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                    NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
 
 1  500 million will suffer from Chernobyl
 2  Nuclear Poll Glance 
 3  Study: Public danger from plant unknown 
 4  Document search is magical mystery tour
 5  NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Standard Review Plan for the 
 6  Peace Farm speaks out against waste site bill
 7  Guest Column: Don't waste energy with nuclear power argument 
 8  'Mobile Chernobyl' 
 9  State Approves License to Dump Nuke Waste as Site Continues to Leak
10  Nuclear industry was its own worst enemy
11  State, plant operators disagree over decommissioning plan 
12  Filters Appear To Be Fighting Uranium 
13  Editorial: 'Bias' isn't part of his vocabulary
14  USEC Inc. adopts shareholder rights plan
15  Uranium Institute News Briefing 01.17 | 18 - 24 April 2001         
16  Japan's Prince Hitachi Visits Panama; Protests About Ship
17  Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Hot house
18  Nuclear plant fully operational again
19  Consultant to advise on delayed nuclear fuel plant
20  Temelin Opponents Say More Fuel to Arrive in Temelin Soon
21  Tour spurs support for Yucca site
22  Anti-nuclear activists try to stop Sellafield cargo 
23  Nuclear Waste Transport Goes Smoothly
24  Dounreay receives safety award
25  FORATOM: EU energy policy -- Why Europe needs nuclear power
26  Sweden, Russia to continue talks on nuclear waste accord
27  Ukrainian reactor reduces output because of malfunction 
28  Ukraine Marks Chernnobyl Anniversary
29  Chernobyl death count still disputed
30  Chernobyl Cattle
31  Inna Bahina, 21, looks at the house where she used to live, 
32  Radioactive rains fall on Moscow 15 years after Chernobyl
33  NRC Will Hold Public Meeting in Charlotte on Environmental Review 
34  Poll: Anxiety over nuclear power easing
35  Nuclear Poll Method 
36  Guinn: Report more proof of Yucca bias

                    NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
 
 1  CROET changes meeting schedule 
 2  Hearing set to discuss DOE report from plant
 3  Tests measure contamination near Nike Park 
 4  Review of DOE probe sought
 5  Hanford guards question reduction
 6  Hanford guards riled over lack of security
 7  National Lab to Host International Conference
 8  Teller says Garwin designed H-Bomb
 9  General Dynamics To Buy Newport News 
10  Size doesn't matter 
11  France studies Gulf War health problems
12  Study: Sierra Army Depot is California's top polluter
13  Legislators aim to restore uranium cleanup funds
14  Uranium Waste Cleanup Gets No U.S. Funds 

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                     NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
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 1 500 million will suffer from Chernobyl

The Russia Journal 

Annie Serebriakova, Alexandre Shishilov

MOSCOW - Russian environmentalist Alexei Yablokov told a news 
conference in Moscow that for future generations, as much as 500 
million people will suffer from the effects of the Chernobyl 
nuclear disaster, reports Gazeta.ru. 

On the eve of the 15th anniversary of the accident, Yablokov, 
citing inform ation from U.S. scientists, said th at Belarus is 
already spending 20% of its budget on its own, while Ukraine now 
spends 10%. By 2000, overall spending the cleanup had already 
reached $300-360 billion, and by 2015 it need to climb to $560 
billion, thus, states Yablokov "exceeding all possible profits 
from nuclear power engineering." 

Environmentalists claim that over 40 large-scale incidents have 
occurred in the last 10 years at Russian nuclear fuel and power 
facilities and that over the last 50 years, the Russian atomic 
industry has registered 385 different accidents.

*****************************************************************
 2  Nuclear Poll Glance 
                                       
Wednesday April 25 1:39 AM ET
 
*By The Associated Press, *

Some details on demographic preferences from an Associated Press 
poll question about support for nuclear power to generate energy. 
The error margin for the poll of 1,002 adults taken April 18-23 
is plus or minus 3 percentage points, larger for subgroups. When 
results don't total 100 percent, the remainder either didn't know 
or refused to answer.

Do you support or oppose using nuclear power to generate electricity?

BY GENDER
Men
-Support, 63 percent
-Oppose, 27 percent
Women
-Support, 38 percent
-Oppose, 33 percent
BY INCOME
Under $25,000
-Support, 37 percent
-Oppose, 39 percent
From $25,000 to $49,900
-Support, 52 percent
-Oppose, 30 percent
From $50,000 to $74,900
-Support, 58 percent
-Oppose, 20 percent
$75,000 and over
-Support, 61 percent
-Oppose, 26 percent
BY RACE
White
-Support, 54 percent
-Oppose, 27 percent
Black
-Support, 27 percent
-Oppose, 46 percent
BY PARTY ID
Democrats
-Support, 39 percent
-Oppose, 39 percent
Republicans
-Support, 68 percent
-Oppose, 20 percent
Independents
-Support, 49 percent
-Oppose, 30 percent 

*****************************************************************
 3  Study: Public danger from plant unknown 

The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP

 April 25, 2001
  
By Dennis J. Carroll 
The Hawk Eye 

nÊAgency recommends more extensive survey at Army plant to 
determine possible health threat. 

MIDDLETOWN -- A federal health study of radioactive contamination 
at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant concludes that the threat to 
public health in the area cannot be determined from available 
information and reinforces questions about former worker and 
public exposure to radioactive wastes. 

The survey was conducted over the past year by the U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Service's Agency for Toxic 
Substances and Disease Registry. The report, released March 19 
and obtained from the office of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is based 
on information supplied by the Army regarding operations of the 
Atomic Energy Commission from 1947 to 1975. 

The AEC assembled and later disassembled nuclear weapons at IAAP 
from the late 1940s to the 1970s, and at least in latter years, 
tested components of the weapons. 

The information used by the health study was supplied by the Army 
and "included memoranda, letters, waste shipments, environmental 
reports and similar documents" prepared during the AEC's tenure 
at the plant, the report said. 

Some of the information, particularly regarding "hydroshot" 
testing of weapons components, which produced large amounts of 
depleted uranium wastes, has been revealed over the past 18 
months. 

However, the report also contains new information and helps to 
confirm other disclosures in recent months. 

The new study notes that radioactive materials were released into 
the environment at the plant by AEC operations in the late 1960s 
and early 1970s, including the burning of radioactive wastes that 
had been placed in drums and burned at a high-explosives disposal 
site. 

The report was not clear on just what radioactive wastes were 
burned. However, the report suggests that workers handled such 
radioactive materials as plutonium, enriched uranium, radium and 
tritium. 

The materials often were contained in the sealed components of 
nuclear weapons, but releases of radioactive materials apparently 
did occur, the report said. 

"Other information available suggested that radioactive cobalt 
and cesium may have been used or is present in the environment," 
the health survey said. The study also notes a 1971 health 
protection survey at the plant found problems with the plant's 
system for monitoring radiation contamination. "Areas not covered 
by the monitoring system included the change room (dress out) and 
cafeteria areas," the new federal report said. 

The 1971 report noted that workers wearing potentially 
contaminated contractor-supplied clothing would wear the same 
clothing to the cafeteria. The new report seems to support claims 
by some former workers that they were not adequately protected 
and often brought contaminated materials home, such as their 
lunch buckets. 

In a 1999 report, the same agency concluded that conditions at 
IAAP did not pose any apparent public health risks. 

In the March radiological report, however, the department noted 
that "information supplied to ATSDR is not complete with respect 
to potential routes of human exposure or extent of contamination 
in the environment." The report concludes that "no determination 
as to the impact on public health can be made at this time." 

The new report also mentions a recent radiological survey of 
former AEC areas by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that found 
depleted uranium contamination in floor seams and cracks in 
several buildings, and chunks of depleted uranium at Firing Site 
12. 

Those findings indicated that previous remediation efforts had 
not been totally successful. 

The new study also noted that in one building the Oak Ridge 
survey found air filters that "appeared to be relatively new" 
that contained elevated levels of contamination. 

In light of that finding, the heath study has recommended that 
some AEC buildings and the areas around them be more extensively 
surveyed for possible surface and air contamination. 

The survey also recommended that the extent of radiological 
contamination at Firing Site 12 be fully determined. That is 
currently being done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the 
Department of Energy. 

In response to the survey, Harkin urged the Army to "step up the 
pace to ensure the plant is safe and all contamination that is 
found is cleaned up." He said the study "confirms that much more 
work is needed just to find out if there is still a health threat 
from radioactive contamination at IAAP." 

The plant continues to be a major health concern "not only to 
those who worked with these nuclear materials but anyone who 
lives in the vicinity of IAAP," Harkin said. 

Donald Flater, chief of the Radiological Bureau of the Iowa 
Department of Public Health, said the new study reinforces his 
call for a flyover of the entire 19,000-acre facility with a 
specially equipped low-flying aircraft to determine whether there 
may be other radiation-contaminated areas. 

"They are going in the same direction we are," Flater said. "We 
don't know what's out there. It needs to be defined." 

The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 
Front Desk ' ' '| ' ' '319-754-6824 FAX ' ' '| ' ' ' 
1-800-397-1708 Outside Burlington [this is a line and that's all 
*****************************************************************
 4  Document search is magical mystery tour
 
April 25, 2001
 
By Frank Munger News-Sentinel senior writer
 
Earlier this year, the Energy Department sold a slice of 
floodplain property to developers for $54 an acre, setting off 
howls of protests from conservationists already upset with the 
agency's land-use planning. 

The 182-acre parcel along the Clinch River was sold to the Oak 
Ridge Land Co., which plans to create a smart-growth community -- 
incorporating facilities for residents to work, play and live -- 
on nearby land (about 1,200 acres) purchased from the Boeing Co. 
The floodplain is important to the project because it provides 
river access to the development. 

Conservation groups that earlier had contested DOE's plan to sell 
the property were incensed by the sale price, calling it a 
sweetheart deal and suggesting the ecological value of the 
property was much greater. 

"Heck, for the price of dinner for two the other night, I could 
have bought an acre of wetlands," said Dev Joslin of Advocates 
For the Oak Ridge Reservation. "I could have traded in one of our 
cars for the whole 182 acres." 

Research scientist Virginia Dale called the $9,828 transaction 
"very sad." At the time, DOE had little to say. 

"The land was sold at fair-market value," agency spokesman Steven 
Wyatt said. "That's determined by the appraised value of the 
land." 

Was the controversy unwarranted? Was the low price reasonable, 
since the floodplain apparently was viewed as unsuitable for 
development? Should DOE have come out strongly in defense of the 
land transaction, which is governed by specific rules and 
regulations? 

Some folks thought so. 

DOE officials, however, appear to have no interest in defending 
the property sale. In fact, the agency appears to be incapable of 
it. 

When asked for a copy of the property appraisal, a DOE spokesman 
offered an all-but-unbelievable response: The agency doesn't have 
a copy of the appraisal, and nobody in the Oak Ridge office 
remembers who the appraiser was. 

Can you imagine a DOE manager testifying to that during a 
congressional hearing? 

Following my inquiry, DOE's chief lawyer, Jennifer Fowler, wrote 
a March 26 letter to Oak Ridge Land Co. asking for a copy of the 
appraisal. 

"In connection with the sale of 182 acres of floodplain by the 
Department of Energy, you engaged the services of a DOE-approved 
certified appraiser and provided the resulting appraisal to DOE. 
However, we have discovered that the appraisal is not contained 
in DOE's files," Fowler wrote. 

"On behalf of the Department of Energy, I am requesting a copy of 
the appraisal so that our records of this real estate transaction 
will be complete." 

There apparently has been no response to that letter. 

"We didn't keep a copy," Michael Ross, chief manager of Oak Ridge 
Land Co., said this week when asked about the property appraisal. 

Ross said he doesn't think Oak Ridge Land Co. got sweetheart 
treatment from DOE. 

"I do feel like we got a good value," he said. 

He said developers wouldn't have paid about $3 million for the 
Boeing parcel if they hadn't been assured of getting the 
waterfront property from DOE. Ross said he was somewhat surprised 
by the controversy, but he said Oak Ridge is a special place. 

"There are certainly a lot of great and good things about Oak 
Ridge, and one of those great and good things is that there are a 
lot of very inquisitive and inquiring minds," he said. 

"We plan to do something very special over there, and we think it 
will be in keeping with what Oak Ridge wants, even the folks that 
are our critics," Ross said. 

He also said the project poses special challenges. 

Ross said there is no final design or name for the proposed 
project because the company is still conducting market studies 
and evaluating land-use issues. But he indicated one focus would 
be on providing ways for walkers to enjoy the natural areas. 

Meanwhile, what about that elusive appraisal on the riverfront 
property? "We requested a copy from the appraiser, but he didn't 
keep a copy," Ross said. "He can get it through some kind of 
printing process .... But we just have not done that. If it 
becomes a major issue, we will." 

Senior Writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for 
the News-Sentinel. He can be reached at 865-482-9213 or at 
twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This column is also available on the Web 
at www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/   
*****************************************************************
 5   NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Standard Review Plan for the 
Gaseous Diffusion Plants; Notice of Availability
 
Story Filed: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 3:55 PM EST Washington, DC, Apr 24, 2001

(FedNet via COMTEX) -- Because of significant changes to current 
draft U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) standard review 
plan for the recertification of the gaseous diffusion plants, NRC 
is offering the opportunity for public review and comment on the 
addition of an introduction to the draft report NUREG-1671 
retitled, "Standard Review Plan for the Gaseous Diffusion 
Plants." 

DATES: Submit comments to the address listed below by May 25, 
2001. Comments received after this date will be considered if it 
is practical to do so, but the Commission is able to ensure 
consideration only for comments received on or before this date. 
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of 
availability. Copyright 2001 FedNet 

*Copyright © 2001, FedNet Government News, all rights reserved.*

*****************************************************************
 6  Peace Farm speaks out against waste site bill

Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: 

By JENNIFER LUTZ 

Globe-News Staff Writer 

The director of the Peace Farm wants to stop a state proposal 
before it even gets off the ground.

Mavis Belisle held a press conference Tuesday at the Amarillo 
Public Library to speak about defeating legislation pending in 
Austin. She spoke on behalf of the organization located south of 
the Pantex Plant that describes itself as committed to nonviolent 
social change.

Senate Bill 1541 would require the state to meet its obligation 
of establishing a permanent management site of low-level 
radioactive waste. The bill would require the state to meet a 
federal compact with Maine and Vermont to create a permanent 
waste site.

Last week, Sen. Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, added an amendment to 
the original bill to create a second Texas site for Energy 
Department waste. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Robert Duncan, 
R-Lubbock, did not vote in favor of the revised proposed 
legislation.

"No state wants to deal with nuclear waste," Belisle said. "The 
amendment is so grievous that the original sponsor doesn't even 
want it."

Bivins tried in 1995 to pass similar legislation, and supported a 
bill sponsored by another senator in 1999.

"The bill is the most recent attempt after trying for almost 20 
years to establish a low-level radioactive site in the state of 
Texas," Bivins said.

The sites would accept mixed and low-level radioactive waste, or 
solid, liquid or gaseous material whether occurring naturally or 
produced artificially that emits radiation spontaneously.

"The incentives for other states to open a site is even less," 
Belisle said. "The important thing for Texans to understand is 
this process has been shielded a great bit from public 
investigation."

No state wants to deal with nuclear waste, and this bill would 
deter other places from creating dumping grounds, she said.

Bivins does not agree. South Carolina and Utah are operating 
similar sites, and he said he believes other places will emerge.

The bill does not specify where the permanent site would be 
located, but Bivins said many constituents in Andrews County, 
north of Odessa / Midland, want the facility.

"There's a great deal of interest for this in Andrews County," 
Bivins said. "I have yet to find a person in Andrews County who 
does not want to have the site located there."

Andrews County residents are accustomed to dealing with natural 
gas because of the abundant oil and gas industry in that region, 
he said.

"It reflects an impressive level of knowledge, ignoring the 
hysterical headlines and looking at the facts," Bivins said. "The 
disposal site can be done safely."

The bill passed a Senate panel last week, and awaits approval by 
the entire Senate.
*****************************************************************
 7  Guest Column: Don't waste energy with nuclear power argument 

  Amarillo Globe-News: Opinion: 

By DAVID STEBBENS 

In his April 13 guest column, "Answer to energy crunch not 
blowing in the wind," nuclear engineer Raymond L. Ashley touted 
the advantages of nuclear power plants over wind power. I agree 
with his assertion that a wind generator's output is dependent on 
the vagaries of the wind. As a small-scale user of the wind and 
sun to produce my household electricity, I view the wind as 
"icing on my cake": a great adjunct to my system, but not a 24/7 
energy source.

However, Mr. Ashley cited the only negatives regarding a nuclear 
power plant as being its high front-end capital cost and the 
complex and lengthy application process. He left out another 
downside: those pesky spent fuel rods.

It seems uranium-235 has a half-life of 24,000 years. That's just 
its half-life, mind you. That means it might be safe to be near 
the stuff after just a few hundred thousand years.

To put it in perspective, we homo sapiens have been around just 
50,000 years. Is it wise to make a material that remains a poison 
many times longer than we've existed as a species?

The current method of disposing of nuclear wastes is to bury them 
in some economically depressed area where there aren't enough 
people to complain. The experts assure us these waste 
depositories are in geologically stable areas. Nobody predicted 
the earth tremors we experienced in Amarillo last summer. How can 
they guarantee the stability of an area over 400,000 years? Are 
there solutions to our pending energy crunch? Sort of:

€ Conserve. Don't use as much electricity. The federal 
government, belatedly, is implementing new standards for 
appliances over the next few years. You'll see higher sticker 
prices for refrigerators and washing machines, but they'll save 
you big-time over the life of the appliance.

You can start conserving right now by using energy-efficient 
light bulbs, using a water-conserving showerhead, blanketing your 
high water heater with insulation, and adjusting your thermostat 
a little warmer in the summer and a little cooler in the winter. 
Conservation tips could fill a book.

€ Photovoltaics. These solar panels convert light into 
electricity. They have no moving parts and no maintenance. There 
is nothing to wear out and nothing to bury. Their peak output 
occurs on sunny days - when air-conditioning loads are highest.

Current prices to generate this type of electricity are high, 
starting at about $3.50 per watt, but prices continue to drop. 
Several manufacturers offer units that produce 120 volts AC. At 
least one is UL-approved. Some folks have mounted these units on 
their roofs and in their back yards to supplement their use of 
grid-produced electricity. I'm surprised Southwestern Public 
Service hasn't told us more about this option.

€ Fuel cells. Essentially a continuously charged battery that 
uses hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity. 
Residential-sized units are the size of a refrigerator. They show 
great promise. Prices are still high - $3 per watt. Trials are 
being performed on large units at conventional power plants.

€ Wind energy. It works. It doesn't pollute. It produces energy 
when the wind blows. Every megawatt produced by the wind is one 
less megawatt that has to be produced by a coal/natural gas-fired 
generator or nuclear plant.

There are no easy answers to our pending energy crunch. But 
unless the nuclear industry can find better ways to deal with 
nuclear waste, or come up with viable isotopes with a really 
short half-life, nuclear energy is saddled with too many 
liabilities and hidden costs. Mr. Ashley states in his column 
that "(nuclear) plants are safe and emit no pollutants into the 
atmosphere."

