*****************************************************************
05/25/01 ****     RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)       **** VOL 9.130
*****************************************************************
   RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE
*****************************************************************

                    NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
 
 1  Governor puts Bryan on nuclear panel
 2  USEC seen as portion of park's future 
 3  Switch erodes Tristate clout
 4  Shift May Derail Energy Proposals 
 5  Multifaith group blasts energy plan
 6  Power Trader Tied to Bush Finds Washington All Ears
 7  Nuclear power popular, dangerous 
 8  Outside California, a Far Different Story: Forward Electricity 
 9  Quick OK for new reactors sought 
10  Nuclear renaissance has to reckon with Chernobyl 
11  Reid intends caution with clout on Yucca
12  Bush push runs into legacy of Chernobyl
13  Cogema on Trial for Illegal Radioactive Waste Storage 
14  *Letter from a Reader* 
15  Revival of Pyroprocessing
16  Letter from IEER to NWTRB re: Yucca Mountain 
17  Secretary Abraham Highlights Administration Support for Expanding 
18  Nevadans Get How To Lesson in Contesting Nuclear Waste Site
19  Radioactive material leak at Japan nuclear reactor 
20  REFERENDUM PUTS JAPAN'S PLUTONIUM PROGRAM IN SPOTLIGHT
21  Nuclear fuel review plea
22  Court challenge to nuclear plant
23  NRC Wants Closer Earthquake Study of Goshute Nuclear-Waste Site 
24  DJ US NRC Gives NU More Time To Search For Spent Fuel 
25  Atomic safety board delays action in Millstone 3 fuel rods dispute 

                    NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
 
 1  Deceased sick workers' children may not be eligible for benefits 
 2  ASIL Insight--Advisory Opinions of the World Court on the 
 3  ASIL Insight--India's Nuclear Tests
 4  Nuclear Weapons and International Law 
 5  Nuclear Sharing in NATO: Is it Legal? 
 6  DOE Quality Assurance Support Contract Awarded
 7  OPA Press Release: Labor Department Meets First Deadline for 
 8  MoD nuclear dump plans for Highlands
 9  UK narrows site for storing nuclear sub remains
10  Some children ineligible for nuclear fatality benefits
11  FFTF solicits proposals for its use
12  Aerial survey sparks rift 

****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
                     NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
 1 Governor puts Bryan on nuclear panel
 
 Reno Gazette-Journal
 Friday May 25th, 2001
 
Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., has been appointed to the 
state’s Nuclear Projects Commission. 

“I can think of no one who has Dick Bryan’s depth of knowledge 
and experience on every aspect of nuclear energy and his 
dedication to serving the people of Nevada is well-known 
throughout our state,” said Gov. Kenny Guinn, who made the 
appointment Thursday.
 
The commission was created in 1985 when Bryan was governor. 

The group is charged with making recommendations to the governor 
and Legislature on nuclear projects and the disposal of 
radioactive waste. 

Bryan’s term ends June 30, 2002.
 
Bryan retired from the U.S. Senate in January after two terms and 
is a former Nevada governor, attorney general, senator and 
assemblyman. He is a partner and executive committee of the Las 
Vegas law firm Lionel, Sawyer and Collins.
 
Bryan is a native Nevadan and earned his law degree from the 
University of California, Hastings Law School. He began work as a 
deputy district attorney in Clark County and two years later was 
named Clark County’s first public defender.
 
                    Back to Local News Index | Back to Top
 
                          ©2001 Reno Gazette-Journal
*****************************************************************
 2  USEC seen as portion of park's future 

The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Friday, May 25, 2001

*Research work by the University of Kentucky, DOE and others is also hoped at
the Paducah Information Age Park.* 

By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--*270.575.8650*
 
Future development of the Paducah Information Age Park could 
center on research and development associated with the Paducah 
Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Environmental issues, energy and 
agriculture are among the possibilities giving the park the 
potential to generate $7 billion for the economy, according to 
Stuart Gilbert, executive director of the Greater Paducah 
Economic Development Corp. (GPEDC). 

The fact that Paducah has the nation's only plant for enriching 
uranium for use as a nuclear fuel adds to the potential for 
development, he said. The 3,000-acre plant compound is owned by 
the U.S. Department of Energy, and the enrichment plant is 
operated by the United States Enrichment Corp., a privately held 
company. 

"We have a significant opportunity to take advantage of resources 
related to the DOE site that so far haven't materialized," 
Gilbert said. 

As part of the effort to take advantage of opportunities at the 
DOE site, GPEDC is ready to sell the Resource Center building in 
the Information Age Park. He confirmed that the University of 
Kentucky, DOE and USEC are among the businesses and educational 
institutions that have expressed interest in the building. The 
asking price is $3.5 million. 

Future development in the park could involve private firms 
involved in research and nuclear cleanup activities. 

University of Kentucky President-elect Lee Todd wants UK to 
establish a major presence in western Kentucky in research and 
development. 

Earlier this month, Todd and Dr. Tom Lester, dean of UK's College 
of Engineering, met with USEC President Nick Timbers to discuss 
UK's being involved in research at the plant. They also expressed 
interest in expanding UK's engineering program to provide 
continuing education for plant workers. "Nick Timbers seemed very 
receptive to the idea of UK providing some research and believed 
it could be in USEC's best interest," Lester said. "We will 
provide him with some documentation of our research capabilities 
in several areas and see where it goes from there." 

USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said the discussions involved 
ways UK and USEC could work together on several projects. "These 
discussions are preliminary, and further discussions will 
probably occur," she said. 

Gilbert said other educational institutions could be involved. 

DOE has a plan to spend more than $1 billion on cleanup of 
nuclear waste at the plant over the next 10 years. The complexity 
of the contamination is such that it will require development of 
new technology, which Todd said is where UK could become a major 
player. 

Gilbert and Todd also said that as the cleanup progresses, there 
will be opportunities for new projects, such as finding markets 
for recycling some of the materials stored at the plant. 

Within the next two years, DOE is expected to release funds to 
build a $300 million plant to recycle the depleted uranium that 
is stored in more than 36,000 containers. Federal officials are 
reviewing proposals from at least five firms, including USEC. 

Another potential is research and development of new, 
more-cost-effective methods to enrich uranium, Gilbert said. The 
gaseous diffusion process was developed more than 50 years ago 
and is expensive because it consumes massive amounts of 
electricity. 

USEC currently is helping to pay for research for a new 
generation of enrichment technology, known as Silex. 

USEC holds the commercial rights to Silex in the United States, 
and is in partnership with an Australian firm that is conducting 
extensive research that has cost USEC at least $5 million. 

A recent report on the research said 50 scientists and 
technicians were working on the project and that the research was 
being conducted in Australia, the United States, Europe and South 
Africa. 

Gilbert thinks some of the research can be done in Paducah. 

Helping with research fits the requirements for success in 
economic development in the new age economy, he said. Firms are 
looking for "brainpower" to help them compete in the high-tech 
markets, and the presence of UK and other research institutions 
would provide that element, he said. 

Research opportunities in energy and agriculture are endless, 
Gilbert said. He said research could involve finding new, 
environmentally friendly ways to produce electricity, and to 
expand the potential use for nuclear power. In agriculture, 
considerable current research involves animal and plant proteins, 
and agriculture's significant presence in the region's economy 
could help attract that type of research, he said. 

*****************************************************************
 3  Switch erodes Tristate clout
 
  Friday, May 25, 2001 

By Derrick DePledge
 Enquirer Washington Bureau

         WASHINGTON — The decision Thursday by Vermont Sen. Jim 
Jeffords to leave the Republican Party and become an independent 
throws power in the Senate to the Democrats and strips Tristate 
lawmakers of plum committee assignments. 

        Democrats now will set the legislative agenda and select 
lawmakers to chair committees and subcommittees. 

        Despite the loss of power, Sen Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., 
said, “We're a long way from dead. We intend to advance the 
president's agenda.” 

        Here are the likely changes for Tristate senators: 

        Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, will lose his chairmanship 
of the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property and 
Nuclear Safety and the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government 
Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia. 

        Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, will have to give up his 
chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Business Rights 
and Competition and the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia. 

        Mr. McConnell, will have to relinquish the chairmanship 
of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. 

        Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., will lose his chairmanship of 
the Subcommittee on Economic Policy. 

        Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., will give up his chairmanship 
of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. 

        Mr. DeWine also could lose a coveted slot on the Senate 
Appropriations Committee because he has the least seniority among 
Republicans. Republican staffers could lose their jobs when the 
power ratios lean toward Democrats. 

        “People are going to lose their jobs. People are going to 
have to change their plans,” Mr. DeWine said. “It's tough.” 

        Mr. Bunning described Mr. Jeffords' decision as a pretty 
drastic step. 

        “While he has had a number of policy differences with the 
Republican Party in recent years, I could not have imagined that 
he would leave our party and single-handedly lead Tom Daschle and 
Ted Kennedy into control of the U.S. Senate.” 

        Mr. Voinovich said the power shift should not have a 
dramatic change on public policy because “bipartisanship simply 
is part of the chamber's tradition.” He said he was disappointed 
with Mr. Jeffords' move, but respects the Vermont lawmaker's 
convictions. 

        “Though I think he can effect more real change for the 
issues that matter to him as a member of the Republican 
conference than as a Democrat, the message from this incident 
should be clear to all: Neither party can govern successfully 
without reaching out to people of different views.” 

        With the Senate narrowly ruled by Democrats and the House 
in Republican control, the political dynamic is more uncertain 
for President Bush, who has made steady progress with Congress on 
his tax and education proposals but now may have to appeal to 
moderates and liberals to accomplish his agenda. 

        Mr. DeWine, who with Mr. Voinovich traveled with Mr. Bush 
on a trip Thursday to Cleveland, said the president was 
philosophical and upbeat. He said Mr. Bush pointed out that he 
needed some Democratic support for his tax and education plans. 

        Mr. DeWine said he respects Mr. Jeffords but disagreed 
with his conclusion that the party had no place for moderates. 

        “That's absurd,” said Mr. DeWine, who added that Mr. 
Jeffords could have worked within the party to accomplish some of 
his goals.
 
       *Gannett News Service reporter Barbara DeLollis 
contributed.
        
Copyright1995-2001. The Cincinnati Enquirer, a Gannett Co. 
*****************************************************************
 4  Shift May Derail Energy Proposals 

No Drilling Likely In Wildlife Refuge 

*By Peter Behr*
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 Friday, May 25, 2001; Page A19 

President Bush's week-old energy plan faces major changes and a 
longer timetable with the Democrats returning to power in the 
Senate, legislative leaders and analysts said yesterday.
 
The change in chairmanship of the Senate Energy and Natural 
Resources Committee, from Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) to 
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), alters the outlook for some major 
energy proposals and confirms the fate of several others.
 
Bush's call to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal 
plain to oil and gas drilling is dead, a senior Democratic staff 
member of the committee said. The odds already were against the 
proposal.
 
"That game was over," said Washington lobbyist and former senator 
J. Bennett Johnston, a Louisiana Democrat who headed the energy 
committee in the 1990s.
 
Federal research funding for energy efficiency could increase if 
Senate Democrats can persuade the Republican-controlled House to 
go along with it. And the Senate's new majority will try to 
revive proposals to restrain emissions of carbon dioxide from 
energy plants and industrial sites, an initiative that Bush had 
dropped, said Howard Gruenspecht, resident scholar at Resources 
for the Future and a former Energy Department official. "Climate 
change comes back," he said.
 
Bush's proposal to give federal regulators control over the 
location of new high-voltage power lines will be sidetracked by 
Senate Democrats heeding the opposition of state governors.
 
Bush still controls important parts of the energy agenda that 
don't depend on legislation, such as reviewing the enforcement of 
air-quality regulations on coal plants and gasoline refineries, 
and a possible increase in the output of nuclear power plants, 
Johnston noted.
 
"I think the core of this [plan] will remain intact," said Thomas 
Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is 
conducting a $1 million lobbying campaign for its energy agenda. 

"Everybody recognizes we have to get more supply and we have to 
get it where we're going to use it. Everybody recognizes we have 
to revisit nuclear [power]," Donohue said.
 
Dan Becker of the Sierra Club in Washington said it isn't clear 
what Democratic' control of the Senate means to energy policy, 
because even from the minority position the party could have 
blocked some of the most controversial proposals. Before the 
change in power, Bush "wasn't going to be able to build new 
nuclear power plants and drill in ANWR, but we weren't going to 
be able to solve global warming either," Becker said. Those 
stalemates may continue.
 
The Republican goal of producing an energy bill by July 4 appears 
spiked. Bingaman said there is too much work to be done on too 
many important issues to permit such fast consideration.
 
"We need to take the time to be sure we've done the best we can 
to understand the problem," Bingaman said in an interview. "I 
don't want to see us rush through something that is half-baked."
 
The one exception is the possibility of Senate action to restrain 
California's high wholesale electricity prices, which have forced 
the state's largest utility into bankruptcy court and are 
draining the state budget. Prices are expected to be even higher 
this summer.
 
While Bush and Murkowski have insisted that price controls would 
only make California's energy shortages worse, the Democratic 
energy bill introduced by Bingaman and colleagues includes 
electricity price restraints for the state.
 
Bingaman said he preferred to see the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission limit wholesale price increases and will support 
legislation to require the agency to do so if it doesn't act on 
its own.
 
The House Energy and Commerce Committee failed to agree yesterday 
on proposals for price relief for California.
 
Bingaman said he hoped Bush's nominees to FERC -- Pat Wood, 
chairman of the Texas Public Utility Commission, and Nora 
Brownwell of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission -- would 
cause the commission to reconsider its opposition to 
comprehensive price restraints for California and neighboring 
states.


© 2001 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
 5  Multifaith group blasts energy plan

 Chicago Tribune Traditional Version - Chicago
 
Tribune wire services
 		
*May 25, 2001*

WASHINGTON               

Thirty-nine Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish leaders attacked U.S. 
policies that rely on fossil fuels and nuclear power, an implicit 
criticism of President Bush's energy plan.

 The group said the approach jeopardizes human well-being "by 
depleting energy sources, causing global warming, fouling the air 
with pollution and poisoning the land with radioactive waste."

 The nation has "a moral obligation to choose the safest, 
cleanest and most sustainable sources of energy" to preserve 
God's creation, they said.

 The group issued an open letter to the president but did not 
refer specifically to his proposals.

 Endorsers included a coalition of top leaders from all branches 
of Judaism, the chief executive of the National Council of 
Churches and ranking leaders from 21 of the council's Protestant 
and Orthodox denominations. No Roman Catholic or Evangelical 
Protestant leaders participated.
 	 	 
*****************************************************************
 6  Power Trader Tied to Bush Finds Washington All Ears
 
May 25, 2001 

 By LOWELL BERGMAN and JEFF GERTH 

Curtis Hébert Jr., Washington's top electricity regulator, said 
he had barely settled into his new job this year when he had an 
unsettling telephone conversation with Kenneth L. Lay, the head 
of the nation's largest electricity trader, the Enron 
Corporation.
 
Mr. Hébert, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 
said that Mr. Lay, a close friend of President Bush's, offered 
him a deal: If he changed his views on electricity deregulation, 
Enron would continue to support him in his new job.
 
Mr. Hébert (pronounced A- bear) recalled that Mr. Lay prodded him 
to back a national push for retail competition in the energy 
business and a faster pace in opening up access to the 
electricity transmission grid to companies like Enron.
 
Mr. Hébert said he refused the offer. "I was offended," he 
recalled, though he said he knew of Mr. Lay's influence in 
Washington and thought the refusal could put his job in jeopardy. 

Asked about the conversation, Mr. Lay praised Mr. Hébert, but 
recalled it differently. "I remember him requesting" Enron's 
support at the White House, he said of Mr. Hébert. Mr. Lay said 
he had "very possibly" discussed issues relating to the 
commission's authority over access to the grid.
 
As to Mr. Hébert's job, Mr. Lay said he told the chairman that 
"the final decision on this was going to be the president's, 
certainly not ours."
 
Though the accounts of the discussion differ, that it took place 
at all illustrates Enron's considerable influence in Washington, 
especially at the commission, the agency authorized to ensure 
fair prices in the nation's wholesale electricity and natural gas 
markets, Enron's main business.
 
Mr. Lay has been one of Mr. Bush's largest campaign contributors, 
and no other energy company gave more money to Republican causes 
last year than Enron.
 
And it appears that Mr. Hébert may soon be replaced as the 
commission's chairman, according to Vice President Dick Cheney, 
the Bush administration's point man on energy policy.
 
Mr. Lay has weighed in on candidates for other commission posts, 
supplying President Bush's chief personnel adviser with a list of 
preferred candidates. One Florida utility regulator who hoped for 
but did not receive an appointment as a commissioner said he had 
been "interviewed" by Mr. Lay.
 
Mr. Lay also had access to the team writing the White House's 
energy report, which embraces several initiatives and issues dear 
to Enron.
 
The report's recommendations include finding ways to give the 
federal government more power over electricity transmission 
networks, a longtime goal of the company that was spelled out in 
a memorandum Mr. Lay discussed during a 30-minute meeting earlier 
this spring with Mr. Cheney.
 
Mr. Cheney's report includes much of what Mr. Lay advocated 
during their meeting, documents show. Both men deny discussing 
commission personnel issues during their talk. But Mr. Lay had an 
unusual opportunity to make his case about candidates in writing 
and in person to Mr. Bush's personnel adviser, Clay Johnson. And 
when Mr. Bush picked nominees to fill two vacant Republican slots 
on the five- member commission, they both had the backing of 
Enron, as well as other companies.
 
Mr. Lay is not shy about voicing his opinion or flexing his 
political muscle. He has transformed the Houston-based Enron from 
a sleepy natural-gas company into a $100 billion energy giant 
with global reach, trading electricity in all corners of the 
world and owning a multibillion- dollar power project in India. 
He has also led the push to deregulate the nation's electricity 
markets.
 
Senior Bush administration officials said they welcomed Mr. Lay's 
input but did not always embrace it: President Bush backed away 
from curbing carbon-dioxide emissions, an effort supported by 
Enron, which had looked to trade emission rights as part of its 
energy business.
 
"We'll make decisions based on what we think makes sound public 
policy," Mr. Cheney said in an interview, not what "Enron 
thinks."
 
The Bush-Lay bond traces back to Mr. Bush's father and involves a 
personal and philosophical affinity. Moreover, Enron and its 
executives gave $2.4 million to federal candidates in the last 
election, more than any other energy company. While some of that 
went to Democrats, 72 percent went to Republicans, according to 
an analysis of election records by the Center for Responsive 
Politics, a nonprofit group.
 
"He's for a lot of things we're for," said Mr. Johnson.
 
But when it came to deciding on nominees for the commission, Mr. 
Johnson said that Mr. Lay's views were not that crucial. The two 
most important advisers, he said, were Andrew Lundquist, the 
director of Mr. Cheney's energy task force, and Pat Wood 3rd, the 
head of the Texas public utility commission.
 
As governor, Mr. Bush named Mr. Wood to the utility commission. 
This year, when the White House filled the two Republican slots 
on the federal agency, Mr. Wood was the first choice, Mr. Johnson 
said. 

Consumer advocates and business executives praise Mr. Wood. But 
Mr. Lay also had a role in promoting him. Shortly after Mr. Bush 
was elected governor in 1994, Mr. Lay sent him a letter endorsing 
Mr. Wood as the "best qualified" person for the Texas commission.
 
In all, there are five seats on the commission, two held by 
Republicans, two by Democrats and one held by a chairman who 
serves at the pleasure of the president. Mr. Hébert, who became a 
commissioner in 1997, was named chairman by Mr. Bush in January.
 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's mandate to ensure fair 
prices in wholesale electricity and natural gas markets makes it 
crucial to sellers like Enron as well as consumers.
 
The movement toward deregulation sometimes leaves the commission 
caught in a tug of war: power marketers like Enron are trying to 
break into markets and grids controlled by old-line utilities, 
which operate under state regulation. The commission's chairman 
has considerable latitude in setting its agenda.
 
As part of its oversight of the wholesale electricity markets, 
the commission ordered several companies to refund what it 
considered excessively high prices this year in California. One 
lesser offender named in the commission's public filings — $3.2 
million, of a total of $125 million — was an Enron subsidiary in 
Oregon.
 
Enron owns few generating assets, but buys and sells electricity 
in the market. Many of those transactions resemble the 
complicated risk-shifting techniques used by Wall Street for 
financial instruments.
 
Mr. Hébert, after he became chairman, initiated an examination 
into the effects those techniques have on the electricity 
markets. "One of our problems is that we do not have the 
expertise to truly unravel the complex arbitrage activities of a 
company like Enron," he said, adding, "we're trying to do it now, 
and we may have some results soon."
 
William L. Massey, one of the agency's two Democratic 
commissioners, said he supported the inquiry but had not been 
aware of it — an indication of the chairman's ability to set the 
commission's agenda.
 
Finally, the commission is trying to speed the pace of 
electricity deregulation by opening up the nation's transmission 
grid, much of which is owned by privately owned utilities that 
enjoy retail monopolies. Some Enron officials say the commission 
has been moving too slowly to open the grid. They attribute some 
of the problem to utilities. But they also fault Mr. Hébert.
 
"Hébert still has undeserved confidence in some of the vertically 
integrated companies coming to the table and dealing openly" with 
transmission access issues, said Richard S. Shapiro, an Enron 
senior vice president.
 
The utilities, however, maintain that they provide cheap and 
reliable service for their customers. Washington lobbyists for 
one Southern utility said that Enron was really interested in 
focusing on the utility's big-business clients, which under state 
regulation pay higher rates than residential customers.
 
Since 1996, about half the states have moved to open their retail 
markets to competition, and the commission has begun to make it 
easier for outsiders to use the nation's transmission grid. But 
the promise of cheaper rates has been largely unfulfilled. So the 
push for more deregulation, in which Enron has been a leader, has 
slowed, especially when California's flawed program led to 
skyrocketing rates and chaotic markets.
 
Mr. Hébert is a free-market conservative who favors deregulation 
but also recognizes the importance of state's rights. A former 
Mississippi regulator, he is a protégé of Trent Lott, the Senate 
Republican leader from Mississippi. Mr. Hébert said Mr. Lott was 
instrumental in his nomination to the commission in 1997 by 
President Clinton.
 
President Bush elevated Mr. Hébert to chairman on Inauguration 
Day, a move Mr. Lay said he told the White House he supported.
 
Mr. Johnson, the White House personnel chief, said that Mr. Lott 
and Mr. Hébert had both been told that Mr. Hébert could remain 
chairman at least until the administration's nominees — Mr. Wood 
and Nora Brownell, a Pennsylvania utility regulator — are 
confirmed by the full Senate. The Senate energy committee voted 
earlier this week to approve the two nominees, after a hearing 
last week indicated strong support.
 
It is widely expected that President Bush will name Mr. Wood to 
replace Mr. Hébert as chairman after the Senate acts.
 
In an interview for a forthcoming episode of "Frontline," the PBS 
series, Mr. Cheney suggested as much. "Pat Wood's got to be the 
new chairman of the F.E.R.C., and he'll have to address" various 
problems in the electricity markets, he said.
 
Mr. Hébert said that no one had told him he was being replaced. 
If someone else is named chairman, Mr. Hébert can remain a 
commissioner until the end of his term, which expires in 2004.
 
