***************************************************************** 12/25/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.305 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Russia to supply uranium for Dutch nuclear research centre 2 The Not-So-Pristine Wilderness 3 NY Security Director Assures Public on Indian Point 4 Shattuck cited in EPA grievance 5 Nuclear Energy Institute seeks to challenge Nevada's Yucca suit 6 Govt to set up centers for radiation treatment 7 Report: Yucca is behind schedule 8 KC company fights to work with Indian nuclear power company 9 Flawed waste-storage site 10 Nuclear Regulatory Official Ronald A. Brightsen (dead) 11 Groups appeal Yankee sale decision to Vermont Supreme Court 12 The NRC: What, me worry | The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 13 POINT OF VIEW: Nuclear plant could have saved remote Miyama 14 British Energy says lack of subsidies hasn't affected decision on reactors 15 NRC criticized on monitoring of plants' financial requirements 16 Nuclear Energy Institute seeks to challenge Nevada's Yucca suit 17 Well-preserved atoms provide next generation with healthy, decent life 18 Power Firm Touts Nevada Site For Spent Nuclear Fuel 19 Franco Dino Rasetti, a Nuclear Pioneer, Is Dead at 100 20 Various factors caused welding crack at Hamaoka nuclear plant 21 Anti-Sellafield campaign 'ignorant NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 EXCLUSIVE: RESEARCH THAT MAY PROVE LINK BETWEEN CANCERS AND DEPLETED URANIUM; SI 2 Pasko sent back to prison 3 editorial: Foot dragging on (Rocky Flats) disposal 4 Cleanup finished at Flats building 5 Russian Reporter Sentenced for Treason 6 Hanford 'burping' tank is back 7 FAS Welcomes Report on Bunker-Busters 8 Uranium found at bin Laden base 9 Documentary details how Israel got the bomb 10 Pakistan military warns of nuclear conflict with India 11 DOE accidently releases 60 pages of restricted information 12 Reagan Presidential Materials To Be Released, Jan. 3 13 Uranium and cyanide found in drums at bin Laden base 14 David Broder: DOE's Abraham an arms control Santa Claus? 15 Saved baby teeth may hold clues about nuclear fallout 16 Vladivostok News :: Pasko gets 4 years in treason verdict ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Russia to supply uranium for Dutch nuclear research centre The Times of India 12/25 MOSCOW: Russia will supply up to 600 kg of enriched uranium for a nuclear research centre in Petten, western Netherlands, the Interfax news agency reported late Monday. The uranium, enriched to 93 per cent in the U-235 isotope, would be used to produce fuel for the Petten reactor, according to a draft accord signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Spent fuel could then be processed in Russia, the European Union, or other countries by mutual consent, according to the accord which would then be up for approval by the European Atomic Energy Community group. ( AFP ) Copyright © 2001 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. | ***************************************************************** 2 The Not-So-Pristine Wilderness by Matt Bivens WASHINGTON--Pity the behemoth known as "the Department of Energy." It's really, of course, the Department of Making Nuclear Weapons--and these days, the Department of Scratching Its Head Trying to Figure Out How to Pay for Tidying Up Afterwards. From Tennessee and South Carolina to Idaho and Washington State, the department is pondering what's collectively the most expensive environmental clean-up in world history. How to afford it all? In Rocky Flats, Colorado, sixteen miles outside of Denver, the department manufactured plutonium "pits" for nearly fifty years--modest-looking spheres that would fit in the palm of one's hand, and which constitute the explosive core of nuclear weapons. A half-century of often rushed work has spread plutonium across the site. The plan now is to scoop up all of the radioactive soil and contain it somehow--before time and run-off carry it into the local water supply and food chain. But how much scooping is enough? One good practice the department has followed calls for cleaning sites sufficiently to satisfy computer models that look at future generations who might farm the land--not because we'd like them to farm there, but because we don't want our grandchildren to be accidentally poisoned. Plutonium will be around for 24,000 years, and institutional memories have been known to fail in far shorter time-periods. The department, however, has been flirting with a new idea: Declare Rocky Flats a wildlife preserve--an idea that has support all on its own in the rapidly developing Denver environs--and then use that as the excuse to clean things up to satisfy computer models suggesting future generations will be, say, wildlife preserve workers. Since park rangers will only be briefly on the land--not living on it and farming it--this theoretical approach could allow more plutonium to be left behind. According to Arjun Makhijani, director of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, there has even been talk that a little radiation makes for a better nature preserve--when ordinary people fear to visit, animals are king. This Enron-esque approach to clean-up accounting has scientists and activists like Makhijani deeply concerned. "At Johnston Atoll in the Pacific [the site of nuclear weapons tests], the soil was cleaned to a level of seventeen picocuries per gram. The initial [DOE] proposal for Rocky Flats was [to leave behind radiation levels] almost forty times as high," Makhijani