There's no need to mention Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.  I 
simply challenge Mr. Ashley to get a zoning variance to store a 
single ounce of uranium-235 in his back yard.

David Stebbins is an Amarillo X-ray technician. On Deck: Claudia 
Stravato discusses the RU-486 pill in the Thursday Daily News.


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 8  'Mobile Chernobyl' 

Safety groups say congressman heading down wrong road with Zion reactor wastes 

By Ralph Zahorik
STAFF WRITER 

   ZION — A 20-foot-long barbell-shaped replica of a truckload of 
radioactive waste that could become a familiar sight in Lake 
County cruised city streets for about two hours Tuesday 
afternoon.

    Dubbed the "Mobile Chernobyl" by its builder, Kevin Kamps of 
the anti-nuclear energy Nuclear Information & Resource Service 
based in Washington — and festooned with slogans including 
"Mobile X-ray Machine That Can't be Turned Off" — it drew some 
double takes from motorists and pedestrians.

    The replica was designed to draw attention to the danger of 
hauling high-level radioactive waste across the country, Kamps 
said.

    The "Mobile Chernobyl" stopped at Zion, he said, because U.S. 
Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Wilmette, recently appeared in the city to call 
for moving radioactive waste stored in the closed Zion nuclear 
power plant to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

    "We don't disagree with Kirk's urgency to remove nuclear 
waste from the community," said David Kraft, director of another 
anti-nuclear group, the Nuclear Energy Information Service in 
Evanston. "But we're saying, let's slow this down and take a look 
at it."

    If all spent nuclear waste is shipped to Nevada, more than 
36,000 shipments will travel by truck and rail through Illinois, 
more than any state outside Nevada and Utah, Kraft said.

    If a truck loaded with four spent fuel rod assemblies got 
"stuck in traffic" for 40 minutes, nearby drivers would get a 
dose of radiation "equivalent to a chest X-ray," Kamps said.

    Troubling questions remain about the suitability of Yucca 
Mountain as a storage site, he said. "Geologically more promising 
sites" are in Virginia, North Carolina and New Hampshire," he 
said. "They were abandoned by the Department of Energy because of 
political opposition."

    Yucca Mountain is on Western Shoshone Indian land, said 
Kamps. Another site in Utah proposed for temporary high-level 
nuclear waste storage is on the Skull Valley Gashute Indian 
Reservation, he said.

    The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency has said nuclear waste can 
be safely stored at reactor sites like Zion for up to 100 years, 
noted Kraft. The time should be used to develop better transport 
casks and finding a better permanent storage site than the Yucca 
Mountain site, he said.

    "Don't stampede people into this," he said.

    Kirk, speaking April 12 in Zion, said storing high-level 
nuclear waste along the shores of Lake Michigan, could threaten 
"the entire Great Lakes region" in 10 years.

    "If that's true, isn't it dangerous to continue producing 
nuclear waste on the Great Lakes?" asked Kraft. A total of 33 
nuclear reactors are currently operating, and producing 
radioactive waste, on the Great Lakes he said.

    Kirk said he was "not advocating a nuclear future for the 
United States" and that he supported development of "renewable 
energy sources," including sun, water and wind power.

    The replica cask is based on the GA-4 cask designed by 
General Atomics and approved in 1998 by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Agency.

    The GA-4 cask, as designed by General Atomics, is about 16 
feet long, built mainly of stainless steel and can transport up 
to four spent fuel assemblies from nuclear reactors. Cask 
production won't begin until an interim or permanent storage 
facility is approved by the Department of Energy and production 
"will take several years," the company has said.

    Some 2,226 bundles or assemblies of fuel rods are stored in 
the Zion power plant. At four bundles per load, it would take 557 
truck loads to empty the Zion plant of its radioactive waste.

    There have been no recorded injuries or fatalities attributed 
to spent fuel in more than 3,000 shipments in the United States 
over the past 30 years, according to the NRC. 

   A 1986 NRC-commissioned study estimated that about one 
accident in every 80 million shipment miles could cause cask 
damage that would be "significant enough to cause a radiological 
hazard that could equal or slightly exceed existing compliance 
values."

    The GA-4 replica was scheduled to take part in a protest at 
the Cook nuclear power plant in Bridgman, Mich., on Thursday, the 
15th anniversary of the Soviet nuclear catastrophe. A dozen 
people were arrested outside the Cook plant in a demonstration 
last August.
    
*****************************************************************
 9  State Approves License to Dump Nuke Waste as Site Continues to Leak
 
 EarthVision Environmental News*

FORD, WA, April 25, 2001 - Dawn Watch, an environmental watchdog 
group whose mission is to collect, organize, and disseminate 
information Dawn Mining Company's reclamation of its defunct 
uranium mill in Washington state, is in favor of the 
implementation of a faster cleanup and reclamation process for 
the Dawn Uranium Millsite but does not feel that we can afford to 
ignore safety for the sake of cost cutting. 

It is the position of Dawn Watch that the State Department of 
Health ("DOH") has not given due consideration to the possible 
adverse impacts of the direct disposal of filtercake material in 
the existing mill tailings pond, which could be detrimental to 
clean up efforts. Dawn Watch is concerned that the existing liner 
is worn and will not provide adequate protection of the 
environment from the tailings. The liner was installed in the 
early 1980s and is composed of a synthetic material, which 
degrades with exposure to sunlight. Also, varies holes, cracks 
and failed seems have been in the liner noted throughout the 
years. 

DOH approved the license based on its annual visual inspection of 
the exposed portion of the liner. The DOH has refused to have any 
meaningful tests to determine the liner's integrity. Considering 
that the new material that is to be dumped into the tailings 
disposal area has twice the concentration of uranium, any 
weaknesses in the liner could lead to disastrous consequences. 
Remediation fails to meet water quality standards, nuclear 
contamination continues. 

For the past 10 years the mining company has been remediating 
uranium contamination in the groundwater emitting from the 
millsite through numerous underground seeps. This contamination 
enters Chamokane Creek a tributary of the Spokane-Columbia River 
system. Dawn Watch opposes an action by DOH that threatens 
further contamination to the site. Without further investigation 
into the integrity of the liner, the decision to approve the 
amendment is at best uninformed at best. In its attempt to speed 
up the closure process at the millsite, DOH and the mining 
company may have exposed Eastern Washington to a real threat of 
further radioactive contamination. 

Submitted By: Dawn Watch 

*****************************************************************
 10  Nuclear industry was its own worst enemy
 
*Wednesday, April 25, 2001*
 
By BILL VIRGIN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
 
The West Coast energy mess hasn't been a lot of fun for a lot of 
people, but it does have one group jazzed -- nuclear-power 
advocates.
 
For two decades, nuclear power, on the list of possible energy 
sources for the Northwest, has ranked only slightly below the 
idea of building a wood-fired generating plant, fueled by trees 
cut down in Mount Rainier National Park.
 
But as the nation looks for new generating capacity, the nuke 
enthusiasts believe their time has returned. "Hey, we're still 
here," they jump up and down, waving their arms. "We've changed. 
We're not the same. We can do it. Pick me! Pick me!"
 
Sorry, guys. While experience in journalism teaches never to 
dismiss the possibility of something happening, were I a 
bookmaker, I would assign odds to the possibility of a new 
nuclear plant being built in the Northwest as being slightly 
longer than those of clearing out the downtown Seattle Nordstrom 
store and converting it to an electric generating plant powered 
by 6,000 hamster wheels.
 
And no, it has nothing to do with the usual crowd of no-nukes or 
environmentalists or neo-Luddites. They didn't kill the 
nuclear-power industry, much as they might like to believe they 
did.
 
The nuclear-power industry killed the nuclear-power industry.
 
It accomplished that feat by promising power that would be, in 
the now immortal phrase, "too cheap to meter," then delivering 
power that required two dozen meters and an army of accountants 
to price, power produced at hideously expensive plants with 
spotty reliability records.
 
The most scathing indictment of the nuclear-power industry ever 
written came not from some lefty tree-hugging rag but from Forbes 
magazine. In his famous 1985 cover story "Nuclear follies," 
writer James Cook declared that "the U.S. nuclear-power program 
ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history."
 
Still, the nuclear advocates shouldn't feel too bad. Their 
industry continues to serve a useful purpose, as a prime example 
of an enduring American economic phenomenon: the business or 
industry that is its own worst enemy.
 
Businesses often cite competition or imports or government 
regulation for their troubles (some releases from failing dot-com 
companies suggest they did everything right; it was the market's 
fault not to recognize the inherent brilliance of their idea), 
when in fact a good place to look for the cause is in the mirror.
 
I know something about this phenomenon. For 23 years I have 
worked in an industry, American newspapers, that has repeatedly 
and continually tried to do itself in, so far unsuccessfully.
 
The industry will tell you that whatever problems it has are 
because of a succession of competitive information channels 
(radio, television, the Internet) and changing habits of its 
audience. In fact, at least as much blame can be assigned to a 
series of dunderheaded moves, including trying to make newspapers 
into a pale imitation of television with short, fluffy news 
(consumers reasonably decided to go with the real thing), 
ignoring community news (while community papers continued to 
thrive on what was mockingly dismissed as "chicken-dinner news") 
or raising prices while cutting the amount of news or even 
killing entire papers, all while telling readers it's for their 
own good.
 
And yet, miraculously, readers still keep reading newspapers, no 
thanks to us. The reason may be that ink on paper is such a basic 
and compelling communication medium that even we can't completely 
screw it up, try as we might.
 
But heck, why be so hard on ourselves? We've got plenty of 
company. American automakers. Automobile retailing. Railroads. 
Banks. Cable-television companies. Each has a rich history of not 
knowing or not caring about the way they try to run off their 
customers.
 
For some businesses, it doesn't matter that they do. Travelers 
are forever griping about the airlines and lost baggage, 
guess-the-price fare schemes, strange food, cramped seats and 
overbooked flights. But if you want to get from coast to coast in 
a day, what choice do you have?
 
Woe unto those businesses for which an alternative is developed, 
or government deregulation opens its once-closed industry to 
competition, or consumer tastes change. Such businesses find they 
have little cushion of consumer good will upon which they can 
draw to carry them through a transition. Such a cushion probably 
wouldn't do many of them much good, anyway; so accustomed are 
these own-worst-enemy businesses to having customers who endure 
whatever abuse they dish out, they're probably not equipped to 
make the necessary changes to deal with the new realities of 
competition and the market.
 
Yet even if they richly deserve a demise, many of those same 
businesses will survive. For all the talk of the business world 
ruthlessly weeding out the weak performers, it's striking how 
long companies can get by on mediocrity and customer lethargy.
 
Not that I'm advocating such a strategy as a low-effort approach 
to business survival. The best you can hope for is long and 
steady decline. The worst you can expect? That even the most 
patient, long-suffering, put-upon customers finally say "enough" 
to bad service or, as in the case of the nukes, wasting billions 
of their dollars, and put an end to their misery and your 
business.
 
You can get away with a lot in America, but even in this country, 
there are some things up with which people will not put.
 
*P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or
billvirgin@seattle-pi.com. His column appears Mondays and Wednesdays.*
*****************************************************************
 11    State, plant operators disagree over decommissioning plan 

By Diane Scarponi, Associated Press, 4/24/2001 16:19 

CROMWELL, Conn. (AP) The operators of Connecticut Yankee clashed 
with the state and an anti-nuclear group Tuesday over the plans 
to decommission and clean up the nuclear power plant site. 

The state Department of Public Utility Control and the Citizen's 
Awareness Network claim that Connecticut Yankee's plan to 
disassemble the plant and restore the site is not specific 
enough. The plant's operators said their plan meets all 
regulatory requirements. 

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission must decide if any issues raised by the state and the 
anti-nuclear group deserve full hearings. 

The arguments Tuesday before the three-judge board focused on 
legal issues of the licensing, decommissioning and cleanup 
process for the Haddam Neck plant. These legal issues, however, 
could determine how much the public is informed about cleanup 
procedures and efforts to prevent contaminated soil and water 
from leaving the site and polluting other areas, critics said. 

''There must be a level of detail in these plans, to allow an 
evaluation of whether these plans are adequate to protect public 
health and safety,'' said Randall Speck, a lawyer for the DPUC. 

Connecticut Yankee's lawyer, Robert Gad, said details for 
specific work must be developed as engineers go through the 
decommissioning and cleanup process over several years. 

Any specific procedures that are written today could be 
meaningless later, when the work actually has to get done, he 
said. 

Also, in many cases, workers will use procedures that already 
have been approved for the regular day-to-day running of the 
plant, Gad said. 

The state and the Citizen's Awareness Network also want the board 
to require Connecticut Yankee to do a historical report of 
contamination of the entire site, because radioactive material 
including concrete blocks and wood has been mishandled in the 
past. 

''Connecticut Yankee has a history of losing control of their 
radiological materials,'' said Rosemary Bassilakis, a member of 
the anti-nuclear group. Gad and lawyers from the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission agreed such a historical report is not 
required under regulations. 

Connecticut Yankee operators would like to clean up one section 
of the plant's property at a time, so that some of the land can 
be used to build a gas-burning power plant. 

Critics of this plan said it could lead to recontamination, if 
soil or water from a contaminated part of the property were to 
travel to the cleaned-up part. 

The plant was first issued a license in 1967. It was shut down in 
1996, 11 years ahead of its license schedule, amid safety 
concerns. Plant operators decided the reactor was too costly to 
keep running. 

Decommissioning, cleanup and fuel storage is expected to cost 
$500 million and take seven years. 

The plant is owned by several New England utilities, under the 
name Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co., with the largest 
portion owned by Northeast Utilities of Berlin. 

[Boston Globe Online
*****************************************************************
 12  Filters Appear To Be Fighting Uranium 
                                       
April 24 09:22 PM EDT 
 
 Two experimental filters appear to be working in the fight 
against uranium-contaminated water in southern Greenville County, 
officials said Tuesday.

Culligan installed a filter in one home in the Jenkins Bridge 
Road area on April 19.

That neighborhood has been affected by high levels of uranium in 
their drinking water.

After the first run of tests, the uranium and radon that was also 
found in the water dropped to safe levels.

Tests on another less expensive filter show that uranium levels 
dropped, but radon levels remained higher than government 
recommendations.

State environmental testers said that they want many more tests 
conducted before they'll recommend the $5,000 Culligan filter.

 
  Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! and .
*****************************************************************
 13   Editorial: 'Bias' isn't part of his vocabulary
 
April 25, 2001 
 
Nevadans were left shaking their heads in disbelief after the 
U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general asserted Monday 
that there was no evidence to "substantiate the concern that bias 
compromised the integrity of the site evaluation process" on the 
Yucca Mountain Project. After all, from its very inception, it 
has been clear that the Yucca Mountain Project has been imbued 
with a bias that a repository should be built in Nevada. 
Considerable scientific evidence has been ignored that shows how 
dangerous it would be to store 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear 
waste just 90 miles from Las Vegas.

 The inspector general investigation was sought last year by 
then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, 
D-Nev. The probe was prompted after the Sun reported that a DOE 
subcontractor, in a two-page memo that accompanied a 60-page 
draft overview on the Yucca Mountain Project, concluded that 
Yucca Mountain was safe to store radioactive waste. This 
obviously demonstrated bias since the DOE wasn't supposed to have 
formed an opinion before the scientific studies had been 
completed.

 Inspector General Gregory Friedman may not have been able to 
bring himself to use the word "bias" in describing the DOE 
contractor's activities, but it sure sounds like that is what he 
found. Friedman noted that the DOE contractor had been 
"inappropriately advocating a position" that Yucca Mountain would 
be suitable. Friedman defended the department, however, saying 
that its officials had told the contractor the language used was 
inappropriate. What's missing from the inspector general's 
report, though, is an acknowledgement that since the DOE relies 
so heavily on outside contractors to run its programs, as is the 
case with Yucca Mountain, genuine oversight is virtually 
nonexistent. So when Friedman writes that the department 
objected, it really was a meaningless gesture because it's not 
minding the store in the first place.

 Another disturbing piece of information is that one witness told 
the inspector general that the DOE has not created incentives to 
"rock the boat." The witness said that while the DOE "has changed 
assumptions when provided supporting data, two factors must be 
true before assumptions will be changed: (1) the evidence must be 
unambiguous, and (2) the resulting change cannot threaten the 
program." In other words, "showstoppers" that question Yucca 
Mountain's suitability are swept under the rug. This appalling 
attitude shows that the Yucca Mountain Project has nothing to do 
with science. Meanwhile, it should be noted that the inspector 
general's investigation was severely restricted -- the probe did 
not assess the validity of the technical and scientific review of 
Yucca Mountain's suitability. So the Yucca Mountain Project's 
inept performance to date wasn't p ursued, which offers little 
comfort to Nevadans.

 A problem with the federal government's advocacy of a single 
national repository to handle this deadly waste all along has 
been its haste, which is an excellent example of bias. Don't 
forget that at one time three states were under consideration -- 
Nevada, Texas and Washington state. Then in 1987 political 
pressure led Congress to remove the latter two states from the 
list, leaving only Nevada to be studied. So much for objectivity. 
The DOE knows where Congress stands on nuclear waste storage, and 
the department has done everything in its power to please its 
master that holds its purse strings. In this case it means 
running a slipshod review that the department tries to pass off 
as a scientific inquiry. It is disheartening that the inspector 
general didn't see through this ruse as others already have.
 
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 14  USEC Inc. adopts shareholder rights plan

Yahoo - 

Tuesday April 24, 5:45 pm Eastern Time
 
BETHESDA, Md., April 24 (Reuters) - Enriched uranium maker USEC 
Inc. (NYSE:USU - news) on Tuesday said its board adopted a 
shareholder rights plan designed to fend off any unwanted 
takeover bids.

The Maryland-based company, which earlier this month said it 
would cut 526 jobs at a gaseous diffusion plant, said the plan is 
not in response to any known effort to acquire the company.

Many companies adopt shareholder rights plans, often called 
``poison pills,'' as a way to defend against unsolicited 
takeovers.

Under USEC's plan, one right will be distributed as a dividend 
for each share of common stock held by shareholders of record as 
of the close of business on May 9, the company said. The rights 
will expire on May 9, 2011, it added.

The rights generally will be exercisable only if a person or 
group acquires beneficial ownership of 15 percent or more of the 
company's common stock, USEC said. Once exercised, each right 
will entitle shareholders to buy shares of common stock at a 50 
percent discount to the market, the company said. 

  Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy 
*****************************************************************
 15  Uranium Institute News Briefing 01.17 | 18 - 24 April 2001         
  
A weekly summary of international news relevant to uranium and 
the nuclear energy industry. 