It was a few weeks after President Bush made him chairman that 
Mr. Hébert said he spoke by telephone with Mr. Lay. 

Mr. Lay told him that "he and Enron would like to support me as 
chairman, but we would have to agree on principles" involving the 
commission's role in expanding electricity competition, Mr. 
Hébert said of the conversation.
 
A senior commission official who was in Mr. Hébert's office 
during the conversation said Mr. Hébert rebuffed Mr. Lay's offer 
of a quid pro quo. The official said that he heard Mr. Hébert's 
side of the conversation and then, after the call ended, learned 
the rest from him.
 
Mr. Hébert said that he, too, backed competition but did not 
think the commission had the legal authority to tell states what 
to do in this area. Concerning the issue of opening transmission 
access through the creation of regional networks, Mr. Hebert 
supports a voluntary process while Enron seeks a faster and more 
compulsory system.
 
Mr. Lay said that while he might have discussed issues relating 
to the commission's authority concerning access to the grid, 
"there was never any intent" to link that or any other issue to 
Mr. Hébert's job status.
 
The commission is a quasijudicial agency, so decision-makers like 
Mr. Hébert must avoid private discussions about specific matters 
pending before the commission. Mr. Hébert and Mr. Lay both said 
that line was not crossed, but Mr. Hébert said he had never had 
such a blunt talk with an energy-industry executive.
 
Mr. Lay added that his few recent conversations with Mr. Hébert 
were nothing special. "We had a lot of access during the Clinton 
administration," he said.
 
And he said that while making political contributions "probably 
helps" to gain access to an official, he made them "because I'm 
supporting candidates I strongly believe in."
 
Last June, Enron executives were asked to make voluntary 
donations to the company's political action committee. The 
solicitation letter noted that the company faced a range of 
governmental issues, including electricity deregulation.
 
This year, some people who sought but did not get nominations to 
the commission said that Mr. Lay and Enron had had a role in the 
process.
 
One was Joe Garcia, a former Florida utilities regulator and 
prominent Cuban-American activist. He said he had been 
"interviewed" by a few Enron officials, including Mr. Lay, who he 
said had not been as "forceful or insistent" as the other Enron 
officials.
 
But in their conversation, Mr. Garcia said, Mr. Lay made clear 
that he would be visiting the White House, adding that "everyone 
knew of his relationship and his importance."
 
Mr. Johnson, the White House personnel chief, could not cite 
another company besides Enron that sent him a list of preferred 
candidates for the commission, but he remembered hearing the 
views of Tom Kuhn, who heads the utility industry trade group, 
the Edison Electric Institute. Mr. Kuhn was a classmate of Mr. 
Johnson and Mr. Bush at Yale.
 
As for his conversation with Mr. Garcia, Mr. Lay said he was 
comfortable with his candidacy but "I'm not sure what I told him 
about my friends at the White House."
 
*****************************************************************
 7  Nuclear power popular, dangerous 
        
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 

Friday, May 25, 2001 
  
Editor -- So a majority of Californians now support nuclear power ("Nuclear
power's California comeback," May 23). Could it be perhaps that the majority
in the state is not educated on the dangers of this most elaborate means of
boiling water? 

In truth, nuclear power merely generates heat that produces steam, which in
turn is harnessed to create electricity. To arrive at this simple output,
radioactive waste is generated and a dangerous chain reaction is placed under
human supervision, subject to human error. 
No effective means of neutralizing or storing radioactive waste has ever been
found. 

President Bush claims that this power source is clean. This claim is patently
false when you look at the legacy of radioactive pools of water and spent fuel
rods lying open next to our large nuclear reactors. 

Nuclear power is not safe. Only 15 years ago, the meltdown in Chernobyl spread
radiation across the Ukraine and neighboring countries, contaminating soil,
crops, drinking water and animals. Thousands of people died, were displaced,
or suffered radiation-related illnesses. 

One accident like Chernobyl in the United States could render a large area
useless for habitation or crop growth for many years. 

No private insurance companies will insure a nuclear power plant. That is why
Bush's energy plan includes a provision that allows the government to insure
new plants. 

LAURA DRAVENSTOTT
 
San Mateo 

PUT 'EM IN TEXAS?
 
Editor -- I was intrigued to learn that a majority of Californians favor more
nuclear power plants. It would be even more interesting to conduct a poll to
see how many would like to have a nuclear power plant and/or a nuclear waste
dump built in their own town. That might look a little different. 
Maybe those in favor of more nuclear plants figure they and associated waste
sites would all be built in Texas. 
JACK KLINE
 
Brentwood 


©2001 San Francisco Chronicle   Page A - 26 
*****************************************************************
 8  Outside California, a Far Different Story: Forward Electricity 
Prices Down as Much as 50% From Last Year, According to Platts
                                       
Friday May 25, 9:55 am Eastern Time
Press Release

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 25, 2001--With California's tight, 
high-cost electricity market in the news, a far different story 
has emerged outside the state with prices in the forward trading 
markets down as much as 50% from year-ago levels, according to 
Platts, the energy market information division of The McGraw-Hill 
Companies (NYSE: MHP- news). 

The current drop in prices is due in part to recently declining 
costs for natural gas and the unusually high cost of wholesale 
power a year ago. While it is difficult to directly correlate 
forward trading markets with still-regulated retail rates, the 
forward prices reflect the wholesale market's expectation of 
future prices, explains Brian Jordan, Platts editorial director 
for North American Electricity Markets. 

In May 2000, for example, forward prices at one trading hub, Into 
Cinergy, in the Midwest, for the July/August 2000 period, hit 
$185 per megawatt hour (MWh) and Into Entergy, in the Gulf Coast 
region, $189/MWh. Last week, the Into Cinergy price stood at 
$90.50/MWh; Into Energy at $101.50 MWh; PJM in the MidAtlantic 
region, $89/MWH; and New England at $84.60, according to Platts 
daily forward price assessments. 

Supply shortages and political uncertainty continue to keep 
prices for the summer at record highs in the West. Prices for the 
third-quarter of 2001at Palo Verde, a major hub that supplies 
California and the most actively traded western hub, was $385/MWh 
on May 18, 2001, down from a high of $575/MWh in April. The same 
forward contract a year ago traded at $90/MWh. 

Meanwhile, traders do not see a rebound in prices outside 
California until at least the summer, when hot weather fuels 
electricity demand. However, for now, gas prices are tame, new 
power plants are coming on-line, and other plants are returning 
from refuelings. 

Platts is the world's largest and most authoritative provider of 
energy market information, with more than 325 professionals 
worldwide and products ranging from real-time and Internet-based 
news services, to market reports, databases, magazines and 
conferences. Platts services cover the oil, petrochemical, 
natural gas, electricity, nuclear power, coal, metals and 
bandwidth markets. Every day, more than $10 billion worth of 
trading activity and term contract sales are based on Platts' 
price assessments. Additional information is available at 
www.platts.comand www.plattsmetals.com. 

Founded in 1888, The McGraw-Hill Companies is a global 
information services provider meeting worldwide needs in 
financial services, education and business-to-business 
information through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's, 
BusinessWeek and McGraw-Hill Education. The Corporation has more 
than 300 offices in 33 countries. Sales in 2000 were $4.3 
billion. Additional information is available at 
www.mcgraw-hill.com. 

*Contact:* Platts Richard Schwartz (212) 438-3020 
richard_schwartz@platts.com or The McGraw-Hill Companies Mary 
Skafidas (212) 512-2826 mary_skafidas@mcgraw-hill.com or RFBinder 
Partners Melissa Emmett (212) 593-5807 emmettm@ruderfinn.com

  Copyright © 2001 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy 
*****************************************************************
 9  Quick OK for new reactors sought 

News from around the nation
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Vice President Dick Cheney told 
representatives of the nuclear power industry yesterday that the 
Bush administration would push for quick approval of permits for 
new nuclear reactors to ease the nation's energy woes.

Cheney, speaking at the annual meeting of the Nuclear Energy 
Institute, said the approach is a necessary part of the 
administration's national policy plan to avoid future energy 
shortages. 

But Cheney conceded that the White House has yet to identify safe 
sites for radioactive waste generated by nuclear power, a 
sticking point for congressional Democrats, environmentalists and 
some scientists who fear that increased nuclear use could lead to 
accidents.

The administration's plan calls for a new look at using nuclear 
power to satisfy the nation's growing energy needs.

Cheney said recommendations include encouraging the federal 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission to expedite applications for new 
reactors and renew licenses for existing plants that "meet or 
exceed" safety standards.

Neo-Nazi site to be rights retreat IDAHO -- The former 
headquarters of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations will become a human 
rights retreat center in the bucolic lake country of northern 
Idaho, the new owner has decided.

Internet millionaire Greg Carr said construction will begin after 
buildings on the wooded site are burned, The Spokesman-Review 
newspaper of Spokane reported in yesterday's editions.

 The Cambridge, Mass.-based Carr Foundation bought the compound 
in March for $250,000 from Victoria Keenan and her son, who sued 
the neo-Nazi group after they were chased and assaulted by Aryan 
Nations guards in 1998.

They gained possession of the property when it was liquidated by 
Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, who filed for bankruptcy 
protection after a jury awarded the Keenans $6.3 million in 
damages.

 
Big tobacco scores a legal victory WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The 
tobacco industry scored a legal victory yesterday when a federal 
appeals court ruled against foreign governments and 
administrators of union health care funds seeking to recover 
costs for treating sick smokers.

Lawyers for the U.S. labor funds and the nations of Guatemala, 
Nicaragua and Ukraine argued in separate claims that they should 
be compensated for caring for smokers.

They also stated that the U.S. cigarette companies committed 
conspiracy and fraud, violating antitrust and racketeering laws.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed 
the claims in a joint unanimous ruling.

The three-judge panel is the eighth federal appeals court to 
issue such a ruling against union health care plans and the first 
to address claims of foreign governments.
 
*P-I news services* *
          
[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 
98119 (206) 448-8000
*****************************************************************
 10  Nuclear renaissance has to reckon with Chernobyl 

ENN.com
 
 Thursday, May 24, 2001 By Duncan Shiels, Reuters 
	
 LONDON — On the evening of April 26, 1986, Europe's media 
alerted the public to unusually high atmospheric radiation 
readings over Scandinavia.      

 Days later, fearful Europeans learned why. A huge explosion had 
blown the roof off Reactor Four at Chernobyl in Soviet Ukraine 
and a radioactive cloud was blowing northwest.  

 The United Nations says some 5 five million people were exposed 
to the radiation or otherwise affected by the Chernobyl disaster. 
More than 4,000 people who took part in the former Soviet Union's 
cleanup attempt have since died and another 40,000 involved in 
the operation became ill or were disabled.
	
 But after 15 years, the nuclear industry has received the 
endorsement of President Bush, which it hopes could herald its 
rehabilitation into public acceptance. Bush last week unveiled a 
national energy plan to boost domestic U.S. energy supplies, with 
fossil fuels and atomic power playing a key role.    

 The industry has always maintained the Chernobyl accident 
resulted from a design flaw that Western reactors do not share — 
the lack of a structure to contain radioactive material in case 
of an accident. It also points to poor regulation inherent in the 
centrally planned Soviet system at that time.        

 Such reasoning failed to convince the United States, which had 
its own near-meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, or 
governments in Europe that the public would accept new nuclear 
plants to meet expected increases in electricity demand.     

 So what has changed? The answer is global warming.     

 Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels — oil, coal and gas — 
which fire 80 percent of the world's power plants are being 
linked to rising world temperatures, which threaten to melt the 
polar ice caps, engulfing lowland areas and wiping low-lying 
Pacific islands from the map within a century.       

 Vaughn Gilbert, spokesman for reactor maker Westinghouse, said: 
"The only carbon emissions that come from a nuclear plant are 
from the nostrils of the people working there."  

 30 NUCLEAR PLANTS UNDER CONSTRUCTION   

 In fact, around 30 Western-designed nuclear reactors are under 
construction around the world, outside the United States and 
western Europe, adding to the current total of over 430.      

 Within the European Union, only Finland is considering building 
a new plant and a parliamentary decision on that was delayed 
recently until the end of the year. But Foratom, the 
Brussels-based European nuclear industry umbrella group, believes 
Washington cannot be ignored.   

 "What we observed in the past was (that) most of the 
developments in the energy field started in the U.S., then Europe 
followed — with a time delay but sometimes with higher 
amplitudes," said Foratom's executive secretary Wolf-Juergen 
Schmidt-Kuester. "We know that utilities are seriously 
investigating the question of whether they should be building new 
nuclear plants."        

 Analysts question the economics of building new reactors, given 
the colossal capital costs involved and the long period of 
construction, usually around 10 years. The Organization for 
Economic Cooperation and Development estimates current designs 
have capital costs of $2,000 per kilowatt of electricity, 
compared to $1,200 per kWe for coal-fired plants.       

 Economists also point out that newly liberated energy markets 
mean wholesale electricity power prices, which govern the rate of 
return on investment, are no longer fixed in advance but move 
with commodity-type power markets, making it very hard to commit 
resources.       

 "Profits in most developed power markets are insufficient for 
the level of return companies are looking for unless there is a 
payment for emission reduction or electricity prices go up 
because of penalties on gas and coal power generation," said Neil 
Cornelius, analyst at ICF Consulting.      

 Benito Mueller of the Oxford Institute for Energy Research says 
companies that invest also want government guarantees on 
decommissioning when the reactors reach the end of their 
operational life. "That is one reason the industry cannot be 
properly privatized, because without government guarantees on 
decommissioning no one is going to touch them with a barge pole," 
he said.   

 But British Nuclear Fuels-owned Westinghouse, which also 
supplies and processes fuel and services existing plants, says it 
is in no hurry to construct new U.S. units.       

 It is already involved in new plants and upgrades in Japan, 
South Korea, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic and the Bush plan 
has already given it a shot in the arm by encouraging the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC) to extend current licenses for many 
of the 100-odd U.S. reactors by 20 years.     

 "Virtually all of those plants are going to apply to extend 
their operating license by 20 years, which, as our basic business 
now is providing fuel and services to those plants, guarantees us 
a long-term market," Gilbert said.      

 He disputes those who say plants will remain prohibitively 
expensive, particularly as Westinghouse's latest model, the 
AP600, will take only three years to build. The firm is already 
negotiating "with a number of U.S. vendors" to build new 
reactors, he said, turning Cornelius' argument around to cite 
liberated prices for fossil fuels as a stimulus to nuclear.        

 "So much of the new generation built in the past decade has been 
gas-fired, the demand for natural gas is going up and 
consequently the cost is going up while nuclear costs have gone 
down," he said.   

 And plants will soon no longer have to be big. The revolutionary 
pebble-bed modular reactor, which Exelon Corp is developing in 
South Africa with utility Eskom and BNFL, is small at around 
110-120 megawatts, compared to up to 1,000 MW for current plants, 
and cheap at roughly $150 million, or $1,300 per kWe, Exelon 
says.    

 JUDGING THE PUBLIC MOOD        

 But economics is one thing, public support is another, and 
Bridget Woodman of environmentalist group Greenpeace in London 
believes people's fears about plant safety will not be easily 
allayed.        

 "I suspect Bush thinks it's going to be an easy ride, especially 
in view of the Californian energy crisis, but I think there will 
be an enormous amount of public opposition to new nuclear power 
stations in the U.S.," she said.         

 Mueller believes power shortages in California are a false 
pretext for building new plants as they were caused by a badly 
managed liberalization of the power market under which producers 
withheld electricity to get better prices.         

 "California is being used to justify everything including 
Alaskan drilling which is not going to come on stream for six 
years. It's all political, I'm afraid."        

 And he believes that even after a decade and a half, Chernobyl 
is still too fresh in the European consciousness for its citizens 
to newly embrace nuclear.
	
 "Chernobyl might be a while back but if you go to Germany I 
don't think the sensitivity has particularly decreased. If the 
industry says the public has misperceived this, that's tough. 
It's not the public's problem to misperceive the industry, it's 
the industry's problem — they have to deal with that." 

Copyright 2001, Reuters
*****************************************************************
 11  Reid intends caution with clout on Yucca

Friday, May 25, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 

By STEVE TETREAULT 
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid said Thursday he will not use his 
new powers in the Senate to seek crippling cuts in the Yucca 
Mountain program, saying he is confident the site will fail 
muster after nuclear waste studies run their course. 

When the Senate formally converts to Democratic control, Reid, 
D-Nev., will become the No. 2 leader of the majority. 

He also will assume leadership of a key energy and water 
subcommittee, which writes an annual spending bill for the Energy 
Department -- including the project that is exploring nuclear 
waste burial at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

Reid, who perennially orchestrates Yucca Mountain budget cuts, 
said he will continue to give tough review to the almost 
20-year-old program, but he won't use his new powers of the purse 
to push for even harsher cuts or to try to kill it outright. 

"I have always tried to be fair," he said. "I have the ability 
probably to cut back funding significantly, but I believe there's 
a process in line that Yucca Mountain be characterized, and I'm 
not going to stop it from being characterized. That would be very 
little, that would show I'm a little person. 

"I'm willing for Yucca Mountain in the right way to go forward 
and be characterized, because I don't think the NRC (Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission) will ever approve it," he said. 

Nevada opponents of nuclear waste storage argue that geologic 
flaws ultimately will sink the Yucca Mountain proposal, even if 
Energy Department scientists disagree and the site is recommended 
by the president. 

The NRC must review the government's work and ultimately decide 
whether Yucca Mountain can safely hold 77,000 tons of encased 
radioactive waste pellets for a required 10,000 years. 

During the past five years, Congress has cut the Energy 
Department's nuclear waste disposal budget requests by amounts 
ranging from 4.5 percent to 14 percent. Approved budgets have 
ranged over that time from $345 million to $391 million. 

Yucca Mountain managers have responded by deferring some 
engineering and design studies. They say the budget cuts have 
contributed to a year delay, to 2003, in submitting a repository 
license application to the NRC. 

At a hearing May 15, Reid told department executives to expect 
cuts in this year's $444.9 million request. 

"Delay has always been to our advantage," by buying time for new 
questions to be raised about Yucca Mountain science, former 
senator Richard Bryan said Thursday. 

Additionally, it may not be possible to zero out the program's 
budget. 

Declining to say that outright, Bryan noted that support for a 
Nevada repository remains strong among a majority of lawmakers. 
"The House is very much supportive of this program, and there is 
support for it in parts of the Senate," he said. "Reid, by 
reducing the funding levels, will have accomplished further 
delays." 

Reid likely would face strong opposition even within his 
subcommittee. Eight of the 12 members voted last year for nuclear 
waste storage in Nevada, and the panel includes strong 
pro-nuclear senators Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Larry Craig, 
R-Idaho. 

Richard Siegel, a political science professor at the University 
of Nevada, Reno, said Reid's ability to influence the Senate 
floor schedule may be where he can bargain for more delays on 
Yucca Mountain -- or to cut a deal for the state. 

"It's unrealistic to think Reid is going to win this war 
unilaterally," Siegel said. "If it comes down to the fact that 
opening up Yucca Mountain is going to happen, Reid, where he is, 
is going to make the best deal that Nevada is going to get." 


Donrey Washington Bureau staff writer Christine Dorsey 
*****************************************************************
 12  Bush push runs into legacy of Chernobyl

New Zealand News - World - 

25.05.2001

Is the mood on the use of nuclear power changing throughout the 
world? DUNCAN SHIELS in London and VIBEKE LAROI in San Francisco 
investigate the hopes for a renaissance in the nuclear industry. 

On April 26, 1986, Europe's media alerted the public to unusually 
high atmospheric radiation readings over Scandinavia. Days later, 
the continent learned why. 

A huge explosion had blown the roof off Reactor Four at 
Chernobyl, in the Soviet Ukraine, and a radioactive cloud was 
blowing northwestwards. According to the United Nations, about 5 
million people were exposed to the radiation or otherwise 
affected by the Chernobyl disaster. 

More than 4000 people who took part in the former Soviet Union's 
clean-up attempt have since died and another 40,000 involved in 
the operation became ill or were disabled. 

But after 15 years the nuclear industry has received the 
endorsement of President George W. Bush, which it hopes could 
herald its rehabilitation into public acceptance. 

Using the opportunity of recent power cuts in California, the 
President has unveiled a national energy plan to boost America's 
energy supplies, with fossil fuels and atomic power playing a key 
role. 

The industry has always maintained that the Chernobyl accident 
resulted from a design flaw which Western reactors do not share - 
the lack of a structure to contain radioactive material in the 
case of an accident. 

It has also pointed to poor regulation inherent in the centrally 
planned Soviet system, which disintegrated a decade ago. 

Such reasoning failed to convince the United States - which had 
its own near-meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 - and 
Governments in Europe that the public would accept new nuclear 
plants to meet expected increases in electricity demand. 

So what has changed? 

The answer is global warming. Carbon dioxide emissions from 
fossil fuels - oil, coal and gas - which fire 80 per cent of the 
world's power plants, are being linked to rising world 
temperatures which could threaten to melt the polar ice caps, 
engulfing lowland areas and wiping low-lying Pacific islands from 
the map within a century. 

As Vaughn Gilbert, spokesman for US reactor manufacturer 
Westinghouse, says: "The only carbon emissions that come from a 
nuclear plant are from the nostrils of the people working there." 

What is President Bush on about? 

Mr Bush has laid out a plan to attack "the most serious energy 
shortage" since the 1970s, calling for heavier reliance on 
nuclear power and recommending speeding the approval process for 
new reactors and providing tax breaks for nuclear plant 
purchases. 

His energy policy taskforce says the United States could boost 
its use of nuclear power by doubling the number of reactors at 
many nuclear sites already licensed by the federal Government. 

No American nuclear power plants have been licensed since the 
1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island plant 
effectively halted the United States nuclear industry in its 
tracks. 

But nobody is very keen on nuclear power plants, are they? 

Around 30 Western-designed nuclear reactors are under 
construction around the world. It is just that they all happen to 
be outside the United States and western Europe. They will add to 
the present total of more than 430. 

Within the European Union, only Finland is considering building a 
new plant, and a parliamentary decision on that was delayed 
recently until the end of the year. 

Apart from the risk of accidents, what are the objections to more 
plants? Before pushing ahead with plans to boost nuclear power in 
the United States, the Bush Administration needs to find a 
permanent home for more than 40,000 tonnes of existing highly 
radioactive waste. 

So say American power utilities - stuck holding spent fuel in 
temporary storage until a central deposit can be found - and 
environmentalists, who are in rare agreement on the need to 
contain this dangerous waste before heaping more on the pile. 

It had not been a high priority for the federal Government to 
make a decision on the controversial nuclear waste issue when it 
was assumed nuclear units would shut down after their 40-year 
licences expired and store spent fuel on-site, either in water 
pools or in dry casks, according to Nancy Messer, an electricity 
utility analyst with Standard &Poor's. 

"That left the politicians with an out for not making a hard 
decision," she says. 

But now licences of most nuclear units are expected to be 
extended by 20 years, and the units have improved their 
performance and cut operating costs. Federal regulators have 
streamlined the licensing process and standardised nuclear plant 
designs, and power utilities are running out of on-site storage. 
Although the most highly radioactive spent fuel declines the most 
rapidly, some of the radiation will stay around for thousands of 
years. 