told a thinly attended press conference in Washington, DC, this week. In the face of public opposition, the department has been reviewing the idea of the wildlife preserve for three-antlered deer. It should detail its latest in a long line of clean-up proposals early next year. Stay tuned. thenation.com Webmanager | Subscribe | Subscription Help | Privacy © 2001 The Nation Company, L.P. Permissions | Letters to the Editor ***************************************************************** 3 NY Security Director Assures Public on Indian Point Nuclear Energy Institute December 21, 2001 James Kallstrom, director of the New York State Office of Public Security, describes the Indian Point nuclear power station as an extremely safe place. At a news conference held last week at Indian Point, which is a major clean-air electricity source in downstate New York, Kallstrom announced that an FBI assessment found security at the facility to be robust. Also, long-term security enhancements at the power plant have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state's Office of Public Security. "We have worked diligently with federal and state counter-terrorism experts to complete a top-to-bottom security assessment at Indian Point. At the onset of the review, based on my experience with the FBI, I believed that security at the plant was robust, and our findings do not suggest otherwise," said Kallstrom, who formerly headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in New York. "The bottom line is, local residents should rest easy knowing that the appropriate measures are in place to safeguard their health and well being," Kallstrom said. The report includes recommendations to further strengthen security at the site, including FBI training/testing of the security force and better coordination of emergency response plans among law enforcement agencies. Copyright © 2001 Nuclear Energy Institute. ***************************************************************** 4 Shattuck cited in EPA grievance Denver Post.com Watchdog blames transfer on Whitman's ties By [msoraghan@denverpost.com] Denver Post Washington Bureau --> Tuesday, December 25, 2001 - WASHINGTON - The watchdog monitoring Denver's Shattuck Superfund cleanup is charging that EPA Administrator Christie Whitman is dissolving his office because of her financial ties to the owners of the radioactive waste site. A formal grievance recently filed on behalf of EPA national ombudsman Robert Martin alleges that Whitman is transferring him so that he can't interfere in the pending court settlement between the EPA and Shattuck's corporate parent, Citigroup Inc. Whitman's husband has stock in Citigroup and works for a company backed by the financial giant. Environmental Protection Agency officials could not be reached for comment Monday, but spokespeople have defended Whitman in the past by saying she has not been involved in decisions on the Shattuck case. She has 30 days to respond to the grievance. Martin's investigation into the Shattuck case forced the EPA to reverse its decision to leave radioactive waste on-site in the residential neighborhood of Overland Park. It is one of several cases in which Martin's investigations have embarrassed the agency. The corporate owners of the site, which have changed over the years, paid $26 million for the first cleanup that left the waste on-site. Citigroup acquired the site several years ago when it bought Salomon Smith Barney. In the Dec. 12 settlement, called a consent decree, Citigroup agreed to pay $7 million of the the estimated $35 million it will take to remove the contaminated dirt. Martin's grievance, alleging that the cost could be much higher, says the settlement saves the company $30 million to $100 million, which instead will have to be picked up by taxpayers. The settlement requires approval by a federal judge after a 30-day public comment period. The grievance says that a previous ombudsman investigation in a Florida case forced a similar settlement to be withdrawn. "I believe you did not want a situation like this to occur with the Shattuck consent decree," states the grievance, drafted by Martin's investigator, Hugh Kaufman. Shortly before the settlement was announced, Whitman said she was transferring Martin and the ombudsman's office to the agency's inspector general. Whitman said the move would give Martin the independence that he and his supporters have sought for some time. But Martin immediately denounced the move as a ruse, because he would not have control over his budget or staff. Kaufman has accused the inspector general's office of interfering in ombudsman cases in the past. Martin's grievance, filed by Kaufman on Martin's behalf, is part of a flurry of legal actions attacking Whitman's transfer plan. Kaufman has filed his own grievance, and a Florida activist sued to block Martin's transfer. The grievance is also the first formal allegation that Whitman's financial ties to Shattuck, first reported by The Denver Post in March, are motivating her decisions. "I believe the motive for your dissolution of the National Ombudsman function of the EPA was to hinder and obstruct the ability of National Ombudsman Martin to carry out his ongoing investigation" into Shattuck, Kaufman wrote, adding that Whitman has not formally recused herself from the Shattuck case. Whitman's husband, John, worked for Citigroup from 1972 to 1987 and is now a managing partner of Sycamore Ventures, a firm spun off from and backed by Citigroup. He still has as much as $250,000 in stock in the company, according