[NB01.17-1] Japan: The president of JCO, Tomoyuki Inami, has 
pleaded guilty on behalf of the company for the accident at the 
Tokaimura uranium processing plant. Six staff in total pleaded 
guilty to breaching nuclear reactor regulations at the initial 
hearing at the Mito District Court in Ibaraki Prefecture. 
*(Financial Times Online, 23 April; see also News Briefing 
00.45-6)* 

[NB01.17-2] Taiwan: The official report into the loss of off-site 
power at Taiwan’s Maanshan nuclear power plant has stated that 
the overall response of personnel was appropriate but highlights 
room for improvement in other areas. Taiwan’s Atomic Energy 
Council (AEC) ordered both staff and independent investigation 
teams to look into the incident. The report into the most notable 
event in 22 years of nuclear power generation in Taiwan noted 
that no radioactive release or environmental impact was observed 
throughout the whole duration of the incident. *(NucNet News 
138/01, 19 April; see also News Briefing 01.13-15)* 

[NB01.17-3] A team of French doctors who work with ionising 
radiation have said that it is vital that the public get a true 
picture of the health effects of the Chernobyl accident. 
Exaggerated accounts of the incident is affecting public health 
with patients refusing treatments and panic over a rise in 
thyroid cancer in France which could not be linked to Chernobyl. 
They cited a growing radiation phobia after the introduction of 
the 1997 Euratom directive on protection of patients against 
ionising radiation as fuelling public fears of possibly life 
saving therapies. *(Nucleonics Week, 12 April, p1) *

[NB01.17-4] Japan: The governor of Yamaguchi province, Sekinari 
Nii, has agreed in principle to a plan to build a nuclear power 
plant at Kaminoseki Prefecture. *(Kyodo News Online, 23 April; 
see also News Briefing 01.07-2)* 

[NB01.17-5] The Russian lower parliament, the Duma, has passed 
the second reading of a bill that will allow the country to 
receive spent fuel imports from other countries for storage and 
reprocessing. Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev told 
the Duma that Russia had good reprocessing technology and could 
generate US$20 billion from the programme. *(Nuclear Market 
Review, 20 April, p2; see also News Briefing 01.15-5)* In an 
interview with NucNet Alexander Rumyantsev stressed the social 
benefits of Russia’s nuclear programme both for the people of 
Russia and in generating funds to clear up environmental problems 
associated with previous defence activities. *(NucNet Background 
No.4-A, 24 April)* 

[NB01.17-6] Ukraine: Vlamir Asmolov of the Kurchatov Nuclear 
Institute has put the cost of a new sarcophagus for the entombed 
nuclear reactor at Chernobyl at between US$1.5 and US$2.5 
billion. He added that there had been no radiation leaks since 
1986 with the original structure. Mr. Asmolov who helped build 
the original sarcophagus was responding to questions about the 
safety of the structure. *(Agencie France Press, 23 April)* 

[NB01.17-7] Canada: Total reserves of uranium at the McArthur 
River are more than 400 million pounds of U3O8 (153 857 tu) and 
the average ore yield 21 per cent according to Bernard Michel the 
chairman of Cameco Corporation. This is a further increase on the 
revised estimates of May 2000. *(Nuclear Canada, 23 April, p1; 
see also News Briefing 01.05-8)* 

[NB01.17-8] South Africa: Preliminary reports for the uranium 
mining industry show an increase of 10% in production levels for 
the first quarter of 2001 over the equivalent period the previous 
year. *(FreshFuel, 23 April, p4*) 

[NB01.17-9] Energy Resources of Australia Ltd (ERA) have made a 
profit after tax of US$0.706 million whilst production has 
increased slightly to 1278 tonnes (1083 tu) for the first quarter 
of 2001. *(Energy Resources of Australia, 24 April)* 

[NB01.17-10] The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has 
approved the transfer of the operating authority for the 
Palisades Nuclear Power Plant from Consumers Energy Company to 
Nuclear Management Company. *(NRC, 20 April; see also News 
Briefing 00.45-7) *

[NB01.17-11] US: The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation has 
formally announced the auction of the generation assets of the 
Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The investment banking firm 
of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co are to conduct the auction sale 
process. *(Nuclear Market Review, 20 April, p3; see also News 
Briefing 01.12-17)* 

[NB01.17-12] US: Edison International, the parent company of 
Southern California Edison (SCE), has announced a loss of US$1.9 
billion for the year 2000. The company has been hit by the 
state-set electricity rates in California however the sale of its 
transmission system to the state of California could offset these 
losses. *(Nucleonics Week, 16 April, p2; see also News Briefing 
01.15-4) *

[NB01.17-13] Sweden: The closure of the Barseback-2 nuclear power 
plant may possibly be put back as the government there wrestles 
with the problems of global warming and electricity demand. The 
Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said that the plant, 
scheduled for closure in 2003, would only be shut down when firm 
replacement sources of electricity had been found. *(FreshFuel, 
23 April, p4; see also News Briefing 00.40-1)* 

[NB01.17-14] Germany: A shipment of spent nuclear fuel has begun 
its journey from Germany for the reprocessing plant at Sellafield 
in the UK. The fuel from Neckarwestheim has left the power plant 
on board trucks and will be joined by more from the Biblis 
nuclear power plant before continuing the journey by rail and 
sea. A total of five flasks will make up the transport which will 
travel by train to Dunkirk ready for shipment across the channel. 
*(BBC News Online, 24 April; see also News Briefing 01.16-17) *

[NB01.17-15] The US Department of Energy has committed an 
additional US$5 million for uranium deposit remediation work at 
the Portsmouth gaseous diffusion plant. This is in addition to 
the US$125.7 million announced in March 2001. *(FreshFuel, 23 
April, p3; see also News Briefing 01.10-10)* 

[NB01.17-16] The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) has warned 
that six of the installations of the Atomic Energy Commission’s 
Cadarache site are incapable of withstanding earthquakes and 
should be closed down. The installations are used for research 
purposes and in the production of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. 
*(SpentFuel, 23 April, p3; see also News Briefing 00.32-14) *

[NB01.17-17] US Department of Energy (DOE) has proposed a budget 
of US$445 million for the country’s used nuclear fuel programme 
and US$223 million for nuclear energy, science and technology. 
Congress is to consider the requests which represent a rise of 
14% in the used fuel programme and a cut of 9% in spending on 
nuclear energy, science and technology over the 2001 budget. The 
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also put in a request for an 
increased budget of US$25.8 million to US$513 million for the 
year 2002. *(NucNet News, 135/01 and 136/01,18 April) *

[NB01.17-18] US: General Electric (GE) is demanding US$50 million 
in compensation from Taiwan Power for losses incurred when 
construction of the Lungmen nuclear power plant was stalled. GE 
was contracted to provide two reactors and construct fuel-related 
facilities for the plant. *(Ux Weekly, 23 April, p4; see also 
News Briefing 01.08-1)* 

[NB01.17-19] The European Union plans to press ahead with the 
ratification of the Kyoto treaty even if the United States pulls 
out of the process. At a meeting of 40 environment ministers in 
New York some compromises were offered to the US including the 
use of forests as carbon sinks which soak up carbon dioxide and 
thereby reduce totals emitted. Jan Prank the environment minister 
for the Nederland’s declared however that all parties bar the US 
were agreed in supporting the Kyoto agreement. This includes 
Australia who previously had seen to be supporting the US 
position. *(BBC News Online, 22 April; see also News Briefings 
01.16-20) *

[NB01.17-20] The European Nuclear Society (ENS) has announced the 
appointment of Stephen Pernau as the organisation’s new secretary 
general. *(NucNet Insider, No 5/01, 18 April)* The World 
Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) Toyko centre has elected 
V K Chatuurvedi of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) 
as chairman of its governing council. (NucNet Insider, No 6/01, 
18 April) Yuri Nedashkovsky has been appointed ‘executive 
president’ of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear utility EnergoAtom 
thus ending the situation where EnergoAtom had two ‘presidents’, 
Mr. Nedashkovsky and Mr. Nur Nigmatullin. Mr. Nigmatullin is 
state operator of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants while retaining 
his role as deputy fuel and energy minister. *(NucNet Business 
News, No 38/01, 19 April; see also News Briefing 01.06-16)* 
Previous News Briefing NB01.16       
                    
*Prepared by the Uranium Institute Information Service. All news 
and views are those of the publications cited.*         
*****************************************************************
 16  Japan's Prince Hitachi Visits Panama; Protests About Ship

Wednesday, April 25 11:10 AM SGT 
 
 PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP)--Prince Hitachi, brother of Japanese 
Emperor Akihito, and his wife Princess Hanako were given the keys 
to Panama City Tuesday. A few blocks away, demonstrators 
protested against the passage of Japanese ship carrying 
radioactive cargo through the Panama Canal. 

The protests apparently weren't visible from the city hall where 
the princes were honored during the second day of their three-day 
visit to Panama. 

"The princes are welcome, ships with plutonium are not," read a 
sign carried by one of the handful of local environmentalists who 
participated in the protest. 

Last week, the ship Pacific Swan carried a load of radioactive 
material from Japan through the canal on its way for treatment in 
Britain. Environmentalists say they are concerned about the 
possibility of leaks and spills from such shipments. 

Prince Hitachi and Princess Hanako arrived in Panama Sunday, are 
to attend a state dinner with President Mireya Moscoso Tuesday 
night and leave the country Wednesday. 
                                       
Copyright © 1994-2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 17  Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Hot house
 	 	 
Hot house 
		 	
When police raided Alfonso Sandoval's house, their Geiger 
counters went mad. But what was a Colombian doing with £1m worth 
of uranium? Had it come from the former Soviet Union? And where 
was it heading next? By Ian Traynor in Moscow and Steven Dudley 
in Bogota           
 		
Wednesday April 25, 2001 The Guardian            
 		
On a warm Friday afternoon last month, six Colombian secret 
policemen, along with members of the prosecutor general's office 
and various geologists, knocked on the door of Alfonso Sandoval. 
Although located in a posh western suburb of Bogota and close to 
the US embassy, Sandoval's house showed signs of ageing. The 
walls were coming apart and the paint was chipping. 

The agents had been closely following Sandoval for two months and 
believed they had gathered enough evidence to search for illegal 
substances in his home. The unassuming-looking Sandoval let in 
the agents who scoured the first and second floors. Just beyond 
the kitchen in a back room they found a computer, a spectrometer 
for measuring the purity of radioactive elements, and two lead 
canisters with 600 grams of highly concentrated uranium. The 
geologists' Geiger counters immediately showed heavy signs of 
radiation. 

The house was severely contaminated. The FBI was alerted. And 
Sandoval instantly fell under suspicion of being at the centre of 
a new and lethal international smuggling ring ultimately aimed at 
flogging a nuclear warhead, or the wherewithal to make one, to 
any unsavoury regime or dictator. 

Sandoval's uranium was not weapons-grade, at least not yet. But 
it was much more highly enriched than the material used in 
civilian nuclear energy generation and was roughly of the degree 
of enrichment used to fuel Russia's ageing fleet of nuclear 
submarines - around 66% pure. The Colombian authorities estimated 
the local market value of the 600 grams at just over £1m. 

The files on Sandoval's computer revealed detailed information on 
uranium enrichment processes. The Colombian investigators believe 
that Sandoval was engaged, however implausibly, in a high-risk, 
home-grown uranium enrichment exercise. 

That scenario is scorned by the experts who point out that 
enriching uranium is an extraordinarily intensive and complex 
process. They add that Saddam Hussein, with limitless funds, has 
spent 10 years trying and failing to produce weapons-grade 
uranium using the rudimentary techniques employed by the US in 
the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. 

So what was Sandoval up to? And where did the uranium come from? 

Given the assumed links between Russian and Ukrainian mafias and 
Colombian drugs cartels, speculation about the origins of the 
nuclear pellets is focusing on the huge and chaotic nuclear 
industries of the former Soviet Union, although in the decade 
since the communist behemoth collapsed there has been only one 
significant confirmed case of weapons-grade fissile material 
being smuggled west and sold. Interestingly, that case also bore 
Colombian and Russian fingerprints. "The uranium could be of 
Russian origin," says David Kyd, spokesman for the International 
Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) in Vienna. "But you would need 
detailed laboratory analysis and a number of days before you 
would be able to find a signature." 

Weapons-grade uranium is 95% enriched, while the stuff used in 
nuclear power stations is 2%-3% enriched. The 66% enrichment, 
says Kyd, is "bizarre". 

Given the corrupt and impoverished condition of the Russian 
nuclear and military industries, there is no doubt that through 
the past decade, Russian boffins have been selling the secrets of 
their arcane trade to the highest bidders, whether in Iraq, North 
Korea, or Libya, despite US aid programmes aimed at securing 
Russian scientists' salaries, safely disposing of weapons-grade 
uranium and plutonium, and de-nuclearising other parts of the 
former Soviet Union. Filching and smuggling of low-level 
radioactive materials, however, is rife in Russia. 

"There have been repeated attempts to take radioactive metals to 
Finland this year," admits Dmitriy Kokko, an officer with the 
customs service in north-west Russia. "Cases of smuggling or 
accidental export are taking place all the time." 

A St Petersburg conference two weeks ago was told that there had 
been 500 attempted cases of radioactive materials being smuggled 
out last year alone. But most of these cases entail relatively 
low-risk isotopes, metal being sold for scrap in the west, or 
materials stolen from medical laboratories. Innocent people may 
get sick from this, but it does not have the makings of a nuclear 
bomb. 

In a typical week earlier this month, a container of radioactive 
isotopes was stolen from an aluminium plant in Ukraine and 
offered for sale, while two sailors in Russia's Pacific fleet 
were arrested in Vladivostok after trying to sell parts taken 
from a naval nuclear installation. 

"You can only get the highly enriched uranium and the plutonium 
at a few closed centres in Russia and we don't get reports of 
this being stolen," says Igor Kudrik, a Russian expert at the 
Bellona nuclear watchdog in Norway. 

"But the situation is very serious. The Russians don't report 
thefts of fissile materials, but three or four times a year it 
emerges that someone has been arrested for stealing fissile 
materials. We're never told what happened to the material." 

Apart from not being of the required degree of enrichment to make 
a bomb, the Sandoval uranium stash was also very small - just 
over half a kilo - experts say you need 25 kilos to make a bomb. 

Nuclear weapons can be made from two types of radioactive 
material - enriched uranium and plutonium. Natural uranium 
contains two kinds of atoms, U-233 and a tiny amount of U-235, 
which is radioactive - that is, it decays, giving off energy and 
particles. Sometimes, the decaying U-235 atom will turn a U-233 
atom into another U-235 atom. If the concentration of U-235 
reaches a high enough level, it can produce new U-235 faster than 
it decays. If uranium is enriched so that U-235 reaches 2-3%, it 
can generate enough energy for nuclear power. If it reaches 95%, 
and there is enough uranium in the first place, there will be a 
nuclear explosion. Plutonium, which does not exist naturally, 
works in the same way, but with a different set of atoms. 

The most notorious case of nuclear smuggling from the former 
Soviet Union entailed plutonium. In 1994, a Colombian, Justitiano 
Torres Benitez, was arrested at Munich airport after arriving on 
a flight from Moscow carrying 340g of plutonium. Together with 
two Spanish middlemen, he was jailed in 1995. He got just under 
five years. He should be out by now. 

Yet that case illustrated all the ambiguities of the shadowy 
world of nuclear smuggling, with spies, counter-spies, 
journalists and double agents pursuing crooks, fraudsters, 
scientists, businessmen and buyers, with nobody sure what game is 
really being played. 

The nuclear material in Torres' case really did come from Russia. 
Alarming. But the buyer, and to many the instigator of the entire 
crooked sting, was the German state, in the form of the German 
Federal Intelligence Service. Had a German undercover agent not 
offered the men £170m for enough plutonium to make a bomb, the 
defence argued convincingly, the shipment would never have taken 
place. The Germans were embarrassed. The Russian were 
incandescent. 

There has never been evidence to suggest that any of the nuclear 
warheads in the former Soviet bloc have gone missing or been sold 
off. Former Warsaw Pact countries such as Hungary or Poland never 
had control over the warheads on their territory, which have long 
since been withdrawn; Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus have all 
renounced the warheads on their territory, and these have, it 
seems, been accounted for and returned to Russia. 

That still leaves a grey area in Russia itself, where, behind 
their security screens, the 10 closed cities involved in nuclear 
weapons production have become hotbeds of entrepreneurship. No 
unauthorised visitors are supposed to go there. But they do. 

A few years ago Victor Osipov, director of a technology park in 
the closed plutonium-making city of Seversk, told the Guardian: 
"There are 5,500 small businesses registered in the town - but 
only about 1,000 pay taxes. There's a strong core of 
entrepreneurs who would be capable of starting a whole nuclear 
industry from scratch." 

And a further part of the problem is that no one really knows how 
much bomb-grade material exists in Russia. For several years now 
the US department of energy has been funding a programme to track 
and trace all the uranium and plutonium across Russia. The result 
so far is inconclusive. The inventory is not complete, meaning it 
is harder to establish the facts if and when some of the stuff 
goes missing. 

And among the experts, the fear is now that the new and 
hard-nosed Bush administration in Washington will cut back on 
such aid programmes which, in any case, are humiliating to the 
Russian atomic lobby, once the Soviet elite. President Bill 
Clinton and his energy secretary, Bill Richardson, viewed the 
nuclear containment aid to Russia as a US national security 
priority. "Under Spencer Abraham [Bush's new energy secretary] 
those programmes will be whittled back," says Kyd of the IAEA. 

Sandoval in his backyard bomb factory, meanwhile, seems an 
unlikely lynchpin of a new international syndicate trafficking in 
the nuclear nightmare. For a wannabe boffin with an atomic 
absorption spectrometer, he has no formal education and, at the 
time of the raid, he was recovering from open-heart surgery, 
though he has admitted to having spent time in Russia. He was 
also arrested in Spain in the early 1980s on charges of drug 
trafficking but released shortly after. 

Government investigators are still monitoring Sandoval's possible 
associates, but have yet to link any of the other illicit 
networks with the one that may have brought the uranium to 
Colombia. While there are natural deposits in uranium in 
Colombia, there are no uranium mines. 

If convicted, Sandoval could face between three and eight years 
of prison. But Colombian law is very vague about the crime in 
question, and Sandoval has been released while the investigation 
proceeds in the prosecutor general's office. Authorities say they 
released him because he could aggravate a heart condition he has 
if left in jail. 

             Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 
*****************************************************************
 18  Nuclear plant fully operational again

The Taipei Times Online: 2001-04-25
 
  Wednesday, April 25th, 2001   

TECHNICAL GLITCH: One of the two generators of a nuclear plant in 
Kenting, which had to be shut down after an electrical fire in 
its circuitry, is to be restarted more than a month after the 
incident

By Chiu Yu-tzu STAFF REPORTER

One of two electricity generators at a nuclear power plant in 
southern Taiwan, forced to close by a fire in mid-March, is ready 
to be put back into service, officials at the plant said 
yesterday.

 Officials at Kenting's Third Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¤T¼t), run 
by the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, ¥x¹q), said that the No. 2 
electricity generator and peripheral facilities are ready to 
resume operations after passing a series of tests.

 Chen Pu-tsan (³¯¥¬Àé), deputy station manager of the plant, said 
that the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) approved the proposal to 
restart the generator last week.

 "We will restart the No. 2 generator immediately after receiving 
notification of the AEC's approval," Chen said, adding that 
afterwards the plant would supply 9,510 megawatts of electricity 
daily.