"The Bush energy plan can urge utilities to build new nuclear 
plants, but the Government needs to look to its own 
responsibilities on the waste issue," says Thomas Neff, senior 
research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

"The main reason for opposition to nuclear right now is the 
nuclear waste problem." 

Green groups promise to block any new nuclear units partly 
because of the spent fuel problem, while utility companies say 
lack of a waste dump remains a key barrier to building more 
reactors. 

What is happening elsewhere? 

The Finnish Parliament has been debating a controversial proposal 
to bury waste from Finland's nuclear power plants at a site 500m 
underground. 

The debate is testing the cohesion of the Coalition Government 
since most European countries are now moving away from nuclear 
power, with public opinion increasingly opposed to use of atomic 
energy and worried about nuclear waste disposal. 

The Government may not decide for some time. But it decided in 
December to give its support in principle to plans by waste group 
Posiva, a unit of power groups Teollisuuden Voima and Fortum, to 
build an underground disposal facility at Olkiluoto in western 
Finland. 

What will the United States do with its waste? 

The US has 103 nuclear reactors operating at 64 sites in 31 
states, accounting for about 20 per cent of its electricity 
generation. Although these sites were designed to host four to 
six reactors, most operate only two or three. 

The reactors have produced about 42,000 tonnes of spent fuel - 
enough to fill one football field 4.6m deep. Each year, they make 
another 2000 tonnes. 

Over 20 years, scientists have spent close to $US7 billion ($16.6 
billion) studying and testing Yucca Mountain, in a remote corner 
of a nuclear weapons' test site in the Nevada desert, as the 
nation's permanent underground nuclear waste repository. No 
country has yet built or operated one. 

Yucca Mountain, about 144km from Las Vegas, is the sole site of 
an original nine candidates for a US nuclear waste repository to 
undergo extensive studies. 

"It is the most studied piece of real estate on the planet," says 
Rod McCullum, senior project manager for used fuel at the trade 
group Nuclear Energy Institute. 

If approved, Yucca Mountain could begin storing fuel in 2010. 

So far, utilities have put more than $US17 billion into a nuclear 
waste fund. Yucca Mountain, designed to store about 77,000 tonnes 
of nuclear waste, is expected to cost $US49.3 billion to build, 
excluding money already spent on research. 

What is the public reaction to the Yucca site? 

Any decision on this dump site may have to include trade-offs and 
compensation to the state of Nevada. 

Environmentalists, many in Congress, and some Nevada officials 
want to block the use of the Yucca Mountain site. 

Concerns about the enforcement of radiation exposure standards, 
transportation of nuclear waste and geological positioning are 
among main reasons for the objections. 

Opponents say the huge amounts of nuclear waste could contaminate 
groundwater or be released during an earthquake. Nevada ranks 
third in the country for seismic activity. 

This year, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham is expected to 
offer his recommendation to Mr Bush on whether to proceed with 
Yucca Mountain as the repository site, after which the President 
will make a recommendation to Congress. 

If the state of Nevada disapproves, as is expected, the decision 
can be overruled only by a majority vote in Congress. 

Is it economic to build new nuclear plants? 

Analysts question the economics of building new reactors, because 
of the colossal capital costs involved and the long period of 
construction - usually around 10 years. 

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 
estimates current designs have capital costs of $US2000 ($4742) 
per kilowatt of electricity, compared with $US1200 per kWe for 
coal-fired plants. 

Economists also point out that newly liberated energy markets 
mean wholesale electricity power prices, which govern the rate of 
return on investment, are no longer fixed in advance but move 
with commodity-type power markets, making it very hard to commit 
resources. 

"Profits in most developed power markets are insufficient for the 
level of return companies are looking for unless there is a 
payment for emission reduction, or electricity prices go up 
because of penalties on gas and coal power generation," says Neil 
Cornelius, analyst at ICF Consulting. 

Benito Mueller, of the Oxford Institute for Energy Research, says 
companies which invest also want Government guarantees on 
decommissioning when the reactors reach the end of their 
operational life. 

But British Nuclear Fuels-owned Westinghouse, which also supplies 
and processes fuel and services existing plants, says it is in no 
hurry to construct new units in America. 

It is already involved in new plants and upgrades in Japan, South 
Korea, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. The Bush plan has already 
given it a shot in the arm by encouraging the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission to extend current licences for many of the United 
States 100-odd reactors by 20 years. 

"Virtually all of those plants are going to apply to extend their 
operating licence by 20 years, which, as our basic business now 
is providing fuel and services to those plants, guarantees us a 
long-term market," Mr Gilbert says. 

He challenges the view that plants will remain prohibitively 
expensive, particularly as Westinghouse's latest model, the 
AP600, will take only three years to build. 

He says the company is already in negotiation "with a number of 
US vendors" to build new reactors." 

"So much of the new generation built in the past decade has been 
gas-fired, the demand for natural gas is going up and 
consequently the cost is going up while nuclear costs have gone 
down." 

Will other developed countries follow the Americans into more 
nuclear power? The Brussels-based European nuclear industry 
umbrella group Foratom believes Washington cannot be ignored. 

"What we observed in the past was that most of the developments 
in the energy field started in the United States, then Europe 
followed - with a time delay but sometimes with higher 
amplitudes," says Foratom's executive secretary, Wolf-Juergen 
Schmidt-Kuester. 

"We know utilities are seriously investigating the question of 
whether they should be building nuclear plants." 

And plants will soon no longer have to be big. 

The revolutionary pebble-bed modular reactor, which Exelon is 
developing in South Africa with utility Eskom and BNFL, is small 
at 110-120 MW, compared with up to 1000 MW for current plants, 
and cheap at roughly $US150 million, or $US1300 per kilowatt of 
electricity, Exelon says. 

Economics is one thing, public support is another and Bridget 
Woodman of Greenpeace in London believes people's fears about 
plant safety are not easily allayed. 

"I suspect Bush thinks it's going to be an easy ride, especially 
in view of the Californian energy crisis, but I think there will 
be an enormous amount of public opposition to new nuclear power 
stations in the United States," she says. 

Benito Mueller, of the Oxford Institute for Energy Research, 
believes power shortages in California are a false pretext for 
building new plants. 

He says the shortages were caused by a badly managed 
liberalisation of the power market. "California is being used to 
justify everything, including Alaskan drilling which is not going 
to come on stream for six years. It's all political." 

And he believes that even after a decade and a half, Chernobyl is 
still too fresh in the European consciousness for its citizens to 
newly embrace nuclear. "Chernobyl might be a while back but if 
you go to Germany I don't think the sensitivity has particularly 
decreased. 

"If the industry says the public has misperceived this, that's 
tough. "It's not the public's problem to misperceive the 
industry, it's the industry's problem - they have to deal with 
that." 

- REUTERS 
 					
©Copyright 2001, NZ Herald               
*****************************************************************
 13  Cogema on Trial for Illegal Radioactive Waste Storage 

IEER: Science for Democratic Action vol. 9 no. 3 / Energy 
&Security No. 17: Law and the Nuclear Establishment 

By Annie Makhijani and Didier Anger 

France's commercial reprocessing plant at La Hague, operated by 
the company Cogéma, separates by far the largest quantity of 
plutonium in the world today. The plutonium comes from commercial 
spent fuel generated in French reactors as well as in the 
reactors of the reprocessing company's foreign clients, the 
largest of which are Germany and Japan. The government of France 
owns a majority share of Cogéma.1 

In the late 1980s, as large scale reprocessing was becoming 
commercially established, the French government began looking for 
a repository site for its high-level commercial radioactive 
waste. As has been the experience elsewhere, there was intense 
protest when the preliminary list of sites selected for study was 
announced.2 The process had to be shut down and France started 
over with a new nuclear waste law, passed in 1991. We will refer 
to the law as the Bataille Act, in reference to the 
parliamentarian who authored it, Christian Bataille, a member of 
the ruling Socialist Party. 

The Bataille Act requires simultaneous research on three methods 
of high-level radioactive waste management (storage, 
transmutation, and repository disposal). Article 3 of the law 
requires the return of foreign radioactive wastes to their 
country of origin after the reprocessing of their spent fuel has 
been completed. Another crucial feature of the law is that it 
forbids the storage of foreign nuclear wastes on French soil 
beyond the limited time necessary for the reprocessing 
requirements.3 Implicit in this idea was that Cogéma (a) would 
not accept foreign spent fuel for storage in France if it was not 
intended for reprocessing, (b) would not store spent fuel for 
long periods of time before reprocessing, and (c) would not store 
the reprocessed wastes from the spent fuel for long periods of 
time. 

Most of the radioactivity in the reprocessing waste is contained 
in liquid high level wastes, which are vitrified and stored in 
specially constructed structures at the La Hague site, located 
near Cherbourg in the northwest of France. Low and intermediate 
level radioactive wastes generated by reprocessing are due to be 
compacted and stored in containers at La Hague. While Cogéma has 
returned some vitrified waste generated from the reprocessing of 
foreign spent fuel to Germany and Japan, the majority remains and 
continues to pile up at La Hague. None of the low and 
intermediate level waste has been returned, and Cogéma and its 
clients are not resolved on its final destination. Liquid low 
level wastes are discharged into the English Channel.
 
Illegal Shipments?
 
Cogéma has accepted:
 
  + close to 50 metric tons of German MOX spent fuel - that is, 
spent fuel resulting from the irradiation of mixed plutonium 
dioxide-uranium dioxide fuel in German reactors - between 1988 
and 1998. Cogéma does not have a permit to reprocess this spent 
fuel and has not applied for one. Such a permit is necessary 
since MOX spent fuel contains far more plutonium and other 
transuranic radionuclides than spent uranium fuel. It is being 
stored in violation of the spirit 1991 law, as Bataille, the 
author of the law, has noted: "The [1991] law allows storage of 
wastes after reprocessing only for the time needed to cool the 
wastes. It did not foresee storage of un-reprocessed spent fuel 
for an extended period, awaiting reprocessing. This practice is 
contrary to the spirit of the law. Storage of wastes not intended 
for commercial reprocessing is not allowed. As the author of the 
law, I declare that the spirit of the law is being flouted by 
this practice." (*Le Monde*, Bataille interview, by Hervé Kempf, 
6 March 2001) + four shipments to La Hague during the summer of 
2000 of German non-irradiated MOX fuel scrap from the Hanau MOX 
fuel fabrication plant which is being dismantled. This fuel is 
slated to be reprocessed. However, Cogéma would need a special 
authorization from the DSIN (Direction de la sûreté des 
installations nucléaires, equivalent to the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission in the United States) to reprocess it and has not 
applied for one. Furthermore, these shipments have occurred 
without the knowledge of the French Ministry of Environment and 
in spite of the fact that for the last two years the French 
government has declared that no more imports of spent fuel from 
Germany would be accepted until Germany takes back its wastes 
from La Hague. The Ministry of Industry claims that the shipments 
were legal since the fuel is not irradiated and the contract was 
signed in 1997, before the 1998 ban on transports from Germany to 
France. Eleven more shipments from Hanau are scheduled for this 
year. 

  + three hundred sixty rods of irradiated MTR (Material Testing 
Reactor) fuel from the Australian Lucas Height research reactor. 
This fuel, which arrived in March in the port of Cherbourg, is 
also slated to be reprocessed but, again, Cogéma would need a 
special authorization from the DSIN. The CRILAN/Anger case 
against Cogéma
 
A lawsuit filed in 1994 by a non-governmental organization in 
Normandy, the Committee for Reflection, Information, and 
Anti-Nuclear Struggle (Comité de Réflexion, d'Information, et de 
Lutte Anti-Nucléaire or CRILAN, for short), alleges that Cogéma 
is violating the Bataille Act. The complaint was amended in 1997 
to include a charge of endangerment of public safety, since a law 
passed in that year allowed individuals to file suit if they 
believed their safety was being endangered due to illegal 
activities. Didier Anger (pronounced *aahn-zhay*), who represents 
CRILAN on the Commission Hague and the Commission Flamanville4 
and was also a former parliamentarian to the European Union, is 
the plaintiff for this new charge. The activities alleged to 
cause public endangerment are the (illegal) storage of foreign 
nuclear waste at La Hague and the releases to the environment 
resulting from reprocessing.
 
Article 3 of the 1991 waste law is very specific in requiring the 
return of foreign wastes. CRILAN's position is that the law 
requires the return of all wastes that were generated at La Hague 
as a result of reprocessing foreign spent fuel. Besides vitrified 
high level wastes, Cogéma must also return other reprocessing 
wastes. 

Before the lawsuit was filed in 1994, Cogéma appeared to have no 
plans to return the foreign waste to the countries where the 
spent fuel originated, including Germany, Japan, Switzerland, 
Belgium and the Netherlands, and these countries had no plans to 
take back their wastes. In fact, a review of the older contracts 
indicates that Cogéma's foreign customers hoped that they could 
abandon their wastes in France under cover of sending spent fuel 
there for reprocessing. 

Based on the testimony of Monsieur Bataille, reprocessing a batch 
of spent fuel takes five to eight years (including the time for 
high level waste vitrification). Reprocessing operations on the 
batches of spent fuel that resulted in the large amount of 
vitrified high level waste that is currently stored at La Hague 
have long been completed. One of the central arguments of 
CRILAN's lawsuit is that this waste is being stored at La Hague 
in violation of French law. 

CRILAN's goals in filing the lawsuit are:
 
  1. To have it officially confirmed that Cogéma's La Hague site 
has become the nuclear dump for Europe and Japan. 2. To 
demonstrate that Cogéma has used illegal tactics to obtain 
contracts. 3. To have highlighted the fact that the government 
has allowed Cogéma to transgress the law, notably by not 
specifying that penalties would be incurred in case of 
infraction, and thus not fully implementing the Bataille Act.5 4. 
To promote the return of foreign waste to the country of origin 
and thereby to help stem or stop reprocessing. 5. To make the 
French and German governments accountable and to force them to 
resolve the difficulties confronting the repatriation of the 
waste. Not only Cogéma but also the governmental agencies are 
responsible for the failure of the lawful return of the waste to 
Germany. Besides the environmental and legal aspects of this 
case, the matter should be of considerable interest to all other 
countries concerned with the management of nuclear materials and 
nuclear waste. If Cogéma, the world's top plutonium handling and 
processing company, is found to be routinely in violation of the 
laws of France, should it raise the question of whether much of 
the world's commercial separated plutonium is in the "wrong 
hands"?
 
Progress to date
 
Before CRILAN's 1994 lawsuit, wastes from foreign spent fuel 
reprocessing were not returned to their countries of origin. 
Since then, there have been six shipments to Japan, two to 
Belgium, and three to Germany. However, Germany does not have 
enough storage space at its power plants for the vitrified logs 
of radioactive waste. Further, shipments of vitrified logs to the 
Gorleben repository in Germany have encountered stiff opposition 
from anti-nuclear activists.
 
The widespread publicity attracted by the CRILAN lawsuit played a 
role in the suspension of spent fuel shipments from Germany to 
France in May 1998, pending a resolution of resuming repatriation 
of German vitrified high level wastes now stored in France. An 
agreement between the French and German governments was reached 
in January 2001 to resume the shipments in both directions. A 
shipment from La Hague to Gorleben took place in March 2001. It 
caused enormous protest in Germany, with thousands of activists 
blocking the transport route, which was escorted by thousands of 
police.6 In the other direction, 1,000 metric tons of spent fuel 
are due to arrive at La Hague between now and 2005 for 
reprocessing. Repatriation is a central issue in the lawsuit. 

In January 1999, the judge Frédéric Chevallier, who has 
investigative powers under French law, decided that there was 
enough merit in Didier Anger's charge to put Cogéma under 
investigation. In May of that year, the judge visited Cogéma's La 
Hague site and Anger accompanied him. Since Cogéma did not meet 
the judge's demand for documents, Judge Chevallier carried out a 
search of Cogéma's headquarters in Vélizy in September 1999 to 
obtain these documents in person. 

Cogéma petitioned the court to dismiss the CRILAN case after an 
official report by the IPSN (Institut de protection et de 
surveillance nucléaire, an institute under both the Ministry of 
Industry and Ministry of Environment) claimed -- contrary to the 
findings of a paper published in a British medical journal -- 
that cases of leukemia near the La Hague site were likely not 
attributable to reprocessing activities. In October 2000, the 
Court of Criminal Appeal rejected Cogéma's appeal.
 
In October 2000, CRILAN's lawyer, the Cherbourg judge granted 
Maître Tilbault de Montbrial, and Didier Anger access to the 
documents that were confiscated during the judge's search at 
Cogéma headquarters, in particular the German reprocessing 
contracts that had been translated. There were several types of 
contracts. The oldest, made with France's Commissariat à 
l'énergie atomique, covering at least 1,700 metric tons, has no 
explicit return clause. Others have a return and a no return 
option. Some provide for return but with no date attached.
 
Judge Chevallier has named an expert to provide him with a report 
on the case. The expert is expected to file his report to the 
court around June 2001. There will be a judicial hearing after 
that, in which plaintiffs and defendants will participate, and 
upon which the judge will make his findings. Cogéma may appeal 
the findings of the judge. The process of judicial hearing, 
appeals, and concurrent organizing and media work by CRILAN is 
expected to extend into the year 2002. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                         Legal Actions Against Cogéma
 
  + CRILAN took Cogéma to the Cherbourg court in 1994 for the 
illegal storage of highly radioactive foreign waste. (See 
accompanying above for details.) 

  + Greenpeace France took Cogéma to court for shipping 
irradiated nuclear fuel from Australia. On March 15, 2001, the 
court ruled in favor of Greenpeace, forbidding Cogéma to unload 
the fuel. To make its judgment stick, the court imposed a fine of 
100,000 francs (about $15,000) per rod unloaded, to be renewed 
every week until the fuel is either shipped back or the 
authorization to reprocess obtained. The court also ordered 
Cogéma to pay 20,000 francs to Greenpeace for laywers' fees, but 
Cogéma got the fee overturned on appeal. The case is still 
underway. 

  + In March 2001, CRILAN took Cogéma to court for accepting 
German non-irradiated MOX fuel scraps. Although the arguments 
were the same as those put forward by Greenpeace, the case was 
not judged on the validity of the arguments. It was dismissed on 
the grounds that CRILAN did not have the standing to bring forth 
such a case. CRILAN has referred the case to the environmental 
group Manche-Nature, which appears to have the standing to file 
the complaint. 

 <em>Science for Democratic Action</em> vol. 9 no. 3 Main 
Menu<em>Science for Democratic Action</em> Main Menu IEER Home 
Page Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to 
Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA 
*May 2001* 
                                       
Endnotes 1. Cogéma is 77% owned by the French government, with 
almost all the rest being owned by the oil conglomerate 
Total/FINA/Elf.
 
2. For more information on the search for a French repository 
site, see Mary Byrd Davis, "Deep Underground Storage in France?," 
*Science for Democratic Action* vol. 7, no. 4 (July 1999), on the 
Web at http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_7/7-4/france.html .
 
3. The law does not specify the duration of this certain period 
of time, referred to as "technical delays imposed by the 
reprocessing." However, in an interview with the French newspaper 
*Le Monde*, Christian Bataille said that it is understood that 
the wastes could be kept between five and ten years.
 
4. The commissions are the US equivalent of stakeholders' 
committees.
 
5. The French legal system requires an enforcement decree from 
the concerned ministries -- the Ministry of Industry, the 
Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Environment -- specifying 
the modes of implementation of the law and, in the case of 
criminal provisions, the penalties for infraction of the law. 
While the Ministry of Industry has issued implementing and 
enforcement orders, setting in motion the research provisions of 
the 1991 waste law, enforcement provisions and specified 
penalties for violation of the waste storage provision have not 
been issued.
 
6. This one shipment included waste generated from the 
reprocessing of approximately 250 metric tons of German spent 
fuel.   


*****************************************************************
 14  *Letter from a Reader* 

  IEER: Science for Democratic Action vol. 9 no. 3 / Energy 
&Security No. 17: Law and the Nuclear Establishment 
                                       
March 28, 2001
 
Dear Arjun:
 
The statement "It presumes the people," etc.* is deserving of a 
very special article.
 
Since 1972, [I] have been an advocate for justice for Atomic 
Veterans having worked with NAAV [National Association of Atomic 
Veterans], NARS, [National Association of Radiation Survivors], 
DAV [Disabled American Veterans], American Legion and VFW 
[Veterans of Foreign Wars] and on one occasion around 1986 met 
you at an appearance with then Representative Simon of Illinois.
 
On many occasions at meetings of the above named organizations 
and at committees and individuals meetings with members of 
Congress, [I] stated that it had always concerned me that the 
Marine Corps never trusted us enough to warn of the dangers of 
radiation before assigning us to Nagasaki in late 1945. It was as 
though we would have revolted or refused to accept the 
assignment.
 
It happened that I was 32 years old at that time and deeply 
resented the fact that young men 18-21 years old etc. who were 
good enough to send to such places as Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo 
Jima, Okinawa, etc., could not be trusted with words of 
precaution about the possibility of exposure while on duty in 
Nagasaki.
 
The result was that many drank from the reservoir, went 
sightseeing all over the Urakami District, and I for one helped 
Bishop Paul Yamaguchi during November 1945 crawl through the 
wreckage of his Cathedral looking for items he could salvage. He 
even gave me a large wooden cross that had been an ornament over 
the choir loft. I brought it home with me and it is now in the 
Hiroshima-Nagasaki collection -- museum at a college in Ohio. On 
New Year's Day 1946 two Marine football teams even played the 
"Atomic Bowl" game at Ground Zero the only clear space.
 
This secrecy and distrust of our citizens has probably been going 
on for years but evidently with the advent of World War II, it 
became an every day occurrence. One only has to read such books 
as "Day of Deceit," "Making of the Atomic Bomb," "The Decision to 
Use the Bomb," plus of course Carole Gallagher's excellent book 
"American Ground Zero," etc. to note how this policy of life and 
death decisions should only be made by the various Presidents 
involved and a few key advisors without the informed consent of 
the people. The message is, "They cannot be trusted."
 
You are to be commended for stressing this concept in your 
article and truly the subject is deserving of a detailed study by 
your fine group.
 
Sincerely,
 
Walter G. Hooke Cambridge, New York
 
* The writer is referring to the following statement, taken from 
"A Global Truth Commission on Health and Environmental Damage 
from Nuclear Weapons Production," *Science for Democratic Action* 
vol. 9 no. 2, February 2001: "The pattern of keeping health and 
environmental abuses of their own people secret in the name of 
national security is anti-democratic to the core. It presumes 
that the people would not make sacrifices for the security of 
their countries. It presumes that top nuclear bureaucrats can 
make life or death decisions in defiance of established laws, 
norms, and regulations without the informed consent of the 
people." The entire article is on-line at 
http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_9/9-3/truth.html.   

