate grassroots opinion, Claudia Roth, the Green Party leader, insisted last week that the anti-nuclear movement had every right to demonstrate peacefully at Gorleben. Waning support for the Greens is not confined to the anti-nuclear lobby. The party's wholesale commitment to abandoning nuclear power is being undermined by warnings from scientists that the resulting, inevitable increase in the use of fossil fuels will speed up global warming. No law has yet been passed that formally ratifies the abandonment of nuclear power. Wrangling over the final draft continues between Mr Trittin and the Industry Minister, Werner Mueller. Fears remain that any future law could be challenged either by the energy providers or by the anti-nuclear lobby in Germany's constitutional court, which could rule it null and void. None of the parties involved has been able to answer a vital question posed by the shutdown plan: where to store the atomic waste - which remains radioactive for 24,000 years - that will accrue from the country's 19 nuclear plants when they close. Plans have been drawn up for the provision of so-called final depots for nuclear waste by 2030, but if Gorleben is anything to go by, opposition to such sites is likely to be considerable. ***************************************************************** 26 Temelin Disconnected From Grid Again Because of Leaking Valve Central Europe Online - PRAGUE, Mar 24, 2001 -- (CTK - Czech News Agency) The nuclear power plant Temelin was on Thursday connected to the grid for eight hours only, and the staff today had to lower output of the reactor to 4 percent because of a leaking oil control valve in the first block and disconnect the turbine from the grid. In the past Temelin was twice connected to the grid for a few hours. The current one is another in a series of faults discovered since last September when the first block was launched. The following is a chronology of shutdowns and failures at the power plant: September 9, 2000 - Launch of reactor of the first block began. September 21, 2000 - Steam leakage put off the granting of permit for fuel activation. The State Authority for Nuclear Safety SUJB ordered that tests be repeated. After it found that one of the tests was not successful, the reactor's output was lowered. October 9, 2000 - SUJB granted permit for the launch of the first block. November 18, 2000 - Automatic shutdown of the first block. SUJB spokesman Pavel Pittermann said it was no accident and no failure of the equipment. December 16, 2000 - Fission reaction halted due to the failure of condensation pumps. December 18, 2000 - First block relaunched. December 21, 2000 - Temelin launched first electricity supplies to the grid. December 22, 2000 - Oil leakage in one of the valves controlling steam supplies to the turbine resulted in the block's shutdown. Output was lowered to less than 3 percent of the nominal output. January 7, 2001 - Tests carried out within the power start-up continued and the reactor had to be automatically shut down after instability of the block's regime was registered in the secondary, non-nuclear part of the plant. January 12, 2001 - Oil leak at the first reactor of the Temelin nuclear power station, which caused fire, was extinguished by a fire squad, and the accident had no impact on the power station's nuclear safety. January 17, 2001 - Temelin staff ended another series of planned tests and shut down the reactor of the first block for almost a month in order to revise the block and remove vibrations of the pipes leading to the turbine. January 31, 2001 - Staff of Skoda Praha, who shared in the repair of vibrating pipes, replaced part of the pipes in which a crack was found. February 25, 2001 - Reactor of the first block restarted. February 27, 2001 - Temelin staff connected the turbine to the grid again, and Temelin's output for several hours stood at 100 MW. March 8, 2001 - Temelin staff completed tests of the substage of the power start-up with output of the reactor to 30 percent, and shut down the reactor. March 13, 2001 - Fault in a switchboard in the second block of the power plant set the switchboard on fire, with damage estimated at CZK 5,000. March 18, 2001 - Staff launched fission reaction again after ten days. March 22, 2001 - Temelin staff on Thursday night discovered a leaking oil control valve and around 21:00 halted measurements and tests in the substage where the reactor's output should not exceed 55 percent. Vaclav Brom of Temelin's press department said that Skoda Praha employees today indicated the leak, from which tens of liters of oil had escaped. The reactor's output was reduced to 4 percent and will remain there until the faulty valve is repaired. *((c) 2001 CTK - Czech News Agency)* ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Court won't hear appeal to remove bell in Oak Ridge March 24, 2001 From staff reports OAK RIDGE -- The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal to remove a Japanese temple bell erected as a symbol of peace in this city that helped build the first atomic bomb. The high court, without comment, declined Feb. 20 to consider the appeal from Robert Brooks, Oak Ridge city attorney Tammy Dunn said. Brooks, an Oak Ridge resident, claimed the bell was a religious symbol that violated the separation of church and state when it was installed in the city's Alvin K. Bissell Park in 1996. Like some other World War II veterans, Brooks was particularly upset that the bell seemed to stand as "atonement for the atomic bomb victims of Japan." The 4-ton bronze bell was designed in Oak Ridge, cast in Japan, and paid for with $200,000 in private donations. It was installed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of Oak Ridge, a once-secret city that produced the nuclear fuel for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. ***************************************************************** 2 Thurmond presses for SRS project funds [charlotte.com] Published Saturday, March 24, 2001 Thurmond presses for SRS project funds *New plutonium plant at center of debate * *Associated Press * AIKEN -- U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond wants to restore money for a proposed plutonium-treatment plant at the Savannah River Site and has criticized Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham for his decision to suspend funding. "While I recognize that you face a daunting task at the Department of Energy, I hope that in the future, you will extend me the courtesy of a consultation before finalizing your position on projects scheduled for my state or in my areas of interest," the Aiken Republican wrote Spencer on Thursday. The Energy Department's proposed budget for fiscal year 2002 eliminated construction money to build the $1.2billion "plutonium immobilization" plant, and the design work on the facility had been halted. Instead, the department plans to concentrate on a controversial plant that would convert used plutonium, which is highly radioactive, to mixed-oxide fuel for use in nuclear reactors. Funding for the immobilization plant would be delayed, an agency spokesman said. In Thurmond's letter, obtained by The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, the senator said he was concerned the decision to suspend the immobilization effort would endanger agreements with Russia to dispose of surplus plutonium, a radioactive metal used in nuclear weapons. "This is definitely an issue that the senator is very concerned about," said Thurmond's spokeswoman, Genevieve Erny. "Funding for this is a priority." The immobilization plant, the only option favored by many nuclear watchdog groups, would dispose of about 19tons of surplus plutonium by baking it into ceramic pucks. The pucks would be encased in stainless-steel canisters filled with radioactive glass, then buried elsewhere. The canisters' radioactivity would make it dangerous and difficult for anyone to retrieve the plutonium inside for reuse in nuclear weapons, Energy Department officials have said. Many environmental groups oppose the other plant that would make the mixed-oxide fuel from plutonium. Critics argue that the cost, estimated at $3billion, far outweighs the benefits. SRS officials also continue to monitor a leaky tank of radioactive waste. The leak was found Jan. 12 with the discovery that about 90gallons of waste had puddled in a saucerlike steel vessel beneath the tank. Engineers think Tank 6 leaked from two small cracks near the top of the vessel, said Dean Campbell, a spokesman for Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which operates the nuclear complex for the Energy Department. Engineers will pump about 40,000 gallons of waste to another tank, lowering the level in Tank 6 below the two cracks, Campbell said. The 750,000-gallon tank now holds about 662,000 gallons, he said. ***************************************************************** 3 Hoya keeps quiet on nuclear dispute OPTICS.ORG - Photonics Resources for Scientists and Engineers Controversy over laser glass shipments to National Ignition Facility remains a mystery by Michael Hatcher, Opto &Laser Europe magazine Hoya Optics, US, is refusing to comment on reports that its Japanese parent company has suspended shipments of laser glass bound for the US-based National Ignition Facility (NIF). Public concern in Japan that the NIF project violates the global nuclear-weapons test-ban treaty, which the US has not signed, is thought to have prompted the current position. The 192-beam NIF project is designed to test the reliability of nuclear weapons without the need for full explosive tests. US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) spokeswoman Susan Houghton said: "Hoya senior management informed LLNL of reports in the Japanese press regarding Hoya's role in supplying laser glass to the NIF. We are respecting Hoya's request that it resolves this issue through its corporate offices in Japan. We are confident that Hoya senior management will be able to resolve any questions regarding the NIF project and its missions." Hoya also supplies optics to the French Commissariat À L'Energie Atomique (CAE), for its Megajoule project. A spokesperson for CAE expressed concern over the dispute, but added, "Although we have the same problem as NIF, we are not in urgent need of doped glass at the moment as we are only building a prototype." Hoya is also reported to share its optics shipments to NIF with Schott Glass, Germany. North America: Tel: +1 360 752 1774 | Fax +1 360 647 8433 | E-mail: International: Tel: +44 117 929 7481 | Fax +44 117 930 1178 | E-mail: ***************************************************************** 4 Editorial: Penny-Wise Evansville Courier & Press Friday, March 23, 2001 The Bush administration is making a grave mistake by cutting funds from a program designed to dismantle and safeguard Russian nuclear