 The plant has stopped supplying electricity since March 17 when 
two electricity generators at the plant were closed after an 
electricity transmission malfunction, apparently triggered by the 
accumulation of salt crystals on transmission lines.

 Sudden short circuits occurred on four electricity transmission 
lines connecting the power plant and two high voltage towers at 
Ta-peng (¤jÄP) and Lungchi (Às±T).

 At the time Taipower officials said that the short circuits 
could be attributed to a failure to remove the salty particles 
stuck on electricity transmission lines.

 The generators are used to produce electricity for part of the 
process of cooling the plant's nuclear reactors.

 A day after the short circuit, a fire erupted when operators 
tried to use diesel-powered generators to bring the No.1 
electricity generator back on line.

 The emergency measure unfortunately caused two breakers, 
commonly known as switchers, to malfunction. The mechanical 
malfunction increased the temperature on the circuit and soon 
heavy smoke damaged more than 100 breakers, officials said at the 
time of the accident.

 Chen said that repairs on the first electricity generator and 
related facilities would be finished by the end of this week.

 "A series of tests scheduled to be carried out next week will be 
crucial to the AEC's decision on the generator's return to 
service," Chen said.

 Chen said that the electrical engineering systems had been 
re-checked after the fire.

 Since the accident took place environmentalists have been 
turning up the pressure on Taipower, accusing the state-run firm 
of lax management. They claim that the design of electrical 
systems at the plant was inadequate and that the AEC was unaware 
of the systems' weaknesses.

 Anti-nuclear activists from the Taiwan Environmental Protection 
Union (¥xÆWÀô«OÁp·ù) have queried the results of a report 
released on April 11 by the Executive Yuan, which attributed the 
damage of the breakers to insulation tubes of the circuit 
breakers burning out.

 
This story has been viewed 304 times. 
URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/04/25/story/0000083087] 

Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 19   Consultant to advise on delayed nuclear fuel plant
 
April 24, 06:01 PM
       
LONDON (Reuters) - The Government has appointed independent 
consultants to assess whether there is an economic case for 
opening a controversial nuclear fuel plant built by state-owned 
British Nuclear Fuels.
 
"Consultants Arthur D Little will report in around seven weeks," 
a spokesman for the Department of Environment, Transport and the 
Regions (DETR) said on Tuesday.
 
The 460-million-pound Sellafield Mox Plant (SMP) has lain idle 
since completion in 1997 because it has been unable to secure 
regulatory approval to start up.
 
"Once the report has been completed the Secretary of State for 
the DETR and the Secretary of State for Health will decide 
whether there is enough information to make a decision (on giving 
the green light to SMP) or whether they need more information," 
the DETR spokesman said.
 
"The decision will take several weeks."
 
The government has consistently refused to grant a full operating 
licence because of fears the mixed oxide fuel, a combination of 
plutonium and uranium, will have trouble finding buyers following 
a scandal nearly two years ago.
 
In late 1999 BNFL's Mox fuel created an international furore 
after revelations that quality control data on a batch of fuel 
sent to Japan had been falsified.
 
The fuel at the centre of the storm was manufactured at BNFL's 
Mox demonstration facility and not SMP.
 
Despite attempts by the company and senior government officials 
to reassure customers the fuel was not dangerous, two key 
customers, Japan and Germany placed import bans on BNLF Mox fuel 
raising questions about the size of future export markets.
 
Critics of Mox, including environmental group Greenpeace, say the 
fuel, which is more more expensive than uranium and requires 
modifications to most reactors before it can be burnt, has no 
real market.
 
Greenpeace argues that Mox is merely a vehicle by which BNFL 
repatriates to its overseas customers the plutonium created when 
the company reprocesses foreign spent nuclear fuel.
 
Before the SMP is allowed to start up it needs to pass a test of 
justification required by European law proving that the benefits 
of a practice involving ionising radiation outweigh any 
environmental impact.   

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or
*****************************************************************
 20  Temelin Opponents Say More Fuel to Arrive in Temelin Soon

Czech Today on Central Europe Online - Czech Today - 

LINZ / TEMELIN, South Bohemia, Apr 24, 2001 -- (CTK - Czech News 
Agency) The Upper Austrian opponents of the Czech nuclear power 
plant at Temelin claim that more fuel is likely to be shipped 
soon to Temelin, the APA agency said today.
 
Referring to the spokesman for the Upper Austrian platform 
against the atomic danger Josef Puehringer and head of the Greens 
in the Upper Austrian land assembly Rudi Anschober, APA said that 
the next supply of fuel to Temelin is expected in the next few 
days.
 
A train transporting nuclear fuel for Temelin arrived secretly on 
Sunday afternoon in Temelin and the secrecy was strongly 
criticized by environmentalists as well as municipalities along 
the route who said they should have been told. Temelin spokesman 
Milan Nebesar today told CTK that he cannot comment on the 
allegations concerning a further transport of fuel.
 
"The route, the timing, and the quantity of the fuel are all 
state secrets," Nebesar said. The new supply should arrive from 
the Polish port of Sczeczin and will again be secret which 
Puehringer criticized. Anschober said the supplies should be 
stopped, APA wrote. The very first fuel arrived in Temelin on May 
21, 1997. The Temelin reactor contains about 81 tons of uranium, 
of which about 3 kilograms are split daily.
 
*((c) 2001 CTK - Czech News Agency)* <IMG 
SRC="/graphics/common/decor/mailarticle.gif" WIDTH=113 HEIGHT=19 
ALIGN=top BORDER=0 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0><IMG 
SRC="/graphics/common/decor/printarticle.gif" WIDTH=113 HEIGHT=19 
BORDER=0 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0>News Headlines    Top Stories    
Business News + Renewed Austrian Protests Over Czech Nuclear 
Plant 28 Apr 2001 10:32 GMT + NATO Summit in Prague to Take Place 
on November 21-22, 2002 28 Apr 2001 15:16 GMT + Three out of 
Eight Planned May Day Events Banned 28 Apr 2001 15:16 GMT + 
Anti-Temelin Blockade of Wullowitz Crossing Ends 28 Apr 2001 
15:16 GMT + Austrian Environment Minister Unhappy About Prague's 
Temelin Note 28 Apr 2001 15:16 GMT 
*****************************************************************
 21  Tour spurs support for Yucca site

  [Las Vegas Review-Journal] 
  
Wednesday, April 25, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

ELKO -- Several Elko County officials who visited the Yucca 
Mountain site on a tour organized by the local Navy League came 
away impressed and supportive of plans to build a nuclear waste 
dump there. 

Elko County Commissioner Mike Nannini and university system 
Regent Dorothy Gallagher are among those who toured the site last 
week and want to see it activated. 

Ralph McMullen, executive director of the Elko Convention and 
Visitor's Authority, and Bill Nisbet, an authority board member, 
also support the proposed high-level waste site about 100 miles 
northwest of Las Vegas. 

"I have confidence in what I saw," Nisbet told the Elko Daily 
Free Press. He said he feels comfortable with the safety 
precautions being taken at the Yucca site. 

Nisbet helped organize the tour as president of the local chapter 
of the Navy League, a group supporting the interests of the 
Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine. Many modern 
Navy ships and submarines use nuclear power.
  
This story is located at: 
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Apr-25-Wed-2001/news/15946537.html
*****************************************************************
 22  Anti-nuclear activists try to stop Sellafield cargo 

ireland.com - The Irish Times - WORLD
 
April 25, 2001                       

By Derek Scally, in Berlin 

GERMANY: Five containers of radioactive nuclear waste began their 
surface trip to the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria 
yesterday amid protests from German anti-nuclear activists.

 Police detained over 50 demonstrators who blocked the road from 
the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant in southern Germany in an 
attempt to halt this latest shipment. It is the second shipment 
of nuclear waste in recent weeks and the first shipment to 
Britain in three years.

 Yesterday's protests were lowkey in comparison to the running 
battles that accompanied the shipment of waste from France to 
Germany earlier this month. "This shipment will have serious 
effects on the environment. Sellafield is the biggest 
environmental hazard in western Europe", said Mr Veit Bürger, an 
energy spokesman for Greenpeace.

 Over 2,500 police officers were on hand yesterday to remove the 
70 demonstrators staging a sit-in on the road near the nuclear 
plant, and the transport got underway after an hour's delay.

 This shipment, along with waste from another plant, will be 
brought to the German town of Wörth today and then on to Dunkirk 
in France. Authorities expect the shipment to reach Sellafield 
next week.

 Protests against this latest shipment began on Monday when a 
dozen protesters chained themselves to railway tracks. They have 
vowed to further disrupt the shipment, in Germany and Britain, to 
make future cargoes prohibitively expensive.

 Shipments of nuclear waste were suspended in Germany in 1998 
after concerns were raised about radioactive leaks. The 
resumption of shipments has divided public opinion in Germany. 
Anti-nuclear activists accuse the Environment Minister and Green 
Party member, Mr Jürgen Trittin, who supported the last protests 
in 1998, of selling out.

 Mr Trittin says Germany has a moral duty to be responsible for 
its own nuclear waste. The resumption of transports also form 
part of an agreement to phase out Germany's 19 nuclear reactors 
by 2025.

 Germany has no facilities for reprocessing nuclear waste and 
must export waste for treatment to France and Britain. The 
suspension of waste transports in 1998 has caused huge problems 
for the nuclear plant operators who have little storage space for 
the highly dangerous waste.

 "We have a huge backlog of waste here. To clear that, we have to 
ship around 128 tonnes of waste in the next five years", said Mr 
Werner Zaiss, technical manager of the nuclear plant in 
Neckarwestheim.
 
*****************************************************************
 23  Nuclear Waste Transport Goes Smoothly

F.A.Z. - English Version
 	 	 	 	 	 
[Frankfurter Allgemeine] 


  Police on horses lead a convoy of three trucks carrying nuclear 
waste in front of the nuclear power plant in Neckarwestheim near 
Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg on Tuesday. Protesters delayed but 
did not stop the shipment. (Photo: Reuters)

*By Alfred Behr
*

STUTTGART. Spent fuel rods from the Neckarwestheim nuclear power 
plant in the German state of Baden-Württemberg completed the 
first leg of their journey to the Sellafield reprocessing plant 
in England on Tuesday with a slight delay caused by protesters, 
but no serious hitches. 

Shortly after 7:30 a.m., a convoy of trucks loaded with three 
Excellox containers carrying 21 of the spent rods left the 
nuclear power station, located north of Stuttgart. The journey 
via cordoned-off roads to the Walheim coal-fired power station, 
five kilometers (3.1 miles) away in Ludwigsburg district, took 
about 45 minutes. 

In Walheim, the containers were transferred to a train scheduled 
to stop in Wörth, near the French border, on Wednesday to pick up 
nuclear waste from the Biblis plant in Hesse. It is then to 
continue to Dunkirk, where the cargo will be stowed on a ship. 

The "Castor Resistance Union for Action" took part in the 
demonstrations, though the shipment did not actually contain any 
Castor containers. These large receptacles have a double-lid 
design that makes them suitable as storage containers, which is 
why they are used for trips to temporary storage facilities. 
Excellox containers, on the other hand, are purely for transport.

Early Tuesday, police had cordoned off the transport route 
between Neckarwestheim and Walheim. Despite the security, a 
hundred or so demonstrators managed to plant themselves in the 
road near the nuclear site, and were carried away by police. The 
state of Baden-Württemberg is demanding a "carrying fee" of DM62 
($28) from protesters who must be forcibly removed.

About 2,500 police officers and federal border guards were on 
duty Tuesday. Some 300 people demonstrated, and police made 68 
arrests.

The Neckarwestheim nuclear plant uses about a hundred fuel rods a 
year, which require disposal. In past years, 170 loads were 
transported from Neckarwestheim to the nuclear reprocessing 
plants in Sellafield and La Hague without much ado. The last load 
was transported to Sellafield in 1998. 

Since that time, however, Germany's policy on nuclear energy has 
changed. The current government coalition of the Social 
Democratic Party and Alliance 90_The Greens no longer tolerates 
nuclear waste reprocessing, and also demands that radioactive 
waste no longer be brought to the temporary storage plants in 
Ahaus and Gorleben.

Instead, the government has ordered that it be stored in 
facilities located at the nuclear power plants.

As Neckarwestheim has no temporary storage facility, the federal 
agency for radiation protection authorized that an "interim 
facility" be used. Neckarswestheim residents now fear that the 
interim facility will turn into a permanent waste disposal site.

Nuclear energy opponents are against both interim facilities as 
well as transports to reprocessing plants.Apr. 24, 2001

                  © Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2000 All 
*****************************************************************
 24  Dounreay receives safety award

BBC News | SCOTLAND | 

Tuesday, 24 April, 2001, 16:58 GMT 

[Dounreay] 
The plant is said to a safe place to work

The Dounreay nuclear plant has received an award as one of the 
safest places to work in Britain. 

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) - which runs the plant - 
won a gold award from the Royal Society for the Prevention of 
Accidents. 

The occupational safety award covers the last year in a four-year 
span, with the accident record considered against official 
national average statistics for the period. 

Colin Gregory, head of technology at Dounreay, said staff 
deserved the highest praise for the award. 
	 		 			
The plant has been criticised over its safety record in the past
 		 		 		  
But Lorraine Mann, of Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, said the 
accolade was misleading. 

Ms Mann said: "This kind of thing does no more than bring the 
society into serious disrepute. 

"These people do not really look at radiological or radioactive 
matters. 

"They concentrate on things like persons injuring themselves on 
slippery floors or spanners falling from above and hitting 
someone below". 

A different impression 

The UKAEA has been fined three times since 1997 for safety 
breaches including two cases involving workers becoming illegally 
contaminated with radioactivity. 

In 1998, Britain's two main nuclear safety watchdogs provided a 
damning indictment of the state of many of Dounreay plans and 
work-practices. It ordered the UKAEA to take action to rectify 
143 safety lapses to bring the complex up to modern national and 
international standards. 

Mark Wheeler, of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, said 34 
of the upgrades demanded in the Health and Safety Executive's 
1998 report had now been completed and passed by his 
organisation. 

'The highest praise' 

He said: "Up until the end of March the authority told us that it 
had completed work on a further 41 of the recommendations for 
action. 

"All of these are now being assessed by our inspectors over a 
period of up to six months". 

Mr Gregory said: "This award demonstrates that the site here is 
actually one of the safest places to work, contrary to the 
impression that is sometimes portrayed. 

"Given the hazardous nature of some of the work that we do and 
the complexities of a site like Dounreay, the safety teams and 
the staff generally deserve the highest praise". 

The gold award to Dounreay was one of around 500 given to 
different firms and organisations throughout the UK.                 


*****************************************************************
 25  FORATOM: EU energy policy -- Why Europe needs nuclear power
 
[M2 Communications Ltd.]   
  
Story Filed: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 12:19 PM EST 

Brussels, Apr 25, 2001 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) -- Europe's 
nuclear industry has told top EU officials that the nuclear power 
option must be retained in the European Community to strengthen 
security of energy supply, increase energy independence and hold 
down greenhouse gas emissions. 

These key messages were presented to senior officials at the 
European Commission yesterday (Tuesday) by FORATOM, the trade 
association for the nuclear industry in Europe. 

FORATOM has just issued a detailed position statement in response 
to a Commission Green Paper, dealing with security of energy 
supply, which was released last November. The Green Paper was 
published to promote a wide-ranging debate on Europe's energy 
future. FORATOM's statement is the industry's main contribution 
to the debate, which has another seven months to run. 

FORATOM recommends that the Commission should promote further 
discussion of the role of nuclear in the EU energy mix, both 
during and after the Green Paper debate. According to FORATOM, 
nuclear's future potential should be examined in order to define 
new orientations and objectives. 

The EU is currently dependent on external sources for 50% of its 
energy needs, but this is due to rise to 70% over the next 20 
years. Greater use of nuclear for electricity generation would 
reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels and reduce atmospheric 
pollution. 

The industry believes that, as nuclear plants emit virtually no 
CO2, the Commission should recognise nuclear's important 
contribution to the avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions. 
According to FORATOM, this should be factored into EU policy 
measures aimed at meeting the Community's commitments under the 
Kyoto Protocol. 

Other recommendations include: - Commission support for political 
and public processes leading to the creation of permanent 
solutions for the storage of all radioactive wastes; - Continued 
provision of significant funding for nuclear research, with 
special emphasis on radioactive waste management and development 
of new reactor types; - Policies encouraging 'a level playing 
field' for competing EU energy producers; - Greater efforts by 
the Commission to increase public awareness of nuclear energy 
issues and radioactive waste management. 

The FORATOM statement makes a series of points on specific issues 
such as security of energy supply, the environment, waste, 
research, economics and public acceptance. In addition, detailed 
answers are given to 13 questions posed by the Commission in the 
Green Paper. 

The full text of the position statement is available on the 
FORATOM website ( www.foratom.org), and a key passage from the 
document is given below: 

Nuclear is a secure, stable and abundant source of energy, 
currently providing about 35% of the EU's electricity. There are 
many conventional uranium sources around the world, and 
availability is not politically sensitive. Large stocks of 
fissile material are already available inside the EU, and there 
are enough fuel assemblies (completed and in production) to 
provide for three to four years of normal nuclear power plant 
operation. 

Furthermore, the cost of nuclear electricity is not highly 
sensitive to the price of uranium. A 50% rise in the price of 
uranium ore would result in a tariff increase of only 2.5%, 
whereas in the case of oil or gas it would be around 38%. Fossil 
fuels have many industrial applications besides their combustion 
for electricity generation. Uranium has virtually no other 
practical uses, and its use in nuclear reactors, therefore, makes 
it possible to conserve valuable and finite fossil fuel reserves. 
For all these reasons, nuclear energy provides a robust and 
stable buffer against external changes that could affect other 
sources of energy supply. 

Evidence of environmental damage from greenhouse gas emissions, 
coupled with recent instabilities in fossil fuel pricing and 
supply, illustrate the potential fragility of our situation as 
far as energy consumption and dependency are concerned. 
Furthermore, we have seen in the US state of California - even in 
the world's most developed economy - that serious disruptions to 
electricity supply are possible. These events, taken together, 
demonstrate that energy cannot be taken for granted. Energy 
availability on demand is not something that just happens. Energy 
supply has to be thought about and planned for in a comprehensive 
manner, taking into account a number of important constraints. 

All energy technologies have a role to play in meeting our needs 
within acknowledged constraints. It is important to develop 
renewable energies and energy-conservation technologies so that 
they can reach their full potential. Appropriate funding 
mechanisms should be developed, but this should not be at the 
direct expense of other energy sources. 

It is appropriate now to reassert the valuable contribution that 
nuclear makes to meeting the need for abundant and clean 
baseload* electricity in the EU. The industry sees the European 
Commission as a key player in this process. Nuclear is 
strategically important to European energy supply because it 
offsets dependence on oil and gas, which are politically 
sensitive. Nuclear also makes a valuable contribution to the 
avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions. The Commission should 
therefore support the promotion of nuclear as part of the EU's 
energy mix. 