to financial disclosure records. Last year, John Whitman got a bonus of unspecified size from Citigroup for past work. Also, Citigroup was one of the top campaign contributors to President Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 election. All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 5 Nuclear Energy Institute seeks to challenge Nevada's Yucca suit [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Tuesday, December 25, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Agency's lawyers submit motion asking permission to intervene DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Energy Institute has filed a motion in federal court seeking to challenge Nevada's lawsuit against site guidelines for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The agency's lawyers submitted a motion on Friday asking permission to formally intervene in the case. The motion was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "NEI has a clear interest in the instant proceeding," the organization said in its filing, since used nuclear fuel from power plants operated by its members would be stored in a repository. NEI members pay about $700 million per year into a fund to cover costs of repository studies. NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said the organization wants to help the Energy Department defend the Yucca Mountain guidelines, which became final on Dec. 14. The guidelines will be used by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to determine whether to recommend nuclear waste burial at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The state of Nevada filed its lawsuit on Dec. 17 against Abraham and the Energy Department, seeking to have the site guidelines declared invalid. The lawsuit charges the new guidelines are not what Congress intended when it passed a 1982 nuclear waste disposal law. The government, supported by the nuclear power industry, says the guidelines were changed to reflect developments in science and the law in the intervening years. The motion said Nevada does not oppose the nuclear industry entering the case. Singer said a lawyer from the Justice Department, which is defending the Energy Department, told the organization on Friday the government also supports its involvement. "They have a right to get involved if the court decides they have standing," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-25-Tue-2001/news/17742387.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-25-Tue-2001/news/17742387.html] ***************************************************************** 6 Govt to set up centers for radiation treatment Daily Yomiuri On-Line Yomiuri Shimbun The government is planning to establish six emergency medical facilities to enable people exposed to high levels of radiation in the event of a nuclear accident to receive prompt, competent medical attention. The government will elaborate on its decision when it issues a basic antidisaster plan by the end of the year, and plans to include the establishment of the medical facilities in its budget. When an accident occurred at JCO Co.'s nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, in September 1999, the current system for providing first-aid treatment to victims of such accidents was found lacking. In the accident, two people were killed and more than 600 others were exposed to radiation. A drastic reexamination of the system to provide treatment for victims of radiation exposure, based on lessons learned from the Tokaimura accident, will be nearly completed when the revision is issued. It is essential for medical staff to be knowledgeable about related disorders when treating victims of exposure to high levels of radiation. It is necessary to provide specially trained doctors and medical experts to treat patients thus exposed because an accurate determination of the amount of exposure is vital when treating such patients. The National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, an affiliate of the Education, Science and Technology Ministry, is currently the nation's only emergency medical facility that specializes in treating radiation victims. However, it reportedly took about five hours for workers exposed to radiation at the Tokaimura plant to be sent to the institute, located in adjoining Chiba Prefecture. Officials of municipal governments that have nuclear plants have voiced their anxiety about possible accidents, asking what would be done if people were exposed to radiation in Hokkaido or Kyushu. After the nuclear accident at the Tokaimura plant, the Nuclear Safety Commission drastically reviewed its system for giving first-aid treatment to radiation victims and proposed in June setting up medical facilities specialized in treating such patients in several regions. It is not easy to keep doctors up-to-date on techniques for treating radiation patients since serious nuclear accidents rarely occur, but many feel this is the government's responsibility. Copyright 2001 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 7 Report: Yucca is behind schedule Las Vegas SUN December 24, 2001 Repository won't be complete until 2015 By Mary Manning < [manning@lasvegassun.com] > The Energy Department's drive to open a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 is partly fueled by a desire to reduce its liability to power producers, a federal audit says. But work on a repository, which has not been approved yet, is years behind, and it likely would not open until 2015, a General Accounting Office report says. Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has been plagued with delays for years, but the problems have not been properly reported -- a violation of the Energy Department's own rules, the GAO report said. The department's liability comes from 18 lawsuits filed by nuclear utilities unhappy that it failed to take the wastes at power plants by 1998, the original deadline for the federal government to do so. The nuclear industry is seeking at least $50 billion in damages. Energy officials estimate it could pay $2 billion to $3 billion. "The actual damages could be higher or lower, depending on when DOE begins accepting spent nuclear fuel," the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, said. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., requested the GAO probe. The Energy Department has spent $8 billion studying Yucca since 1982. The total cost is estimated at $56 billion, but Bechtel SAIC, the primary contractor, said it could reach $63 billion, the report says. Only $11 billion remains in a fund paid by utility-user fees to build a repository, the report said. The rest will have to be paid by taxpayers. The final GAO report, released Friday, recommends the Energy Department indefinitely postpone recommending Yucca as the site for a high-level nuclear waste dump. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said recently there is no deadline for a recommendation to President Bush, however, he is widely expected to do so this winter. The report also reveals for the first time that Yucca managers failed since 1997 to either Abraham or former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson of delays and higher costs expected to license and build a repository, as required by department rules. The first indication since March 1997 of any delay to open a repository came in a September report by Bechtel SAIC. The GAO report said it would be January 2006 before the department could send a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a Yucca repository. The department has not accepted Bechtel's new projection, the GAO said. But auditors agreed with Bechtel's new estimate. So much scientific information is missing that the department probably could not submit a license request, the GAO report said. An application must be filed 90 days after the president and Congress recommend the site. "On the basis of the information we reviewed, DOE is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010 and currently does not have a reliable estimate of when, and at what cost, such a repository can be opened," the report said. The repository opening could be delayed until 2015, it said. The Energy Department, meanwhile, has asked the National Academy of Sciences to study the feasibility of storing up to 77,000 tons of nuclear waste on top of Yucca until the agency can receive approval for a repository, the report said. The academy's report is expected next winter. The department audit responded in general to the issues raised by the GAO. Energy Undersecretary Robert Card wrote that delaying the site recommendation will delay opening a repository, and he cited concerns from 129 communities where waste is stored. "Yet the report gives no weight to the interest of the communities where this waste is located in having a decision on a site for a repository made promptly, one way or the other, as soon as it can be made responsibly," Card wrote. Card said the site recommendation does not include a final repository design, which would include results of ongoing studies. "The site itself is not licensed; instead its features may affect design of the facility which is licensed," he said. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 KC company fights to work with Indian nuclear power company By ERIC PALMER - The Kansas City Star Date: 12/24/01 22:15 President Bush in September said India was our friend and ally in the fight on terrorism. For that friend he lifted trade sanctions on exports there and to Pakistan. It was good news to executives at Brunson Instrument Co. in Kansas City who have been wrestling with the Commerce Department over an order to sell its high-precision but low-tech optical leveling instruments to an Indian nuclear power company. They are finding, however, that even the president's endorsement of trade may not be enough when you get caught up in the whirlwind of international geopolitics. "We are interested in following the government's guidelines, but we can't tell what those guidelines are," said Deighton Brunson, president of the small manufacturing firm. "Our hopes got raised when the president declared he was lifting sanctions." The $185,000 order has become even more important as the recession has deepened and many of the company's regular clients, such as Boeing, cut back on business, Brunson said. "We don't want to give this order up," Brunson said. "We are not exactly IBM." A spokesman for the Commerce Department said the agency was prevented from speaking about specific license cases. He said no one was available to speak about general policy. Brunson has gotten caught up in one of the gritty, and controversial, areas of international trade: export sanctions. For some years now, administrations have been imposing sanctions on countries whose politics or policies are not to their liking. U.S. officials don't want the United States providing products that might be used in the proliferation of nuclear weapons, for example. Sanctions are considered onerous among industries that export. Critics claim that American business is more deeply affected