 <em>Science for Democratic Action</em> vol. 9 no. 3 Main 
Menu<em>Science for Democratic Action</em> Main Menu IEER Home 
Page Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to 
Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA 
*May 2001* 
*****************************************************************
 15  Revival of Pyroprocessing

IEER: Vice-President Cheney Wrong About French Nuclear Repository 
Program, Press Release
 
For Immediate Release, 17 May 2001 For further information, 
contact: U.S.: Arjun Makhijani, 301-270-5500 

*PRESS RELEASE* 

            Revival of Pyroprocessing Technology for Nuclear Fuel 
in Bush Administration Energy Plan Poses Serious Proliferation 
Dangers 
                                       
Process Could Lead to the Revival of Plutonium Breeder Reactors, 
Independent Institute Says 

Washington, D.C.: The Bush administration has decided to 
investigate the use of a plutonium separation technology called 
pyroprocessing "in the context of developing advanced nuclear 
fuel cycles and next generation technologies for nuclear energy."  
Pyroprocessing, a term used to refer to electrolytic separation 
of the contents of spent nuclear power plant fuel, is the 
technology that was proposed to be used with the Advanced Liquid 
Metal Reactor, also called the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), 
before it was cancelled in 1994.  Research on pyroprocessing was 
continued as part of DOE's "waste management" program.
 
"Pyroprocessing is the tail that seems set to resurrect the IFR 
breeder reactor dog," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the 
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), in Takoma 
Park, Maryland, which has published many studies on 
nuclear-related technologies.  "Breeder reactors were consigned 
to oblivion in times past because of their potential for creating 
huge amounts of plutonium, the proliferation dangers that they 
posed, their high costs, and their safety vulnerabilities. They 
should not be revived."
 
Proponents of pyroprocessing, who seem to have convinced the 
White House energy panel, claim that it is 
"proliferation-resistant" because the impure plutonium that 
results will not be used to make nuclear weapons.
 
"It is true that countries that have nuclear weapons already 
would not use impure plutonium from pyroprocessing for building 
bombs," said Dr. Makhijani, "but those who lack the materials 
would not hesitate to use it.  Non-nuclear states that may want 
nuclear weapons and terrorist groups would be the main customers 
for this impure plutonium, if this technology spreads."
 
Lack of nuclear materials that could be used to make even crude 
nuclear bombs is generally considered to be the main obstacle to 
nuclear proliferation. Pyroprocessing would lower the 
proliferation bar considerably, according to IEER.  One of the 
drawbacks of pyroprocessing plants for proliferation derives is 
that they are far more compact than existing reprocessing plants, 
which are huge and discharge large amounts of liquid waste.
 
Pyroprocessing could greatly aggravate the problems of inspection 
of nuclear facilities and create disputes over the sharing of 
civilian nuclear technology.  "Many countries will want this 
technology, if the United States promotes it as 
proliferation-resistant, and that could become a fertile source 
of international political disputes and inspection nightmares," 
said Dr. Makhijani.  

"It's best to end development of pyroprocessing."  Nuclear 
weapons states are obliged, under Article IV of the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty to share civilian nuclear technologies, 
he further noted. --30-- 

Also available on this site: Plutonium End Game: Stop 
Reprocessing, Start Immobilizing,article in *Science for 
Democratic Action* (February 2001)   

IEER Home PageInstitute for Energy and Environmental Research 
Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, 
Maryland, USA *Posted May 24, 2001* 
*****************************************************************
 16  Letter from IEER to NWTRB re: Yucca Mountain 

Letter from IEER to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board re: 
suitability of proposed Yucca Mountain repository 
  
May 25, 2001
 
Dr. Jared L. Cohon Chairman Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board 
2300 Clarendon Boulevard Arlington, Virginia 22201-3367
 
Dear Dr. Cohon
 
A number of factors, including a review of the literature and the 
presentations before the NWTRB on May 9, 2001, convince me that 
there are outstanding scientific and waste management issues that 
must be properly resolved before the proposed Yucca Mountain 
repository site can be declared suitable for high-level waste and 
spent fuel disposal. Most, but not all, relate to the question of 
possible hydrothermal incursions into the proposed Yucca Mountain 
repository. Before I discuss these issues, let me first say how 
pleased I am that there is now general agreement that fluid 
inclusions in many mineral samples show unequivocal evidence of 
the presence of hot water in the past. I take no small comfort in 
the role of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 
(IEER) in helping to bring about this scientific agreement on a 
difficult topic. As you probably know, IEER sponsored the first 
and, to date, the only research on fluid inclusions in Yucca 
Mountain, that has resulted in a peer-reviewed publication. What 
is at issue now, as the members of the Board put it so well 
during their questioning on May 9, is the origin of the hot 
fluids.
 
Here are the issues that concern me greatly. I request that the 
Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) address them 
thoroughly. 

1. Uranium-lead dating
 
The use of the uranium-lead dating method is central to the 
conclusions of the Department of Energy and the United States 
Geological Survey that rainwater was the origin of the thermal 
fluid inclusions. The later conclusion relies greatly on the 
dating. The method, however, seems to contain circular reasoning. 
The U-Pb calculation method assumes implicitly that the common 
lead correction is constant. Since this assumption does not 
necessarily apply to hydrothermal fluids, but is characteristic 
of rainwater, it rules out the former on an *a priori* basis. The 
dating results are then used to conclude that rainwater was the 
origin of the thermal fluid inclusions.
 
For a process involving upwelling of the deep-seated reducing 
fluids and their subsequent mixing with the oxidizing 
near-surface fluids, as Dr. Dublyansky suggested in his 
presentation, the constant lead correction would not apply and it 
is no longer straightforward to use the uranium-lead dating 
method. 

This implication of the assumption of a constant lead correction 
value was not made explicit by either the USGS, or Dr. Cline, or 
the NWTRB consultant on fluid inclusions, Dr. Bodnar. If the 
constant lead correction were thrown into doubt, then the dating 
results would no longer be valid, the dating problem become much 
more complex. Moreover, Dr. Dublyansky informs me that data from 
U-238-Pb-206 and Th-232-Pb-208 decay chains have been discarded. 
Apparently these data do not produce meaningful results for 
dating. They should have been put before the NWTRB for review. I 
recommend that you request this data from the USGS and Dr. Cline.
 
The NWTRB should ask the USGS for a clarification of the U-Pb 
common lead correction issue. The apparent rejection of 
hydrothermal upwelling in the U-Pb dating method should be 
explicitly discussed and justified, rather than taken as an 
implicit *a priori* assumption. The opinions of Drs. Bodnar and 
Cline would also be helpful, especially as neither of them have, 
to my knowledge, stated unequivocally that the thermal fluid 
inclusions were created by rainwater percolation.
 
2. Thermodynamic arguments against the rainwater hypothesis
 
In his presentation, Dr. Dublyansky argued that the acceptance of 
the rainwater hypotheses for thermal inclusion implies a constant 
temperature during mineral formation to within much less than 0.1 
degrees Celsius for millions of years. This, as he noted, is 
thermodynamically impossible. It is also geologically incredible. 
I have not checked the calculations that Dr. Dublyansky has made. 
But the argument appears plausible to me. As I recommended during 
the public comment period on May 9, it is essential for the NWTRB 
to address basic physics issues, including this one, and ensure 
that the DOE and USGS arguments do not have implications that are 
physically next to impossible. It should not be too difficult to 
resolve this issue, since it is one of physics. I understand that 
calculations along the lines discussed by Dr. Dublyansky are in 
the report presented to you as a public comment on May 9 by Jerry 
Szymanski.
 
Further, the thermal models of heating of the unsaturated zone at 
Yucca Mountain by a magma body developed by USGS and the State of 
Nevada scientists must be documented and presented for evaluation 
in the complete form. I think that the NWTRB as well as the 
public should have the opportunity to examine all analytical or 
numeric solutions, assumptions and boundary conditions that have 
been used to arrive at some rather surprising conclusions as 
regards the origin of the thermal fluid inclusions.
 
3. Hydrocarbons
 
Dr. Dublyansky's research showed that some all-gas inclusions in 
calcite minerals contained hydrocarbons. This provided an 
important part of the evidence leading him to conclude with a 
high degree of confidence that hydrothermal upwelling were the 
origin of the thermal fluid inclusions. Research by the USGS and 
by Dr. Cline has not addressed this issue. The NWTRB needs to 
examine the issue of hydrocarbons in some inclusions and its 
relevance for the hydrothermal upwelling hypothesis. Such an 
examination should include a review of Dr. Dublyansky's work.
 
4. Dr. Cline's database on fluid inclusions
 
All parties agree that Dr. Cline has compiled an extensive and 
scientifically worthy database. However, this database has not 
been reviewed, nor have the detailed calculations upon which Dr. 
Cline's conclusions are based. I recommend that the NWTRB ask for 
the full database and make it public so that it is available for 
independent review. Given the centrality of the issues, I think 
that a review by the NWTRB itself is important.
 
5. Minerals from nearby faults
 
Dr. Dublyansky has postulated that an examination of minerals 
from nearby faults would yield clues as to whether the upwelling 
model he presented to the NWTRB is valid. Given the crucial 
nature of this issue, I believe that it is imperative that the 
DOE and USGS carry out these investigations and that they do so 
in an open and transparent manner, prior to making a conclusion 
about site suitability.
 
6. Jerry Szymanski's submission to the Board
 
Jerry Szymanski submitted a report to you during the public 
comment period as his last comment on the NWTRB on the subject of 
Yucca Mountain. Given his central role in the entire issue of 
hydrothermal upwelling, his expertise on many other areas 
relating to Yucca Mountain, and his standing as a long-term 
consultant to the State of Nevada, I recommend that the Board 
review that report thoroughly and commission independent reviews 
of it as well. These reviews should be made available to the 
public before the Board makes any findings on DOE's site 
suitability recommendation.
 
Conclusion
 
In sum, the evidence so far leads me to conclude that the issue 
regarding the presence or absence of hydrothermal upwelling at 
Yucca Mountain is a very serious one and is far from resolved. I 
know that the NWTRB takes its role as the scientific guardian of 
the public policy process regarding site suitability most 
seriously. I believe that it is essential that the NWTRB insist 
that the DOE resolve these issues fully before making its site 
suitability recommendation. Given the depth of the scientific 
controversy and the complexity of the issues, I cannot see how 
these issues can be reasonably resolved in the next eight to 
twelve months, DOE's timetable for a site suitability 
recommendation.
 
I recommend that the NWTRB immediately send a letter to the DOE 
that it should satisfactorily address all these questions and 
that it take the time needed to do so. This would give the DOE 
notice of the seriousness with which you intend to examine the 
site suitability recommendation in regard to these issues. Such a 
letter would create some public trust and confidence that the 
process will be guided by sound science rather than political 
expediency. A letter from you is especially needed since the 
Board's prior recommendation ("Review of Materials on 
Hydrothermal Activity" of July 24, 1998) does not allow an 
unambiguous reading as to whether the Board considers the issue 
of hydrothermal upwelling to have resolved.
 
Mr. Chairman, in closing let me congratulate you on the wonderful 
way in which you conducted the May 9 meeting. The presentations, 
questions and answers, the opportunities for public comment, the 
solicitation of clarification from the presenters on issues that 
were raised during the public comment were done in an exemplary 
way. I truly appreciate the way that you chaired the public 
process and I learned a great deal from it. Thank you very much.
 
I look forward to hearing from you. 

Yours sincerely,
 
Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. President 

 IEER Home Page Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 
Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, 
Maryland, USA *Corrected version posted May 25, 2001*
*****************************************************************
 17  Secretary Abraham Highlights Administration Support for Expanding 
Nuclear Power in Visit to Calvert Cliffs, Maryland Nuclear Power 
Plant

energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release

    	 
RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2001                                                      [Print Friendly Version]       
 
*Says Nuclear Power is “Clean, Safe, Efficient &Affordable”* 

Calvert Cliffs, Maryland – Highlighting nuclear power as a clean, 
safe and affordable energy source for the United States, Energy 
Secretary Spencer Abraham outlined the Bush Administration’s 
National Energy Policy priorities to expand the use of nuclear 
energy in a visit to Calvert Cliffs, Maryland Nuclear Power 
Plant, the first nuclear power plant granted an extended 
operation license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

In an address to plant employees, Abraham said that the Bush 
Administration’s National Energy Policy (NEP) embraces an 
expanded role for nuclear power by recommending that nuclear 
plants meeting stringent safety requirements are relicensed as 
quickly as possible. Building on advancements in nuclear plant 
technology, Abraham said, the NEP also encourages the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission to expedite applications for new 
advanced-technology reactors to help meet the energy needs of the 
country. 

Along with supporting legislation to extend the Price-Anderson 
Act, which insures speedy compensation in case of accidents, 
Abraham said that the Bush Administration will back legislation 
clarifying that qualified funds, which are set aside by plant 
owners for eventual decommissioning operations, will not be taxed 
as part of those decommissioning transactions. 

“Nuclear energy is a safe, clean, and efficient form of power 
generation,” Abraham said. “America’s demand for electricity is 
expected to grow by 45 percent over the next 20 years, and 
nuclear energy will play an important role in meeting that energy 
demand.” 

Abraham noted that the average nuclear plant, while producing 
safe, clean and affordable energy, currently operates at 90 
percent capacity, greatly above the average operating capacity of 
70 percent just ten years ago. That increase translates into an 
additional 23,000 megawatts of power, the same as building nearly 
29 additional nuclear power plants similar to Calvert Cliffs. And 
the support for nuclear power continues to grow, with a recent 
poll by Bisconti Research showing that 66 percent of all 
Americans support building more nuclear power plants, up from 51 
percent in January 2001. 

Media Contact:  Jeanne Lopatto or Joe Davis, 202/586-4940 Release 
No. R-01-079 

*****************************************************************
 18  Nevadans Get How To Lesson in Contesting Nuclear Waste Site

  Environment News Service: 

 By Shervin Hess

 LAS VEGAS, Nevada, May 24, 2001 (ENS) - Nevada residents learned 
this week exactly what they will have to do if they want to 
contest the controversial high-level radioactive waste repository 
proposed for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. 

Officials from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held 
two public meetings this week in Nevada to inform the citizens of 
their rights with regard to permitting of the only site in the 
nation being considered as a permanent repository for waste from 
nuclear power plants. 

[Yucca] Aerial view of Yucca Mountain (Photos courtesy ) The NRC 
is obligated to approve or deny the Department of Energy’s plan 
for Yucca Mountain, which will call for at least 77,000 tons of 
high-level radioactive waste to be shipped to the site for long 
term storage from the individual nuclear power plants where it is 
now being held. 

If the repository is permitted, many Nevadans fear water and 
ground contamination, as well as the threat of radiation that 
might be released if accidents occur during transport of the 
waste to Yucca Mountain. 

“There have been a number of instances where lay persons have 
succeeded in meeting the committee threshold for denying an 
application,” NRC Associate General Counsel Lawrence Chandler 
said, citing examples where the public has succeeded in 
preventing the construction of various reactors. 

However, no one has ever successfully stopped a radioactive waste 
repository from being built in the United States, because Yucca 
Mountain will be the first that the federal government attempts 
to take through the hurdles of public comment. 

During the NRC’s licensing process, any member of the public will 
be able to observe prehearing conferences, act as a party in the 
hearing and authorize an organization to file an intervention 
petition. 

Those who intervene in the permitting process must show that they 
have an interest that would be adversely affected by the outcome, 
and that their injury is distinct and concrete, not speculative. 

But most of the some 100 Nevadans who attended the meetings said 
they believe speculation would be unavoidable, considering that 
there is no other permanent nuclear waste repository available 
for comparison. Yucca Mountain is the only site that is being 
studied for suitability as a high-level waste storage location. 

[test] Technicians use sound waves to probe the rock within Yucca 
Mountain for its ability to hold hot radioactive waste without 
emissions into the environment. The Department of Energy (DOE) 
has been performing extensive scientific testing under the eye of 
the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board to evaluate the 
suitability of the Yucca Mountain site. The DOE will propose a 
design for the repository to the NRC, but changes can be made 
after approval if any new significant environmental impact has 
been found. 

Chandler explained that the emplacement of the waste must be 
reversible. If the DOE application is granted, the President then 
decides the outcome, which can be contested by the state, after 
which it becomes a Congressional decision. 

Nevada Senators Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a 
Republican, among others, have strongly opposed this repository 
since it was first proposed, claiming the science is not 
sufficient to justify the project. The DOE has been under fire 
from Nevada officials and environmentalists for its alleged bias 
in reporting environmental impact during its scientific 
assessment. But Tuesday, Bruce Babbitt, a former Arizona governor 
who served as Interior Secretary in the Clinton administration, 
endorsed the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. 

[Cheney] Vice President Dick Cheney (Photo courtesy the White 
House) Also Tuesday, Vice President Dick Cheney told the annual 
meeting of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s lobby 
group, that nuclear power is a very important part of the Bush 
administration's newly announced . But Cheney had a warning for 
the 400 nuclear executives. 

“It is also important for us to remember," Cheney said, "that if 
we fail to do an effective job beginning with the relicensing 
questions and the waste disposal questions with respect to 
nuclear energy, that eventually the contribution we can count on 
from the nuclear industry will in fact decline." Currently, the 
nation’s 103 reactors operating in 31 states produce nearly 20 
percent of the nation’s electricity. 

Encouraged by the Bush administration's stance, top nuclear 
industry officials announced their intention to build another 50 
power plants over the next 20 years. 

This would add around 50 percent waste to that which already 
exists, says Joe Colvin, president and chief executive officer of 
the Nuclear Energy Institute. Colvin believes that by 2020, 
nuclear energy will be recognized as a safe and environmentally 
sound source of electricity. 

© 2001. All Rights Reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 19  Radioactive material leak at Japan nuclear reactor 

- 5/24/2001 - ENN.com
 
 Thursday, May 24, 2001   

TOKYO, May 23 — An experimental nuclear reactor in northwestern 
Japan has been leaking radioactive material since January, but 
the fault has had no impact on the environment, local officials 
said on Wednesday.     

 The small leak of tritium had been detected at the facility 
operated by the government-funded Japan Nuclear Cycle Development 
Institute in Fukui prefecture, about 300 km (185 miles) northwest 
of Tokyo, officials said.        

 "A small leak tritium is natural. But this leak was slightly 
over the normal amount," a Fukui prefectural government official 
said.  

 "But there is absolutely no impact on the surrounding 
environment because the leakage was so small."  

 The operator has temporarily stopped the facility and 
inspections will be conducted this week, the official said.         

 "We know where it leaked from but not why," he said.   

 The facility has been operating since 1979 and is used for 
development of new fuel and research for plutonium usage.  

 A string of nuclear accidents in recent years has eroded public 
faith in Japan's nuclear industry.       

 In the country's worst nuclear accident, two workers were killed 
at a uranium processing plant in 1999 when staff used a bucket to 
mistakenly load nearly eight times the safe amount of condensed 
uranium into a mixing tank, triggering a self-sustaining nuclear 
reaction that took 20 hours to bring under control. 

Copyright 2001, Reuters
*****************************************************************
 20  REFERENDUM PUTS JAPAN'S PLUTONIUM PROGRAM IN SPOTLIGHT
 
25 May 2001

 Tokyo - A first of its kind referendum on whether plutonium 
should be loaded into a Japanese nuclear reactor will be held 
this weekend in the village of Kariwa, Niigata Prefecture. The 
people of Kariwa live immediately next to the world's largest 
nuclear power plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, operated by Tokyo 
Electric Power Company, TEPCO. The company had planned to load 
the controversial plutonium fuel during this summer, but due to 
growing opposition in Niigata, as well as the rest of Japan, 
those plans have been abandoned. 

In recent days, Japanese government Ministers have stated that 
the plutonium program will proceed, regardless of the referendum 
result. However, Greenpeace believes that in fact the program is 
already under severe pressure due to the poor economics, 
controversy surrounding the transport and use of plutonium, and 
Japan's mounting stockpiles of plutonium. Sunday's referendum is 
already a significant milestone in the national and international 
effort to change Japan's nuclear policy. 

A shipment of approximately 200kg of MOX fuel containing 
plutonium arrived at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in March. The plutonium 
MOX was manufactured in Europe by a consortium led by French 
state-company Cogema. MOX fuel supplied by the same company and 
delivered to Japan in 1999 has also not been loaded into a 
reactor in Fukushima Prefecture, due to opposition from citizens 
and politicians, including the Governor of the region. Evidence 
of falsification of vital quality control data and low production 
standards in all Europe's plutonium MOX facilities, have 
contributed to growing opposition to MOX fuel which when loaded 
in a reactor increases the risk of catastrophic accident. A 
review by Fukushima Prefecture of Japan's plutonium program is to 
be held over at least the next 12 months. 

The holding of the referendum in itself is a significant 
development in the mounting opposition in Japan to the country's 
nuclear program, in particular government and industry plans to 
use large amounts of weapons-usable plutonium in multiple 
reactors. Previous attempts to hold the referendum were rejected 
by the village Mayor following strong pressure from Tokyo 
Electric not to allow the issue to be voted on. 

The referendum which will be held on Sunday 27th, permits three 
options for the citizens of Kariwa. A yes, in favor of loading 
the MOX fuel, no to loading the MOX, and suspend. 

"Whatever the result on Sunday night, the signal is clear: 
Japan's plutonium MOX program is becoming increasingly 
controversial. Plans by the utilities, and the Ministry of 
Economy, Trade and Industry to transport thousands of kilograms 
of plutonium around the planet to load into reactors are unsafe, 
unsustainable and uneconomic. The program is already in disarray, 
after Sunday it could be in freefall," said Kazue Suzuki of 
Greenpeace Japan. 

Japan currently owns a plutonium stockpile of over 30,000kg. Five 
kilograms would be sufficient for one nuclear weapon. Not one 
gram of the plutonium shipped from Europe to Japan in the last 16 
years has been used in a reactor.

MOX fuel delivered by British Nuclear Fuels in 1999 was rejected 
following disclosures that it contained falsified quality control 
data. BNFL has agreed to pay nearly US$200 million in 
compensation and transportation costs to ship the plutonium fuel 
back to the UK. The company is desperate to secure commercial 
contracts with Japanese utilities to secure the opening of its 
new Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP).(1) Recent leaked information 
highlights continuing profound disagreements between BNFL and 
their Japanese reprocessing clients.(2) SMP currently has no 
contracts with Japanese utilities. There is growing evidence 
about poor quality control and production standards at the BNFL 
plant, as well mounting evidence of safety problems with Japan's 
plans to use MOX. 

"British Nuclear Fuels, as well as Cogema of France, will be 
watching the referendum with real fear. Only a few months ago 
they were dismissing the possibility that such a referendum could 
be held at all. They, together with pro-plutonium factions in the 
government are now trying to dismiss its relevance. However, for 
the first time, the people of Kariwa are being given a chance to 
effect the future of Japan's plutonium program. Even before the 
result on Sunday, we know, as does the nuclear industry, that the 
momentum of opposition against this program in Japan and 
internationally is growing and will continue to do so after 
Sunday," said Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Kazue Suzuki - Greenpeace 
Japan - + 81 3 5351 5400 Shaun Burnie - Greenpeace International 
- + 31 629 001 133 (Dutch mobile) 

Notes to editors: 

(1) The UK government is due to make a decision in June or July 
on whether to license the Sellafield MOX Plant. Greenpeace 
International is opposed to its licensing, and is supporting a 
legal challenge launched by Friends of the Earth (UK) against the 
British government charging that Deputy Prime Minister John 
Prescott and Environment Minister Michael Meacher have acted 
unlawfully in restricting the amount information and scope of the 
latest public consultation on the MOX plant. The court challenge 
was launched on Thursday, 24th May in London. 