* the power needed round-the-clock, day after day 

CONTACT: Jack Ashton, Media Relations Manager Tel: +32 2 505 32 
26 e-mail: ja@foratom.skynet.be Karen Daifuku, Communications 
Director Tel: +32 2 505 32 20 e-mail: kd@foratom.skynet.be 

PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.neton the world 
wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com. 

Copyright 1994-2001 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD 
*****************************************************************
 26  Sweden, Russia to continue talks on nuclear waste accord
 
 [M2 Communications Ltd.] 

Story Filed: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 9:15 AM EST 

Apr 25, 2001 (NORDIC BUSINESS REPORT via COMTEX) -- Sweden and 
Russia are to continue to discuss problems related to a 
conclusion of a multilateral accord on the utilisation of nuclear 
waste during an upcoming visit to Moscow of the Swedish Prime 
Minister Goran Persson. 

This statement was reportedly made by Persson yesterday (24 
April) at a joint news conference with his Russian counterpart 
Mikhail Kasyanov which was devoted to the results of talks 
between the two premiers. 

At an earlier meeting yesterday Kasyanov discussed with Birgitta 
Dahl, the head of Swedish parliament, a range of international 
issues, including the situation in the Balkans and Yugoslavia, 
enlargement of the EU and NATO's eastward expansion, reported the 
Russian news agency Itar-Tass. 

Comments on this story may be sent to 
nbr.feedback@nordicbusinessreport.com Copyright 1998-2001 M2 
COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com
*****************************************************************
 27  Ukrainian reactor reduces output because of malfunction 

The Associated

KPnews.com -- News about Ukraine

25 Apr 2001       
Press 

KYIV, April 25 - Workers were forced to reduce a nuclear 
reactor's output at Ukraine's Yuzhnaya atomic power plant due to 
a malfunction in the circulation pumps, the Emergency Situations 
Ministry said Wednesday. 

The output of Yuzhnaya's reactor No. 3 was reduced by 80 percent 
while repairs were conducted Tuesday, and the reactor was 
expected to reach full output by Wednesday afternoon, it said. No 
radiation leaks were reported.
 
The malfunction was reported just a day before the 15th 
anniversary of the reactor explosion and fire at the Chernobyl 
plant, the world's worst nuclear disaster.
 
Chernobyl remained a source of international concern until it was 
shut down for good in December, but much work remains to be done 
to fully decommission the plant and make a sarcophagus covering 
its ruined reactor environmentally safe.
 
Ukraine operates 13 nuclear reactors at four atomic plants. They 
produce about 40 percent of the former Soviet republic's 
electricity but are frequently shut down for maintenance or 
because of malfunctions.

© 2000 SputnikMedia.net   
*****************************************************************
 28  Ukraine Marks Chernnobyl Anniversary
 
April 25, 2001 

KIEV, Ukraine- Fifteen years after the Chernobyl disaster sent a 
radioactive cloud over much of Europe, the infamous plant has 
finally been idled and a beleaguered nation struggles to deal 
with its deadly legacy. 

The plant - site of the world's worst nuclear accident - 
continued operation after the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire, 
amid profound international concern over safety issues. 

The last reactor was shut down in December and the plant stopped 
operating for good. The greatest worry remains the leaky concrete 
and steel sarcophagus over the ruined reactor - a $758 million 
internationally funded project aims to make it environmentally 
safe. 

Now, with promised Western aid in limbo, the economically 
struggling Ukraine must provide for about 6,000 Chernobyl workers 
who depended on the plant to survive. 

"The 2001 budget did not provide for the social needs and for 
works related to the plant's closure," Chernobyl director Vitaly 
Tolstonohov said. "We had to do much work in resolving the 
questions of financing, and have partially solved them." 

The government is frustrated because it has not received money 
promised by the international community to compensate for the 
loss of Chernobyl electricity, in particular to complete two new 
reactors. 

Instead, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 
which guides the aid project, raised new conditions for its 
loans. 

"I consider this as unwillingness to fund construction of the 
reactors," an angry President Leonid Kuchma said recently. "Why 
do we go with our hand outstretched, and they always beat us on 
our hands by various conditions?

Didn't we know that it would be so when we were closing down 
Chernobyl?" 

The government also faces criticism for not adequately providing 
for those who suffered the effects of Chernobyl's fallout, which 
contaminated large areas of the former Soviet republic of 
Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. 

More than 4,000 who took part in the hasty and poorly organized 
Soviet cleanup effort have died, the government says, and more 
than 70,000 Ukrainians were disabled by the disaster. 

About 3.4 million of Ukraine's 50 million people, including about 
1.26 million children, are considered affected by Chernobyl. Of 
them, 400,000 adults and nearly 1.1 million children are entitled 
to state aid. 

About 5,000 Chernobyl victims demonstrated in Kiev over the 
weekend, saying many entitled to state aid were not receiving 
benefits and compensation for living on contaminated land. 

Yuriy Andreev, who heads a victims' union, said Chernobyl victims 
are now owed $136 million, and the debt grows by up $7.4 million 
every month. 

Post-Soviet economic distress forced Ukraine to steadily 
underfund Chernobyl-related social programs, though that has 
changed somewhat. But the health of those affected has 
deteriorated steadily. 

A dramatic surge in thyroid cancer among Ukrainian children was 
reported last year, along with a high number of other diseases 
among affected children. 

Also, 100 percent of those evacuated from their homes feel the 
disaster "has ruined their lives and they have no future," said 
Yuriy Saenko, of the National Academy of Sciences' monitoring 
department. 

Work goes on to stabilize the sarcophagus, believed to contain 
tons of radioactive waste. Officials dismiss suggestions that the 
shelter was threatening collapse, but admit its condition is 
cause for concern. 

"Time is passing and we have to understand full well that it is 
an object in an unclear state, due to its grave radiation 
conditions," Tolstonohov said. 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 29  Chernobyl death count still disputed

25/04/2001 10:13  - (SA)           
    
 Kiev - The fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl blast contaminated 
three-quarters of Europe, irradiating millions of people in 
far-flung corners of the continent, yet the precise toll of the 
disaster remains hotly disputed 15 years on.

 Up to 30 000 people have died as a result of the explosion on 
April 26, 1986, of Chernobyl's reactor number four, which spewed 
radiation into the atmosphere equivalent to 500 times that of the 
atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

 But official estimates from the Soviet era put the death toll at 
only 31, of which 29 are said to have died of radiation sickness, 
while the pro-nuclear lobby has deliberately clouded the issue in 
a bid to protect the image of atomic power.

 The margin of error, or dispute, is wide and has become a 
political battleground.

 Stark evidence from Ukraine's hospitals and clinics points 
towards the upper end of the tally, with three million citizens, 
a third of them children, diagnosed with ailments linked to 
radiation.

 But few, if any, of these anonymous victims will be present at 
Chernobyl on Thursday when President Leonid Kuchma attends a 
memorial ceremony for the those killed by the disaster.

 The death toll controversy continues to spark tension between 
the uneasy partners.

 Under a 1995 protocol, the West promised $2.3 billion, 
comprising $500 million in grants and $1.8 billion in loans, to 
help provide substitute power for Ukraine, make the site safe, 
and help soften the social impact of the closure.

 It has also stumped up around $700 million as part of a 
hazardous multinational effort to contain the radioactive magma 
buried inside the crippled reactor's concrete "sarcophagus".

 The Ukraine government has repeatedly criticised the West for 
taking the moral high ground over the Chernobyl disaster, while 
hampering efforts to publicise the inherent dangers of their own 
nuclear power plants.

 "The Western countries, being amply provided with nuclear 
reactors of their own, try to hush up the subject of Chernobyl in 
order not to alarm their own citizens," a senior Ukraine health 
ministry official told AFP.

 At the same time, Kiev is accused of inflating the figures in 
order to get even more international aid.

 Yet even in the fog of statistics, of charge and countercharge, 
one irrefutable fact stands out: thousands of young people in 
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia suffer from thyroid cancer caused by 
their unwitting exposure to radioactivity in those first cruel 
moments after the 1986 explosion.

 In total, nearly 1 400 tumours were reported between 1986 and 
1997, according to the Institute for Nuclear Protection and 
Safety, an organisation overseen by France's environment and 
industry ministries.

 Meanwhile, the United Nations last January estimated that over 
11 000 thyroid cancer cases were linked to the 1986 disaster.

 Worried researchers expect to see an upsurge in the reported 
number of leukaemia cases among those in the 20-25 year age 
group.

 According to some independent surveys, the number of leukaemia 
cases could double among the so-called "liquidators" - those 650 
000 men and women who came from all corners of the Soviet Union 
in 1986 to carry out the unenviable task of decontaminating the 
30km zone around Chernobyl.

 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) notes that it is 
difficult, however, to distinguish between radioactivity-linked 
tumours and everyday cancers, for lack of reliable data.

 Besides, there are other ailments that have provoked scientific 
and medical debate. 

For example, inhabitants of the worst-affected regions - where 
the effects of radiation illness have since been diagnosed as 
chronic - suffer from a much higher than average incidence of 
cardio-vascular disease, digestive problems, sexual and nervous 
dysfunctions.

 The number of eye-related illnesses and respiratory diseases is 
also markedly on the increase.

 "Their conditions get worse year by year," Ukraine's deputy 
health minister, Olga Bobyleva, said in April.

 Even though many of these illnesses may be congenital or 
psychosomatic, the respected Russian academic Yury Dubrova has 
published her research in the British journal Nature suggesting 
that cases of genetic mutation are twice as common in children 
born to parents in the radiation zone.

 The Institute of Hereditary Diseases in Belarus reported in 1997 
that congenital abnormalities had risen by 81 percent in recent 
years. - Sapa-AFP

*****************************************************************
 30  Chernobyl Cattle
 
A Bovine Nuclear Family  

*by our Science Editor Liesbeth de Bakker, 24 April 2001*  

[Uranium the bull] ‘Uranium' the bull was one of the few 
domesticated animals to survive the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 
April 1986. When he was captured, one year after the disaster, he 
was unable to sire offspring. But now, fifteen years later, he's 
fathered more than 180 calves who form a prime study object for 
geneticists.  

The accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant happened in the 
early hours of April 26, 1986. Of the 50 tonnes of radioactive 
dust and debris that was produced, a large amount landed in the 
immediate surroundings. The people in the area were evacuated but 
they had to leave everything behind, including pets and farm 
animals. 

Survivors

In the months that followed, hairless dogs and dead animals were 
not an uncommon site in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the 30 
kilometre circle around the nuclear power plant that has been a 
no-go area ever since the disaster. However Uranium the bull and 
three cows named Alpha, Beta and Gamma survived the ordeal. "When 
our scientists found them, the animals suffered badly," 

[Igor Cherzjevski (left)]                
                  
says senior researcher Igor Cherzjevski of Chernobyl's Radio 
Ecological Centre. "They had lost almost all their hair and were 
completely wild. They didn't allow people to approach them. But 
we managed to catch them and bring them to an experimental farm 
where we looked after them. And after only one year the first 
calf was born".  

No Monster

Contrary to layman's expectations, this calf didn't have two 
heads or five legs. It looked perfectly okay and didn't suffer 
from any birth defects. There were only minor indications that it 
was born of special parents, says Dr. Cherzjevski: "If you took a 
blood test, you would see that certain levels were higher. But 
this only indicated that just like his parents, this calf was 
fighting against the impact of the radioactive pollution in the 
area." 

One Big Family

To date, Uranium's offspring number 186, but not all of them are 
from Alpha, Gamma and Beta. In fact Alpha and Beta died, not 
because of illnesses related to radiation, but because of old 
age. So now Uranium's daughters and granddaughters are 
inseminated with the bull's sperm to study the impact of 
radiation on many generations of cows. 

Evolution Backwards

Now, in the fourth generation, the geneticists are starting to 
see minute changes in the genetic make-up of Uranium's 
descendants. Professor Valeri Glasko from the Institute of 
Agri-Ecology and Biotechnology in Kiev supervises the genetic 
studies. "The genetic changes don't affect the way the calves 
look. We just see differences on the cell level. And the 
interesting thing is, we find that the cattle's genetic structure 
is now more similar to that of a beef cow than a milk-cow, which 
they originally are. A milk cow is a very specialised animal, but 
a beef cow is more general. It can deal better with changes in 
the environment. So it seems that the milk cows are losing their 
specific characteristics in order to cope with the radiation 
that's still present in the Exclusion Zone." 

[Prof Glasko (2nd from left) and team] An Effect of Inbreeding? 
When asked about the danger of inbreeding, Professor Glasko says 
that even in normal, self-perpetuating herds genetic processes 
occur that resemble these changes from milk cow to beef cow, but 
in Uranium's herd the rate of change is faster - suggesting that 
this is partly a response to radiation and not simply the usual 
process.
 
Radiation Protection

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is unevenly polluted with 
radioactive compounds. Some places are now close to normal again, 
but in many areas the level is still several times higher than 
normal background radiation and there are even some ‘hot spots'. 
So Dr. Cherzjevski and his team are working on ways to protect 
the cows. The biggest danger for the animals is if they eat 
radio-active particles, because once these poisons are in the 
body they can settle in the muscles or bones and wreak havoc 
there. "We've made a medicine which consists of active coal and 
several kinds of clay, and when a radioactive element such as 
Caesium is ingested, it's absorbed by the medicine and excreted. 
This way the Caesium cannot settle in the body and cause the 
animal harm."   

   
Life at Chernobyl: + Andrey Archipov, Radio Biologist, Chernobyl 
Exclusion Zone + Dr. Oxana Garnets, Coordinator of the UN 
Chernobyl Programme + Hanna Alexeyva Zavarodna 


Radio Netherlands
http://www.rnw.nl/science/
*****************************************************************
 31  Inna Bahina, 21, looks at the house where she used to live, 
fifteen years ago, in the town of Pripyat, just nine kilometres 
from Chernobyl.

25Apr01

On Thursday 26 April 1986, the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl 
nuclear plant exploded -- releasing 150-200 million curies of 
radioactivity into the air. An area of 155,000 square kilometres, 
home to over seven million people, was contaminated. Now, 15 
years later, millions of people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia 
are still suffering from severe physical and psychological harm 
in the wake of the disaster. The incidence of cancer is 16 times 
higher than in countries not affected by the disaster, and the 
Red Cross predicts that symptoms linked to the radiation are now 
only beginning to peak. Research shows that the toxic wastes of 
Chernobyl will be around for a terrifying 244,000 years. 

Fifteen years on, the effects of Chernobyl are painfully felt by 
the young people living in the contaminated areas. The incidence 
of thyroid cancer continues to increase in young adults who were 
children (0-18 years old) at the time of the disaster -- and who 
make up the group the Red Cross is targeting for screening of 
thyroid cancer. Since 1992, the International Federation of Red 
Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), together with the Red 
Cross Societies in the three affected countries, has operated six 
mobile diagnostic laboratories, which over the past nine years 
have assisted more than 2.5 million people. The Red Cross is the 
*only organisation* screening the affected population in their 
hometowns through its Chernobyl Humanitarian Assistance and 
Rehabilitation Programme (CHARP), where Red Cross doctors and 
technicians annually examine up to 90,000 people, travelling into 
remote areas where no other services reach. 

Morbidity is increasing in the region, although thyroid cancer is 
curable in up to 95 percent of all cases if it is detected early 
enough. Lena Lukashova is one of the lucky ones who was cured: 
*"Thanks to the programme carried out by the Red Cross, it was 
possible to detect my disease, which would never have been 
possible with the local capacities. Now, it is all over -- it is 
all in the past. I am making plans for the future, I will 
graduate from school and will try to go to university. I will 
continue to live."* Lena, who is 17 now, was only two at the time 
of the disaster, but in January 2000 she was diagnosed with 
thyroid cancer. Two months later her thyroid gland was completely 
removed.
 
Apart from the physical effects, more than three million people 
are estimated to suffer from post-traumatic stress reactions such 
as anxiety, tension, insomnia and a sense of insecurity about the 
future -- not to mention addiction to drugs and alcohol. The Red 
Cross has therefore built psychosocial services into the CHARP 
programme -- providing psychological support through counselling 
sessions with individuals, groups and family members. It is often 
enough to give people adequate information to relieve them of 
their fears.
 
The experience of psychologist Olgerd Kanzler, who is a member of 
the mobile clinic team, shows that people affected by the 
Chernobyl catastrophe desperately need psychological assistance 
and information about how they can cope, because time does not 
diminish their problems, and instead they accumulate and 
increase. 

Olga Beletskaya is one of the survivors that has asked for Red 
Cross counselling. She lives with her husband and three children 
in Schorsovka village. The family is forced to eat what they can 
cultivate on their land -- in contaminated soil -- and what they 
can find in the forest, even though they know it is dangerous. 
Olga is worried about her daughter Tatiana. She is 21 years old, 
and in very poor health -- her heart is weak, she suffers from 
bad blood circulation and diagnosis has shown she is developing 
thyroid cancer. She is often depressed, and the smallest things 
can upset her. * "On her way to school the other day, she just 
started to cry. I had to rub her hands and her feet to keep her 
warm, to get her going again. A few months ago we had to go to a 
clinic to see a doctor. There we discovered that a lot of people 
have similar problems"*, said Tatiana's mother. To make a secure 
online donation, click here
 
To find out more, go to the IFRC website

  Reuters Foundation accepts no responsibility for the accuracy, 
*****************************************************************
 32  Radioactive rains fall on Moscow 15 years after Chernobyl
 
[ITAR/TASS News Agency]   
  
Story Filed: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 9:49 AM EST 

MOSCOW, Apr 25, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Radioactive rains periodically
fall on Moscow, but the radionuclide fallout is much less than 15 years ago
when a reactor of Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant blasted in the
world's worst disaster ever. 

April 26 marks day of the Chernobyl nuclear accident which affected Ukraine,
neighbouring Belarus and Russia's 14 regions downwind the radioactive cloud
which the Chernobyl reactor spewed. 

Moscow was not officially listed as an affected territory, but radionuclide
levels in its environment were 250 times above normal when the accident
struck, Natalya Shandala of Moscow's Institute of Biophysics told Itar-Tass on
Wednesday. 

Shandala, who is chief of the laboratory of population radiation safety, said
radionuclide levels were high in the air, while milk contamination increased
30 to 40-fold. Only the quality of the drinking water remained unaltered. 

The situation has been gradually improving in the recent years. Moscow's
present-day radiation situation is described by health officials as "calm and
good". Radionuclide levels in the drinking water and foods are hundredfold
below a normal range. 

However, the improvement results from physical processes, with radionuclide
activity decreasing with time, rather than from meausures of the government
and specialists. Scientists admit that many things were too late and too
little or were bungled in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. The result was
thousands of "unnecessary" victims and contamination of huge expanses of
territory. 

Doctors see the thyroid cancer morbidity of children as one of the most
ominous consequences of Chernobyl. 

Russia's chief sanitation physician Gennady Onishchenko admitted that
specialists made "several omissions" with iodine prophylaxis. 

"Iodine prophylaxis in many residential areas began with a substantial delay
or was not conducted at all," Onishchenko said. 