than the countries being sanctioned because banned countries can often get the same equipment from America's competitors. According to estimates, sanctions cost American businesses roughly $20 billion a year. "Clearly nuclear proliferation is a serious problem and needs to be addressed, but the issue for the business community is that sanctions are unilateral," said Kimberly Elliott, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington. "How can it be effective if India can go someplace else and get it? It doesn't affect India, and the company has lost a sale." Export sanctions used to apply to just a small number of countries, such as Cuba, Libya and Iran. In the past five years, restrictions of some kind have been placed on 50 countries, including China, Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In addition, about 5,000 specific entities or individuals are banned. Not only does the Commerce Department review licenses but sometimes, as in the Brunson case, agencies such as the Departments of Defense, State and Energy get involved. India and Pakistan were added to the list of sanctioned countries after they conducted nuclear tests in 1998. It was a blow to U.S. business. The United States is the leading source of India's commercial technology and the country is considered a huge potential market as it grows. The Bureau of Export Administration estimates that sanctions on India cost U.S. businesses $150 million in their first year. After the Sept. 11 attacks, government agencies responsible for international oversight are going to be more cautious, said Chris Redmond, who works in international law at Husch &Eppenberger. "The U.S. has issues," Redmond said. "We have seen criticism that agencies were not aware of what was going on before the attacks occurred. Now I think everyone is going to be more careful, analyze everything more thoroughly. There will be some economic impact on individuals and companies, but it will be a more rational, coordinated approach." Brunson's situation began a year ago, when it got an order for some of its optical leveling devices from Nuclear Power Corp. in India. When Brunson started the deal, it recognized it might be a long shot to get the export licenses. Brunson's products were among general equipment that might be sold to India and a subsidiary of Brunson's had sold to the nuclear power company before. But from 1998 until September 2001, the company was listed as one in which there would be a "presumption of denial" for a license, according to Commerce Department information. Still, an order of $200,000 would make up nearly a third of the company's international business for a year. Because its products have nothing to do with generating nuclear power directly, Brunson executives thought they had a chance to get approval. It was a long shot worth taking. There have been lots of publicized cases of companies ignoring export regulations and selling to countries without licenses. "You can drive a car without a license and not get caught," said Michael Grafton, Brunson's international sales manager. But Brunson does a substantial amount of international business, and it always plays by the rules, Brunson executives said. In their initial round with the Commerce Department, Brunson executives were told it would be an uphill battle. That was in August. But in September everything changed. Following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, President Bush began making deals with countries whose support was needed to act against terrorists. With the sanctions lifted, Brunson officials felt the regulations favored their sale, and they let officials at the Commerce Department know that. They also offered to take the equipment to Washington and show officials that it was industrial measuring equipment, not something more ominous. Further, they explained, India could get the same equipment from other suppliers in England and Japan, although Brunson was the only company making everything the power company wanted. Still, Commerce officials denied the license. Brunson is now appealing the decision. "Something is not working right here," said Bill Primosch, director of international business policy at the National Association of Manufacturers in Washington. "The administration needs to get its act together and have its administration conform with its policy." Executives at Brunson refuse to give up on the order. They have asked Missouri Sen. Kit Bond's office for help and intend to take the appeal process to the end. Deighton Brunson explains: "Part of the problem is this is more important to us than anyone else." To reach Eric Palmer, regional business editor, call (816) 234-4335 or send e-mail to epalmer@kcstar.com. All content © 2001 The Kansas City Star ***************************************************************** 9 Flawed waste-storage site [newsobserver.com, Raleigh, NC] TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2001 [newspaper_services] It's astonishing that the Dec. 12 Associated Press article "Nevada wants to halt decision on waste site" implied that it is only Nevada officials who oppose attempts to bury high-level nuclear waste at that state's Yucca Mountain. A December report by the General Accounting Office called the Department of Energy's 13-year effort to license Yucca a "failed scientific process" that could take 15 more years before the nuclear industry's irradiated fuel could be buried there (if ever). With $7 billion already spent, the Energy Department estimates another $50 billion will be needed to license