(2) Relations between BNFL customers, including Japanese 
utilities, never good, have recently been exposed to be still in 
crisis. Leaked documents on secret negotiations between BNFL and 
Japanese utility customers reveal threats of legal action against 
BNFL for failing in its operations at Sellafield and for cost 
overruns of hundreds of millions of dollars which are passed on 
to the customers. These documents and background briefing are 
available at the Greenpeace web site: www.britishnuclearfuels.com 
*****************************************************************
 21  Nuclear fuel review plea
 
  ISSUE 2191    Friday 25 May 2001
  
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor

FRIENDS of the Earth began legal proceedings against John 
Prescott in the High Court yesterday over his decision to write 
off the £500 million cost of . 

The environmental group, which is supported by Greenpeace, 
alleges that Mr Prescott acted unlawfully by excluding economic 
considerations from a public consultation on the opening of the 
Mixed Oxide Plant in Cumbria.

 The plant was built four years ago to produce a new form of 
reactor fuel that contains plutonium. The law says the plant can 
open only if the economic benefits outweigh the detriments but 
Friends of the Earth alleges it is working at 10 per cent 
capacity.

 It has applied for leave for a judicial review of Mr Prescott's 
handling of the public consultation into the proposed opening of 
the plant.
 
*****************************************************************
 22  Court challenge to nuclear plant

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Friday May 25, 2001
The Guardian 		
 		
The government faces a high court challenge immediately after the 
election to British Nuclear Fuels' plans to start a new plant at 
Sellafied to make plutonium fuel for reactors in Sweden, Germany 
and Japan. The government, which hopes to part privatise BNFL, is 
accused of using "voodoo economics" to justify the plant, 
contrary to the law. 

The plant will be fed with plutonium from the Thorp spent fuel 
reprocessing works. If it does not get the go-ahead there is no 
point in Thorp continuing to operate. Around 2,000 people work 
there. 

Friends of the Earth, backed by Greenpeace, began the action 
yesterday, after the latest public consultation on starting up 
the plant. The green groups believe that John Prescott, 
environment secretary, and Alan Milburn, health secretary, broke 
the law by restricting the scope of that consultation. Under 
European law a nuclear plant that subjects the public to extra 
radioactivity has to be justified on economic grounds before it 
can be licensed. This would be impossible in the case of this 
plutonium plant unless its £462m construction costs were written 
off. 

The government, against standard economic practice, wants to 
prove the plant is viable by allowing accountants to consider 
only future running costs against profits from selling the fuel, 
rather than the plant's whole cost. Martin Forwood of Cumbrians 
Opposed to a Radioactive Environment calls this voodoo economics. 
The government is also accused of withholding from the public an 
independent report on the plant's economic viability. 

The mixed oxide plant was completed four years ago to produce MOX 
reactor fuel, of which about 10% is plutonium. British Energy, 
the privatised nuclear generator, will not use MOX because it is 
too expensive. 

Foreign nuclear operators who have contracts signed in the 1970s 
to reprocess spent fuel are embarrassed by the amount of 
plutonium they own for which there is no use apart from turning 
it into MOX fuel. 

Mark Johnston, nuclear campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: 
"The fact that government is sole owner of the company does not 
permit it to disregard the law in order to allow BNFL to start 
making MOX." 

The Department of the Environment called the action premature and 
misguided. A BNFL spokeswoman said the Mox plant's construction 
was paid for out of the company's profits, "so only the operating 
costs matter when it comes to deciding whether to open the 
plant". 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
 23  NRC Wants Closer Earthquake Study of Goshute Nuclear-Waste Site 

**    *Friday, May 25, 2001*   

BY JUDY FAHYS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE 

    The state has always questioned whether a nuclear-waste 
storage site proposed for the Skull Valley Goshute Indian 
Reservation can be made earthquake safe. 

    Now the federal agency responsible for permitting the storage 
is wondering, too. 

    The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) wants Private 
Fuel Storage (PFS), the consortium proposing the site, to 
reassess what might happen to the ground during an earthquake and 
how the facility would hold up to seismic shaking. The NRC also 
set a meeting next week to discuss when PFS can answer those 26 
questions. 

    "Now they seem to be, on their own initiative, taking a 
really hard look at this," said an aide to U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, 
R- Utah. 

    "I'm hoping they [at NRC] will take a step back and re-look 
at all of the safety issues," said Connie Nakahara, the state's 
lead attorney for the nuclear waste opposition. 

    PFS did not respond to calls seeking comment. But the 
consortium has disagreed with the state about the seismic issues 
from the beginning. 

    The consortium of eight utilities has signed an agreement 
with the Goshutes to store spent nuclear fuel at the reservation, 
about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The $3.1 billion 
facility would hold the steel-and-concrete casks of waste like so 
many beer cans arranged on a soil-and-concrete tabletop. 

    PFS, the tribe, the Tooele County Commission and other 
supporters insist the storage would pose no threat to Utahns or 
the environment, and would help solve national energy problems 
and bolster local economies. 

    The site would be big enough to hold all of the waste 
commercial nuclear power plants have produced over the past four 
decades, including highly radioactive spent fuel stored at the 20 
nuclear power plants owned by the PFS-member utilities in the 
East, Midwest and California. 

    As the NRC has studied the storage permit application for the 
past three years, the state has criticized the earthquake safety 
analysis. New data provided by PFS last fall suggest the earth's 
swaying and bouncing during a quake might be worse than 
originally estimated. 

    The consortium has noted previously that the Goshute site 
sits on and around faults that could produce temblors as big as 
those that shook Seattle earlier this year and Oakland, Calif., 
in 1989. PFS insists the pad and the casks can withstand that 
sort of jostling, and the NRC seemed inclined to agree. 

    But the state filed papers with the NRC last week, asserting 
the new ground-shaking data begs a new analysis of the pad itself 
and earth beneath it. Engineer affidavits say PFS' proposal for a 
soil and cement foundation is "unprecedented and unproven," that 
fluctuating moisture and temperatures probably would weaken the 
pad before an earthquake. 

    In a May 7 letter, the NRC seemed to be thinking along the 
same lines. The agency told PFS its latest ground and earthquake 
analysis "does not contain sufficient information to permit a 
complete and adequate technical review." The agency also said the 
wait for answers "is likely to impact the schedule for 
adjudicatory proceedings." 

    That means a possible delay for public hearings on seismic 
and aircraft safety issues that were planned for fall, and it 
possibly means bumping a final decision on the site that was 
expected next April. 

    This development comes just as the state is poised to 
announce its new legal team for the PFS-Goshute case. A news 
conference is scheduled for today at 10:30 a.m. 

    "We're going to go to Congress," Gov. Mike Leavitt said 
Thursday. "We're going to fight environmentally. We're going to 
resist this. We don't want it." 
   
  © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on 
*****************************************************************
 24   DJ US NRC Gives NU More Time To Search For Spent Fuel 

PowerMarketers.com: Energy News From Dow Jones
 
 Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones &Company, Inc. 	
 
( May 24, 2001 ) 

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has 
granted Northeast Utilities (NU) more time to search for two 
spent fuel rods, missing from the Millstone plant in Waterford, 
Conn., and a reprieve from possible criminal charges. 

Two spent fuel rods, considered high-level radioactive waste, 
were discovered missing late last year, while the plant, now 
owned by Dominion Resources Inc. (D), was under the stewardship 
of Northeast Utilities. 

In an affidavit filed Tuesday with the Atomic Safety and 
Licensing Board, the head of NRC's Office of Investigations (OI), 
Barry Letts, said the agency should wait until the end of the 
summer before deciding whether the loss of the spent fuel merits 
a criminal investigation. 

Letts said he was concerned a board hearing about waste-storage 
practices at Millstone's unit 3 could compromise his office's 
investigation into the loss of fuel at unit 1. 

"Due to the scope of the ongoing investigation, I estimate that 
the OI investigation and the decision whether to refer the matter 
to the Department of Justice for criminal consideration will be 
completed by late summer...," Letts said. 

The board agreed Thursday to delay its proceedings on unit 3 
until after Labor Day. 

"We feel that the decision will allow us the time we need to 
complete our fuel-accountability project in a thorough manner," 
said Pete Hyde, a spokesman for Dominion. 

Anti-nuclear advocates had requested the board re-examine 
Dominion's plan to restack spent fuel rods in the pool at unit 3, 
saying the same practice might have led to the loss of the fuel 
rods at unit 1. 

"These are two totally separate issues," said Hyde, citing the 
change of management and technological advances since the fuel 
rods went missing in 1980. "We are capable of operating the spent 
fuel pool at unit 3 safely." 

Neither the company nor the NRC would comment on their separate, 
ongoing investigations. 

About 1/2 inch in diameter and 158 inches long, the rods are 
filled with uranium pellets that trigger the atomic reaction that 
produces heat and powers a reactor's turbines. 

When spent fuel is removed from the reactor, it is stored in 
steel-lined cooling pools. 

According to Hyde, from 1972 to 1980 the company's records said 
the rods, which were slightly damaged, were stored in the pool at 
Millstone's now-shut unit 1. 

By September 1980, the rods had disappeared from the records, and 
were no longer where old records said the should have been. 

Northeast, which is paying for the investigation, formed an 
Independent Review Team to pursue the search. 

The company had a history of problems at its nuclear power 
plants. Millstone 1 was permanently shut in 1995. Millstone 2 and 
3 were shut in 1996, as was Maine Yankee. Dominion, which helped 
Northeast restart Millstone 2 and 3 in 1998 and 1999, recently 
bought the plant for $1.28 billion. 

- By Jennifer Morrow, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4377; 
mailto:jennifer.morrow@dowjones.com 
*****************************************************************
 25  Atomic safety board delays action in Millstone 3 fuel rods dispute 

TheDay.com: Local and National News
 
By Paul Choiniere               

Published on 5/25/2001 

Waterford — The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board wants to await 
the outcome of a federal investigation into missing fuel rods at 
Millstone 1 before deciding whether that incident should have any 
bearing on plans to boost the amount of nuclear waste that can be 
stored at the Millstone 3 plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of Investigations is 
trying to determine whether the failure to keep track of the two 
missing fuel rods from Millstone 1 rises to the level of criminal 
misconduct. The Department of Justice would make a final 
determination whether to prosecute. The Millstone 1 reactor is 
permanently closed and has not operated since 1995.

The missing fuel rod issue has become legally intertwined with 
plans by Dominion Nuclear Connecticut to expand the amount of 
spent nuclear fuel it can store at Millstone 3. The operator 
needs to place more fuel in the pool, or find an alternative 
storage option, if it wants to continue operations. The plant is 
now at its licensed storage capacity and fuel will next be 
removed from the reactor in about 15 months. 

The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, which opposes the 
license amendment at Millstone 3, contends the failure to account 
for two fuel rods at Millstone 1 raises doubts about the ability 
of the station operators to properly handle more waste storage at 
unit 3.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has agreed to hear the 
issue, but acting on a motion filed by NRC attorneys, it decided 
Thursday to postpone further debate until the federal 
investigation is complete. It ordered a delay in further 
proceedings until early September. By that time it should also 
have the results of Millstone's own internal investigation.

The board made its decision during a pre-hearing telephone 
conference call involving the various parties. 

In an affidavit filed with the board, Barry R. Letts, field 
office director for the Office of Investigations in the Northeast 
region, had warned that a licensing board hearing into the 
Millstone 1 issue at this time could interfere with or jeopardize 
his office's ongoing investigation.

Nancy Burton, the attorney representing the anti-nuclear 
coalition, opposed the delay, saying the NRC had not provided any 
evidence as to how the hearing on the Millstone 3 spent fuel pool 
issue would interfere with the ongoing investigation.

David Repka, an attorney for Dominion, questioned the validity of 
the coalition's entire argument. He contended that there is no 
relationship between the missing fuel rod issue and the storage 
of spent fuel at Millstone 3. 

The Millstone 1 issue involved the failure to keep account of the 
spent fuel, while the issue at Millstone 3 is assuring that the 
fuel is placed and managed in such a way as to assure there is no 
atomic reaction in the storage pool, said Repka.

Repka also argued it would make no sense to withhold the license 
amendment at this point. New storage racks are already installed 
in the pool. Existing spent fuel has been reconfigured in 
anticipation of the added fuel. The operator should be allowed to 
move forward as planned, he said.

“It simply makes no sense to go back,” Repka said.

Pete Hyde, a spokesman for Dominion, said the company was pleased 
with the delay because it will provide time to complete the 
internal review of the missing fuel issue. He said Dominion is 
also fully confident in the procedures that are in place to 
handle the storage of spent fuel at Millstone 3.  

© 1998-2001 The Day Publishing Co. 
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
                     NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
 1 Deceased sick workers' children may not be eligible for benefits 

Oak Ridger Online --> 

Story last updated at 2:35 p.m. on Friday, May 25, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Some children of nuclear weapons plant workers 
killed by exposure to radiation and other dangerous substances 
won't qualify for $150,000 from the government because they were 
too old when the parent died.

 "It's a real kick in the teeth to families that have suffered," 
said Ken Silver, a public health advocate in New Mexico.

 "The bad thing about it is the latency period," added Sam Ray of 
Lucasville, Ohio.

 Cancer, beryllium disease and silicosis -- the diseases for 
which the government will compensate exposed workers -- can be 
slow killers, and a child under 18 when the parent got sick "will 
no longer be a dependent by the time the individual passes away," 
Ray said.

 "But the sons and daughters were still affected," said Ray, who 
lost his larynx to cancer and now helps fellow workers deal with 
medical issues.

 At this point, there's no way to know how many grown sons and 
daughters are going to be surprised to learn they don't qualify 
for compensation.

 Congress passed the law last year to compensate workers who 
contracted cancer and other diseases while building the nation's 
nuclear deterrent. The Clinton administration asked for the 
legislation, reversing decades in which the government fought the 
claims of job-sickened workers.

 About 600,000 people worked in the nuclear weapons complex 
during the Cold War.

 The Energy Department initially estimated 3,000 to 4,000 might 
be eligible for the new compensation program, but the accuracy of 
that estimate is unclear because of poor record keeping over the 
decades.

 The Labor Department, which will handle the paperwork for those 
benefits, said in a draft document that it expects claims to be 
much higher -- about 43,000 applications a year from sick workers 
still living and 28,000 applications a year from survivors.

 Restrictions on who is eligible for benefits are going to be 
spelled out in regulations being issued Friday.

 "The list of eligible individuals does not include a child over 
the age of 18 unless that child is a 'student' ... or is 
incapable of self-support," a draft of the regulations said. 
"Similarly, non-dependent parents, siblings, grandparents and 
grandchildren do not qualify as survivors."

 Stuart Roy, a department spokesman, said that part of the 
regulation followed the instructions of Congress.

 "Qualified survivors were spelled out in the law," he said.

 "Often times the devil is in the details and this is an 
important detail," said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, who believes 
the intent was for grown children to be eligible for 
compensation.

 Ohio, at one point, was home to three major Energy Department 
complexes, including one in Strickland's district in southern 
Ohio.

 Limiting the payments based on how old surviving children were 
when the nuclear breadwinner died "was not our understanding," 
said Mike Dawson, a top aide to Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. "We're 
going to work to change it."

 Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, "was disappointed to learn that 
this was the impact," said press secretary Scott Milburn.

 "He thinks it should be fixed to reflect his intent."

 Interviews with legislative aides who wrote the law found just a 
few aware that survivor benefits would go largely to widows and 
widowers.

 "I think this just went under the radar screen," said Richard 
Miller, who followed the bill's progress for the Paper, 
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers union.

 Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., said he would like to work with 
colleagues from other weapons-plant states to make the benefit 
more generous, but he didn't know how optimistic to be, given the 
difficulty of getting the program enacted in its current form.

 "It was a major accomplishment getting this passed," Whitfield 
said. "It was the first new entitlement program in 29 years. It's 
not a perfect piece of legislation but we were fortunate to get 
it passed at all."

 The program offers $150,000 lump-sum payments and lifetime 
medical care to weapons plant workers exposed to health-robbing 
levels of radiation, silica or beryllium while working in the 
nuclear weapons complex.

 Congress enacted the program after hearing testimony about 
workers breathing dense clouds of silica dust with no breathing 
protection, empty radiation-measuring badges pinned to those 
working with uranium and a chronic inattention to safety measures 
during the Cold War.

 It is an entitlement, so the government will pay the bills 
automatically, and the sick workers will never get IOU's like 
beneficiaries in another program that pays uranium miners and 
people downwind of nuclear test blasts.

 The Labor Department is opening field offices next month to help 
sick workers and the heirs of deceased workers file claims under 
the new compensation program, which is supposed to begin July 31.

All Contents ©Copyright* The Oak Ridger *
*****************************************************************
 2   ASIL Insight--Advisory Opinions of the World Court on the 
Legality of Nuclear Weapons
 
November 1996
                                        
   *--Dr. Peter H.F. Bekker is an attorney with Winthrop, 
Stimson, Putnam & Roberts in New York. He is Chair of the 
International Courts Committee of the American Bar Association's 
Section of International Law and Practice. He was a member of the 
Registry of the International Court of Justice in The Hague 
between 1992-1994.*  
                                       

 On July 8, 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), 
popularly known as the World Court, delivered two advisory 
opinions on separate requests received from the World Health 
Organization and the General Assembly of the United Nations, 
respectively, relating to the legality of nuclear weapons under 
international law. The principal judicial organ of the United 
Nations, whose Statute forms an integral part of the UN Charter, 
consists of 15 judges representing the different regions and 
principal legal systems of the world. In addition to the Court's 
function of delivering judgments in contentions cases submitted 
to it by states, it may issue non-binding advisory opinions at 
the request of certain UN organs and agencies.
                                         
               Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons
                                         
  On December 20, 1994, the UN General Assembly requested the ICJ 
to give an advisory opinion on the question: "Is the threat or 
use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance permitted under 
international law?"
                                         
 At the outset, the ICJ confirmed the Assembly's broad competence 
to make such a request, deriving from the UN Charter and the 
Assembly's longstanding activities regarding disarmament and 
nuclear weapons. The Court also found that the request related to 
a legal question within the meaning of the ICJ Statute and the UN 
Charter and that there were no compelling reasons to refuse the 
request, even though the question put to it did not relate to a 
specific dispute and was couched in abstract terms.
                                         
  In determining the legality or illegality of the threat or 
external use of nuclear weapons, the ICJ decided that the most 
directly relevant applicable law governing the Assembly's 
question consisted of (1) the provisions of the UN Charter 
relating to the threat or use of force, (2) the principles and 
rules of international humanitarian law that form part of the law 
applicable in armed conflict and the law of neutrality, and (3) 
any relevant specific treaties on nuclear weapons. In applying 
this law, the Court considered it imperative to take into account 
certain unique characteristics of nuclear weapons, in particular 
their destructive capacity that can cause untold human suffering 
for generations to come.
                                         
  The Court first considered the provisions of the UN Charter 
relating to the threat or use of force. Although Article 2(4) 
(generally prohibiting the threat or use of force), Article 51 
(recognizing every state's inherent right of individual or 
collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs) and Article 42 
(authorizing the Security Council to take military enforcement 
measures) do not refer to specific weapons, the Court held that 
they apply to any use of force, regardless of the type of weapon 
employed. The Court noted that the UN Charter neither expressly 
prohibits, nor permits, the use of any specific weapon (including 
nuclear weapons) and that a weapon that is already unlawful *per 
se* by treaty or custom does not become lawful by reason of its 
being used for a legitimate purpose under the Charter. Whatever 
the means of force used in self-defense, the dual customary 
condition of necessity and proportionality and the law applicable 
in armed conflict apply, including such further considerations as 
the very nature of nuclear weapons and the profound risks 
associated with their use.
                                         
   The ICJ also considered the question whether a signalled 
intention to use force if certain events occur qualifies as an 
unlawful "threat" under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. According 
to the Court, the notions of "threat" or "use" of force under 
Article 2(4) work in tandem in that the illegal use of force in a 
given case will likewise make the threat to use such force 
unlawful. The Court pointed out that the mere possession of 
nuclear weapons would not constitute an unlawful "threat" to use 
force contrary to Article 2(4), unless the particular use of 
force envisaged would be directed against the territorial 
integrity or political independence of a state or would be 
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations or, in the 
event that it were intended as a means of defense, such envisaged 
use of force would violate the principles of necessity and 
proportionality.
                                         
 The Court next examined the law applicable in situations of 
armed conflict by addressing two questions: (1) are there 
specific rules in international law regulating the legality or 
illegality of recourse to nuclear weapons *per se*, and (2) what 
are the implications of the principles and rules of humanitarian 
law applicable in armed conflict and the law of neutrality?
                                         
 The ICJ noted that international customary and treaty law do not 
contain any specific prescription authorizing the threat or use 
of nuclear weapons or any other weapon in general or in certain 
circumstances, in particular those of the exercise of legitimate 
self-defense. Nor, however, is there any principle or rule of 
international law that would make the legality of the threat or 
use of nuclear weapons or of any other weapons dependent on a 
specific authorization. State practice shows that the illegality 
of the use of certain weapons as such does not result from an 
absence of authorization but is rather formulated in terms of 
prohibition.
                                         
The Court examined whether any such prohibition of recourse to 
nuclear weapons can be found in treaty law. With regard to 
certain specific treaties dealing with the acquisition, 
manufacture, possession, deployment and testing of nuclear 
weapons, the Court noted that these treaties "point to an 
increasing concern in the international community" with regard to 
nuclear weapons, and concluded that they "could therefore be seen 
as foreshadowing a future general prohibition of the use of such 
weapons, but they do not constitute such a prohibition by 
themselves." As to those treaties that address the issue of 
recourse to nuclear weapons, the Court observed that they 
"testify to a growing awareness of the need to liberate the 
community of States and the international public from the dangers 
resulting from the existence of nuclear weapons," but that these 
treaties also do not amount to a comprehensive and universal 
conventional prohibition on the threat or use of nuclear weapons 
as such.
                                         
The Court then examined customary international law. First, it 
determined that the non-use of nuclear weapons does not amount to 
a customary prohibition, because the world community is 
profoundly divided on the issue. Second, the Court examined 
whether certain General Assembly resolutions that deal with 
nuclear weapons signify the existence of a rule of customary 
international law prohibiting recourse to nuclear weapons. In the 
Court's view, although these resolutions are "a clear sign of 
deep concern regarding the problem of nuclear weapons" and 
"reveal the desire of a very large section of the international 
community to take, by a specific and express prohibition of the 
use of nuclear weapons, a significant step forward along the road 
to complete nuclear disarmament," they fall short of a customary 
rule specifically prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons as such.
                                         
The ICJ next considered whether recourse to nuclear weapons must 
be considered as illegal in the light of the principles and rules 
of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict 
and of the law of neutrality. The Court stated that the cardinal 
principles of international humanitarian law prescribing the 
conduct of military operations are: (1) the protection of the 
civilian population and civilian objects and the prohibition of 
the use of weapons incapable of distinguishing between combatants 
and non-combatants, and (2) the prohibition on causing 
unnecessary suffering to combatants by using certain weapons. 
According to the Court, the fundamental rules of humanitarian law 
applicable in armed conflict must be observed by all states 
whether or not they have ratified the conventions that contain 
them, because they constitute intransgressible principles of 
international customary law. The ICJ agreed with the vast 
majority of states as well as writers that there can be no doubt 
as to the applicability of the principles and rules of 
humanitarian law in armed conflict to a possible threat or use of 
nuclear weapons, despite the fact that these principles and rules 
had evolved prior to the invention of nuclear weapons. It also 
found that the customary principle of neutrality is applicable, 
subject to the relevant provisions of the UN Charter, to all 
international armed conflict, whatever type of weapons might be 
used (although the principle of neutrality is not well defined, 
and the ICJ left its content undefined here, it is generally 
regarded as requiring at least that no attack be made on a state 
that has declared itself a neutral and is conducting itself 
accordingly).
                                         