A total of 170 cases of thyroid cancer have ben registered in children, 55 of
which have been proved to be related to the Chernobyl accident. 

Another "ommission" hit so-called liquidators, or people who handled the
Chernobyl searing rubble with the bare hands in the first days after the
accident. About 120,000 Russians were recruited in emergency management. Many
had to do "absolutely unnecessary work", Onishchenko admitted. 

He said more than 300 liquidators were exposed to heavy radiation; of these,
137 got radiation sickness. One of this cohort dies every year. Doctors
forecast that one out of six liquidators is at risk of developing cancer. 

The suicide rate in this group is seveal times higher as compared to the
nationwide average figure. Specialist say one of the most serious problems of
liquidators is not so much radiation exposure as psychological aftereffects of
their past stress and present-day social neglect. Mental disorders have been
found out in 27 per cent of the liquidators. 

Doctors also relate the growing disease incidence in people in Russia's
contaminated regions, which is 20-30 per cent in adults and 50 per cent in
children, to radiation and stress. 

Over 50,000 peopel were resettled and had to live with traivails of household
and job restrictions, and this also affected their health. Health statistics
looked bleaker as medical monitoring was becoming more careful in the affected
regions. 

According to forecasts of specialists, the cancer rate in the population of
will increase to make an average figure plus 400 new cases. People continue to
use radiocontaminated food. About 35 per cent of meat, milk, mushrooms and
berries are radioactive in the affected regions. 

The Chernobyl accident left radiocontaminated 56,000 square kilometers of
territory in Russia and 110,000 square kilometres in Ukraine and Belarus.
About three million people were affected. A total of 1,717,822 peoplelive in
Russia's radiocontaminated regions. The radiation situation improved with time
or is safe in 12 of the regions. 

However, over 150,000 people live in 500 residential areas of Kaluga and
Bryansk regions where an annual average irradiation level is above a normal
one milliSievert). 

Russian scientists are of the view that it is technically impossible to
resolve at least one of Chernobyl problems, effects of radiation. 

The Russian Research Institute of Inorganic Materials, whose personnel
decontaminated the grounds of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, has developed
a cleaning technology. Its use leaves a "green meadow", but Ukraine, Belarus
and Russia cannot employ it because required costs are hundreds of billions of
dollars. Even the more affluent West cannot afford such technolopgies. 

The Chernobyl reactor four which exploded on April 26, 1986 also needs
multibillion spending. 

It remains buried in a concrete sarcophagus which was built as a stopgag
measure. 

"The sarcophagus never was an absolutely safe facility," the directo of the
Institute of Safety Problems, Vladimir Asmolov, told Itar-Tass. 
He said experts are uncertan how long this dome can stand intact, and the
sarcophagus problem dictates a possibly rapid solution. 

Asmolov, who was scientific director of the sarcophagus project, said there
were about ten new projects of rebuilding the old or building a new
sarcophagys. However, they ran into the money snag, as costs would be
comparable to building a new nuclear power plant, 1.5-2.5 billion dollars. 

There have been no radioactive leakages from the Chernobyl sarcophagus since
1986, but if they occur, there wil be no "global disaster any more", as
"million of times less" radioactive substances remain at the reactor site than
at the time of the accident, Asmolov said. 

Nonethless, the situation should be permanently monitored by specialists, an
increasingly difficult task with Ukraine's being independent. Ideally, the
"green meadow" solution is needed, he said. 

By Itar-Tass writer Veronika Voskoboinikova 
(c) 1996-2001 ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. 

*****************************************************************
 33  NRC Will Hold Public Meeting in Charlotte on Environmental Review 
for Proposed Mixed Oxide Fuel Facility
 
Press Release 2001 - 046 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs     
Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001     E-mail: 
opa@nrc.gov Web Site: http://www.nrc.gov/OPA  

  No. 01-046     April 24, 2001  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting on 
May 8 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to obtain comments on what 
should be included in an environmental impact statement that the 
agency will prepare on a proposed mixed oxide (MOX) fuel 
fabrication facility.
 
The Department of Energy is proposing to construct a facility on 
its Savannah River site near Aiken, South Carolina, through a 
contract with a consortium of Duke Engineering & Services, COGEMA 
Inc., and Stone & Webster (together known as DCS).
 
The meeting will be held at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government 
Center, 600 E. Fourth Street, in Charlotte. An open house will 
start at 6 p.m., followed by the meeting, from 7 to 10 p.m. The 
agency recently held two other such "scoping" meetings in North 
Augusta, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, on April 17 and 
18, respectively. 

If the NRC grants the license, DCS could build a MOX facility 
that would convert surplus weapons-grade plutonium, supplied by 
the Department of Energy, into fuel for use in a limited number 
of commercial nuclear reactors. Such use would render the 
plutonium essentially inaccessible and unattractive for weapons 
use. Commercial nuclear power plants currently use uranium as 
fuel; the mixed oxide fuel would be a combination of uranium and 
plutonium.
 
DCS submitted an environmental report on the proposed MOX 
facility last December, and requested authorization to construct 
the facility in February. Before deciding whether to authorize 
construction, the NRC will prepare an environmental impact 
statement and will conduct a safety evaluation of the application 
to determine whether it meets NRC requirements.
 
As previously announced, the NRC is offering an opportunity for 
interested persons to request a hearing on the proposed facility. 
Such requests should be submitted by May 18 and follow the 
submission requirements set out in a Federal Register notice 
published on April 18.
 
To obtain information about the May 8 meeting, or to provide 
comments or suggestions on the scope of the environmental impact 
statement, interested parties should contact Tim Harris, at 
301-415-6613, or Betty Garrett at 301-415-5808. 

*****************************************************************
 34  Poll: Anxiety over nuclear power easing

  [Las Vegas Review-Journal] 
    
Wednesday, April 25, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
Concerns over handling of waste remain strong 

By WILL LESTER 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON -- Americans have grown slightly more comfortable with 
nuclear power over the past two years, an Associated Press poll 
suggests, with half now saying they support using nuclear plants 
to produce electricity. 

Supporters of nuclear power were significantly more likely than 
they were two years ago not to mind a nuclear plant close to 
their homes. The poll was conducted for the AP by ICR of Media, 
Pa. 

The support for the nuclear option now being considered by the 
Bush administration was strongest among men and those older than 
65. 

"I think it's a safe way to produce energy," said Mike McDonald, 
46, a computer consultant from Sparta, Mich. 

Fifty percent in the poll supported nuclear power, and a majority 
of the supporters, 56 percent, said they wouldn't mind a nuclear 
plant within 10 miles of their own home. Three in 10 opposed 
nuclear power, and the remainder said they didn't know. 

Two years ago, 45 percent said they supported nuclear power, and 
fewer than half of those supporters said they would want a 
nuclear plant nearby. 

In the new poll, some admitted that concerns over energy 
shortages and fears of pollution have affected their support for 
nuclear power. 

But concerns remained strong about how to handle radioactive 
waste from the power plants. 

Almost half said they don't believe nuclear waste can be safely 
stored for many years, about the same level as two years ago. The 
number who thought it could be stored safely was up slightly to 
almost four in 10. 

Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only 
site being studied to entomb the nation's highly radioactive 
waste. 

The poll of 1,002 adults was taken April 18 through Monday and 
had an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points. 

Support for nuclear power was lowest and fears of nuclear waste 
were highest among young adults. The sentiment for nuclear power 
increased steadily as the age of poll respondents went up. 

"I'm pretty opposed to nuclear energy," said Liza Lionetti, 25, 
an Internet company employee from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. "The 
biggest issue is the waste products. We bury them and we poison 
the ground." 

Among the regions, support for nuclear power was strongest in the 
energy-starved West, 55 percent. Support for nuclear power tended 
to increase with education levels. Republicans were twice as 
likely as Democrats to support it, and men were more supportive 
than women. 

Nuclear power plants, which produce 20 percent of the nation's 
electricity, are the focus of renewed interest. They have become 
more competitive in cost because of rising natural gas prices and 
growing concern about pollution from fossil fuel- burning power 
plants. 

The nation's 103 nuclear reactors have increased their power 
output by 25 percent over the past decade along with a steadily 
improving safety record. A Bush administration energy task force 
is expected to conclude next month that nuclear power is 
essential in meeting the nation's energy needs and recommend ways 
to increase nuclear energy production. 

No new nuclear plant has been ordered and completed since 1973 
and while utilities are determined to run their current reactors 
longer, no new orders are expected anytime soon. 

In 1989, an AP poll showed that a clear majority, 55 percent, 
supported nuclear power. But the sentiment for nuclear power 
dwindled in the 1990s, before the latest renewal of interest. 

The slightly improved climate for nuclear power hasn't eased the 
doubts of some, although two-thirds said they think nuclear power 
is safer now than it was 10 years ago. 

The numbers who think a nuclear accident at a power plant is 
likely has dwindled slightly from half two years ago, to just 
over four in 10 now. 

"I'm not in favor of nuclear power due largely to the fact that 
there's always the chance for error," said Dale Buchanan, 51, a 
machine operator from Belleville, Pa. He lives about 60 miles 
from Three Mile Island, site of the nation's worst nuclear 
accident in 1979. 

"The closer to home it gets," Buchanan said, "the more you think 
about it." 

This story is located at: 
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Apr-25-Wed-2001/news/15953177.html
*****************************************************************
 35  Nuclear Poll Method 
                                       
April 25 1:39 AM ET
 
*By The Associated Press, *

The Associated Press poll on nuclear power is based on telephone 
interviews with 1,002 randomly selected adults from all states 
except Alaska and Hawaii. The interviewing was conducted April 
18-23 by ICR, of Media, Pa.

The results were weighted to represent the population by key 
demographic factors such as age, sex, region and education.

No more than one time in 20 should chance variations in the 
sample cause the results to vary by more than 3 percentage points 
from the answers that would be obtained if all Americans were 
polled.

This margin of sampling error is larger for responses of 
subgroups, such as income categories. There are other sources of 
potential error in polls, including the wording and order of 
questions.

The AP poll questions (because of rounding, sums may not total 
100 percent):

1. Do you support or oppose using nuclear power to generate 
electricity? Support, 50 percent; oppose, 30 percent; don't know, 
19 percent; refused to answer, 1 percent.

2. (Asked only of the 518 respondents who support nuclear power) 
Would you support or oppose the construction of a nuclear power 
plant within 10 miles of your home? Support, 55 percent; oppose, 
40 percent; Don't know, 5 percent.

3. Do you think nuclear power plants in the United States are 
safer now than they were 10 years ago, or not? Safer, 65 percent; 
not safer, 18 percent; don't know, 17 percent.

4. Do you think radioactive waste from nuclear power plants can 
be safely stored for many years, or not? Yes, 37 percent; no, 45 
percent; don't know, 18 percent.

5. How would you rate the likelihood of a serious accident at a 
nuclear power plant in the United States - highly likely, likely, 
unlikely or highly unlikely? Highly likely, 11 percent; likely 33 
percent; unlikely, 29 percent; highly unlikely, 21 percent; don't 
know, 6 percent. 

  Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 36  Guinn: Report more proof of Yucca bias
 
Wednesday, April 25, 2001
 
Gov. Kenny Guinn says the Inspector General's report concluding 
there isn't enough evidence to prove bias in the Yucca Mountain 
selection process is just more evidence of that bias.
 
"While I'm disappointed in the conclusion that bias could not be 
proven, aspects of the Inspector general's report enhance my 
belief that Nevada has, in fact, been unfairly targeted during 
the site selection process," said Guinn.
 
"We found several written statements in key Yucca Mountain 
evaluation documents that could be considered by an impartial 
observer to be prematurely conclusive or inappropriately 
advocating a position by the Department or its contractors," the 
report concluded.
 
But it said there wasn't enough evidence to prove bias 
compromised the site selection process.
 
Guinn said, however, that he hopes the attention focused on the 
energy department and its selection process will force them to 
shape up and focus on scientific evidence.
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
                     NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
 1 CROET changes meeting schedule 

Oak Ridger Online --> 

Story last updated at 1:13 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25, 2001

from staff reports 

Members of the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee 
board voted Tuesday to begin meeting quarterly instead of 
monthly.

 Several members suggested that the change goes along with the 
organization's bylaws.

 However, CROET member Susan Gawarecki said those bylaws might 
need to be reevaluated, especially since a strategic plan to 
reorganize the organization was recently approved. She suggested 
forming a special ad hoc committee to look at the bylaws.

 Russ Schubert, chairman of the CROET board, said he would 
consider forming the committee.

 The CROET board also approved two leases, including a six-month 
deal with Greenfield Logistics for the shipment of radioactive 
rubble from the ED-2 property. Gawarecki said it should be 
specified in the lease that the company will be responsible for 
cleaning up the area after the transporting is done.
 
All Contents ©Copyright* The Oak Ridger *
*****************************************************************
 2  Hearing set to discuss DOE report from plant

The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Wednesday, April 25, 2001

A public meeting will be at 7 p.m. Monday at the Paducah 
Information Age Park Resource Center to discuss a recent public 
health assessment concerning the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. 

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will discuss 
findings of the report, which says the plant poses no apparent 
public health hazard despite past environmental problems. 

The meeting will allow people to talk with agency staff about the 
document and other plant-related activities. 

The report was released last month. 

The agency did the work because the plant is a federal Superfund 
site. Scientists evaluated the chance of human exposure to 
hazardous substances from the plant, and associated health 
impacts. 

Copies of the document are available at public libraries in 
Paducah and Metropolis, Ill., and libraries at Paducah Community 
College and Murray State University. 

The document also is on the Internet at www.atsdr.cdc.gov. 

Public comments should be sent to Chief, Program Evaluation, 
Records and Information Services Branch, ATSDR, 1600 Clifton 
Road, NE, Mailstop E-56, Atlanta, GA 30333. Comments will be 
received until May 14. 

Call the agency's Maria Teran-MacIver at 888-422-8737 for other 
information about the meeting. 

*****************************************************************
 3  Tests measure contamination near Nike Park 

[SCNmedia (www.SuburbanChicagoNews.com)]     
      
Forgotten history Nike Park evokes Cold War memories 

By Ron Pazola 

STAFF WRITER

   Government agencies continue to monitor levels of a toxic 
chemical that seeped into the property near Nike Park when the 
United States Army used the 26-acre Naperville site as a missile 
base during the Cold War years.

    "The people in the area have been notified of the possible 
contamination," said Les Bant, DuPage County Health Department 
engineer. "We are still conducting tests in the area."

    In June the Army Corps of Engineers discovered unsafe levels 
of trichloroethene, or TCE, in the ground water near the former 
Nike site, now a popular sports complex at Diehl Road and Mill 
Street.

    Soldiers used TCE — a multi-purpose liquid — to clean and 
degrease the launchers.

    After further testing, however, the Corps said in August that 
preliminary results of 40 tests of the water wells at Knight's 
subdivision in unincorporated DuPage County, just south of Nike 
Park, showed no levels of TCE that exceeded the Illinois 
Environmental Protection Agency's standards.

    Three wells showed levels of less than one part per billion, 
according to Karen Holmes, DuPage County Health Department 
director of environmental services.

    The IEPA considers five parts per billion of TCE an 
acceptable level for drinking water.
    
STAFF WRITER

It looked like remnants of a German concentration camp: The 
barbwire fence, the stark buildings — now abandoned and rundown — 
the bleak light fixtures, the wire cage where the guard dogs 
stood watch.

    John Ellenwood wandered past the front gate, his shoes 
crunching against yellow scrub grass that stuck out of the hard 
earth like unruly spikes. In contrast, a bright yellow smiley 
face loomed from the side of a barn off in the distance.

    Ellenwood, 65, poked his head into what had once been a guard 
shack, his eyes gazing at the other buildings scattered 
throughout the property. The view took him back 40 years.

    "It looks like the place I was stationed at in Naperville," 
he said. "The buildings and the layout of the buildings are 
pretty much the same."

    Ellenwood was visiting C-47, a former Nike missile base in 
Portage, Ind., on a recent chilly afternoon. The facility — one 
of the few missile batteries in the Chicago area that still has 
its buildings intact — was one of 23 military installations that 
protected Chicago from enemy aircraft during the Cold War years.
   
A job to do

   The missile sites — most of them gone now with no tangible 
remnants — are a nearly forgotten piece of history. Many people 
don't know the Cold War was being fought in their back yards and 
that the Army operated 200 similar missile installations across 
the country.

    The government called them Nike sites after the Greek god of 
victory and strategically positioned them around metropolitan 
areas. Nearly two dozen sites — including Naperville, Lombard, 
Lemont, Arlington Heights and Libertyville — surrounded Chicago 
from the 1950s to the 1970s.

    Naperville's Nike Park, now a 26-acre sports complex on the 
southeast corner of Diehl Road and Mill Street, was a working 
missile battery from 1956 to 1963. The facility, known as C-70 at 
the time, originally was operated by the U.S. Army, then the 
Illinois National Guard. Nearly 125 military personnel lived and 
worked there.

    The base consisted of three underground missile silos, a 
missile assembly area, two barracks, a mess hall, a sentry house 
and various storage sheds. The buildings were one-story concrete 
structures painted yellow. The barracks and radar system were 
along Warrenville Road where the BP Amoco campus now sits. The 
missiles and launching area occupied what is now Nike Park.

    Ellenwood was stationed at the Naperville facility for six 
months in 1960. Before that, he also worked at missile sites in 
Arlington Heights, Lombard and Lemont for three years.

    Though many of the installations had nuclear missiles called 
Hercules, the Ajax missiles in Naperville never had nuclear 
capability.

    As a missile crewman, Ellenwood assembled the weapons, which 
were stored underground in three 17-foot pits. During practice 
alerts, he moved the missiles to an elevator that raised them 
above ground to the launching area.

    "It was all pretty safe," said Ellenwood, a longtime 
Naperville resident. "As soldiers, we didn't feel much fear for 
the Russians. We had a job to do and we did it."

Life on the base

   But aspects of his job were frightening. One of his least 
favorite tasks was transporting red fuming nitric acid to the 
missiles. The acid oxidized the missiles' liquid fuel so it could 
burn properly.

    "We had to wear these big rubber suits that made us look like 
creatures from outer space," Ellenwood said. "The acid was pretty 
nasty stuff and you didn't want to breath it or touch it."

    Alden Bos, 64, was one of the first soldiers to be stationed 
at the Naperville facility. Part of Battery A, 13th AAA Missile 
Battalion, Bos worked at the base from August 1956 to November 
1957. He recalled raking rocks and stones from the ground as he 
waited for the first missiles to arrive in an area then 
surrounded by cornfields.

    "It got real interesting whenever an unidentified flying 
object was spotted coming our way," said Bos, a Naperville 
resident who also owns a house in Dowagiac, Mich.

    "We were put on alert and had to be ready to fire the 
missiles within 30 minutes. Whenever we were on alert, we had to 
sleep in the pits with the missiles," he said.

    In the long run, the soldiers' leisure pursuits posed more of 
an immediate threat than the threat of Soviet attack.

    "We knew every tavern within a 50-mile radius of Naperville," 
Bos said. "A lot of soldiers got into traffic accidents on the 
way back from a night out on the town."