the dump. Due to increasing understanding about water infiltration and seismic activity that could cause radiation to escape into the environment, it now seems that only a political fix could override the science and open Yucca for waste that's deadly for 10,000 years. Now, with waste storage at every nuclear plant possibly becoming permanent, risks must be minimized to the greatest extent possible, especially because terrorists have repeatedly threatened to attack U.S. plants. In our area, the Shearon Harris plant's waste pools already contain 10 times the radioactivity released by Chernobyl, so shipping in more waste creates a larger potential target, more radioactivity that could be released by attack or accident, and makes unnecessary targets of the slow-moving trains carrying the waste. I urge all decision-makers to join elected officials from three counties calling on CP, the plant's owner, to participate in a cooperative regional discussion about the feasible measures that would greatly reduce the potential targeting of Harris, and that could eliminate the release of radiation if an attack should occur. Jim Warren Director, NC WARN Durham © Copyright 2001, The News & Observer. ***************************************************************** 10 Nuclear Regulatory Official Ronald A. Brightsen (dead) (washingtonpost.com) Tuesday, December 25, 2001; Page B06 Ronald A. Brightsen, 76, a nuclear scientist who retired in 1985 from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safeguard division as assistant director for licensing, died of liver and kidney failure Dec. 20 at Cameron Glen Care Center in Reston. After he retired, Mr. Brightsen headed a small firm, Clustron Sciences, where he continued his research on the structure of the atom. The model he developed was based on three bound clusters of protons and neutrons, rather than a separate proton and neutron composition of the atomic nucleus. Mr. Brightsen was a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and a graduate of Wagner College in New York. He received two master's degrees, the first in nuclear chemistry at the University of Michigan and the second in nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During World War II, he worked as an analytical chemist on the atomic bomb project in Oak Ridge, Tenn. After the war, he participated in atomic weapons testing in the South Pacific and in a project that detected the first Russian atomic tests. He headed radio-chemistry experiments for Westinghouse Corp. during development of the first nuclear-powered submarine and the first civilian nuclear power plant. Before joining the NRC in 1976, he was co-founder and president of a Pittsburgh company that worked on peaceful use of atomic energy. Mr. Brightsen collected stamps and was a member of the Scandinavian Collectors Club. He also belonged to the alumni associations of the University of Michigan and MIT. His marriage to Elizabeth Thorpe ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 46 years, Martha Brightsen of Reston; a daughter from his first marriage, April Engel of Austin; three children from his second marriage, Gordon Michael Brightsen of San Antonio, Beverly Ornik of Villanova, Pa., and Laura Brightsen of New York; and seven grandchildren. © 2001 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 11 Groups appeal Yankee sale decision to Vermont Supreme Court By Associated Press, 12/24/2001 14:58 BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) An anti-nuclear group will ask Vermont's highest court to help it stop the sale of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution will ask the court to temporarily halt review of the state regulators' Vermont Yankee docket, said the group's attorney, James Dumont. The anti-nuclear group has twice sought to have the Vermont Public Service Board dismiss the proposed sale to Entergy Nuclear on legal grounds. On Dec. 14, the board ruled against the group and said it would continue its review of the proposed transaction. In a brief letter to board clerk Susan Hudson, Dumont wrote that ''we have now had time to read and consider the board's order'' and ''we respectfully submit that the order was wrongly decided.'' Dumont's letter did not state specifically what aspects of the decision the group would challenge, but said that asking the board to review its own decision -- an alternative to a Supreme Court appeal -- would ''not provide an adequate remedy.'' ''We think that this is a necessity,'' said Jon Block, attorney for anti-nuclear group Citizens Awareness Network, which joined the attempts to dismiss the sale and will join the Supreme Court appeal. Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams declined to comment. ***************************************************************** 12 The NRC: What, me worry | The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists January/February 2002 Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 38-44 by Daniel Hirsch The question immediately arose on September 11 and has persisted: As horrific as the terrorist attacks were, what might have happened if the terrorists who seized jumbo jets and used them as weapons against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had aimed them at nuclear power plants instead? And if more attacks are likely, as government officials have said, are nuclear facilities on the terrorist target list? The Sunday Times of London reported in October that some intelligence assessments suggest that the intended target of the fourth plane, the one downed