and chemical weapons. The Clinton administration had proposed a 50 percent increase, to $1.2 billion, and a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission had recommended spending even more, $30 billion over 10 years. Instead, Bush plans to cut the $872 million annual program by almost 10 percent, apparently not out of any strategic consideration but to save money. The decision may be penny-wise. The program helps Russia dismantle, store and secure its nuclear arms and helps pay for the conversion of weapons-grade plutonium to peaceful uses and the destruction of chemical weapons. The idea is to stop Russia’s widely dispersed and poorly guarded nuclear and chemical arsenals from being stolen or sold off on the black market. While Bush might be understandably skeptical of initiatives bequeathed him by the Clinton administration, the nonproliferation program has impeccable Republican origins. It is the brainchild of Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, one of the party’s pre-eminent foreign-policy experts. Bush should restore and, if possible, increase funding to the program. It may not fit the conventional definition of defense spending, but that is in fact what it is. ***************************************************************** 5 South Korea Think Thank: North Korea Has 3,000 Nuclear Experts Friday, March 23, 2001 [Associated Press] SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea is believed to be capable of making one or two nuclear bombs and may have about 3,000 nuclear experts trained in Russia and China, a South Korean government think tank said Friday. The Education Center of Unification said in a report that communist North Korea is believed to be able to make bombs with plutonium extracted from its Soviet-designed reactors. "Verification on whether the North has fully given up its suspected nuclear weapons program should be pushed," said the center, which is part of the government's Unification Ministry. North Korea began training nuclear specialists in the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s, and their number is now believed to reach 3,000, the report said. Under a 1994 deal with the United States, North Korea suspended its suspected nuclear weapons program. But some experts say there should be a system to verify the freeze. In return for the suspension, a consortium led by the United States, Japan and South Korea is building two light-water reactors in North Korea worth $4.6 billion. The Korean Peninsula was divided into the communist North and pro-Western South in 1945. Their 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, and the two sides are technically still at war. Inter-Korean relations improved significantly following a historic summit of their leaders in June. © News Digital Media 2000. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Lasting and grave consequences of NATO aggression for the Balkan Serbia Info News / www.serbia-info.com/news March 23, 2001 Athens, March 22 (Tanjug) - During the bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, apart from claiming numerous civilian casualties, a lasting threat to the Balkans through the use of depleted uranium and the shelling of chemical facilities have been created, it has been stressed at a meeting in Athens, today, dedicated to the consequences of the NATO aggression on our country. The meeting, on the occasion of March 24 and the second anniversary of the start of the aggression on Yugoslavia, has been organized by Greece's Balkan Friendship Society and Movement for Peace and Human Rights, with the participation of experts from Balkan countries, delegates of Greek political parties and several non-governmental and humanitarian organizations. The delegates were firmly agreed that the aggression on FRY was a wrong move and that the international community must help alleviate its consequences. "The NATO carried out an aggression on Yugoslavia without the U.N. approval and committed severe crime using the radioactive ammunition", President of the Balkan Friendship Society Panayotis Mikalakakis said opening debate. Ivan Cakalov from Bulgaria stressed that "after Chernobyl and the Gulf War, danger of radiation is minimized, but grave consequences have been discovered soon, and although, now, the damage from uranium is being denied under the West and the USA influences - it is an useless effort", Cakalov stressed. Vladimir Djukic from Medical Faculty in Belgrade, who estimated that indifference of those responsible for the fate of wounded, for their number and suffered consequences was amazing, pointed out to attempts in order to disparage the consequences of the aggression. Ljiljana Kolar-Anic from Belgrade Faculty of physical chemistry warned about long-term, lethal effect of depleted uranium, but also toxins and heavy metals released during bombing. Several participants, confirming the existence of danger from uranium projectiles, stressed the fact that states, which claimed that there was no risk, have been sending food and water to their soldiers in Kosovo, and also instructions what they can touch and where to go. At the beginning of the meeting, which Ambassador's Adviser to the FRY in Athens Mirko Jelic welcomed, expressing gratitude to organizers on the attention, which they paid to this subject, participants condemned the ethnic Albanian extremists' actions in Macedonia, which, as it was stressed, endangere peace in the Balkans. [ Home | Encyclopedia | Facts | News ] Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000 Ministry of Information Email: mirs@srbija-info.yu ***************************************************************** 7 John Mclaughlin's "One on One" - Complete Chao transcript released Copyright 2001 Federal News Service, Inc. Federal News Service March 23, 2001, Friday SECTION: PRESS CONFERENCE OR SPEECH LENGTH: 4678 words HEADLINE: JOHN MCLAUGHLIN'S "ONE ON ONE" GUEST: U.S. SECRETARY OF LABOR ELAINE CHAO SUBJECT: UNITED STATES LABOR ISSUES TAPED: FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 2001 BROADCAST: WEEKEND OF MARCH 24-25, 2001 BODY: MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The season of discontent. Spring is here, and summer's on the way, and it's not just the geese who are taking to the air. Record numbers of Americans have plans for air travel, and a record number of airline unions are ready to strike. The Bush administration is headed towards a showdown with labor. Can the travel crisis be averted, or will strikes paralyze our airports? And what is the employment outlook for our troubled economy? We'll ask Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. ANNOUNCER: The biggest obstacle to feeding the world is not the food supply; it's just politics. Who is dedicated to opening the borders to get food to the people who need it? MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Secretary Chao, welcome. SEC. CHAO: Yes. Thank you. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What is the story on nuclear-ill workers that has been getting a few headlines? SEC. CHAO: Well, you know, I am very, very concerned with the plight of workers -- energy workers who have worked in these energy and nuclear plants. I mean, they have been wonderful in terms of dedicating their lives to the service of their country, and now they are ill. And we have a responsibility to take care of them. And in 2000, October of 2000, this past year, the Congress passed an Energy Worker Compensation Act, basically to take care of these nuclear workers who have been injured on the job. The executive order was promulgated around December 7th of last year. In the statute, the Department of Labor is not mentioned as the agency that needs to take the lead and have the responsibility for this new law and this new responsibility, but the executive order issued under the previous administration put it under Labor. I am very concerned about the ability of the Department of Labor to carry out this mission. And there's a deadline -- there's a May 31st deadline for setting up the program. There's also a July 1st deadline for getting out the checks. As of now, the Department of Labor has no capability, no infrastructure, to handle this. And I'm concerned about these workers, that they be taken care of, and that they receive what is due them. Justice, on the other hand, has a program already. They're -- you know, they have something that's called the Radiation Exposure Act of 1990. And -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Under that act, these -- SEC. CHAO: Under that act, they have the -- they have experience. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So claims have been made by victims of nuclear radiation. SEC. CHAO: Yeah. Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: How many are there? SEC. CHAO: Oh, I think there are hundreds of thousands. So it's quite substantial. It's a real issue. It's a real issue. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Now, some of those were employees involved in the Nevada testing -- SEC. CHAO: Absolutely. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- of a military usage of nuclear weaponry; correct? SEC. CHAO: In the service of their country, yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. In fact, all of these workers were connected with the military application of nuclear energy, is that correct? SEC. CHAO: Yes, absolutely. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: There were some miners of uranium involved. SEC. CHAO: Right. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: But about half the number -- correct me if I've misread this -- about half the number were not actually employees, but they were downwind and they suffered from having been downwind? SEC. CHAO: That's right. That's right. So these are people who really need to be -- they have been wronged. There are real injuries. And we need to take care of them. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. Now, the last application for relief from the government, which they're entitled to under the terms of the act, when did that last application appear? SEC. CHAO: You mean the -- the act was 1990 -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. SEC. CHAO: And that was -- that gave the responsibility to the Justice Department. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Correct. SEC. CHAO: The whole issue is about -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: But what I'm saying is, the last time anyone applied for this was in 1971, is that correct? SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So this goes considerably back. SEC. CHAO: Right. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Now, the current dispute in which the Labor Department is involved is over the question of who is to take charge of this situation. SEC. CHAO: Who is best able to take care of these workers. And that's the issue. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You received a letter from Representative Ted Strickland, a Democrat -- SEC. CHAO: No, I never did. It's in the papers, but I've never seen it. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: (Laughs.) You haven't seen it? SEC. CHAO: No, I haven't seen it yet. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, let me tell you what Ted Strickland and the eight other members of the House of Representatives are saying. They're saying that your effort this past week to move this matter to the Justice Department from the Labor Department contradicts what President Clinton put into effect -- when? --last December? SEC. CHAO: December 7th. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And he gave the Department of Labor jurisdiction over the program in an executive order issued in December. SEC. CHAO: That is quite true. But on the other hand, the Department of Labor has no ability to carry out this program. There is a deadline, as I mentioned, of May 31st to set up the program; there's a deadline of July 1st to have checks out the door. We would have to build, establish, create a whole new office and a whole new process for helping these workers, because the issue here is what's called Dose Reconstruction. This is not a simple issue. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: D-O-S-E Reconstruction? SEC. CHAO: I guess so, right. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What does that mean? SEC. CHAO: Well, it's not like workman compensation, which of course the Department of Labor is in charge of. Workman compensation involves a particular -- a discrete injury, like a broken arm, broken leg. It's discrete in time as well as an injury. But with radiation exposure, we would basically -- someone would basically have to go back decades and try to reconstruct how this exposure came about, when did it come about, how much was the worker exposed. There are very complicated tables. We don't have that capability. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And that is the meaning of the world dose -- D- O-S-E --what dosage of radiation did you receive. And reconstructing that is not easy to do. SEC. CHAO: It's very difficult. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Very time-consuming. SEC. CHAO: And the Justice Department has this capability already. And so I am just concerned about the workers. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, you know, Strickland says in his letter -- the fantasy -- the phantom letter which you have not yet received, Strickland says that when the members -- as I read it -- when the members drew up -- and I'm reading from a news account. I don't have the letter either. When the members drew up this legislation in 1990, their intention was for this to sit with the Department of Labor. Do you have any reason to believe that? SEC. CHAO: No, it was given to Justice. Well, the statute said it was given to Justice. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The statute says that? SEC. CHAO: Oh, yes. The statute says give it to Justice -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, you notice that some senators have gotten into the act, too. SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Notably, Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, and George Voinovich, Ohio, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. SEC. CHAO: No, that's not true. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Is Mitch not involved? (Laughs.) SEC. CHAO: I don't think so. (Chuckles.) MR. MCLAUGHLIN: I'm joking about Mitch. He's your husband. SEC. CHAO: Yes, he is. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Okay. But the other two senators -- SEC. CHAO: I care deeply about this issue. I mean, I'm a Kentuckian, and there are Kentucky workers that are affected by this. So this is by no means any attempt to deflect responsibility. I am passionate about this issue. I want these workers to be taken care of, and I have very serious concerns that the Department of Labor is unable to take care of these workers, and I want these workers to be taken care of. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You're saying that there is an existing entity within the Justice Department, there is the -- correct? SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And there is existing manpower there -- SEC. CHAO: They have the expertise -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- there is existing expertise there. SEC. CHAO: They have the experience. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You don't have it? SEC. CHAO: We don't have it. And this comes from our career professionals. We cannot -- I can tell you right now, and, you know, we're working ahead as if we have the responsibility, so even with, you know, our preparation, we are beginning to know already that we cannot meet the deadline of July 1st in terms of sending all those checks. I'm saying that right now: We don't have the capability and we're going to miss that deadline and the workers are not going to get their checks on July 1st. And I'm concerned about that. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, who is going to resolve the matter? SEC. CHAO: I think the White House is going to have to take a look at it. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Have they indicated to you which way they are leaning? SEC. CHAO: I think on a substantive issue, I don't think there's very much doubt about that. This is obviously -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You think the statute speaks for itself? SEC. CHAO: The statute does not mention Department of Labor. It was only through an executive order -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Correct. SEC. CHAO: -- that Labor was tasked with it. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: But does the statute in any way -- I thought you indicated that the statute directed it to the Justice Department? SEC. CHAO: RECA -- the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. Right. SEC. CHAO: -- directed it to Justice. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: It did. SEC. CHAO: Yeah, in 1990. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Why do you think Clinton took that step and moved it to Labor? SEC. CHAO: Well, I think organized labor certainly would like to have this within their portfolio. I think they would be much more involved in health care issues. And they're concerned about, I think, finding a much more -- perhaps a friendly environment. But I have no problem with that. I want to do the job. I just want to do the right thing, and I'm just concerned that our department is ill-equipped and unable to help these workers who deserve help. That's my main point. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, do you think that this was -- this movement to the Department of Labor was a political effort on President Clinton's part in order to woo labor by conceding to labor's preference? SEC. CHAO: Well, I wasn't there, but I wouldn't be surprised. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You wouldn't be surprised if President Clinton could have been politically motivated in taking the actions he could; do you feel that that's a reasonable -- SEC. CHAO: I think it's possible. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Possible. We'll be right back. (Announcements.) MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The new secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, who's with us today, has an initiative of her own. She calls it the Office of the 21st Century Workplace. What does this mean? What is the office's mission? Is Madame Secretary trying to anticipate future trends? But has her enthusiasm for the new economy, which is bound up in this office, been dampened by the dot-com bust that we all -- are all suffering through? She'll answer those question in a moment, but first, here is the profile of our distinguished guest: Born: Taipei, Taiwan. Emigrated at the age of 8. Forty-seven years of age. Husband: Addison Mitchell McConnell, three-term Republican U.S. senator from Kentucky. Protestant. Republican. Mount Holyoke College, B.A. Harvard University, MBA. BankAmerica, vice president, two years. Reagan administration, Department of Transportation, various posts, including deputy secretary, five years. Reagan administration, Federal Maritime Commission, chairman, one year. Bush Sr. administration, Peace Corps, director, one year. United Way of America, president, four years. Heritage Foundation, distinguished fellow, five years. Bush administration, secretary of Labor, two months and currently. Elaine Lan Chao. Secretary Elaine Lan Chao, you've held a number of very distinguished posts in your short lifetime. SEC. CHAO: I've been very blessed. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: How do the challenges of the Labor Department rank against the challenges of the other positions of great responsibility that you have held? SEC. CHAO: I've been very blessed. You know, I have had a tremendous opportunity to work in the for-profit, nonprofit, as well the government sector. And I view all these challenges really as wonderful opportunities. I have to say one of my toughest jobs was to turn around United Way of America. I took over United Way of America during a very, very painful period in its history, and it was a period of great turmoil. But with the help of volunteers and the professional staff at United Way, we turned it around and restored overall giving and also launched a new strategic plan. So that actually was a very good experience in what I'm about to do now, because through United Way, I was able to meet with and work with a number of organized labor leaders. On the United Way board, for example, I had John Sweeney on the board; Mort Bahr, who was head of the Communications Workers of America; Vince Dombrado (sp), Joe -- Moe Biller (sp); Lynn Williams, who was head of United Steelworkers of America at the time. And so we worked together -- and very well, I might add -- for charitable causes, in raising money and in working with the United Way. So I know them, and I think they know me. And we have had some time to understand each other, and I think that's very helpful in my current role, going ahead. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, one of those you mentioned, Morton Bahr -- SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- had some nice things to say about you. Here's a quote, which you can see on the screen. SEC. CHAO: Well, Mort and I have had -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: "I believe she will be responsive to the needs of working families. We look forward to working with her." She -- he's the president of the Communications Workers of America. SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, it's nice to know that there's a love-fest going on between you and big union labor. SEC. CHAO: Well, I'm not so sure it's a love-fest. I think we understand each other. We have worked well together in the past on areas of commonalities and common interest. They know that I'm a conservative -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, you know that big labor -- SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- is somewhat in eclipse because they tied all of their fortunes to the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party is not in power in any branch of the government. Now here is the question as it pinpoints on you. Traditionally, a Labor secretary and other secretaries in the Cabinet are expected to be quasi-advocates, if that's the right word, friendly towards the constituency to which the president wishes to relate under conditions that provide for pragmatic and realistic solutions to problems. Right? That's your role with labor. SEC. CHAO: With -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So -- SEC. CHAO: With the total labor force. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: All right. Well, right now we're talking about the union labor force. SEC. CHAO: Yeah, sure. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And your point is well taken, because there's a non-union labor force. SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: There's the right-to-work contingent. SEC. CHAO: Right. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: And you represent all of labor. But when you -- are you able, with President Bush, who is a conservative, and who is not, I think, the -- I know, we all know, was not the chosen candidate of American labor -- big labor today, union labor, are you able to kind of carry that or walk that tightrope so that you can -- SEC. CHAO: Sure. Absolutely. Sure. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- on the one hand, represent Sweeney -- SEC. CHAO: I don't represent Mr. Sweeney. He and I have worked together very well in the past, but I don't represent him. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: But you have to carry his water, don't you, to some extent? SEC. CHAO: Oh, I think Mr. Sweeney is big enough to carry his own water. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, you do have to represent his interests to the president. SEC. CHAO: Well, certainly, I'm -- I have always said that my door is open. I want to keep the channels of communications open. I want to listen to the concerns of the workforce, organized and unorganized. Organized labor comprises, as you had alluded to, about 10 percent -- 9 percent of the private sector, about 13 percent in the overall workforce. So I will of course work with them and listen to their concerns. They are one of my many constituencies, and I will certainly do that. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, what do you think is going to happen if, as is projected, airlines go on strike? And that would include pilots, it would include flight attendants -- SEC. CHAO: Sure. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- and it would include also maintenance personnel, mechanical workers who work on the engines, et cetera, of the planes. That's -- that would mean, of course, a basic destabilization -- further -- of our economy -- resort hotels, theme parks, the whole variety of institutions that would be affected --and it would certainly drive us, if there's any doubt, into a recession, would it not? Now is the president going to take a tough line when it comes to that, if it comes to that? Is he going to behave like Reagan did when Reagan was dealing with PATCO, which was the air traffic controllers, and put 11,000 of them out of work? SEC. CHAO: Am I going to answer the question? (Laughs.) Oh, absolutely. You know, the president's concerned about the overall vitality of the workforce and, of course, of the economy. How many of us have been air traffic -- air travelers? And we have been complaining about how awful it is to travel already. I mean, complaints are rampant about how congested our skies are, how awful it is -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, that's a different issue. SEC. CHAO: No, it's the same issue. How awful -- you know, the air congestion is, and how many of us have missed our flights, how many of us have been delayed in our flights, how many of us have actually spent nights at airports. The airline industry is in very bad shape at this point. There are tremendous delays and congestions which are impacting the productivity of our country. And if there were to be an airline strike involving all these different workers, I think the president's going to have a real challenge in responding to the consumer cries that they want this issue resolved. They are already under tremendous pressure under ordinary traveling circumstances, and if these additional labor unrests will add or paralyze our country's airways, then it's of concern, it's of very great concern. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What will he do? What will he do? SEC. CHAO: Well, I don't want to jump to conclusions at this point. Obviously, the collective bargaining process is ongoing, and so let's see what the collective bargaining process will bring. But let me just say that, you know, this president, as has been mentioned, that this president has invoked the words of the "Presidential Emergency Board", PEB. But it was President Clinton who invoked the PEB for the first time in over 30 years. What's going to happen now is that we may have major airline strikes during Easter, a period when families should be reuniting with one another, when families are going to be flying across country. And instead of, you know, spending Easter dinner with their families, they may very well be stuck at an airport overnight, with no food at all. So, I mean, this -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What's your advice to people who will be traveling during this season, this upcoming season? SEC. CHAO: Well, let's not -- I think they need to be careful. I think they need to check the airlines. But right now, you know, there is already a lot of potential loss in passenger revenues already. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think they should repose in the comfort of knowing that their president will not let this happen? SEC. CHAO: Well, let's see what the collective bargaining yields. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Now let me ask you this about -- SEC. CHAO: But may I also say that these airline strikes are not within the Department of Labor primary responsibility. The Department of Transportation has the lead -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you want to move this over to the Justice Department? SEC. CHAO: (Chuckling) No, no, no. No, I mean, it's under the National Railway Laborers Act, so all airline strikes are in fact -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Oh, you don't think you're going to be right squarely in the middle of this? SEC. CHAO: No, I'm going to be involved, oh, absolutely. I am going to be involved. But I'm just saying that I don't want to step on somebody else's turf. So let me make it very clear that the Department of Transportation has the lead on the airline strikes. We, of course, will be involved. But I just want to be -- I want to be respectful of my fellow Cabinet member, too. Let me just put it that way. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The Department of Transportation? SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you know him? SEC. CHAO: Yes, of course. I worked with him. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think alike? SEC. CHAO: Secretary Mineta was my chairman when I was at the Department of Transportation as a deputy secretary over 12 years ago. So we have worked well together. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Answer this question for me. SEC. CHAO: Sure. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: The president has emergency powers. They were used by Reagan towards air traffic controllers. It was clear, I think by statute, however, that air traffic controllers fell within his power. SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Now, is it also clear that the president would have that kind of emergency control over pilots? SEC. CHAO: Well, this situation, in terms of the PEB, is a little bit different in that the National Mediation Board, which is an independent regulatory -- independent body, has to make the recommendation to the White House. So the recommendation for the PEB has to come from them first. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: We'll be right back. (Announcements.) MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Is Senator Mitch McConnell, your husband, envious of you and your job? After all -- SEC. CHAO: Oh, no. Not all. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- you're only one of 14 and he's one of 100. SEC. CHAO: Well, he has been practicing the gaze of the adoring spouse. And in fact, I've heard that he's been studying Nancy Reagan tapes! MR. MCLAUGHLIN: In order to -- SEC. CHAO: In order to be the adoring spouse. So I'm very proud of him. He's very supportive, and we have a wonderful marriage and I feel very pleased. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, I think we're all proud of him. SEC. CHAO: Thank you. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Thanks so much for being my guest, and good luck. SEC. CHAO: Thank you so much. (Announcements.) PBS SEGMENT MR. MCLAUGHLIN: President Bush takes the position, Secretary Chao, that any campaign finance reform legislation should include paycheck protection; namely, a provision that allows union members to decide whether they want any of their union dues used for political contributions. Do you support that? SEC. CHAO: Well I, of course, support what the president proposes. I think this is clearly an amendment that organized labor does not like. Basically, this is a very simple provision, and it's all about disclosure, and it's about giving union members the ability to decide where they want the union dues to go. And if a union member doesn't want to have his or her dues go to a political cause which he or she does not support, then the worker will be able to have the ability to say no, and make that decision. Again, it's an issue about disclosure, and it's an issue that gives the union workers the ability to decide where their own union dues should go. You know, it's interesting, about 40 percent of organized labor vote Republican. And I think that their leaders need to understand that and also reflect more the tendencies of their own members. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Forty percent of what percentage of the total labor force? SEC. CHAO: No, 40 percent of organized labor, approximately -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. And 40 percent of organized labor. What percentage of the total labor force today is organized labor? SEC. CHAO: Organized labor has about 13 percent, 9 percent of whom are in the private sector, 4 percent of whom are in government. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let's take that 87 percent that are not union. SEC. CHAO: Yes. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What percentage of the 87 percent vote Republican? SEC. CHAO: Well, they -- working men and women are us; we are them. There is no distinction. All of us are working men and women. So when you ask how many of them reflect one party's philosophy versus another, it's the general population. So -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So it's about -- right now, the Republicans are practically even with the Democrats. SEC. CHAO: It's about pretty much even. Yeah. Yes, very much so. But -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Those are interesting statistics. SEC. CHAO: It is. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let me ask you this. You've got some good news in this period where things seem so grim on the financial side, on the economic side. You do have some good news, and that relates to unemployment. Right? SEC. CHAO: Well, as I mentioned -- and I'm looking very hard for areas of commonality. I've worked very well with labor in the past. I want to work well with organized labor in the future. I have tremendous respect for them, because, you know, when they're with you, they're really with you. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, I'm -- SEC. CHAO: And so I've launched a new initiative that I hope that they will also join in and help, and that's called the 21st Century Workforce. I hear from CEOs and from workers and management that this is a new economy, that we have, you know, a tremendous number of high-skill jobs that go begging -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, this -- yeah -- SEC. CHAO: -- and thousands and thousands of Americans that don't have the skills to fill them. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah. Have you had the opportunity to observe what's happened to the NASDAQ lately? SEC. CHAO: I was on the board of the NASDAQ, so I know very well. Markets are going to go up and down, but overall -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Oh, you think the NASDAQ's going to come back? SEC. CHAO: Oh, sure. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: When do you think it's going to come back? SEC. CHAO: Well, I'm not going to bet on that, but I'll bet you, over the next 10 years, it's going to come back, and it's going to have -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Next 10 years? SEC. CHAO: Absolutely. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: You mean on the far side of the 10, rather than the near side of the 10? SEC. CHAO: I'm not making any prognostication. But what I am saying is, markets are going to go up and down. But that does not detract from the more important issue as to where our workforce is going. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Are you -- SEC. CHAO: Our workforce now is increasingly mobile. It's more flexible. And a person now may hold five to seven jobs in their lifetime, versus the one that a generation ago of workers used to hold. And so we need to talk about the skills gap, and that is, again, high -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, before we get into kind of an hysteria of approval of the new economy, you know that the old economy still accounts for 90 percent of the American workforce. SEC. CHAO: Sure. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right? SEC. CHAO: Well, 94,000 -- MR. MCLAUGHLIN: So the 10 percent you're talking about is going to be the area of your concern? SEC. CHAO: No, no, no, not at all. I'm trying to -- what I'm saying is, we need to look ahead and prepare America, our country, for a new workplace reality. And I'm asking -- and labor has been very, very cooperative about it. We're talking about a 21st century workforce. We're talking about closing the skills gaps. We're talking about upcoming worker shortage. All of that will be the focus of this new initiative. END LOAD-DATE: March 24, 2001 ***************************************************************** 8 Russia PM Orders Kursk Sub Recovered March 23, 2001 MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov signed an order Friday ordering the recovery of the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk, in the face of news media speculation that such an operation would not proceed. The government press service said Kasyanov's order gives the Defense Ministry the task of making arrangements to recover the Kursk, which sank with the loss of all 118 crewmen in August after an explosion during maneuvers. The Russian government is supposed to share the cost, estimated at $70 million, with the Kursk Foundation, an international fund-raising group. But Russia has so far failed to pay its part. The current plan is to use cranes to raise the 14,000-ton Kursk and tow it to the Russian port of Murmansk under a giant barge. The operation is expected to take several months. Experts have warned that if preparations do not begin soon, the work will not be completed by the time autumn storms set in on the Barents Sea in the Arctic where the sub lies. The order didn't give a date for operation. The government has not yet determined the cause of the sinking, saying it could have been triggered by an internal malfunction, a collision with a Western submarine or a World War II mine. Most Russian and foreign experts believe that the explosion of a practice torpedo was the most probable cause. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 9 Gregoire threatens DOE with lawsuit This story was published Sat, Mar 24, 2001 By John Stang Herald staff writer Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire is preparing to unleash the lawyers on the feds. Gregoire ordered her staff Friday to start researching a potential lawsuit against the Department of Energy if Hanford's radioactive waste glassification efforts fall behind their legal timetable. Two factors have apparently prompted this action. One is a July 2001 deadline in the Tri-Party Agreement to begin building the glassification plants -- a deadline universally believed unreachable for the past nine months. The second is the likelihood DOE's nationwide cleanup budget will be cut for fiscal 2002. If so, a good chunk of Hanford's glassification project will be a probable casualty. "If we are going to clean up this waste in our lifetime, we must move forward," Gregoire said in a news release. In the same release, Gov. Gary Locke said: "The federal government has made commitments to timelines for the cleanup, and it is irresponsible for (President Bush) to suggest cutting the funding needed to meet them." This is the second time Locke and Gregoire have threatened DOE with a lawsuit for stalled tank farms work. In 1998, they threatened to sue DOE over missed deadlines on pumping wastes out of the site's leak-prone single-shell tanks. The state and DOE later negotiated a new timetable to head off litigation. "There is a very high level of frustration among the state's officials," said David Mears, a senior assistant attorney general who is in charge of preparing litigation against DOE. The state's threat comes a week and a half before DOE is expected to announce how much money it will seek for Hanford's cleanup in fiscal 2002. In fiscal 2001, DOE has a $19.7 billion budget, of which $6.25 billion goes to nationwide cleanup efforts. Hanford's share is about $1.5 billion. For 2002, DOE is asking Congress for $19 billion with no real details on how that money will be allocated. But, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recently told Gregoire that possibly $425 million might be trimmed from DOE's nationwide cleanup budget. If that happens, DOE's nationwide cleanup budget would be reduced to about $5.8 billion in 2002. Meanwhile, DOE's Hanford officials contend Hanford needs $1.85 billion in 2002 to meet all its legal cleanup obligations. The site needs most of the extra $350 million to start building glassification plants. DOE allocated $377 million to this project in 2001 and will need $690 million annually starting in 2002. The bottom line is that Hanford's glassification work will fall drastically behind its legal schedule unless it gets an extra $300 million to $350 million in 2002. DOE declined Friday to comment on Gregoire's threat or the budget. "The budget numbers are not set yet. All the (publicly discussed) numbers are based on speculation," said DOE spokeswoman Jeanne Lopatto. Mears said the attorney general's staff has just begun its research, including on what legal issues will be emphasized, when a suit would be filed and what DOE action or nonaction will actually trigger a lawsuit. Under the Tri-Party Agreement, DOE is legally required to request enough money each year to keep Hanford's cleanup on the schedule outlined by the legal pact. And every year, the federal Office of Management and Budget limits how much money DOE can seek from Congress. Consequently, Hanford's preliminary budget requests get trimmed annually -- often below the Tri-Party Agreement's requirements -- when DOE and the OMB haggle over DOE's overall budget request behind closed doors. Mears said the state will legally argue that DOE cannot use the OMB as a scapegoat absolving it from the Tri-Party Agreement's obligations. Gregoire has not explored if Washington legally could team up with other states that have DOE cleanup sites, Mears said. However, he said Gregoire and other states' attorneys general share information on dealing with DOE. On March 15, Gregoire and 13 other states' attorneys general sent a letter to Abraham that said funding cuts would jeopardize DOE meeting cleanup obligations in several states. U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also have pressured Abraham on cleanup funding. And Locke and Gregoire sent a letter to Bush citing the same concerns. Besides the funding issue, Gregoire's threat cues on a soon-to-be-missed Tri-Party Agreement deadline of July 31 to begin construction of the glassification plants. This deadline essentially fell through last June, when DOE fired BNFL Inc. as the lead glassification contractor. However, the July 2001 deadline was never removed from the Tri-Party Agreement. DOE and BNFL's replacement, Bechtel National Inc., expect to soon agree on a new construction start date. Preliminary speculation put that date in spring 2002. Until recently, the state and DOE have assumed the key Tri-Party deadline is 2007, when actual glassification was to begin -- an assumption that led to relatively little state quibbling about the July 2001 deadline. But when DOE signed up Bechtel in December, the new contract pushed the start of glassifying highly radioactive waste back 18 months from 2007 to 2009. And that contract pushed the deadline for full-speed glassification back 13 months from December 2009 to January 2011. DOE did not discuss either change with the state, which has never agreed to change the Tri-Party Agreement accordingly. DOE earlier said it had to get the Bechtel contract signed -- before going through long Tri-Party renegotiations -- to keep momentum going on the design and construction work. Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 10 State threatens Hanford cleanup suit *Saturday, March 24, 2001* By LINDA ASHTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS YAKIMA -- The state is threatening to sue the U.S. Department of Energy if it fails to start construction on a radioactive waste treatment plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation this summer, a deadline the DOE has said it cannot meet. State Attorney General Christine Gregoire yesterday instructed her staff to prepare a legal case against the federal government, which is obligated under a 1989 agreement to start construction on the glassification plant by July 31. Construction is not expected to begin until July 31, 2002, in part because the project was delayed by the firing of the original contractor last year. "If we are going to clean up this waste in our lifetime, we must move forward now," Gregoire said. "We cannot and we will not allow the legacy of untreated nuclear waste to be left for yet another generation to cope with." Energy Department spokesman Guy Schein in Richland said he had no comment. The plant is considered essential for dealing with Hanford's most critical cleanup problem -- 54 million gallons of highly radioactive waste left over from Cold War-era plutonium production. Sixty-seven of the 177 underground tanks have leaked more than 1 million gallons of waste, contaminating groundwater and threatening the Columbia River. The Energy Department and its contractors have been pumping liquid waste from the older, leak-prone, single-shell tanks into newer, double-wall tanks. Under the 1989 Tri-Party Agreement among the DOE, the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the glassification plant will be used to prepare about 10 percent of the waste for permanent storage as glass logs. Under the agreement, the state can sue the federal government to enforce compliance with cleanup deadlines. © 2001 The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 11 Sailor accused of sabotaging nuclear sub faces court-martial *Friday, March 23, 2001* THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BREMERTON, Wash. -- A sailor has been ordered to face a court-martial on accusations he sabotaged and stole equipment from a Trident nuclear missile submarine. Missile Technician 2nd Class Ernesto G. Cimmino, 23, of Scotia, N.Y., was charged with sabotage, larceny, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and illegal drug use, among other offenses this week. Cimmino is accused of damaging more than 100 cables aboard the USS Alaska with the intent of harming national defense. The nuclear missile submarine was at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard here last year for repairs and improvements. The cables damaged operated the submarine's missile systems, internal communications, ventilation, lighting and the torpedo room. Cimmino will be tried at a general court-martial, the most serious level of military trial. He remains in custody at the brig inside Naval Submarine Base Bangor on Washington's Hood Canal. If convicted of all charges, Cimmino could face 82 years in prison, a dishonorable discharge, reduction in rank and forfeiture of pay. A preliminary hearing could take place next week. No date has been set for the court-martial, Navy officials said. Cimmino also is accused of stealing a missile emergency alarm, prescription and nonprescription drugs, a camera, cutting tools and his commanding officer's stateroom nameplate. Other charges include lying to Navy investigators and using methamphetamine, LSD and cocaine. © 2001 The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 12 Secret planes that helped America win the Cold War lie buried at Area 51 LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: NEWS: Sunday, March 25, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL As big as football fields and deep enough to bury airplanes, the graves at Groom Lake lie scattered around the government's secret installation, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. There are no headstones or markers to denote the final resting place for such high-tech aircraft as the predecessors to the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter jet and the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. But people who worked there and researchers who track aviation history and the government's so-called "black budget" programs say some planes that crashed and other experiments that failed were hauled to the bottom of 40-foot-deep holes and covered overnight with mounds of dirt. One former Groom Lake worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he watched while an earthmover spent a day in 1982 scraping out a burial site. It was a massive excavation, he said. "They didn't dig that hole and put Martians or moon men in it." He said the wreckage of a classified plane that was buried on the base was for months in what's called the "Scoot-N-Hide," a shed off a taxiway where secret planes are kept out of view of orbiting satellites. "They put it on a flatbed truck and put it in a hangar. Then one day they scraped it off the flatbed into the hole and buried it," he said. "They attached a cable to the aircraft and just pulled it off. The thing was shattered like an egg." According to aviation writer and historian Peter Merlin -- who has obtained declassified flight documents and interviewed personnel involved with Groom Lake programs spanning a period since 1955 -- more than a dozen aircraft are buried around the installation. Combined, the craft were worth at least $600 million and might be valued as much as $1 billion. This practice of disposing secret, high-tech equipment continues today, he said. "We have no reason to believe it has stopped." Because it is cloaked in secrecy by a presidential order, Air Force officials will not discuss what it acknowledges only as "the operating location near Groom Lake," which is widely known as Area 51, a 38,400-acre swath of desert along the dry lake bed. Merlin said the equipment that now lies 40 feet beneath the surface represents cutting-edge technology that in its time kept the U.S. military and the nation's intelligence community ahead of foreign adversaries. For example, three generations of high-flying spy planes -- U-2s, A-12s, and SR-71s -- have been demonstrated at Groom Lake, each becoming progressively superior to foreign forces. "Nobody ever shot down an A-12," he noted. Even former Soviet bloc aircraft, such as the 1970s-vintage MiG-23, have been obtained by the U.S. intelligence community and tested at Groom Lake to see how U.S. planes and radar stack up against it, said Merlin, who writes for several aeronautical trade publications, including a newspaper for the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. The 1982 burial site described by the former Groom Lake worker was near a gravel-pit road and system of trenches where secret documents and materials including drums of toxic coatings for stealth fighter jets were routinely burned for years. A lawsuit by former base workers alleged they had developed illnesses from toxic fumes, but the Air Force has declined to release documents regarding the disposal practice, citing national security concerns. John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org -- a Washington, D.C.-area defense-policy organization, said "the notion that the Air Force is burying its mistakes at Groom Lake makes sense." It is patrolled by helicopters carrying doorgunners manning machine guns. The Groom Lake graveyard, according to Merlin, includes: • Several 1960s-vintage A-12s, predecessors of the fast, high-flying SR-71 Blackbird spy planes. • Four U2s from the 1950s. • An F-101 chase plane that crashed in 1965. • Two Have Blue airframes that were used to demonstrate technology for the F-117A. • Wreckage of a MiG-23 that crashed in 1984. Merlin and three other sources who worked at the base said base officials wanted to retrieve one of the Have Blue airframes buried somewhere near the Groom Lake installation but were unable to find it. He said there was a plan to bury a unique surveillance aircraft, Tacit Blue -- a white plane equipped with sensors and radar that could survive flying close to war zones -- but it was rescued and placed in the U.S. Air Force Museum in Ohio instead. Tacit Blue was tested at Groom Lake from 1982 to 1985, he said. Not all once-secret planes from Groom Lake that crashed have been buried there, including the first production F-117A, tail No. 785, according to Merlin and others who worked at the base at the time. On April 20, 1982, Lockheed test pilot Robert Riedenauer was at the controls of that plane when it cartwheeled wing over wing attempting to take off from a Groom Lake runway. To this day neither Riedenauer nor Air Force officials can say where the ill-fated takeoff occurred -- but other sources who worked at the base as well as Merlin say that crash was indeed at the Groom Lake installation. While Riedenauer can't talk about the crash location he spoke openly about how he escaped death that day, when miswired controls caused the craft to go down instead of up. "I had four seconds to think about it," Riedenauer explained in an interview about his ride aboard the jet. He said he spent the first two seconds trying to get the craft under control. "The third was reaching for handles to bail out, and the fourth was I realized the aircraft was inverted so it didn't make sense to bail out, so I started shutting down the engine and throttle." Rescuers managed to save Riedenauer from a fire that flared up. They spent 20 minutes cutting him out of the cockpit. He would spend months in the hospital. The wings of the $46 million plane were shattered. The plane was to have been the first of 59 stealth F-117As delivered to the Air Force. Much of it, however, was salvaged and spared from burial, according to Merlin. The damaged aircraft was returned to Palmdale, Calif., where it now sits on a pylon on display. The first preproduction F-117s have also been converted to displays. One of them, tail No. 780 is at Freedom Park at Nellis Air Force Base. Bob Pepper, a spokesman for the F-117A stealth fighter jet unit at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, said the policy for disposing of wrecked stealths is to store them temporarily at Holloman and then to follow the procedure for disposing other military aircraft. The current procedure for disposing of Air Force planes developed from unclassified technology, according to Pike, is to take them to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Ariz., where they are kept for parts, chopped up and melted down to recycle their aluminum and other metals. "A stealth composite airplane is not the sort of thing that can be melted down to make pots and pans. You would want to dispose of them so they don't come back to haunt you," he said, explaining that the government's intention is to keep secret materials and components in a secure location so they can't be obtained by other countries. One former base worker described the 1984 crash of a MiG-23 that ultimately ended up in the Groom Lake graveyard. "I saw that thing explode," he said. "I was looking up at the sky. I thought, `God, these guys are going fast.' "Then it was just like it disappeared. The plane came apart. The wings came off it and he punched out," he said, referring to the pilot's fatal bail-out. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 13 NUCLEAR WORKERS' AID PROGRAM IN LIMBO Chicago Tribune Traditional Version - Nation/World *LABOR SECRETARY WANTS IT MOVED TO JUSTICE DEPT.* By Ben White The Washington Post *March 25, 2001* WASHINGTON Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has asked the White House to shift responsibility for a new program to compensate sick nuclear workers from her agency to the Justice Department, eliciting bipartisan criticism from lawmakers who say the move could greatly delay disbursement of the funds. In her March 9 letter to the White House, Chao said the Labor Department lacks the infrastructure to administer the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, which Congress passed last year with an initial appropriation of $60.4 million. The Department of Justice should run it because the department already makes payments to uranium miners and people living downwind from nuclear test sites, Chao said. However, members from both major parties argued this week that they intended the Labor Department to run the program because it has administered similar worker compensation programs for nearly a century, including the Longshore and Harbor Workers Act and the Coal Miners Black Lung Disease Act. "I think the inevitable result will be that victims will have a significant delay in receiving compensation," said Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), whose district includes many the program could help. "And some of these people, quite frankly, are in the process of dying." On Wednesday, he sent the White House a letter signed by eight other members, Republicans and Democrats, asking that Labor run the program. Republican Sens. Mike DeWine and George Voinovich of Ohio sent a similar letter. Congress passed the program, intended to help Cold War-era workers suffering from cancer and other diseases, without specifying which department should run it. But Strickland said members had made their intentions clear. The Clinton administration in December gave jurisdiction over the program to the Labor Department. Under the program, workers deemed to have illnesses related to exposure to nuclear weapons material at Energy Department and privately owned facilities would get $150,000 and full medical coverage for life. The initial appropriation was $60.4 million, but the program could cost almost $2 billion. The payments are scheduled to begin July 31. A spokesman said Voinovich spoke with Chao on Wednesday, and members of their staffs would try to iron out their differences in the next few days. Labor Department spokesman Stuart Roy said there was room for negotiation, but he added that nothing has swayed Chao. "It seems fairly straightforward that this is a program that ought to be administered by the Department of Justice," Roy said. Roy said the Labor Department has no capacity for making complicated judgments regarding workers' claims that exposure to nuclear material caused their illnesses. Chao, in her letter to White House budget director Mitch Daniels, cautioned that several issues still must be resolved surrounding "dose reconstruction," the process of determining who is entitled to payments under the program. "Whichever organization is given primary responsibility for claims processing," Chao wrote, "the design of the dose reconstruction process will be critical to ensuring that the program is administrable and that it avoids a morass of litigation, uncertainty, and frustration." The White House declined to comment. ***************************************************************** 14 SRS incinerator poses dilemma *Officials must take on lengthy process of seeking new permit or steep costs for plant's dismantlement * *Web posted Sunday, March 25, 2001 By Brandon Haddock *Staff Writer* The waste isn't burning at Savannah River Site's Consolidated Incineration Facility, but the midnight oil is. Officials at the federal nuclear-weapons site have until April 1, 2002, to decide what to do with the shuttered, $100 million plant - and how to treat more than 100,000 gallons of radioactive liquid waste that the facility was supposed to handle. If the U.S. Department of Energy decides to restart the incinerator, it will have to seek a new operating permit from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. That process could take months or even years, site officials acknowledged. And if the site decides to abandon the incinerator, it must dismantle it within 180 days - a task that would require millions of dollars. ``It was the only viable technology that they had to reduce that particular waste stream,'' said Wade Waters, a member of the site's Citizens Advisory Board, whose committee has studied the issue. ``They have a very short time to come up with something. ``They are going to have to make a decision pretty soon, and it's going to be a very costly affair any way we go at it.'' Site officials said they were confident they could beat the deadline. ``I think that's enough time to make that decision,'' said Ray Hannah, a program manager for the Energy Department at SRS. SRS officials shut down the 4-year-old incinerator last year, after determining it was too expensive to use to burn thousands of gallons of PUREX solvent at the site. The solvent, used in the site's massive reprocessing plants, is contaminated with plutonium, uranium, strontium, cesium and other radioactive materials, said Ray Hannah, a program manager for the U.S. Department of Energy at SRS. The site has about 37,000 gallons of PUREX waste in storage now, and more than 100,000 additional gallons will be slated for disposal in the future, SRS officials have said. The incinerator had an operating budget of about $20 million a year. But safety concerns and permit limits caused SRS workers to dilute PUREX by as much as one-half before burning it, limiting the facility to treatment of only about 5,000 gallons of PUREX per year, SRS officials said. Scientists are evaluating solutions that could be more cost-effective, said Peter Hudson, planning and technology manager for British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Savannah River Corp. The contractor operates the site's solid-waste division for the Energy Department. But SRS officials insist that the new methods must be thoroughly tested, saying they don't want to repeat the mistakes made with the site's In-Tank Precipitation Facility. The site spent $500 million to build that plant, only to see it fail. ``I would not like to go through that scenario,'' Mr. Hannah said. ``In April 2002, if we decide to pursue an alternative, we still need to fully develop that alternative and deploy it.'' South Carolina regulators are willing to extend deadlines to give the site more time to develop new methods of treating the waste, said Keith Collinsworth, federal facilities liaison for DHEC. But if the Energy Department decides to close the incinerator, it will be held to the 180-day standard for dismantling the plant, he said. ``We don't want to be the Energy Department complex's regional incinerator,'' Mr. Collinsworth said. ``We don't want an incinerator sitting idle for many years that would attract the attention of other Energy Department sites for treatment of their hazardous-waste solvents.'' Energy Department officials are trying to ``define'' what must be done to satisfy DHEC's closure requirements, Mr. Hannah said. At the least, the site will have to dismantle the plant to a point at which it could never again be used as an incinerator, Mr. Collinsworth said. Current projections indicate that such a project would cost $50 million, but the estimate could vary by as much as $30 million more or less, Mr. Hannah said. Energy Department officials wouldn't say whether money to dismantle the plant was included in the site's proposed budget for fiscal year 2002. But the looming deadline already worries some observers. ``I'm concerned about it,'' Mr. Waters said. ``We do have some very serious concerns about the deadline, as well as the money to do whatever is required.'' Reach Brandon Haddockat (706) 823-3409. All contents © 1996 - 2001 *The Augusta Chronicle*. All rights ***************************************************************** 15 Lake City plans meeting to talk about depleted uranium use 03/24/01 Saturday, March 24, 2001 By The Examiner staff Lake City officials will present more information about depleted uranium and its use at the Lake City Army Ammu-nition Plant at the Reclamation Advisory Board meeting Tues-day night. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in Building 6, just inside the main entrance to Lake City at the junction of Missouri 7 and 78. The meeting is open to the public. Lake City staff and representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will respond to questions raised at the last RAB meeting about the possibility of depleted uranium particles traveling off the plant site. A representative of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will also be on hand to speak about the Lake City health assessment released last year. RAB members had questioned some details of the report, including the methods used for data collection. Also on Tuesday's agenda, Lake City officials will present a status report on clean-up projects in the Northeast corner. Staff will preview new water treatment technologies being considered for the clean-up. *Copyright 2000 The Examiner* ***************************************************************** 16 Nuclear stewardship taken to task The Taipei Times Online: 2001-03-25 Sunday, March 25th, 2001 MELTADOWN:The recent mishap at the Third Nuclear Power Plant has brought to light a history of carelessness and lack of transparency at Taiwan's nuclear facilities By Chiu Yu-Tzu STAFF REPORTER The recent incident at the Third Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¤T¼t) in Pingtung County has caused high-ranking officials, including Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (±i«T¶¯), to question the care taken by Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, ¥x¹q) at the nation's nuclear plants. While no less than four separate groups from Taipower, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) and the Cabinet search for answers, the premier lashed out at Taipower, saying that the company has a responsibility to the lives and property of Taiwan's 23 million citizens. "...abnormally high levels of radioactive contamination were being emitted from a reactor, exposing both employees and the public. At the time, however, no one was told period of time have also mysteriously disappeared." As the nation closely watches the investigation into Taiwan's worst-ever nuclear mishap, environmental activists are whispering about a separate, unexposed incident at another nuclear plant which might well have led to a far more dangerous conclusion. Unexposed incident On March 2, workers installing fuel rod assemblies into one of the two reactors at the First Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¤@¼t) located in Chinshan township (ª÷¤s), attempted to install a damaged fuel rod, according to sources who spoke on condition that they remain anonymous. At the time, the plant had stopped operation for routine maintenance. Operators must replace one fourth of the more than 400 fuel rod assemblies in the boiling water reactor (ªm¤ô¦¡¤ÏÀ³Äl) every 18 months. Both the reactor and the fuel rod assemblies are supplied by a General Electric (GE) plant in North Carolina. Sources said that one of the fuel rod assemblies, which had just been shipped to Taiwan from the GE plant, was damaged after it collided with part of the water pool in which the fuel rod assemblies sit. Sources said that workers had installed all the fuel rods and were about to start the reactor when someone noticed the damaged rod assembly and abruptly stopped the process. Anti-nuclear activists told the *Taipei Times* that if workers had started the reactor under such a delicate situation, it might well have caused the reactor to malfunction. "A damaged fuel rod assembly might create difficulties ... for inserting the control rods into the reactor to control heat production," Shih Shin-min (¬I«H¥Á), chairman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU), told the *Taipei Times*. Control rods are placed in the water pool with the fuel rod assemblies in order to control the rate of the nuclear reaction, to prevent the fuel rods from getting so hot that they melt down. "The accident reveals a lack of attention to detail," said Shih, who also teaches chemical engineering at National Taiwan University. Taipower's supervising body, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC), however, said the mishap was not a big deal. "The mistake was only a minor problem [with moving the fuel rod assemblies], which is far from any so-called accident," Shen Li (¨H§), director of the AEC's department of nuclear regulation, told the *Taipei Times*. After receiving Taipower's report, the AEC immediately began an investigation into the March 2 incident. Shen confirmed that the cause of the problem was a collision of the fuel rod assemblies when they hit part of the water pool during maintenance. "Workers removed the damaged one immediately and replaced it with a new one," Shen said, adding that all the fuel rod assemblies now installed in the reactor were in an acceptable condition. However, Shen said that the plant has experienced similar problems in the past. According to Shen, the AEC had considered replacing the plant's old transportation machinery and cranes and providing more thorough training for workers in order to avoid similar situations from occurring in the future. Lin Li-fu (ªL¥ß¤Ò), deputy director of the AEC's Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, told the *Taipei Times* that cranes were not the problem, but rather the competence of their operators. "Humans are [only] human. Mistakes are inevitable," said Lin, adding that fuel rod assemblies are sometimes bumped while being moved at nuclear plants all over the world. "Controlling fuel rod assemblies, which are submerged under some 7m of water is quite a challenge," Lin explained. Using damaged fuel rod assemblies in the reactor, Lin said, was not specifically forbidden, but the risks involved in doing so must first be calculated. "Such an evaluation ... takes time and may be turned into an issue with the media," Lin said. He speculated that Taipower chose to replace the damaged fuel rod assembly rather than wait for the AEC's evaluation. Lin stressed that the plant's safety was no longer a cause for concern as the damaged fuel rod assembly had been replaced. Actividts' doubts Anti-nuclear activists, however, said that the plant operators should have earlier on identified the risk involved with using a damaged fuel rod in the reactor. "We are greatly dissatisfied that Taipower hid the truth from the public," said Tsai Sen (½²´Ë), a member of TEPU's North Coast branch (¥_®ü©¤¤À·|). Tsai, who lives near Taiwan's oldest nuclear plant, said he has twice inquired about the incident with the plant's public relations office, but has received no answer thus far. "They said that the mistake was not a problem at all, but did not explain why not," Tsai said. Local residents said that since the plant began operating in 1978, they've never been made aware of the causes of accidents which have occurred because Taipower has been unwilling to reveal the truth. Instead, their only knowledge of the incidents has come from piecing together news reports. According to TEPU, in September 1999, a truck carrying 31 barrels of radioactive waste crashed into a river flowing through the plant area. In May 1997, an electricity generator stopped because depleted fuel rod assemblies had not been replaced. In August 1995, electrical systems at the plant were shut down as a result of a lightning storm. In January 1992, a series of human errors and mechanical failures led to a reactor shutdown. In March 1991, air unexpectedly entered one of the reactors, causing high levels of radiation inside major steam pipes. Operators immediately brought the reactor offline. In August 1990, a typhoon caused a transmission line to malfunction, forcing one of the reactors offline. In October 1988, manufacturing flaws in a water pipe caused the leakage of radioactive waste water. Each of the these incidents pale in comparison to a 56-day period between Sept. 3 and Oct. 28, 1985 when steam jet air ejectors detected that abnormally high levels of radioactive contamination were being emitted from a reactor, exposing both employees and the public. At the time, however, no one was told to evacuate. Daily work reports during that period of time have also mysteriously disappeared. Activists said that Taipower's 22 years of experience in running nuclear power plants did not necessarily ensure the public's safety. "Based on recent incidents which have occurred at the First Nuclear Power Plant and the Third Nuclear Power Plant, nuclear safety issues in Taiwan still lack transparency," said Lai Wei-chieh (¿à°¶³Ç), secretary-general of the Green Citizens' Action Alliance, told the *Taipei Times*. Lai claimed the monitoring network established by local residents, rescue teams and fire departments did not function adequately during the recent fire at the Third Nuclear Power Plant because Taipower officials at the plant procrastinated for at least an hour before reporting the accident. AEC officials said that the council would supervise Taipower in carrying out safety checks at the first and second nuclear power plants in Taipei County. "We will especially focus on the condition of transmission lines at the two plants as they were the cause of the recent incident at the Third Nuclear Power Plant," said the AEC's Shen. This story has been viewed 291 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/03/25/story/0000078969] Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 Oak Ridge cleanup firm hit with fine over fire last year March 24, 2001 By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer OAK RIDGE -- BNFL has been fined $41,250 for safety violations related to a fire last year at its Oak Ridge cleanup site. The U.S. Department of Energy announced the fine as part of its enforcement of the Price-Anderson Amendments Act, which requires action against government contractors violating nuclear safety standards. The April 4, 2000, metal fire occurred during cleanup activities in the K-33 Building, a former uranium-enrichment facility on the Energy Department's Oak Ridge reservation. The fire was contained in a bundle of metal tubes in an assembly being decontaminated. DOE's investigation determined that BNFL, the American subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels, did not follow established procedures or conduct an effective effort to identify and correct the problems. "As a result, safety and worker hazards were not fully identified or analyzed," DOE said in a press statement. The preliminary "notice of violation" was issued March 19 and becomes final within 30 days unless challenged by BNFL, DOE said. In a statement issued by BNFL, the company said, "We took immediate steps to find the root cause of the incident. Such metal reactions were anticipated, analyzed and planned for, and it is clear that our overall approach to work safety was a key factor in that no injuries, personnel uptake or environmental contamination took place." BNFL said it took responsibility for the incident and for the enforcement of penalties. "We have revamped and improved our approach to this type of activity to ensure that these self-sustaining metal reactions do not occur," the company said in a statement. However, Normal Hammitt, a BNFL spokesman, said the company objected to a statement in DOE's press release that said the fire released uranium into the work environment. "We feel this is an inaccurate statement," Hammitt said. "We have no documentation of the incident which states that any uranium was released into the building as a result of the fire/reaction." Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. ***************************************************************** 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. 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