    For recreation, soldiers watched TV, paid 25 cents to see a 
show at the Naper Theater and played softball, basketball, 
pingpong, pool and cards.

    Soldiers held occasional open houses for area residents, who 
toured the facility and viewed missiles displayed in the 
launchers.

    The government closed the site in March 1963, and the 
Naperville Park District acquired the property from the U.S. 
Department of Interior in 1975.
   
Childhood memories

   Tom Wehrli of Naperville recalled his boyhood in the '60s, 
when he would ride his bicycle "to the weed-ridden site out in 
the middle of nowhere."

    Wehrli and his twin brother, Chuck, opened a hatch that 
resembled a manhole cover and climbed down a ladder to where the 
missiles used to be stored. The boys looked around but only saw 
tree limbs and empty beer cans.

    Another time they explored an abandoned military shed that 
housed electrical equipment. A beam of light sliced through 
plywood that covered the windows.

    "When we pulled the plywood off, an alarm sounded. We were so 
scared, we didn't stick around to see what happened," said 
Wehrli, who owns Wehrli Wood Refinishing, an antique restoration 
business in Naperville.

    Wehrli grew up during the Cold War, a time of rampant 
paranoia that fostered the fear of a nuclear holocaust and 
communist enslavement. As a pupil at SS Peter and Paul School, 
Wehrli and his classmates were required to do air raid drills 
during school time.

    "We had to sit on a stairwell, put our hands on our heads and 
our heads on our laps," Wehrli recalled. "If we didn't do that, a 
nun came along and hit us with a ruler. We were terrified and a 
lot of us started to cry."

   * *The former Naperville missile site also was a place for 
some terrifying occurrences. In the 1970s, authorities received a 
call about a boy falling into one of the missile pits. Officers 
rushed to the property and helped the uninjured teen out of the 
hole. The pits eventually were sealed.

    Chuck Wehrli, now a captain with the Naperville Fire 
Department, was a firefighter in the 1980s when he pulled two 
construction workers from one of the two-story pits. The steel 
enclosure over the bin had swung down, plunging the workers to 
the bottom. The two men, who were helping convert the site into a 
sports complex, broke both their legs.

    From a place designed for destruction to a place fostering 
physical exercise and recreation, Nike Park is a reminder of days 
when peace was not so close at hand.

    Many years have passed since the park was a missile base. 
Children now play soccer and softball there, not knowing the 
ground they are running on once held guided missiles ready to be 
fired.

    Don Bender, a Nike researcher, said he believes it is 
important to keep the memory alive.

    "The presence of the Army's Nike missile sites in heavily 
populated cities, suburbs and towns made it clear that in an age 
of long-range bombers and atomic bombs, the front lines of the 
Cold War could be almost anywhere — on the lakefront in Chicago 
or even in otherwise quiet and peaceful Naperville," Bender said. 
"The missile sites should be a reminder that even the United 
States was not immune from attack." 


*****************************************************************
 4  Review of DOE probe sought
 
April 25, 2001 
 
By Jeff German 
<german@lasvegassun.com>
 LAS VEGAS SUN

 Nevada's congressional delegation today asked the General 
Accounting Office to review an internal Energy Department 
investigation that failed to document alleged bias in the Yucca 
Mountain site-selection process.

 The delegates said they were worried that the disappearance of 
key e-mail may have impeded the DOE investigation, which was 
conducted by Inspector General, Gregory Friedman.

 Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., and Reps. 
Shelley Berkley,D-Nev., and Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., requested the 
review in a joint letter to Comptroller General David Walker, who 
heads the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

 "While the GAO may be looking into separate allegations 
regarding mismanagement at Yucca Mountain, it is important they 
be made aware of the IG's findings and the loss of what could be 
important e-mail messages," Reid said this morning.

 "Without this electronic paper trail, we may never be able to 
determine the real level of bias among the DOE contractors 
working on the proposed dumpsite."

 Friedman spent four months investigating allegations that the 
DOE and its contractors were displaying bias toward Yucca 
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the site for the 
nation's first high-level nuclear waste dump.

 On Monday Friedman informed Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham 
that his investigators could not substantiate the bias.

 But he urged Abraham to publicly renew the DOE's commitment to a 
fair and objective Yucca Mountain study amid the erosion of 
public confidence in the agency's nuclear waste dealings. Federal 
law prohibits the DOE from taking sides in the site-selection 
process.

 In his 14-page report, Friedman acknowledged that his office 
could not obtain all of the information it wanted, because e-mail 
with a DOE subcontractor at the heart of the probe had been 
destroyed during a computer malfunction.

 The subcontractor, Colorado-based JK Research Associates, wrote 
a 60-page draft overview for the DOE that suggested Yucca 
Mountain was safe to store radioactive waste even though 
scientific studies haven't been completed.

 A two-page JK Research memo attached to an October draft 
suggested the overview could be used to help the nuclear industry 
sell Yucca Mountain to Congress. The memo sought comments about 
the draft from members of the DOE's nuclear waste community.

 "According to JK Research Associates, complete electronic mail 
records were unavailable to the Office of Inspector General due 
to a computer malfunction." Friedman wrote in his report.

 "Consequently, because a complete record of interactions between 
the contractor and the reviewers was not available, the Office of 
Inspector General was unable to obtain a complete, verifiable 
history of the development of the draft overview."

 John Kelly, a longtime Yucca Mountain subcontractor who runs JK 
Research, has declined comment.

 In their letter to Walker, the Nevada delegates said they were 
concerned about the inspector general's inability to obtain the 
e-mails.

 "We are troubled by this incident, because it represents a loss 
of information that may have provided greater insight into the 
development of the draft overview and related memo," the 
delegation wrote.

 "To prevent a further erosion of public confidence in the DOE's 
site characterization work, we request that you expand the scope 
of the previous investigation to look at the circumstances of 
this loss of e-mail."

 The GAO is probing allegations of misconduct at the DOE's Office 
of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which is overseeing the 
Yucca Mountain study. The allegations were revealed earlier this 
year in an anonymous six-page letter from a DOE insider that was 
circulated on Capitol Hill.

 Berkley, meanwhile, sent a separate letter today to Friedman 
asking him to investigate the circumstances surrounding the 
missing e-mails, which she maintained likely would have created a 
"traceable record of bias" toward Yucca Mountain.

 Berkley also asked Friedman to turn over all of the documents 
that his office gathered during its four-month probe.

 Wilma Slaughter, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, 
defended the investigation this morning.

 "As stated in our report, our conclusions are based on over 200 
interviews of knowledgeable federal and contractor officials, 
reviews of thousands of pages of relevant documents and our 
reviews of the activities of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review 
Board," Slaughter said. "Our report on this matter speaks for 
itself."

 Slaughter declined comment on whether her office would give 
Berkley the requested documents.

 Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear 
Projects, the state's Yucca Mountain watchdog, suggested JK 
Research might have intentionally destroyed the e-mails.

 "Somebody may have gone to great lengths to keep investigators 
from seeing all of this," he said. "It doesn't seem inadvertent 
to me."

 Loux said important DOE records have a history of turning up 
missing during Nevada's longtime battle against Yucca Mountain.

 In 1986,when the DOE narrowed the number of nuclear waste 
dumpsites to three, the DOE told Congress that technical records 
showing how that decision was made were inadvertently destroyed, 
Loux said.

 A year later Congress passed the "Screw Nevada" bill singling 
out Yucca Mountain as the lone site in the nation to study, he 
said.

 "If all of the records surrounding the overview and the memo now 
are gone, then the inspector general really didn't give us an 
answer to our question," Loux said. "All of this then is 
nonsense." 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 5  Hanford guards question reduction
 
*Wednesday, April 25, 2001*
 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
YAKIMA -- The 24-hour security detail at the Hanford Nuclear 
Reservation's K Basins, two 1.1 million-gallon pools holding 
lethal spent fuel, is being cut to save money.

The Hanford guards union says it's a move that puts the public 
and the Columbia River at risk should either of those pools be 
ruptured by terrorist attack or internal sabotage.

But the federal Department of Energy and Fluor Hanford, the 
managing contractor, say the business decision has an acceptable 
level of risk that will make operations more efficient. 

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 
101 Elliott Ave. W.
 Seattle, WA 98119
 (206) 448-8000
*****************************************************************
 6  Hanford guards riled over lack of security
 
This story was published Wed, Apr 25, 2001
 
By The Associated Press and the Herald staff
 
Hanford's guards union is criticizing a decision not to have a 
24-hour security detail stationed at the K Basins.
 
Earlier this month, the Department of Energy approved a Fluor 
Hanford plan to rearrange parts of Hanford's security setup, 
including an end to around-the-clock guards at the storage basins 
for spent reactor fuel.
 
The guards union says the move puts the public and the Columbia 
River at risk of a terrorist attack or internal sabotage 
rupturing the radioactive pools 400 yards from the river.
 
"If we drain those basins, it's going to make Chernobyl look like 
a Girl Scout campfire," said Darryl Sybouts, a former business 
agent for Local 21 of the International Guards Union of America.
 
The K Basins are two indoor pools of water that hold 2,300 tons 
of spent uranium reactor fuel from Hanford's Cold War days.
 
DOE spokesman Mike Talbot said DOE's Washington, D.C., 
headquarters studied the K Basins' security a year ago, followed 
by a similar DOE Richland office study earlier this year.
 
The studies concluded that it is unlikely that someone would try 
to steal fuel from the K Basins. Such thieves would risk a deadly 
dose of radiation, and even if they survived, they'd need a huge, 
complex chemical plant to extract plutonium from the fuel, Talbot 
said.
 
K Basins aren't the only part of Hanford to see changes in 
security after DOE approved Fluor's plan to rearrange much of 
Hanford security to save money, he said.
 
Talbot declined to discuss the new security setup in detail, 
saying those arrangements are classified. He said the new 
security plan cuts back on the time that guards are physically 
present at the K Basins -- relying more on roving guards in the 
general area, sensors and physical barriers to protect the 
basins.
 
Talbot said the changes won't result in layoffs, but will trim 
back on overtime hours that guards work.
 
The union is not sounding the alarm because it fears potential 
job cuts or lost overtime, said Charles Nelson, the guards 
local's current business agent. "Our concern is security," he 
said.
 
Nelson said the real concern isn't thieves, but someone damaging 
the basins and allowing the contamination to escape into soil and 
the Columbia River, which is only 400 yards away from the basins.
 
Without the 24-hour guard, Nelson said, the extra workers brought 
on board for the K Basins cleanup project no longer are checked 
routinely for prohibited items, such as drugs, firearms and 
transmitters.
 
This criticism comes when Hanford has begun moving fuel from the 
K Basins to spend a short stay at a vacuum facility before being 
stored in an underground vault in central Hanford. Talbot said 
the vacuum facility and vault are covered in the revamped 
security measures.
 
Right now, most K Basins employees work in one shift, which is 
too soon increase to two, with a third shift to be added in 
several months. Consequently, the basins area will eventually be 
staffed by nuclear workers 24 hours a day. 

Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This 
*****************************************************************
 7  National Lab to Host International Conference

 EarthVision Environmental News*

ARGONNE, IL, April 25, 2001 - Environmental scientists and policy 
experts from around the world will gather at the US Department of 
Energy's Argonne National Laboratory May 14-18 for a conference 
focusing on how new science and technology is being applied to 
global environmental problems. 

The conference, titled "Eco-Informa 2001: Environmental Risks and 
the Global Community - Strategies for Meeting the Challenges," 
brings together international experts to cover the areas of:

  1. sustainable environment, 
  2. engineering and biotechnology, 
  3. public policy and due process, and 
  4. environmental information in the 21st century. Argonne notes 
that within these areas, some of the topics the conference will 
touch upon include the cleanup of contamination generated from 
Cold War activities, resource management, urbanization, and 
global climate change. Participants will take these and other 
topics and discuss solutions and tools that will include 
environmental partnerships and communication, information 
technology and Internet applications, and geographic information 
systems and remote sensing. 

Agencies participating include the US Department of Energy, the 
US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Department of Defense, 
NATO, UNESCO, the United Nations Environmental Program, the World 
Health Organization, and the World Bank. Countries represented 
include Algeria, Austria, Canada, England, France, Georgia, 
Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Morocco, Norway, 
Romania, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, Ukraine and Uruguay. 

For more information on the conference, see the Eco-Informa 2001 
websiteor call 630-252-1520. 

EarthVision Stories 
*****************************************************************
 8  Teller says Garwin designed H-bomb

 *April 24, 2001*

 After suffering a heart attack in 1979, Edward Teller sat down 
with a friend and a tape recorder and offered his views on the 
secret history of the hydrogen bomb. "So that first design," 
Teller said, "was made by Dick Garwin."

He repeated the credit, ensuring there would be no 
misunderstanding. Teller, now 93, was not ceding the laurels for 
devising the bomb -- a glory he claims for himself. He was 
rewriting how the rough idea became the world's most feared 
weapon. His tribute, made more than two decades ago but just now 
coming to light, adds a surprising twist to a dispute that has 
roiled historians and scientists for decades: who should get 
credit for designing the H-bomb? 

The oral testament was meant to disparage Dr. Stanislaw M. Ulam, 
Teller's rival, now dead, and boost Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a 
young scientist at the time of the invention who later clashed 
with Teller and now says he would wipe the bomb from the earth if 
he could. The New York Times obtained a transcript of the 
recording recently from the friend with whom Teller shared his 
memories.

Some historians of science praise Teller's tribute to Garwin as 
candid; others fault it as disingenuous. In any event, the 
recognition of Garwin is surprising because he is not usually 
seen as having a major role in designing the hydrogen bomb. 

He eventually became an outspoken advocate of arms control, 
battling often with Teller. The tribute also poses the riddle of 
how Garwin's work, done in the early 1950s, could have gone 
unacknowledged for so long. "It's fascinating," said Dr. Ray E. 
Kidder, an H-bomb pioneer at the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory in California, which Teller helped found and once 
directed. "There's always been this controversy over who had the 
idea of the H-bomb and who did what. This spells it out. 

It's extremely credible, and I dare say accurate." Dr. Priscilla 
McMillan, a historian at Harvard who is working on a book about 
the early H-bomb disputes, agreed, saying the tribute sounded 
right. She added that Teller might have done it to "square things 
with God" after his 1979 heart attack. One of the most 
controversial figures of the nuclear era, Teller played central 
roles in inventing the atomic and hydrogen bombs, and in 
destroying the career of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who in World 
War II had run the laboratory in the mountains of New Mexico that 
gave birth to the atomic bomb. 

Afterward, though, Oppenheimer questioned the morality of 
devising an even more powerful weapon, and amid the 
anti-communist paranoia of the McCarthy era, the government 
stripped him of his security clearance. The schism among 
scientists over his fate lasts to this day. 

In the process, Teller became a hero to conservatives but was 
disparaged by liberals as the role model for Dr. Strangelove, the 
fictive mad scientist of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film who was 
fixated on mass destruction. Garwin, during the design effort a 
half-century ago, was a 23-year-old faculty member at the 
University of Chicago who was working during the summer break of 
1951 at the New Mexico weapons laboratory, known as Los Alamos. 

Over the decades, he rose to prominence, often advising the 
government on secret matters of intelligence and weapons. In an 
interview, Garwin said Teller was correct to include him among 
the bomb's designers, likening himself to its midwife. "It was 
the kind of thing I do well," he said of joining theory, 
experiment and engineering to make complex new devices. 

But he added, "If I could wave a wand" to make the hydrogen bomb 
and the nuclear age go away, "I would do that." 

Now 73, Garwin is an experimental physicist who for decades 
worked at the International Business Machines Corp. and is now a 
senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He 
backs such arms control measures as the Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty to outlaw all nuclear explosions. 

A theoretical physicist, Teller is a senior fellow at the Hoover 
Institution at Stanford and director emeritus of the Livermore 
weapons laboratory. He was an ardent advocate of the Reagan 
administration's Star Wars antimissile plan and, more recently, 
has promoted the idea of manipulating the earth's atmosphere to 
counteract global warming. 

If Teller's version of events is right, he and Garwin were the 
main forces behind one of the most ominous inventions of all 
time, a bomb that harnessed the fusion power of the sun. Teller 
had championed the goal since the early 1940s, before the atomic 
bomb actually flashed to life. 

His basic idea was to use the high heat of an exploding atomic 
bomb to ignite hydrogen fuel, fusing its atoms together and 
releasing even larger bursts of nuclear energy. But no one 
working at Los Alamos could figure out how to do that. 

The credit dispute has its roots in a conversation Teller had in 
early 1951 with Ulam, then a mathematician at Los Alamos. 
Afterward, a new plan emerged. The breakthrough idea, known as 
radiation implosion, was to build a large cylindrical casing that 
would hold the atomic bomb and hydrogen fuel at opposite ends. 
The flash of the exploding bomb would hit the case, causing it to 
glow and flood the interior of the casing with radiation pressure 
sufficient to compress and ignite the hydrogen fuel. 

No one knew whether the idea would work. And studies of it were 
slowed by ill will between Teller and Ulam, as well as debates at 
the weapons laboratory over whether building a hydrogen bomb was 
ethical and smart, given its potentially unlimited power. Garwin 
arrived at Los Alamos in May 1951 from the University of Chicago, 
where he had been a star in the laboratory of Enrico Fermi, the 
Nobel laureate and arguably the day's top physicist. Garwin had 
been at Los Alamos the previous summer and, intrigued by the 
work, had come back for another atomic sabbatical. In the 
interview, Garwin recalled that Teller had told him of the new 
idea and asked him to design an experiment to prove it would work 
-- something the Los Alamos regulars failed to do. "They were 
burnt out" from too many rush efforts to design and test nuclear 
arms, Garwin recalled. "So I did it." 

By July 1951

 after talking at the weapons laboratory with physicists and 
engineers, he had sketched a preliminary design. Of its features, 
Garwin said, "There is still very little I am allowed to say." 

He continued working on the design until he went back to Chicago 
that fall. Then, as momentum built at Los Alamos for the H-bomb, 
many experts joined the design effort, which was finished in 
early 1952. 

The prototype bomb stood two stories high. In November 1952, it 
vaporized the Pacific island of Elugelab, a mile in diameter. Its 
power was equal to 10.4 million tons of high explosive, or about 
700 times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. 

Unlike its atomic predecessors, the hydrogen bomb theoretically 
had no destructive limits. Its fuel was cheap, and its force 
could be made as large as desired. Scientists talked of doomsday 
weapons big enough to blow the earth's atmosphere into space, or 
to raise ocean waves that crushed whole nations.     

NewsChoice.com

*****************************************************************
 9  General Dynamics To Buy Newport News 

(washingtonpost.com)

The Associated Press
 Wednesday, April 25, 2001; 7:58 AM 

NEW YORK –– General Dynamics Corp. plans to acquire Newport News 
Shipbuilding Inc. for $2.1 billion in its second attempt in two 
years to acquire its shipbuilding rival and become the sole 
manufacturer of Navy aircraft carriers and submarines. 