      Despite the undisputed applicability of the principles and 
rules of humanitarian law and of the law of neutrality to nuclear 
weapons, the ICJ found that the conclusions to be drawn from this 
applicability were controversial. The Court admitted that, in 
view of the unique characteristics of nuclear weapons, their use 
"in fact seems scarcely reconcilable" with the strict 
requirements dictated by the law applicable in armed conflict. 
The judges being evenly divided, ICJ President Mohammed Bedjaoui 
used his casting vote to hold that the threat or use of nuclear 
weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international 
law applicable in armed conflict. At the same time, the ICJ held 
that it did not have a sufficient basis for a definitive 
conclusion as to whether the use of nuclear weapons would or 
would not be at variance with the principles and rules of law 
applicable in armed conflict in an extreme circumstance of 
self-defense, in which a state's very survival is at stake.
                                         
    Finally, the Court examined the obligation to negotiate in 
good faith a complete nuclear disarmament, recognized in Article 
VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 
1968. The ICJ judges held unanimously that the obligation 
enshrined in Article VI involves "an obligation to achieve a 
precise result—nuclear disarmament in all its aspects—by adopting 
a particular course of conduct, namely, the pursuit of 
negotiations on the matter in good faith." The Court noted that 
this twofold obligation to pursue and conclude negotiations in 
accordance with the basic principle of good faith formally 
concerns the 182 states parties to the Treaty on the 
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, constituting the vast 
majority of the international community.
                                         
      Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed 
Conflict
                                         
    On July 8, 1996, the ICJ ruled also that it was unable to 
comply with a request received on September 1993 from the World 
Health Organization (WHO) to give an advisory opinion on the 
following question: "In view of the health and environmental 
effects, would the use of nuclear weapons by a State in war or 
other armed conflict be a breach of its obligations under 
international law including the WHO Constitution?" The Court 
ruled, 11-3, that although the WHO is duly authorized under the 
UN Charter to request advisory opinions from the ICJ and the 
opinion requested concerned a legal question, the request 
submitted by the WHO did not relate to a question arising within 
the scope of the activities of that organization as required by 
Article 96(2) of the UN Charter.
                                         
 The Court pointed out that its jurisdiction to provide an 
advisory opinion in response to a request by a specialized agency 
requires that: (1) the specialized agency requesting the opinion 
must be duly authorized, under the UN Charter, to request 
advisory opinions from the ICJ, (2) the opinion requested must 
relate to a "legal question" within the meaning of the ICJ 
Statute and the UN Charter, and (3) the opinion requested must 
relate to a question that arises within the scope of the 
activities of the specialized agency requesting the opinion.
                                         
   Regarding the third condition, the Court emphasized the 
importance of the relevant rules, and in particular the 
constituent instrument, of the WHO in determining the scope of 
its activities against the background of the question it posed. 
In interpreting the constituent instrument of an international 
organization, the character of which is conventional and at the 
same time institutional (being a treaty establishing an 
international organization), the Court observed that the 
following elements deserve special attention: (i) the nature of 
the international organization, (ii) the objectives assigned to 
the organization by its founders, (iii) the imperatives 
associated with the effective performance of the functions of the 
organization, and (iv) the organization's own practice.
                                         
 The ICJ observed that none of the 22 functions listed in the WHO 
Constitution expressly refers to the legality of any activity 
hazardous to health, or depends upon the legality of the 
situations in which that organization must act. Article 2 states 
that the WHO discharges its functions "to achieve its objective," 
which Article 1 defines as "the attainment by all peoples of the 
highest possible level of health." According to the Court, the 
functions listed in Article 2 authorize the WHO to deal with the 
effects on health of the use of nuclear weapons, or any other 
hazardous activity, and to take preventive measures that are 
aimed at protecting the health of populations in the event of 
such weapons being used or such activities engaged in.
                                         
  Having found the request to relate not to the effects of the 
use of nuclear weapons on health, but rather the legality of the 
use of such weapons in view of their health and environmental 
effects, the Court concluded that there was insufficient 
connection between the request and the functions of the WHO to 
support the Court's jurisdiction. According to the ICJ: "the 
legality or illegality of the use of nuclear weapons in no way 
determines the specific measures, regarding health or otherwise 
(studies, plans, procedures, etc.), which could be necessary in 
order to prevent or cure some of their effects."
                                         
     The Court acknowledged that international organizations can 
exercise subsidiary or "implied" powers not expressly provided 
for in the basic instruments that govern their activities. 
However, it held that the competence to address the legality of 
the use of nuclear weapons could not be deemed a necessary 
implication of the WHO Constitution in the light of the purposes 
member states had assigned to it. To hold otherwise would be 
tantamount to disregarding the principle of speciality according 
to which international organizations operate in limited fields.
                                         
  The ICJ explained that the logic of the UN Charter system 
demonstrates that the United Nations was invested with powers of 
general scope and that specialized agencies such as the WHO were 
invested with sectorial powers. The responsibilities of the WHO 
are necessarily restricted to the sphere of public health, and 
cannot encroach on the responsibilities of other parts of the UN 
system. More specifically, questions concerning the use of force, 
the regulation of armaments, and disarmament are within the 
competence of the United Nations and outside that of the 
specialized agencies.
                                         
 Finally, the Court pointed out that none of the WHO's reports 
and resolutions was in the nature of a practice of the WHO 
concerning the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. 
It held that in general the WHO is not empowered to seek an 
opinion on the interpretation of its Constitution in relation to 
matters outside the scope of its functions.
                                        

+ ****** These advisory opinions of the World Court are of 
considerable significance to the development of the law of 
nuclear weapons and international organizations. Although the 
Court concluded that it was unable to hold definitively whether 
the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful 
in an extreme circumstance of self-defense in which the very 
survival of a state would be at stake (thereby leaving the door 
to legality open) and it could not give the opinion requested by 
the WHO, the legal reasoning leading to these conclusions 
reflects the Court's authoritative views on important issues of 
international law. Although the opinions are non-binding, in 
preparing them the Court follows the same rules and procedures 
that govern its binding judgments delivered in contentious cases 
submitted to it by sovereign states.
                                         
                               Further Reading Ian Brownlie, 
*Some Legal Aspects of the Use of Nuclear Weapons*, 14 ICLQ 437 
(1965). David M. Corwin, *The Legality of Nuclear Arms under 
International Law*, 5 Dickinson JIL 271 (1986). Richard Falk, Lee 
Meyrowitz & Jack Sanderson, *Nuclear Weapons and International 
Law*, 20 Ind JIL 541 (1980). William R. Hearn, *The International 
Legal Regime Regulating Nuclear Deterrence and Warfare*, 61 
B.Y.B.I.L. 199 (1981). Frits Kalshoven, *Arms, Armaments and 
International Law*, 191 RdC 183 (1985 II). Elliott L. Meyrowitz, 
*Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons: The Relevance of International 
Law* (1990). Elliott L. Meyrowitz, *The Opinions of Legal 
Scholars on the Legal Status of Nuclear Weapons*, 24 Stanford JIL 
111 (1987). Istvan Pogany, ed., *Nuclear Weapons and 
International Law* (1987). Alfred P. Rubin, *Nuclear Weapons and 
International Law*, 8 Fletcher Forum 45 (1984). Nagendra Singh & 
Edward McWhinney, *Nuclear Weapons and Contemporary International 
Law *(2nd Rev.Ed. 1989). Burns H. Weston, *Nuclear Weapons Versus 
International Law: A Contextual Reassessment*, 28 McGill LJ 543 
(1982). 

 The purpose of *ASIL Insights* is to provide concise and 
informed background for developments of interest to the 
international community. The American Society of  International 
Law does not take positions on substantive issues, including the 
ones discussed  in this Insight. *ASIL Insights* may be found on 
the ASIL Web Site. Educational copying is permitted with due 
acknowledgement.  
  
      © 2001 American Society of International Law Copyright 
Statement 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20008 
Tel.: 202-939-6000, Fax: 202-797-7133  
*****************************************************************
 3  ASIL Insight--India's Nuclear Tests
 
 *India's Nuclear Tests
 By Frederic L. Kirgis 
May 1998
 
India’s five underground nuclear explosions detonated on May 
11-13, 1998, raise such international law questions as these: Is 
India prohibited by any applicable treaty or customary rule of 
international law from testing or possessing nuclear weapons? Is 
there any other source of international law that might prohibit 
India’s testing or possessing nuclear weapons? If India may test 
and possess them, under what circumstances would it be lawful to 
use them? Do India’s tests provide any other states, such as 
Pakistan, with legal justification to conduct their own nuclear 
tests?  

In September 1996 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would prohibit states 
parties from carrying out any nuclear weapons test explosion. 
India did not sign the treaty, and it is not in force. It will 
not enter into force until 180 days after 44 named states ratify 
it. India is one of those named states, and thus can unilaterally 
preclude the treaty from entering into force.. Nor is India a 
party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thus, even 
though the NPT is in force, India is not bound by the direct 
undertaking on the part of non-nuclear weapon states parties to 
the NPT to refrain from manufacturing or otherwise acquiring 
nuclear weapons. In July 1996 the International Court of Justice 
(the World Court) issued an advisory opinion at the request of 
the UN General Assembly, on The Legality of the Threat or Use of 
Nuclear Weapons. The Court found no generally-applicable treaty 
or customary rule specifically prohibiting the threat or use of 
nuclear weapons as such. Nor did it find an indirect prohibition 
stemming from international environmental law. Nevertheless, it 
held that any threat or use of nuclear weapons would have to meet 
all the requirements of self-defense as set out in Article 51 of 
the UN Charter, would have to be compatible with the humanitarian 
law of war (which seeks to limit unnecessary harm during wartime, 
particularly to noncombatants and nonmilitary property), and 
would have to comply with any specific obligations (such as 
regional or bilateral treaties) which expressly deal with nuclear 
weapons. But the World Court was deeply split on the ultimate 
legal consequences of these points. By a tie vote, with the 
President of the Court casting a deciding vote, the Court 
concluded:  It follows from the above-mentioned requirements that 
the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary 
to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, 
and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law; 
However, in view of the current state of international law, and 
of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot 
conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear 
weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of 
self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at 
stake. India has asserted that it needs nuclear weapons for 
self-defense, and that its current series of underground testing 
is necessary to develop those weapons. To support its assertion, 
India points to a nuclear power, China, on its border, and to a 
putative nuclear power, Pakistan, with which it has had serious 
conflict, also on its border. Since the World Court was not able 
to conclude definitively that the use of nuclear weapons by India 
or any other nuclear-weapons state would be unlawful under all 
circumstances, India has some room to argue that its development 
of nuclear weapons has the legitimate purpose of ultimate self 
defense. If so, testing–an integral part of development, at least 
at the stage at which India finds itself–would arguably be 
permissible, at least if it is credible that the weapons could be 
needed to preserve the survival of the state. In April the Indian 
Defense Minister, George Fernandez, reportedly told the U.S. 
Ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, that India was 
in the process of a national defense review and planned no 
nuclear testing. Moreover, in March he said publicly that the 
decision on atomic weapons would depend on a thorough strategic 
review. The review apparently had not been concluded when the 
tests occurred. If India did perform the tests without conducting 
what its Defense Minister said was a needed defense review, it 
may be hard pressed to show that there is a real necessity at 
this time to have an operable nuclear capability for 
self-defense. It is arguable that the Indian Defense Minister’s 
statements of intention created an obligation similar to a treaty 
obligation under international law to refrain from from nuclear 
testing until the defense review had been completed and had shown 
the need for testing in self defense. In a 1974 case the World 
Court said that French government assurances to the world at 
large that it would terminate atmospheric nuclear tests amounted 
to a legal undertaking to the international community that French 
atmospheric testing would cease. As a result, the Court declined 
to hear a case brought by Australia and New Zealand against 
France seeking the Court’s judgment that atmospheric nuclear 
tests are unlawful in themselves. It is not certain, however, 
that the Indian Defense Minister’s statements would be regarded 
as solemn undertakings (relating to abstention from any testing 
in the absence of a completed review showing necessity) in the 
same sense as the French government’s assurances (relating to 
abstention from atmospheric testing) were. There is one more 
aspect of the World Court’s 1996 advisory opinion on Nuclear 
Weapons that could affect India’s freedom to test. The Court 
concluded, unanimously, that "There exists an obligation to 
pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations 
leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict 
and effective international control." Although it relied in part 
on the NPT for this obligation, it did not limit the obligation 
to NPT states parties. One could argue that India’s continuing 
development of its nuclear warfare capability, as evidenced by 
the tests, runs counter to that good-faith 
obligation–particularly when the obvious risk of nuclear 
proliferation on the Indian subcontinent is taken into account. 
On the other hand, it could be argued that as the stakes rise, 
the incentive for meaningful disarmament negotiations rises as 
well, even in the case of acknowledged nuclear powers. If India 
genuinely intends to pursue those negotiations seriously and in a 
timely manner, its tests would not necessarily run counter to its 
good faith duty.  
  
Finally, India’s nuclear tests strengthen Pakistan’s self-defense 
rationale if Pakistan should now decide to conduct its own 
nuclear tests. Pakistan may argue that past experience and 
current tensions make it impossible to be assured that India’s 
nuclear capability is purely defensive. Pakistan may also argue 
that it cannot simply rely on statements from acknowledged 
nuclear powers that they would defend Pakistan from any Indian 
nuclear attack. Any Pakistani tests could in turn strengthen 
India’s self-defense argument, and an arms race at the nuclear 
level could be on.  

About the author: Frederic L. Kirgis is Law School Association 
Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law. 
He has written a book and several articles on United Nations law, 
and is a member of the Board of Editors of the *American Journal 
of International Law*.  

The purpose of *ASIL Insights* is to provide concise and informed 
background for developments of interest to the international 
community. The American Society of  International Law does not 
take positions on substantive issues, including the ones 
discussed  in this Insight. *ASIL Insights* may be found on the . 
Educational copying is permitted with due acknowledgement.    
    
      © 2001 American Society of International Law Copyright 
Statement 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20008 
Tel.: 202-939-6000, Fax: 202-797-7133  
*****************************************************************
 4  Nuclear Weapons and International Law 

IEER: Science for Democratic Action vol. 9 no. 3 / Energy 
&Security No. 17: Law and the Nuclear Establishment 
                                       
By Merav Datan1
                                        
By their very nature, their physical characteristics, nuclear 
weapons are not compatible with a rule of law society; they defy 
the spirit, the letter, and the concept of law. But they continue 
to exist in the arsenals and policies of a minority of powerful 
states because they have come to represent power, influence, and 
status. For the states that possess nuclear weapons, they are 
expressions of sovereignty. 

Ironically, nuclear weapons not only undermine the sovereignty of 
states because they defy any national borders, nuclear weapons 
also conflict directly with the principles of an international 
legal order. Nuclear weapons reveal the cracks in the existing 
international legal system, and suggest the changes necessary for 
a more just world order to emerge.
 
International law and nuclear weapons intersect in a number of 
ways, including specific treaties (Non-Proliferation Treaty, 
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, Comprehensive Test Ban 
Treaty), general treaty structures that form the basis of 
international law today (United Nations Charter), and the law of 
armed conflict, or humanitarian law and the law of neutrality. 

Comprehensive studies of international law and nuclear weapons 
exist.2 Here the focus is on the law relevant to nuclear 
disarmament in the form of treaty and the international legal 
system, both its structure and jurisprudence. This includes the 
following:
 
  1. Non-Proliferation Treaty obligation
 
  2. United Nations Charter (*jus ad bellum*)
 
  3. International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinion (interpretation 
of existing law, particularly the law of armed conflict *jus in 
bello*, but limited by the political system of today) 4. Judge 
Weeramantry's dissenting opinion (as the authoritative 
interpretation of the law, following through on the logical and 
legal conclusions that - for political reasons - the Court could 
not) The Non-Proliferation Treaty
 
The NPT 3, opened for signature in 1968 and entered into force in 
1970, was among other things a deal between five nuclear weapons 
states (NWS) and the rest of the world (182 non-NWS today) that 
the latter are not to acquire nuclear weapons, in exchange for 
the former negotiating nuclear disarmament.
 
NPT Article VI obligation:
 
"Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue 
negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to 
cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to 
nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete 
disarmament under strict and effective international control."
 
"Each of the Parties" suggests this obligations goes beyond the 
bilateral START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties) process and 
requires multilateral negotiations. This obligation is backed up 
by numerous resolutions of the UN General Assembly, dating back 
to the very first resolution.
 
United Nations Charter
 
The UN Charter4 provides the framework for modern international 
law, though much of it is the codification of pre-existing 
customary international law.
 
Article 2(4): "All Members shall refrain in their international 
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial 
integrity or political independence of any state, or in any 
manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."
 
Article 51: "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the 
inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an 
armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until 
the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain 
international peace and security."
 
The combination of these two provisions means that a state may 
engage in the threat or use of force only in collective or 
individual self-defense, if an armed attack occurs, and only when 
the Security Council has not exerted control. Of course, the 
result has been, in part, that states claim their own threat or 
use of force as an act of self-defence, and see aggression on the 
part of others who act and speak similarly in the name of 
self-defense. Nuclear weapons raise this irony to the level of 
absurdity. 

But implicit in these principles of law is the aspiration for a 
just and effective international legal order. That it does not 
function smoothly is due largely to the psychological mindset of 
human mistrust, and the ways that fear, greed, and the drive for 
power have been infused into political structures. At the same 
time, these structures are being challenged today in ways that do 
not necessarily promise but do allow for the possibility of a 
transition to a more just world order based on the force of law 
rather than the law of force.
 
The International Court of Justice
 
The 1996 Advisory Opinion of the ICJ5 on the threat or use of 
nuclear weapons reflects this moment of transition. The Court was 
caught between the political power structures that have shaped 
it, and the potential legal and political system that might 
emerge. Politically, the Court went as far as it could in 
affirming the illegal nature of nuclear weapons, but it could not 
directly state the logical and legal conclusions suggested by its 
own reasoning. The separate opinion of Judge Weeramantry (offered 
as a dissent) is in this sense the authoritative interpretation 
of the law, completing the legal reasoning suggested by the 
Court.
 
The International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion of 
July 8, 1996, held that: 

"...the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be 
contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed 
conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of 
humanitarian law." [para. 105(2)(E)]
 
The Court as a whole could not, however, 

"reach a definitive conclusion as to the legality or illegality 
of the use of nuclear weapons by a State in an extreme 
circumstance of self-defence, in which its very survival would be 
at stake." [para. 105(2)(E)]
 
This "exception" portion of the judgment was the subject of 
specific comment by the President of the Court, Judge Bedjaoui.6 
He stressed this exception could not be interpreted as "leaving 
the door ajar to recognition of the legality of the threat or use 
of nuclear weapons."
 
Judge Bedjaoui stated that:
 
"...self-defence - if exercised in extreme circumstances in which 
the very survival of a State is in question - cannot engender a 
situation in which a State would exonerate itself from compliance 
with the *'intransgressible'* norms of international humanitarian 
law."
 
Indeed, he added that: "[I]t would thus be quite foolhardy 
unhesitatingly to set the survival of a State above all other 
considerations, in particular the survival of mankind itself."
 
Thus, even a situation of extreme self-defence does not 
constitute an exception to the other applicable rules of 
international law. The Judges all agreed that the rules of 
international humanitarian law apply at all times.
 
Furthermore, the Court unanimously concluded that any threat or 
use of nuclear weapons whatsoever,
 
"...should also be compatible with the requirements of the 
international law applicable in armed conflict, particularly 
those of the principles and rules of international humanitarian 
law, as well as with specific obligations under treaties and 
other undertakings which expressly deal with nuclear weapons..." 
[para. 105(2)(D)]
 
The lack of a definitive conclusion regarding extreme 
circumstances of self-defence was likely a political bargain 
struck in order to gain enough votes for general illegality, 
given the political constraints on the judges. (Five of 15 judges 
are traditionally from the five official nuclear weapon states, 
also the permanent members of the Security Council.) 

Three of the seven negative votes on general illegality, however, 
dissented because they disagreed with the possible exception in 
extreme circumstances of self-defense, arguing that nuclear 
weapons were illegal under all circumstances. Weeramantry's 
dissent falls into this category and will be discussed further 
below.
 
With respect to the principles of humanitarian law, the Court 
observed that: 

"...the principles and rules of law applicable in armed conflict 
- at the heart of which is the overriding consideration of 
humanity - make the conduct of armed hostilities subject to a 
number of strict requirements. Thus, methods and means of 
warfare, which would preclude any distinction between civilian 
and military targets, or which would result in unnecessary 
suffering to combatants, are prohibited. In view of the unique 
characteristics of nuclear weapons...the use of such weapons in 
fact seems scarcely reconcilable with respect to such 
requirements." (para. 95)
 
Thus the Court confirmed that the Hague and Geneva Conventions, 
which codify the law of armed conflict, apply to nuclear weapons 
and make their use generally illegal. The principles of this law 
establish that the use of any weapon:7 a.     must be 
proportional to the initial attack, b.     must be necessary for 
effective self-defence, c.     must not be directed at civilians 
or civilian objects, d.      must be used in a manner that makes 
it possible to discriminate between military targets and civilian 
non-targets, e.      must not cause unnecessary or aggravated 
suffering to combatants, f.      must not affect States that are 
not parties to the conflict, and g.     must not cause severe, 
widespread, or long-term damage to the environment. 

The Court also confirmed that if a particular use of weapons is 
illegal, so is the threat of such use. With respect to 
possession, the Court said specifically: "[i]f the envisaged use 
of force is itself unlawful, the stated readiness to use it would 
be a threat prohibited under Article 2, para 4 [of the UN 
Charter]." This being the case, the Court observed that 
"[p]ossession of nuclear weapons may indeed justify an inference 
of preparedness to use them." It added that:
 
"Whether there is a "threat" contrary to Article 2, para 4, 
depends upon whether the particular use of force envisaged would 
be directed against the territorial integrity or political 
independence of a state, or against the Purposes of the United 
Nations or whether, in the event that it were intended as a means 
of defence, it would necessarily violate the principles of 
necessity and proportionality." (para. 48)
 
Since first use of nuclear weapons would necessarily violate the 
principles of necessity and proportionality, it is arguable that 
mere possession of such weapons by a state that maintains a 
foreign policy of first use would constitute a threat to use 
those weapons under the Charter.
 