The deal announced Wednesday would make General Dynamics a 
shipbuilding powerhouse, giving it control over the manufacture 
and maintenance of all the U.S. military's nuclear-powered ships, 
in addition to a strong position building Navy destroyers, 
auxiliary ships and commercial oil tankers. 

If approved by regulators, General Dynamics' deal for Newport 
News would make it a stronger rival to Northrop Grumman Corp., 
which recently acquired the only other major U.S. shipmaker, 
Litton Industries Inc. 

The deal has been approved by the boards of both companies. In 
addition to paying $2.1 billion in cash for Newport News stock, 
General Dynamics plans to assume $500 million of Newport News 
debt. 

Under terms of the deal, General Dynamics would pay $67.50 for 
each of Newport News' 29.6 million shares outstanding, 
representing a 23 percent premium to the stock's price of $55.05 
as of 4 p.m. Tuesday. 

In 1999, Newport Chairman William Fricks rejected General 
Dynamics' unsolicited offer of $1.4 billion as too low. Clinton 
administration officials and congressional leaders also balked at 
the original proposal. 

The deal is likely to be heavily scrutinized by the Pentagon and 
federal antitrust authorities. Proponents of the deal are hopeful 
the Bush administration will have a more relaxed attitude about 
such mergers. 

The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the deal in 
Wednesday's editions, said no shipyards are expected to close as 
a result of the acquisition. 

General Dynamics, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., is a leader 
in business aviation, information systems and land combat systems 
as well as shipbuilding. It employs 46,000 people worldwide and 
expects sales this year of $11.5 billion. 

Newport News, based in Newport News, Va., employs 17,000 people 
and had $2.07 billion in revenue last year. 

On the Net: General Dynamics http://www.gdeb.com Newport News 
http://www.nns.com 

                          © 2001 The Associated Press
*****************************************************************
 10  Size doesn't matter 

Guardian Unlimited | 

America has put nuclear weapons back on the agenda. Big or small, 
they're still dangerous

Special report: Britain's nuclear industry 		
 		
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday April 25, 2001
The Guardian 		
 		
It is time we Europeans woke up to the fact, however 
uncomfortable it may be, that nuclear weapons are well and truly 
back on the agenda. A growing lobby of American political and 
military zealots, reawakened by President Bush's election success 
and egged on by leading scientists, want to attack "rogue" states 
with nuclear weapons. 

Under proposals being considered by the US defence department, 
"mini-nukes" would attack dictators' underground headquarters and 
their supplies of chemical and biological weapons. Nukes would do 
what conventional bombs have conspicuously failed to achieve: 
knock out bunkers being built deeper and deeper into the rocks. 
User-friendly, "low-yield", nuclear weapons would limit 
collateral damage (ie killing civilians) and radioactive 
fall-out, argue their proponents. 

"The US will undoubtedly require a new nuclear weapon... because 
it is realised that the yields of the weapons left over from the 
cold war are too high for addressing the deterrence requirements 
of a multipolar, widely proliferated world," Paul Robinson, 
director of America's Sandia Nuclear Laboratories pronounced 
recently. "Low-yield weapons with highly accurate delivery 
systems" would be a useful deterrent, he said, adding that such 
devices could help decision-makers "contemplate the destruction 
of some buried or hidden targets while being mindful of the need 
to minimise collateral damage". 

In a paper entitled Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, Stephen 
Younger, head of nuclear weapons research at the Los Alamos 
laboratory, last year said low-yield nukes would be more 
effective against underground concrete bunkers and mobile 
missiles than conventional bombs. Weapons of less than five 
kilotons, the argument goes, would be a more credible deterrent 
than "normal" nuclear weapons. Indeed, they could have been used 
during the Kosovo war. And mini-nukes would enable the US to 
reduce its stockpile of 6,000 much larger nuclear warheads. 

The taboo, whereby nuclear weapons would not be used against 
non-nuclear powers as a war-fighting tool, was breached last year 
in an amendment to the US defence budget authorisation bill 
tabled by two republican senators, John Warner and Wayne Allard. 
This required the Pentagon to study how best to bomb buried 
targets, including the use of low-yield nuclear devices. 

A 1994 law, the Federation of American Scientists points out in a 
recent report, prohibits nuclear laboratories in the US from 
undertaking research and development that could lead to a 
precision nuclear weapon of less than five kilotons because 
"low-yield nuclear weapons blur the distinction between nuclear 
and conventional war". However, it warns that legislation for 
long-term research and actual development of low-yield nuclear 
weapons will almost certainly be proposed in the new session of 
Congress. 

The notion that an accurate, low-yield, nuclear bomb would cause 
limited - acceptable - collateral damage is ludicrous. As Martin 
Butcher and Theresa Hitchens, two security analysts, point out, a 
five-kiloton warhead dropped on London might only destroy 
Islington. But it would kill thousands of people and make 
thousands more victims of burns, radiation sickness, and 
blindness. 

"The use of any nuclear weapon capable of destroying a buried 
target that is otherwise immune to conventional attack will 
necessarily produce enormous numbers of civilian casualties," the 
federation points out in its report. "No earth-burrowing missile 
can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion 
with a nuclear yield even as small as 1% of the 15 kiloton 
Hiroshima weapon," it says. "The explosion simply blows out a 
massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local 
region with an especially intense and deadly fallout." 

The Pentagon is due to send its report on mini-nukes to Congress 
in July, the same time a separate and comprehensive review of US 
strategic nuclear deterrence is likely to be published. One thing 
is certain. As Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at 
Bradford University, puts it: "Building new nuclear weapons is 
firmly on the agenda of the Bush administration." 

Whether it involves the development of mini-nukes or a new 
version of the Minuteman intercontinental ballis tic missile 
system or a new Trident 3 system for nuclear submarines, it will 
lead to increasing pressure within the US to resume nuclear 
tests, a move which could destroy the comprehensive test ban 
treaty which Washington has yet to ratify. 

This, coupled with the growing debate in the US about using 
nuclear weapons in limited or regional wars, has the most serious 
implications for nuclear proliferation and arms control treaties 
already threatened by the Bush administration's determination to 
go ahead with a missile defence system. There is talk now in the 
US about nuclear weapons in this project, too. Nuclear warheads, 
so the argument runs, would be most effective in knocking out 
incoming missiles. That's one more reason to worry. 
*****************************************************************
 11  France studies Gulf War health problems

UPI News Article: 

Tuesday, 24 April 2001 8:13 (ET)
 
By ELIZABETH BRYANT

 PARIS, April 24 (UPI) -- French Defense Minister Alain Richard 
announced Tuesday that the government would launch a study into 
the health effects of the Gulf War on some 25,000 soldiers 
deployed during the fighting.

 The announcement followed a report by a panel of health experts 
presented Tuesday to France's health and defense ministries. The 
report said isolated symptoms and health complaints were more 
frequent among French soldiers than in the rest of the country's 
population.

 Although the 135-page report did not find "grouped symptoms" 
generalized among the Gulf War veterans, experts recommended a 
health questionnaire should be distributed to France's 25,000 
Gulf War veterans, along with a study into causes of death of 
French soldiers deployed in the region.

 Following the report, Richard said the government would follow 
the panel's recommendations.

 "Even if we've had very few signs of complaints or questions, 
there must be a medical questionnaire generalized for 25,000 
soldiers who service in the Gulf 10 years ago," Richard told 
reporters.

 "From there, we'll lead an in-depth study on the symptoms that 
appear in number" among those surveyed, he said.

 Similar studies launched in the United States and Britain failed 
to draw conclusive evidence of a "Gulf War syndrome" among 
military personnel serving in the war against Iraq a decade ago.

 The French study will also look into the causes of death by 
French soldiers fighting in the Balkans, the Defense Ministry 
said.

 In recent months, French and other European governments have 
launched inquiries into the potential health effects of depleted 
uranium on soldiers serving in the Balkans. But despite a rash of 
reports of soldiers with Leukemia and other diseases, many 
scientists concluded there was no evidence of health effects from 
the uranium-tipped shells.

-- Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
*****************************************************************
 12  Study: Sierra Army Depot is California's top polluter

*Frank X. Mullen Jr.*
 RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
 Wednesday April 25th, 2001
 

The Sierra Army Depot, just 55 miles from Reno, was California’s 
leading air polluter during 1999, according to a new federal 
report that activists said proves the health threat to northern 
Nevada.
 
The military base, northwest of Reno on the California boarder, 
discharged 5.4 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air 
that year, about 17 percent of all toxins inventoried statewide, 
according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
 
The pollution is the result of the Army’s 30-year practice of 
burning and detonating obsolete munitions on an open hillside 
behind the base near Herlong, Calif., according to the EPA’s 
annual toxic release inventory. 

A Reno Gazette-Journal investigation into the base’s activities 
last year showed the base has violated its own guidelines for the 
blasts by blowing up munitions when the cloud cover was low or 
the wind was blowing faster than the guidelines allowed
 
Although Army officials deny the blasting causes any health 
problems and disputed the EPA’s findings, Lassen County 
environmental activists contend the EPA ranking proves the 
dangers.
 
“The Army must halt this barbaric method of throwing bombs in a 
ditch and blowing them up in the open air, sending toxic clouds 
to the people downwind,” said Jack Pastor, leader of Citizens 
Against Munitions in Susanville, Calif. “They are sacrificing our 
communities.”
 
The Army should switch to blast chambers, which don’t send toxins 
into the air, Pastor said.
 
Army officials denied wrongdoing.
 
“We are in compliance with environmental laws and all the 
guidelines,” said Larry Rogers, base spokesman. “We are operating 
within the environmental controls placed on us. We are within the 
acceptable (health) risk posed by the regulators.”
 
Rogers said the EPA’s report is inaccurate because it is based on 
the total weight of munitions destroyed at the depot and doesn’t 
take into account bomb casings and other metals that are 
recycled.
 
“The EPA’s listing shows 100 percent of the items being 
vaporized,” he said. “That’s not the case. We are working with 
the regulators to make next year’s report more accurate.”
 
“It doesn’t matter if we are No. 1 or No. 10 on the (EPA) list,” 
Rogers said. “The bottom line is we’re in compliance.”
 
In past public hearings, Army spokesmen said the base emits fewer 
pollutants than the power plant or the lumber mill in Susanville. 
At the time, there were no EPA figures to dispute those claims. 
Due to a Clinton Administration order, federal facilities are 
included on the EPA state toxics list for the first time this 
year.
 
Base officials are seeking state and federal permits to annually 
destroy more than 106 million pounds of out-of-date bullets, 
bombs, rocket motors and artillery, one of the depot’s primary 
missions.
 
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control has been 
considering granting the base a toxic release permit since 1994, 
when Army officials applied for a permit after operating 14 years 
under interim status.
 
Since holding public hearings last fall, state officials have 
been conducting additional studies and reviewing the more than 
2,000 public comments they have received, said Ron Baker, a 
department spokesman.
 
Lassen County and federal officials are also considering what 
requirements to include in a permit to bring the base into 
compliance with the federal Clean Air Act.
 
Rogers said the depot is “ramping up” for the season to demolish 
about 24 million pounds of material this year, about half the 
historic quantity.
 
He said the decrease in demolition is partly due to public 
concern over noise levels from the blasts and is also due to a 
downturn in business.
 
Rogers said the depot is investigating new technologies of 
weapons destruction, but none seem practical for the large 
quantities of munitions destroyed at the base.
 
All of the chemicals reported by the EPA were discharged by the 
demolition operation, EPA officials said. More than 4 million 
pounds are aluminum fumes, the EPA reported.
 
Other chemicals include roughly 1 million pounds of copper, and 
more than 130,000 pounds of zinc and emissions containing lead, 
nickel, hydrogen cyanide and styrene.
 
                          ©2001 Reno Gazette-Journal
*****************************************************************
 13  Legislators aim to restore uranium cleanup funds
 
April 24, 2001 
 
LAS VEGAS SUN

 Although the Bush administration removed a budget item to clean 
up radioactive uranium tailings leaking into the Colorado River 
near Moab, Utah, the Nevada congressional delegation plans to 
help restore the funding.

 Last year Congress gave the Department of Energy responsibility 
for removing 13 million tons of uranium mill tailings that leak 
about 16,000 gallons of contaminated water a day into the river, 
the major drinking water source for Nevada, Arizona and 
California.

 A $2.8 million line item in the DOE's Grand Junction, Colo., 
budget would allow the federal agency to begin overseeing the 
project. Some officials estimated it would cost up to $300 
million to remove the tailings left after Atlas Mining Corp., the 
bankrupt Denver-based company, quit mining uranium after the Cold 
War. Atlas filed for bankruptcy in 1997, leaving the cleanup to 
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

 But after the NRC decided to cap the leaky tailings in place for 
$100 million, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson stepped in 
and pledged to remove the tailings piled 750 feet from the 
river's edge.

 Utah and Nevada water officials feared a flash flood or other 
disaster could wash the entire pile of tailings into the 
Colorado, contaminating the river downstream.
 
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 14  Uranium Waste Cleanup Gets No U.S. Funds 

April 24, 2001        

Colorado River is feared. 

By TONY PERRY, Times Staff Writer
 
The Bush administration has omitted any money from the federal 
budget to continue the cleanup of a huge uranium slag heap in 
southern Utah that has been leaking radioactive waste into the 
Colorado River. 

Perched about 750 feet from the river's edge near the small town 
of Moab, the waste heap is the size of a football field and 
contains 13 tons of material left over from a uranium mill that 
shut down in 1984. 

Chris Ullman, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, 
said the request for money for the Moab site will be reviewed by 
the administration. He said that cleaning up contamination left 
from the cold war is "a priority to the president." 

The budgetary omission has brought protests from Utah and 
Southern California. Officials in California are worried that the 
mill waste could severely contaminate the Colorado River, a major 
source of drinking water for Southern California and the 
Southwest. 

"We worked too long and too hard to let this happen," said Rep. 
Grace Napolitano (D-Montebello). "It's too critical to 
California." 

"Our entire water supply is threatened," said Rep. Bob Filner 
(D-Chula Vista). "They've got to act quickly." 

After years of trying to get federal attention, Napolitano, 
Filner and other members of Congress managed to get an amendment 
to a military appropriations bill last year pledging assistance 
for the cleanup at Moab. 

The measure provided no money but contained a pledge that the 
federal government, pending a study by the National Academy of 
Sciences, would pay to have the waste pile moved away from the 
river. 

The bill was signed by President Bill Clinton just before the 
November election, with a promise that the government would 
continue the project in future years. It was part of a common 
two-step legislative process in which a project is authorized the 
first year, and funded in the second and subsequent years. 

So far, water intake plants downstream from Moab have not 
detected any unsafe levels of toxic substances traceable to the 
waste pile. 

Officials worry, however, that the waste heap is a "radioactive 
time bomb" that should be cleaned up before a flood, an 
earthquake or the cumulative effects of the leaching contaminate 
drinking water supplies downstream. Last week, seven members of 
Congress petitioned the chairman of the House energy and water 
development subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to 
add $10 million to the budget for the project. Their letter noted 
that 25 million people in the West depend on the Colorado River 
for drinking water. 

But the Bush administration, to date, has not budgeted money for 
the cleanup or for the study. 

Meanwhile, Moab residents complain that the cleanup work done so 
far at the site has actually made things worse by increasing the 
amount of dirt that blows into town during the area's frequent 
windstorms. 

"People here are up in arms about the tail dust blowing through 
the town," said Bill Hedden, a former Grand County commissioner 
from Moab and now Utah conservation director of the Grand Canyon 
Trust. 

The slag heap was left behind by a plant run by Atlas Corp., 
which filed for bankruptcy protection in 1998. The plant, which 
began operating in 1956, provided uranium for nuclear weapons. 

Moab, with 4,500 people, is a popular tourist destination 240 
miles southeast of Salt Lake City in a starkly beautiful, 
ecologically fragile corner of the Southwest. The region is home 
to several national parks and monuments. In the 1950s, Moab was 
the capital of a uranium mining boom. 

The Colorado River and an 875-acre wetland preserve close to the 
waste pile are home to dozens of species of fish and birds, 
including five that are protected by the Endangered Species Act: 
the Colorado pike minnow, razorback sucker, humpback chub and 
boneytail fish and the southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird. 

California officials hope that it is only a matter of convincing 
the new administration of the importance of the project. 

"The president's budget has been culled back to the president's 
priorities--Moab was not one of his campaign themes," said Adan 
Ortega, senior executive assistant to the general manager at the 
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. "We hope the 
Congress can convince the president of its importance." 

A spokesman for Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), whose district 
includes Moab, said the Bush budget does not include any specific 
Department of Energy cleanup projects, and therefore his boss is 
confident that Moab has not been singled out for exclusion. 

The spokesman said Cannon believes that the administration, once 
it has time to review the budget, will include the cleanup in 
future budgets. 

But others, including the trustee for Atlas, suggest that the 
Bush administration may decide that it is too expensive and not 
necessary to move the pile. There are scientific disputes about 
whether virtually all of the toxic material will have leached 
into the river before the pile can be moved. 

Efforts at removing water from the pile--as a way to decrease the 
amount of toxic substances leaching into the Colorado River--were 
halted in February amid a dispute between the U.S. Fish and 
Wildlife Service and PricewaterhouseCoopers, trustee for the 
owner of the defunct uranium plant. 

PricewaterhouseCoopers unsuccessfully sought a grant of immunity 
from the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the company if the 
cleanup was seen as damaging to fish and birds. The company could 
be fined $25,000 a day if its work injures wildlife. 

Denied immunity, the firm decided to halt work, to the chagrin of 
officials in Utah, California and Washington, D.C. 

"The agency is very upset by the slow action, or inaction, by the 
trustee out there," said Rick Weller, spokesman for the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission. 

"We've tried every way we can to clear the path so they can move 
ahead," said Bill Sinclair, director of the division of radiation 
control with the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. 

The work done by contractors hired by PricewaterhouseCoopers has 
been funded not by the bill signed by Clinton but by a fund 
controlled by the federal government for the cleanup of former 
uranium plant sites. The fund is made up of federal funds and 
money contributed by the former plant owners, in this case, Atlas 
Corp. 

Jim Langley, a Houston-based PricewaterhouseCoopers official, 
said that the fund will pay part--but not all--of the costs of 
covering the slag heap. 

But the fund, he said, will not pay for moving the pile or for 
the National Academy of Science study of whether moving the pile 
is necessary. Those actions will require additional federal 
financing, Langley said. 

The estimated cost of covering up the pile is $16 million to $20 
million. Estimates for moving it away from the river range from 
$300 million to $1 billion. 

Langley said PricewaterhouseCoopers attorneys have been told by 
Bush administration officials that the cost of moving the pile is 
daunting. "We've been told that California energy is the sole 
interest of the Bush administration's Department of Energy in its 
first year, not Florida, not Alaska, and certainly not Moab," 
Langley said. 

Langley added that his firm has been getting a "bum rap" for 
stopping work in February. He said PricewaterhouseCoopers was 
caught between differing views of the regional office of Fish and 
Wildlife and the headquarters in Washington about whether it 
could be fined for any environmental damage. 		 

Los Angeles Times 

    
*****************************************************************

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have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
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information go to: 
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