With regard to the obligation under the NPT for good faith 
negotiations on nuclear disarmament, the Court found that:
 
"The legal import of that obligation goes beyond that of a mere 
obligation of conduct; the obligation involved here is an 
obligation to achieve a precise result - nuclear disarmament in 
all its aspects - by adopting a particular course of conduct, 
namely, the pursuit of negotiations on the matter in good faith." 
(para. 99)
 
The Court saw this obligation as the *remedy* to the current 
state of instability in international law created by the 
"exception" regarding an extreme circumstance of self-defense. 
This was not an incidental reminder to negotiate nuclear 
disarmament, but the solution to lack of clarity in the law.
 
In this context, the Court held unanimously that: "There exists 
an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion 
negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects 
under strict and effective international control." [para. 
105(2)(F)]
 
The Advisory Opinion reflects the changing role of global society 
and international law. The Court was caught between the framework 
of the past and indeterminate power structures yet to emerge. 
What kind of system will emerge and what the power structures 
will be is not yet clear, but Weeramantry's opinion offers some 
guidance.
 
Judge Weeramantry's dissenting opinion8
 
Weeramantry's dissenting opinion functions as the accurate, 
authoritative statement of the law, statement of transition, and 
a guide to discerning positive signs of the emergent system.
 
Weeramantry's dissent9 is based in large part on his fundamental 
disagreement with the concept of "general" illegality and the 
possible self-defence exception. He believes that the existing 
law is sufficiently clear on this matter. His interpretation 
should and will most likely be the prevailing opinion in years to 
come, as he was not bound, like the Court, by current politics 
and the jurisprudence of the past.
 
Under the nation-state system of the past 350 years, the 
international actors are sovereign, territorial states, and the 
international security system depends on the role of a few 
dominant states. Warfare and economic disparity are seen as 
inevitable.
 
It is something of a cliché to point out that the world is going 
through a period of transition, or globalization, which includes 
centralization and integration of non-territorial social and 
economic forces, and globally organized media and communication, 
at governmental and non-state levels. This transition can be 
labeled a move from *geopolitics* to *geogovernance*.
 
Whether the emergent system will be human rights based or statist 
and market centered depends greatly on the nature of 
participation of transnational civil society and on our ability 
to discern emergent structures and to reinforce those we view as 
humane. The guiding principles of *humane geogovernance*, both 
analytical and normative, include economic well-being, social 
justice, non-violence, ecological stability, and positive 
identity. Weeramantry foreshadows positive signs by affirming the 
role of law in society as a guide to interpreting the law. His 
opinion on nuclear weapons offers a reading of the current state 
of the law that brings us into the "shadowland" of a nuclear 
weapons free world.
 
"Shadowland" is a term used by Richard Falk in an essay entitled, 
*The Grotian Quest*.10 He argues that our endeavors to create a 
better world necessitate "a special sort of creativity that 
blends thought and imagination without neglecting obstacles to 
change." Falk continues:
 
"We require, in effect, an understanding of those elements of 
structure that resist change, as well as a feel for the 
possibilities of innovation that lie within the shadowland cast 
backward by emergent potential structures of power. Only within 
the shadowland, if at all, is it possible to discern 'openings' 
that contain significant potential for reform, including the 
possibility of exerting an impact on the character of the 
emergent political realities."
 
Grotius, often referred to as the father of international law, 
lived in the shadowland of a transition from feudalism to the 
modern nation-state system. His contributions to the laws of war 
and peace (1625) provided the basis for a new normative order for 
the nation-state system, which was then emerging. Today's 
"Grotian Quest" faces a set of obstacles that includes widespread 
abuse of human rights, scarcity of basic material needs, 
environmental degradation, and global militarization, including 
the threat of nuclear weapons. Judge Weeramantry foreshadows a 
globalization that moves the state system from geopolitics to 
humane geogovernance. Finding that "international law has clearly 
a commitment to the Grotian vision," he brings the shadowland 
into focus by coding the instruments of international law that 
are both normatively grounded and oriented toward a nuclear 
weapon free world.
 
Weeramantry uses an updated Grotian methodology to build his 
case, relying on positive legal instruments as well as the 
historical and jurisprudential bases of these instruments, and 
fundamental humanitarian principles shared by cultures and 
authorities throughout the world. He also ranges far afield both 
in a macro-historical and multi-cultural fashion, opening up a 
range of topics that the other judges do not get into and 
inviting us to think about the world in which we live, how law 
presently affects that world, and how it should. 

In his analysis of past reliance on nuclear weapons, Weeramantry 
keeps in sight the role of the Court in guiding global society:
 
"A global regime which makes safety the result of terror and can 
speak of survival and annihilation as twin alternatives makes 
peace and the human future dependent on terror. This is not a 
basis for world order which this Court can endorse. This Court is 
committed to uphold the rule of law, not the rule of force or 
terror, and the humanitarian principles of the laws of war are a 
vital part of the international rule of law which this Court is 
charged to administer."
 
Weeramantry also reminds us why, in today's increasingly 
interdependent world, the admittedly difficult task of analyzing 
and explaining international law is essential, as illustrated by 
the example of South Africa:
 
"The Court's decision on the illegality of the apartheid regime 
had little prospect of compliance by the offending government, 
but helped to create the climate of opinion which dismantled the 
structure of apartheid. Had the Court thought in terms of the 
futility of its decree, the end of apartheid may well have been 
long delayed, if it could have been achieved at all. The 
clarification of the law is an end in itself, and not merely a 
means to an end. When the law is clear, there is a greater chance 
of compliance than when it is shrouded in obscurity." 

Weeramantry reminds us that a viable social organization contains 
rules of conduct that allow for its continued existence. Thus, 
international law - flexible as it might often appear - cannot be 
manipulated to permit any conclusion that tolerates the 
possibility of self-destruction. Seeking security through arms 
races and the capacity for mass destruction is incompatible with 
a legal system that has prohibited the threat or use of force, as 
the UN Charter does. 

The Court was also bound by a tradition of jurisprudence 
inherited from its predecessor, the Permanent Court of 
International Justice (PCIJ). In a 1927 criminal jurisdiction 
case, *Lotus*, the PCIJ held that "restrictions upon the 
independence of States cannot...be presumed."11 This "permissive 
theory" of international law provides that what is not 
specifically prohibited is permitted. *Lotus* was the brooding 
omnipresence in the ICJ's advisory opinion, causing it to look 
for explicit prohibitions of nuclear weapons, for example. 
Weeramantry moves beyond this extreme deference to state 
sovereignty, noting also that in times of war, when humanitarian 
law applies, there can be no presumption of permissibility. 

The Advisory Opinion also serves to highlight the gaps in the law 
of self-defence, itself a manifestation of the concept of 
sovereignty. Given the range of opinions on the meaning and 
application of self-defence, it should come as little surprise 
that the ICJ could not reconcile extreme circumstances of 
self-defense with the most extreme means of warfare to date - 
nuclear weapons. If the law is unclear and inconsistent on the 
use of force in self-defence, it would be all the more 
indeterminate when juxtaposing weapons of mass destruction with 
the "very survival of a state."
 
The Court could not resolve the question of self-defence in 
relations to state survival because the emerging system of 
geogovernance threatens the very *survival of statehood* as an 
institution. The concept of "extreme circumstances of 
self-defence" underscores the futility of attempting to draw a 
line between legitimate and illegitimate uses of nuclear weapons. 
The Court did not recognize that self-defence as a *right* should 
carry a *duty*: an obligation of restraint.
 
Weeramantry's analysis of *Lotus* foreshadows a fundamentally 
different interpretation of sovereignty and permissible state 
behavior than that espoused by the nuclear weapon states. He 
recognizes that the law contributes to and functions within the 
premise of continued existence of the community served by that 
law. Legal systems are postulated upon the continued existence of 
society. 

Conclusion
 
Nuclear law cannot be only an exercise in jurisprudence. Law must 
take into account the unique nature of nuclear weapons *and* the 
political/social context that enables their continued development 
and improvement. 

The policies and practices of defence establishments and weapons 
laboratories help to shape society and law. Considerations of the 
role of law in society must therefore take into account the 
functioning of the machinery that produces nuclear weapons, other 
weapons of mass destruction, and newer and more sophisticated 
weapons that cannot even be easily classified.
 
Our law is failing us as a society if it allows us to continue 
putting enormous quantities of resources and talent into the 
science of destruction. Weeramantry offers a framework for 
reversing this trend.
   
 <em>Science for Democratic Action</em> vol. 9 no. 3 Main 
Menu<em>Science for Democratic Action</em> Main Menu IEER Home 
Page Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to 
Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA 
*May 2001* 
  
Endnotes
 
1 Merav Datan is the director of the United Nations office of the 
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and 
Physicians for Social Responsibility, located in New York. She 
presented this paper at IEER's *Conference on Nuclear 
Disarmament, the NPT, and the Rule of Law* at the United Nations 
in New York on April 25, 2000. 2 See for example Charles Moxley, 
*Nuclear Weapons and International Law in the Post Cold War 
World*. Lanham, Maryland & Cumnor Hill, Oxford: Austin & 
Winfield, 2000; Elliott Meyrowitz, *Prohibition of Nuclear 
Weapons: The Relevance of International Law.* Dobbs Ferry, New 
York: Transnational Publishers, Inc., 1990. 3 Treaty on the 
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 21 U.S.T. 483, 729 U.N.T.S. 
161, 7 I.L.M. 811 (1968). On the web: 
http://www.un.org/Depts/dda/WMD/npttext.html. 4 Charter of the 
United Nations, entered into force 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. 993, 
3 Bevans 1153. On the web: 
http://www.un.org/Overview/Charter/contents.html. 5 *Legality of 
the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons* (Advisory Opinion of the 
International Court of Justice, July 8, 1996), UN Doc. A/51/218 
(1996), 35 I.L.M. 809 & 1343 (1996). On line at 
http://www.lcnp.org/wcourt/opinion.htm and 
http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icases/iunan/iunanframe.htm. 
(Hereinafter "ICJ Advisory Opinion.") 6 ICJ Advisory Opinion, 
Declaration of President Bedjaoui. 7 Thanks to Lawyers for Social 
Responsibility for the wording of this list. 8 This section is 
adapted from Saul Mendlovitz & Merav Datan, "Judge Weeramantry's 
Grotian Quest," in *Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems* 
Vol. 7 No. 2, Fall 1997. 9 ICJ Advisory Opinion, Dissenting 
Opinion of Judge Weeramantry. 10 Richard Falk, "The Grotian 
Quest" in R. Falk et al., eds., *International Law: A 
Contemporary Perspective*. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985 
(Studies on a Just World Order, No. 2). 11 S.S. Lotus (Fr. V. 
Turk.) (1927), Permanent Court of International Justice 
Publications, Series A, No. 9, at 18 (Sept. 7). On the web: 
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/faculty/ddcaron/Courses/il/il02005.htm. 
  


*****************************************************************
 5  Nuclear Sharing in NATO: Is it Legal? 

  IEER: Science for Democratic Action vol. 9 no. 3 / Energy 
&Security No. 17: Law and the Nuclear Establishment | 
                                       
By Otfried Nassauer 1
                                        
Historical evidence indicates that, at the time of negotiating 
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1960s, many 
countries did not fully understand what implications nuclear 
sharing had and/or did not know that the North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization (NATO) interpreted nuclear sharing to be legal under 
the NPT. According to the current understanding of most non-NATO 
parties to the NPT, NATO nuclear sharing probably violates 
Articles I and II of the Treaty.
 
Article I of the NPT prohibits nuclear weapon states that are 
parties to the NPT from sharing their weapons with non-nuclear 
states:
 
"Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to 
transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other 
nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or 
explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to 
assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to 
manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear 
explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive 
devices."
 
Article II contains a parallel commitment on the part of 
non-nuclear states parties not to receive them:
 
"Each non-nuclear weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not 
to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear 
weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over 
such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to 
manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear 
explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in 
the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive 
devices."
 
This is complicated treaty language. I will separate my analysis 
into four sections. First, I would like to clarify what NATO 
nuclear sharing means. Second, I will talk about the history of 
the NPT and nuclear sharing. Third, I will address the European 
Union and nuclear sharing, which is one question that might come 
up in the future. Finally, I will conclude with some suggestions 
on how the problem might be addressed. 

The meaning of nuclear sharing
 
Six non-nuclear NATO countries currently host U.S. nuclear 
weapons on their territories. Up to 180 freefall bombs of the 
type B-61, Modification 10 may be deployed in Europe. These are 
nuclear weapons designed to be dropped from aircraft. Some of 
these bombs are designated for possible use in wartime by 
non-nuclear NATO members. The air forces of these countries 
operate so-called dual-capable aircraft, which allow them to drop 
conventional as well as nuclear bombs. The dual capability of 
these fighter-bombers allows the militaries of these non-nuclear 
states to participate in NATO nuclear operations, should the 
Alliance decide to use nuclear weapons and the U.S. President 
order their use.
 
The pilots for these aircraft are provided with training specific 
to use nuclear weapons. The air force units to which these pilots 
and aircraft belong have the capability to play a part in NATO 
nuclear planning, including assigning a target, selecting the 
yield of the warhead for the target, and planning a specific 
mission for the use of the bombs. 

Under NATO nuclear sharing in times of war, the U.S. would hand 
control of these nuclear weapons over to the non-nuclear weapon 
states' pilots for use with aircraft from non-nuclear weapon 
states. Once the bomb is loaded aboard, once the correct 
Permissive Action Link code has been entered by the U.S. soldiers 
guarding the weapons, and once the aircraft begins its mission, 
control over the respective weapon(s) has been transferred. That 
is the operational, technical part of what is called nuclear 
sharing. 

Nuclear sharing has also a political side. All non-nuclear weapon 
states that are members to the NATO treaty are eligible to 
participate in NATO's nuclear-planning and consultation 
processes. This means they are eligible to participate in drawing 
up target plans, in discussing the use of nuclear weapons in war 
time, in consultations on whether NATO should ask the U.S. for 
the use of nuclear weapons, and in consultations when the NATO 
nuclear weapon states should decide to use nuclear weapons, 
whether NATO as a whole would agree to do so. All of these tasks 
are accomplished in NATO's Nuclear Planning Group and its 
subsidiary bodies.
 
NATO nuclear sharing, as far as the technical part is concerned, 
was described in 1964 by one member of the U.S. National Security 
Council in what was at that time a highly classified memorandum 
as meaning that "the non-nuclear NATO-partners in effect become 
nuclear powers in time of war."2 The concern is that, at the 
moment the aircraft loaded with the bomb is on the runway ready 
to start, the control of the weapon is turned over from the U.S., 
a nuclear weapon state, to non-nuclear weapon states. The control 
over this weapon is, at that moment, with the pilot from the 
non-nuclear weapon state in both the physical and legal sense. 
Control remains with the United States until that point. To my 
understanding, this is in violation of the spirit, if not the 
text, of Articles I and II of the NPT. 

During the negotiations for the NPT, NATO's member states used a 
rather tricky approach to get around a prohibition of their 
established system of jointly deciding and implementing specific 
aspects of NATO's nuclear strategy. Once the text of Articles I 
and II was known, the U.S. (in coordination with its allies) 
worked on a unilateral interpretation of Articles I and II, which 
they agreed upon internally and then consulted with some of the 
other countries negotiating the NPT. Who was consulted was not 
widely known until recently. We now know that the Soviets had 
been shown the text of these interpretations and that some key 
members of the Eighteen-Nation Committee negotiating the NPT had 
been consulted. However, it is still not known which nations were 
among the "key" members. Most of the States that signed the NPT 
on July 1, 1968, did not have a chance to see the text of these 
interpretations at that time. 

The normal way to make reservations known to all future and 
current parties of an international treaty would be to deposit 
them jointly with the signature of the treaty. Thus they would be 
in the public domain. However, the U.S. government at the time 
decided to not deposit any reservation, but make its unilateral 
interpretations to the NPT public in a different way. They were 
presented during the Senate ratification hearings in 1968 and 
later printed in the hearing's transcript. Thus most initial 
signatories of the NPT got the chance to learn of the 
reservations when looking at the transcripts of the U.S. Senate 
hearings, which were held after they had already signed the 
treaty.
 
Because most, if not all, non-NATO countries did not fully 
understand what NATO nuclear sharing meant in detail, this 
procedure in effect assured that no early questions about NATO 
nuclear sharing would be raised by countries not privy to the 
limited NPT consultations among a few of the parties.
 
The unilateral U.S. interpretations of the NPT were described in 
an undated letter from then-U.S. Foreign Secretary Rusk, in 
answers to 'hypothetical' questions asked by the European NATO 
allies.3 The first three questions dealt with nuclear sharing, 
the fourth one with the future of the European Union. In this 
letter, the United States tried to legalize under the NPT what 
NATO had been doing anyway.
 
The Rusk letter argues that the NPT does not specify what is 
allowed, but only what is forbidden. In this view, everything 
that is not forbidden by the NPT is allowed. Since the treaty 
doesn't explicitly forbid the U.S. or other nuclear-weapon states 
to sell nuclear-weapons-capable carrier systems, such as 
aircraft, missiles, etc., to non-nuclear weapon states, it is 
allowed to sell them. Since the treaty doesn't explicitly talk 
about the deployment of nuclear warheads in countries that are 
non-nuclear weapon states, such deployments are considered legal 
under the NPT. And since the treaty doesn't talk explicitly about 
whether it applies or is binding in times of war, a very specific 
argument has been developed so NATO can argue that this treaty is 
not binding in times of war. 

Limits of NPT applicability?
 
The question of whether the treaty applies in times of war is a 
very crucial one to the interpretation of the legality of nuclear 
sharing.
 
Adrian Fisher, the U.S. diplomat who developed this U.S. 
negotiating concept, suggested, referring to the NPT's preamble, 
that the treaty should have the purpose of prohibiting not only 
proliferation but also war. Fisher went on to argue that, if such 
a formula was contained in the preamble, the U.S. could claim 
that, once a war had begun, the treaty had failed to fulfill its 
function of prohibiting war and thus was no longer binding on the 
United States and its allies. The suggestion was adopted and is 
now contained in the treaty text, which declares that the treaty 
is intended to "to make every effort to avert the danger of such 
a war," meaning nuclear war.5 

The Rusk letter also reflects this view. It states that the 
United States and its NATO allies will feel bound to the NPT, 
"unless and until a decision were made to go to war, at which 
time the treaty would no longer be controlling."6 The provision 
allows NATO to argue that both a policy that includes possible 
first use of nuclear weapons and nuclear sharing is legal in 
times of war. 

The question of what type of war it might take to suspend the NPT 
arose during the Senate hearings. The Johnson Administration 
replied that they were talking about "general war."7 However, 
while general war is defined in U.S. military strategy, the term 
is not used or defined by NATO. Wars between two minor powers 
were excluded from the definition of "general war" during the 
hearing. Rather the term applied to an East-West conflict during 
which NATO wouldn't be bound to the treaty.8 Such a view allowed 
NATO some flexibility to decide itself when the NPT should apply 
and when not, and when NATO might undertake a first use of 
nuclear weapons.
 
Recent developments in NATO make things even more complicated. 
NATO is currently working on a new classified military strategy 
document called MC-400/2, in which some want the Alliance to 
retain the option to assign to nuclear weapons a role in 
deterring biological and chemical weapons owners as well as those 
having the means of delivery for such weapons. The document was 
approved by NATO's North Atlantic Council in May 2000. To my 
knowledge, it does not contain a clear approval of deterring all 
types of weapons of mass destruction by nuclear weapons. However, 
it also does not contain language clearly restricting the use of 
nuclear weapons to situations, where nuclear weapon states are 
involved in the conflict. Since the exact language is unknown to 
the public it remains an open question whether, like in the case 
of NATO's "first use policy," the option for a wider role of 
nuclear weapons is kept open via the argument, "allowed is what 
is not explicitly forbidden." 

Retaining the option to use nuclear weapons against opponents 
armed with biological and/or chemical weapons would increase the 
number of occasions under which NATO might consider nuclear 
sharing and under which non-nuclear weapon states may participate 
in nuclear missions. This is a logical consequence of the 
Alliance's policy of shared risks, roles and responsibilities.
 
Nuclear sharing and the European Union
 
Nuclear sharing might become a problem for the European Union 
(EU), too. The EU is likely to face similar questions as has NATO 
when it no longer discusses joint military crisis-management, but 
begins to give detailed shape to its collective defense. At some 
point in the future the EU's members will have to decide whether 
to integrate their military forces into a collective defense 
structure or even whether they are going to become a unified 
state with unified armed forces. In both cases, the question 
remains of how current or possible future EU members will address 
the use of nuclear weapons that belong to the two European Union 
members that are nuclear powers, Britain and France.
 
European integration often seems to happen on a slippery slope 
towards integration. This might prove true again, when it comes 
to discussing Europe's nuclear future. A one-time decision to 
hand over control from the national, i.e. British and French, 
level to the European level is very unlikely. Interim steps, e.g. 
some version of nuclear sharing modeled after NATO, could be used 
to avoid a clear-cut decision on a highly complicated issue such 
as the future control over British and French nuclear weapons. 

At present the fate and the legality of EU nuclear sharing would 
appear to depend in part on the resolution of the NATO nuclear 
sharing question. One should try to ensure that the European 
Union doesn't run the risk of causing suspicions about the EU 
violating the NPT in a manner similar to NATO. 

Conclusions
 
1. The issue of the legality of NATO nuclear sharing has never 
been fully and thoroughly addressed by the parties to the NPT. 
They need to do so. Unless NATO does not deliberately end nuclear 
sharing, the parties to the NPT should develop a joint 
understanding on whether it is legal or not. 

2. NATO's non-nuclear countries should consider whether they 
would take the unilateral initiative to give up the technical 
capability to use nuclear weapons. This could be a very, very 
positive step for strengthening the NPT because it eliminates all 
ambiguity on whether these countries are in compliance with 
Article II.9 After all, these countries are parties to the NPT 
and they have an obligation not to receive nuclear weapons or 
plan for taking control of them in the future, directly or 
indirectly. The U.S. should consider whether it is not in its 
vital interest to end nuclear sharing in order to avoid any 
ambiguity on compliance with Article I of the treaty.
 
3. Both the non-nuclear as well as the nuclear State Parties to 
the NPT should consider strengthening and reiterating a formula 
from the 1985 Third Review Conference final document: that the 
treaty is controlling under "any circumstances"10 This approach 
would make it clear that the NPT is binding in times of war. This 
would end the ambiguity created by the U.S. and its NATO allies 
in regard to nuclear sharing.
 
4. Non-nuclear and nuclear members of the EU should assure the 
other members of the NPT that the EU is not going to develop at 
any time a nuclear sharing model that might violate or create 
ambiguity over their compliance with Articles I and II of the 
NPT. This would make clear its very strong commitment to 
strengthening the non-proliferation regime.
   
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to 
Outreach Coordinator: Takoma Park, Maryland, USA *May 2001* 
  
Endnotes 1 Otfried Nassauer is the Director of the Berlin 
Information-center for Transatlantic Security (BITS). This 
article is based on the transcript of a talk he gave at IEER's 
*Conference on Nuclear Disarmament, the NPT, and the Rule of Law* 
at the United Nations in New York on April 25, 2000. (The 
original transcript is on-line at .) His talk was based on 
research done for a report published in March 2000 by BITS and 
BASIC entitled "Questions of Command and Control," on-line at .
 
2 Charles E. Johnson, "U.S. Policies on Nuclear Weapons," 
Washington, December 12, 1964, partially declassified in 1991 
(Lyndon B. Johnson Library).
 
3 "Questions on the Draft Non-Proliferation Treaty Asked by U.S. 
Allies Together with Answers Given by the United States," in: 
"Non-Proliferation Treaty" Hearings before the Committee on 
Foreign Relations," U.S. Senate, Executive H 90th Congress 2nd 
Session, Washington, 1968, pp. 262-263. This letter was part of 
the ratification documents, sent by the President to the Senate 
on July 2, 1968 - one day after the signing ceremony for the 
treaty. The initial public hearings on these documents were held 
on July 10, 11,12 and 17, 1968.
 
4 Adrian Fisher, "Memorandum for Mr Bill Moyers, Subject: Working 
Group Language for the Non-Proliferation Treaty: Relationship to 
Existing and Possible Allied Nuclear Arrangements," September 30, 
1966, Original Classification Secret-Exdis, pp. 4-5.
 
5 "Non-Proliferation Treaty"-Hearings before the Committee on 
Foreign Relations," U.S. Senate, Executive H 90th Congress 2nd 
Session, Washington, 1968, p. 258.
 
6 op. cit.
 
7 "Non-Proliferation Treaty"-Hearings before the Committee on 
Foreign Relations", U.S. Senate, Executive H 90th Congress 2nd 
Session, Washington, 1968, p. 60.
 
8 "Non-Proliferation Treaty"-Hearings before the Committee on 
Foreign Relations", U.S. Senate, Executive H 90th Congress 2nd 
Session, Washington, 1969, p. 424.
 
9 For a longer description of the pros and cons of this proposal 
see Otfried Nassauer and Markus Nitschke, "Die NATO, Europa und 
das Ende der technischen nuklearen Teilhabe," BITS-Policy Note 
00.7, Berlin, December 2000, available at .
 
10 Final Declaration of the Third Review Conference of the NPT, 
reprinted in: Jozef Goldblat, "Twenty Years of Non-Proliferation 
Treaty - Implementation and Prospects," Oslo, 1990, p. 138.   


*****************************************************************
 6  DOE Quality Assurance Support Contract Awarded

energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release

RELEASE DATE: May 24, 2001                                                      [Print Friendly Version]       
 
*Says Ever Freer Trade is Not Just Desirable,
It is Essential* ---> 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has 
recently awarded a Quality Assurance Technical Support Services 
contract to Navarro Research and Engineering Inc., a woman-owned 
Hispanic small business. 

The firm, based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will provide technical 
support services to the Office of Quality Assurance, a part of 
the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). The 
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, established OCRWM 
to design, construct and manage a federal system for disposing of 
the country’s high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel 
in a facility that would be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission (NRC). 

Navarro Research and Engineering Inc. will assist OCRWM’s Office 
of Quality Assurance in implementing an effective quality 
assurance program to comply with regulatory requirements. OCRWM 
is responsible for complying with NRC-prescribed quality 
assurance requirements related to waste isolation, worker 
radiological safety, and public health. 

This contract award totals $15 million for three years. Extension 
of two one-year options could bring the total contract value to 
$25 million. Dr. Susanna Navarro-Valenti owns and is CEO of 
Navarro Research and Engineering Inc. The company provides 
engineering and technical support services throughout the Energy 
Department complex. At the Paducah, Kentucky, and the Portsmouth, 
Ohio, site offices, the company provides environmental safety and 
health oversight, environmental management, and quality 
assurance. Technical support, analysis and evaluation services 
are provided to the Oak Ridge Operations Management Program 
Office in Tennessee. 

Media Contact:  Jacqueline Johnson, 202/586-5806, Gayle Fisher, 
702/794-1347 Release No. R-01-078 
*****************************************************************
 7  OPA Press Release: Labor Department Meets First Deadline for 
Energy Workers' Compensation Program [05/25/2001]
 	 
[DOL logo] U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
 	 
Office of Public Affairs

An all-out effort by the U.S. Labor Department to meet the first 
deadline for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act has passed its first hurdle. Proposed 
regulations for the new law, which were due May 31, appear in 
today's Federal Register. 
	 
"Our goal was to issue these proposed regulations as soon as 
possible, to start the process of collecting comments and allow 
us to begin processing claims when the statute becomes effective 
on July 31, 2001," said Secretary of  Labor Elaine L. Chao. "This 
is the first step of many toward implementing avery complicated 
compensation program. As part of our commitment to helping those 
workers who were harmed in service to our country, we want to 
make surethis program is launched correctly and on time." 
	 
On May 31, the department will launch a toll-free number that 
affected workers can call with questions about the program: 
1-866-888-3322.  The toll-free number can also be used to request 
application forms. Updated information will be posted on the 
department's website at www.dol.gov. Between May 31 and July 31, 
theLabor Department will host community meetings where workers 
can ask questions about the program, and at least nine Resource 
Centers run jointly by the Laborand Energy Departments will be 
opening near Department of Energy facilitiesthroughout the 
country. 
	 
The Department of Labor, which will administer compensation and 
medical benefits, has primary responsibility under the Energy 
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, but 
three other departments share some responsibilities. 
	 
The Department of Energy's Office of Worker Advocacy will help 
workers file state workers' compensation claims and list 
facilities where coveredworkers were employed; the Department of 
Health and Human Services must establish guidelines for 
estimating radiation doses and the likelihood thatthey caused a 
worker's cancer; and the Justice Department is obligated tonotify 
uranium workers eligible for benefits under the Radiation 
Exposure Compensation Act that they may also receive compensation 
under the energy workers' program. 
	 
Passed in October 2000, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness 
Compensation Program Act pays medical expenses and lump-sum 
compensation to employees who are seriously ill because they were 
exposed to radiation, beryllium or silica while working in the 
nuclear weapons industry. Compensationwill also be available to 
survivors in certain instances, and to uranium employees who 
received benefits under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
 	 
The interim final regulation published in today's Federal 
Register establishes procedures for filing applications and 
determining compensation eligibility. Although the interim 
regulations provide 90 days for public comment, they will go into 
effect 60 days after publication so the Labor Department can 
begin processing compensation and medical benefit claims on July 
31. 
	 
U.S. Labor Department news releases are accessible on the 
Internet at www.dol.gov. The information in this release will be 
made available in alternate format upon request (large print, 
Braille,audio tape or disc) from the COAST office. Please specify 
which news release when placing your request. Call 202-693-7773 
or TTY 202693-7755. [blue 
*****************************************************************
 8  MoD nuclear dump plans for Highlands

The Scotsman Online - Scotland's best selling quality national newspaper
 	 	 	 	
John Ross                                                                                                                                                                       

CROFTERS have reacted with fury to plans by the Ministry of 
Defence to use their area as a dump for radioactive material from 
decommissioned submarines. 

Mellon Charles, near Aultbea, in Wester Ross, which has a 
population of about 300, has been singled out in a MoD report on 
how to deal with waste from the decommissioned vessels. 

Politicians and environmentalists last night condemned the 
development, saying it smacked of civil servants in Whitehall 
choosing the Ross-shire site because of its distance from London. 

The SNP said the revelation was "extremely worrying". It claimed 
that the Highlands could be used as a nuclear dumping ground. 

But Labour and the MoD said nothing had yet been decided and a 
consultation exercise on the issue is still running. 

Another eight possible sites for land storage have been earmarked 
by consultants. But these have been kept secret and were removed 
from the report before it was made public. 

Fergus Ewing, a SNP MSP, said: ‘‘What is it about Aultbea, one of 
the most beautiful parts of Scotland, that makes it all right to 
tell the world this is a possible site, but it is not okay to 
tell the world about other possible sites? Is it because it is a 
remote part of Scotland and people who live there are less 
important than others in the undisclosed zones?" 

The UK has 27 nuclear-powered submarines, 16 of which are still 
in service. Nine have been de-fuelled and are being stored afloat 
- six at Rosyth and three at Devonport in Plymouth. The Renown, 
is being de-fuelled at Rosyth and HMS Valiant is at Devonport 
waiting to be de-fuelled. 

When submarines are taken out of service, the fuel is removed and 
taken to Sellafield for storage. Other equipment is then removed 
and the vessel, including the reactor compartment - the size of 
two double-decker buses and weighing about 750 tonnes - is 
prepared for long-term storage. 

By 2012, there will be insufficient room at the dockyards to 
store the vessels afloat. The entire fleet will be ready for 
decommissioning by 2040. 

The MoD had planned to dispose of the submarines at sea. But this 
practice has now been banned following environmental concerns 
such as the proposed dumping of the Brent Spar oil rig. 

It had been hoped to store the vessels afloat for 30 years until 
a national repository for nuclear waste was built. But plans for 
a facility at Sellafield were rejected and it is not expected 
until 2050. Interim arrangements are needed. 

A study called Project Isolus - the Interim Storage of Laid-up 
Nuclear Submarines - is being carried out by experts from 
Lancaster University. The report suggests land storage is viable 
at Rosyth or Devonport, as well as Barrow-in Furness in Cumbria 
and other commercial yards. 

But it also identified MoD sites in remote places. It says: ‘‘An 
example is Mellon Charles (Aultbea) which was identified in 
previous studies as being suitable. It is in a remote part of 
Scotland (Loch Ewe) in a sheltered location and has access from 
the beach-jetty." 

But it recognises that such sites could face opposition because 
of a perceived ‘out of sight out of mind’ attitude: "Whilst they 
have the advantage of being MoD-owned they could come under 
pressure from the public and pressure groups. NIMBY pressure 
could therefore be considerable." 

Kevin Dunion, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, said the 
censored document raises more questions and fears than answers: 
‘‘It seems clear the only justification for considering a site at 
Loch Ewe is that is seen by official mandarins to be a long way 
from anywhere and therefore might give rise to fewer risks of 
public reaction." 

He said there are serious problems associated with the 
decommissioning - the cutting of the radioactive core has not 
been tried elsewhere, workers will be exposed to risk and 
"temporary" storage sites could last two generations. 

‘‘Siting next to Rosyth has caused fears that west Fife could 
become the graveyard for nuclear submarines; ferrying the scrap 
to remote sites gives outrage to those communities who feel they 
are being unjustly dumped on because of their remoteness." 

David Stewart, a Highland Labour MP, said other sites had not 
been named in the public report because of commercial 
confidentiality. ‘‘We need long-term storage of these submarines 
and everyone, including the environmental lobby agrees that dry 
land storage is the best option. Absolutely nothing has been 
decided." 

	 	 		 						 						
*****************************************************************
 9  UK narrows site for storing nuclear sub remains

IT HAS emerged that Rosyth is among the final three likely land 
sites identified for storing nuclear reactor compartments of 
decommissioned Royal Navy submarines.

 The radioactive material would be encased in concrete and kept 
on or near the surface, and could be stored there for up to 50 
years.

 A Ministry of Defence project known as Isolus - intermediate 
storage of laid-up submarines - has identified Rosyth, in Fife, 
Devonport, and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria as the most likely 
potential repositories.

 An election campaign claim by the SNP yesterday that a second 
Scottish site at Aultbea near Loch Ewe has been chosen as "a 
nuclear dump in the Highlands" is untrue.

 The Isolus study, being carried out on the Ministry's behalf by 
a team from Lancaster University, originally identified the 
remote Inverness-shire location as a possibility. 

But it is understood Aultbea was rejected partially because its 
selection would trigger an environmental outcry north of the 
border and create problems for the Scottish Executive and 
partially because the rock stratum at the site was considered to 
be unstable in the event of an earthquake or a major explosion.

 The MoD remit for the Lancaster team is to "define, develop and 
procure a safe and publicly acceptable method for the interim 
storage of the radioactive material from de-commissioned 
submarines".

 The new plan, first proposed by BAe Systems, Britain's biggest 
defence contractor, is to remove the irradiated compartments from 
the seven nuclear submarines already taken out of service and 
berthed at Rosyth, and from four others tied up at Devonport.

 The hulls would then be cut up for scrap.

 The reactor compartments would be encased in concrete and stored 
at specially-prepared secure facilities on or near the surface. 
The projected storage time would be up to 50 years or until such 
time as a deep-storage underground bunker becomes available.

 A previous scheme to dump the compartments in an underground 
chamber near the Sellafield nuclear power complex in Cumbria was 
overturned at a public inquiry.

 A House of Lords committee estimated in 1999 that by 2060, there 
would be 2500 cubic metres of high-level waste from nuclear power 
stations, 300,000 cubic metres of intermediate level waste from 
submarines and research reactors and two million cubic metres of 
low-level medical and other waste.

 It would take the capacity of a deep coalmine to contain it. The 
Finns and Swedes already operate underground sites, and the 
United States is burrowing into a mountain in New Mexico to 
create one.

 The highly radioactive reactors themselves and fuel rods which 
drove them while the submarines were in service were removed as 
each boat was decommissioned, leaving only the metal shell, which 
is far less irradiated, and core of the compartment which housed 
them. Lang Banks, spokesman for Friends of the Earth Scotland, 
said: "We are opposed to trying to hide this waste deep 
underground, where it can affect water supplies and leach out 
into the environment for centuries.

 "Dry storage above ground is infinitely preferable if it can be 
done safely.

 "The real problem is that no one anywhere in the world thought 
through the nuclearisation process.

 "Militarily, they were revolutionary weapons. Now, when scores 
have reached the end of their operational lifespans in the UK, 
America, and Russia, acceptable disposal is so far insoluble."

 The Royal Navy currently operates 12 nuclear-powered 
hunter-killer submarines of the Swiftsure and Trafalgar classes 
and four Vanguard-class Trident missile boats.

 There are plans for a new class of advanced Astute-class attack 
boats to replace the oldest members of the force.

 Because of problems with cracks in the reactor coolant pipes of 
the existing attack fleet, only two boats, Triumph and Tireless, 
are operational while the others undergo safety checks.

 The Nationalist claim over Aultbea, made by Angus MacNeil, the 
SNP's prospective Westminster candidate for Inverness East, Nairn 
and Lochaber, was ridiculed last night by the Labour Party in 
Scotland, which described it as "unfounded scaremongering."

 *- May 25th*
 
*****************************************************************
 10  Some children ineligible for nuclear fatality benefits

  [Las Vegas Review-Journal] 
  
Friday, May 25, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

WASHINGTON -- Children of nuclear weapons workers are 
disqualified from $150,000 in compensation if they turned 18 
before the parent died of exposure to radiation and other 
dangerous materials they worked with during the Cold War era. 

The children, including those of former Nevada Test Site workers, 
lose eligibility even if they were underage at the time the 
parent got sick. The restriction is explained in regulations the 
Labor Department is releasing today. 

"It's a real kick in the teeth to families that have suffered," 
said Ken Silver, a public health advocate in New Mexico. 

Stuart Roy, a Labor Department spokesman, said part of the 
regulation followed the instructions of Congress. "Qualified 
survivors were spelled out in the law," he said. 

Cancer, beryllium disease and silicosis -- the diseases for which 
the government will compensate exposed workers -- all can be slow 
killers. 

"The sons and daughters were still affected," even if they were 
adults at the time the parent died, said Sam Ray of Lucasville, 
Ohio, who lost his larynx to cancer and now helps fellow workers 
deal with medical issues. 

About 600,000 people worked in nuclear weapons manufacturing and 
testing in 37 states during the Cold War. The Nevada Test Site, 
65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was the primary site for nuclear 
testing from 1951 until 1992. 

The Labor Department, which will handle the paperwork for 
benefits, said it initially expects to get about 43,000 
applications a year from sick workers and 28,000 applications a 
year from the families of those who died. 

The program offers $150,000 lump-sum payments and lifetime 
medical care to weapons plant workers exposed to health-robbing 
levels of radiation, silica or beryllium while working in the 
nuclear weapons complex. 

Most of the survivor payments are expected to go to widows and 
widowers. 

Congress enacted the program after hearing testimony about 
workers breathing dense clouds of silica dust with no breathing 
protection, empty radiation-measuring badges pinned to those 
working with uranium and a chronic inattention to safety measures 
during the Cold War. 

The Labor Department is opening field offices next month to help 
sick workers and the heirs of deceased workers file claims under 
the new compensation program, which is supposed to begin July 31.
  
This story is located at: 
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/May-25-Fri-2001/news/16179066.html
*****************************************************************
 11  FFTF solicits proposals for its use
 
This story was published Fri, May 25, 2001
 By Annette Cary Herald staff writer 

The Department of Energy has officially asked any group or 
business interested in using Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility to 
submit details, including proposed financial arrangements.
 
The notice, inserted in Commerce Business Daily on Wednesday, 
gives companies or other groups 30 days to respond.
 
"(Those) on the front line in the development of cancer 
treatments now have an opportunity to speak up about their 
specific need for the isotopes," said Amy Evans of Citizens for 
Medical Isotopes.
 
Supporters of restarting the research reactor want it used to 
create isotopes for use in new medicines to treat cancer and 
complications of heart procedures. FFTF also could be used for 
nuclear power and other research and to make isotopes to power 
deep space missions for the National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration.
 
In 1999, when DOE was considering whether to do an environmental 
study of a restart, general expressions of interest in the 
reactor were gathered. DOE heard from international 
organizations, government agencies, industry, professional 
societies, universities and operating contractors.
 
Now, DOE is asking for more specific declarations of interest, 
although it emphasized the notice is not a solicitation for 
proposals nor an invitation for bids.
 
The Clinton administration in January ordered the dormant reactor 
permanently shut down, in part because it found insufficient 
interest in using the reactor after an environmental study. 
Supporters questioned that decision, saying the study did not ask 
for proposals to use the reactor. The Bush administration is 
reconsidering that decision and whether partnerships or business 
deals could be created to reduce government costs for operating 
FFTF.
 
In the Commerce Business Daily notice, DOE requested information 
from organizations about what irradiation or isotope capabilities 
they would use, an estimate of financial contributions, a 
statement of technical and financial capabilities of the 
organization and information on what sort of business arrangement 
would be proposed.
 
"A proposed funding profile or other description of the 
interested party's participation will be an important 
consideration in DOE's review of expressions of interest," the 
notice said. 

Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 12  Aerial survey sparks rift 

The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP
 
Friday, May 25, 2001
[Unknown dangers at IAAP]   

By Dennis J. Carroll 
The Hawk Eye 

 Iowa wants flyover, Army says it is unnecessary. 

Signaling a growing breach between the Army and the state of Iowa 
over radioactive cleanup at the Middletown munitions plant, the 
commander of the plant said Thursday that state regulators have 
no authority to insist on a flyover of the sprawling compound. 

Col. Bruce Elliott, in remarks to the citizens' panel that 
monitors the Superfund cleanup at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, 
said a flyover of the facility, to detect possible radiation 
sources, is not warranted and that the Iowa Department of Public 
Health is out of line pushing for one. 

It also was learned Thursday that Gov. Tom Vilsack has joined 
Iowa's U.S. senators, Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Charles 
Grassley, in calling on the Army to conduct an airborne survey of 
the plant grounds with high-tech radiation sensing and mapping 
equipment. 

Rep. Rick Larkin, D-Fort Madison, whose legislative district 
includes Middletown and the plant, said Thursday that he, too, 
supports the proposed flyover. 

A Vilsack spokesman could not be reached for comment late 
Thursday. The low-flying plane or helicopter would be looking for 
possible radioactive contamination left over from nuclear weapons 
operations of the Atomic Energy Commission 

The AEC assembled, test-fired and, in later years, disassembled 
nuclear weapons and their components from the late 1940s to the 
mid-1970s. Throwing Grassley's words back at him, Elliott said it 
is not "idiotic -- in other words a no-brainer" for the Army to 
refuse such a flyover. 

"It's not that simple," Elliott said. 

Elliott told a meeting of the plant's Superfund Restoration 
Advisory Board that both the Army and the Environmental 
Protection Agency believe that priority should continue to be 
given to the cleanup of heavy metals, explosives and other 
chemical pollutants -- products of decades of weapons 
manufacturing. 

EPA's project manager Scott Marquess, who attends most RAB 
meetings, was not at Thursday's meeting and could not be reached 
for comment. 

The flyover sought by the Health Department's radiological 
bureau, headed by Don Flater, would not be helpful in detecting 
nonradioactive metals and chemicals, Elliott said. 

However, the commander said "the Army shares everyone's desire 
for a thorough review of (AEC) activities at the plant," but that 
a flyover is not the way to go about it. A flyover "is not 
warranted ... and is premature," Elliott said. He said two Army 
entities, including the Army Corps of Engineers, already have 
begun looking for possible radioactive contamination. 

Elliott also said the Health Department has no jurisdiction over 
the environmental cleanup of the plant, although it does control 
the radiological license and inspects radiological devices used 
at the plant. 

In an interview after the meeting, Elliott said he and Army 
higher-ups have sent letters to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller 
stating that opinion. Elliott said the plant cleanup is a 
conducted under a federal agreement between the EPA and the Army, 
and that neither the Department of Energy nor Iowa regulators are 
part of that agreement. 

State regulators may offer their advice, but have no role in the 
decision-making, Elliott said. 

Flater disagreed. 

He cited an executive order signed by Vilsack in December 1999 in 
which the Army relinquished sole jurisdiction over the plant. 

"That's what brought us in," Flater said, "because sole federal 
jurisdiction is what it used to be, but now it's concurrent 
jurisdiction. So there's got to be some questions answered. We 
still believe that, the way our law is written, we have 
responsibility in (the environmental cleanup) ... (Elliott) now 
has a facility that is responsible to the state of Iowa, not just 
to the federal government." 

Larkin said he at first believed the cleanup was not Iowa's 
problem. "But we got involved in it and, now that we are, we 
should be allowed to continue because there are a lot of 
questions that have to be answered," he said. 

Elliott's position also was supported by Sharon Cotner of the 
Army Corps of Engineer's office in St. Louis, which is conducting 
a radiological survey of several areas on the plant -- including 
two firing sites where the AEC test-fired components of nuclear 
weapons using depleted uranium. 

The sites were thought to have been cleaned up by the AEC, but 
recently numerous shards and fragments of depleted uranium were 
found at Firing Site 12. 

Cotner said one chunk there weighed about 35 pounds. 

Cotner said her surveyors also found the soil around both firing 
sites to be contaminated with radioactive metal, but that there 
is no danger to the public because the material is covered by 
soil and the areas are extremely restricted by the Army. 

"We don't see a real problem here," Cotner said, noting that 
initial surveys found no evidence of depleted uranium in the 
groundwater, although further testing may be done. 

She also said depleted uranium gives off very low levels of 
radiation and that is not dangerous unless inhaled or ingested 
into the body. 

Cotner also said her team surveyed radiation levels around 
Casey's convenience store on U.S. 34 just outside the plant's 
fences and found only normal background radiation levels. 

She said the Corps is preparing a preliminary assessment of the 
radiological contamination at the plant, which should be ready in 
August. 

She said that document could help garner funds for further 
surveys and eventual cleanup. 

As for flyovers, Cotner said, they often show false positives and 
could cost well more than the $175,000 to $300,000 Flater's 
office estimated. 

The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 
Front Desk ' ' '| ' ' '319-754-6824 FAX ' ' '| ' ' ' 
1-800-397-1708 Outside Burlington [this is a line and that's all 
that it is] ©' 2000 The Hawk Eye, all rights reserved. ' ' 
    
*****************************************************************

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
*****************************************************************