in Pennsylvania, was a nuclear power reactor. The plane had descended much too soon for Washington to be its intended destination, these assessments indicate, suggesting that the true target may have been one of several nuclear plants in its flight path, with the single still-operating unit at Three Mile Island seeming the most likely. This assessment cannot be confirmed, of course. But if it is correct, we owe even more to those brave passengers who succeeded, at the cost of their own lives, in bringing the plane down before it reached its intended target. Misleading statements Immediately after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear industry issued statements asserting that U.S. reactor containments were designed to withstand the crash of a fully loaded jumbo jet. Within days, both had to recant and admit that the opposite was the case. Just hours after the terrorist attacks, NRC spokesperson Breck Henderson said U.S. nuclear plants were safe because “containment structures are designed to withstand the impact of a 747.” Ten days later he admitted that “the initial cut we had on that was misleading.” In a formal statement, the agency conceded that it “did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s and 767s, and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such crashes.” A similar pattern of assurance followed by retraction characterized the behavior of public relations personnel for a number of specific nuclear sites. Early on, however, David Kyd, spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted as saying that most nuclear plants, built during the 1960s and 1970s, were designed to withstand only accidental, glancing impacts from the smaller aircraft used at the time. “If you postulate the risk of a jumbo jet full of fuel, it is clear that their design was not conceived to withstand such an impact,’’ he said. In reporting Kyd’s comments, the Associated Press quoted an unnamed U.S. government official to the effect that a direct hit at high speed by a modern jumbo jet “could create a Chernobyl situation.” The press has focused on the vulnerability of reactor containment buildings to airborne attack. But there are also “soft targets” outside containment, and their protection is critical to preventing radioactive release. Excessive emphasis on the risk of air attack obscures the far larger and more frightening possibility of ground assault or the threat from insiders. Security at the nation’s nuclear plants has been grossly inadequate for decades, and the nuclear industry and its captive regulatory agency, the NRC, have refused to do anything about it—both before and after September 11. 1,000 times more A typical nuclear power plant contains within its core about 1,000 times the long-lived radioactivity released by the Hiroshima bomb. The spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants typically contain some multiple of that several Chernobyls’ worth (see “What About the Spent Fuel?” page 45). Any analogy with the dropping of a bomb is imperfect, of course, because much of the destruction caused by an atomic bomb comes from blast effects, and the damage caused by a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant would stem almost exclusively from the release of radioactivity. However, the potential casualties from an atomic attack and those resulting from using conventional explosives to produce a radiological release from a nuclear facility would be surprisingly similar. For example, the NRC estimated years ago that a meltdown at one of the San Onofre reactors in Southern California could produce 130,000 “prompt” fatalities, 300,000 latent cancers, and 600,000 genetic defects. Analyses for other reactors performed by Sandia National Laboratories for the NRC estimated damages up to $314 billion in 1980 dollars (the equivalent of about $700 billion today). Because there is an immense amount of radioactivity at a reactor, and because the fuel must be constantly cooled to prevent it from melting and releasing that radioactivity, it is not difficult to understand why nuclear facilities might be a tempting target. As Bennett Ramberg pointed out in 1984 in his seminal book on the subject, Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, any country that possesses nuclear energy facilities gives its adversaries a quasi-nuclear capability to use against it. Conventional explosives—a truck bomb, for example—could cause a massive radiological release, with terrorists turning their adversaries’ own technology against them. And just as simple box-cutters were used to convert U.S. jumbo jets into guided missiles, conventional means could turn U.S. nuclear plants into radiological weapons. The need to protect nuclear facilities against terrorist attack should be obvious. Minimal protection Yet for decades, NRC regulations have required only minimal security. Fifteen years ago in the March 1986 Bulletin (“Protecting Reactors from Terrorists”), two colleagues and I warned even then that terrorist trends were rendering the NRC security rules inadequate. But with only a single, partial exception, the agency’s primary security regulations are unchanged from a quarter century ago. And despite September 11—when the NRC’s assumptions crumbled at the moment the Twin Towers fell—both the industry and the agency that regulates it continue to resist making any significant improvement to dismally inadequate and outmoded security regulations. We reported in 1986—and it is still the case today—that NRC regulations require nuclear reactor operators to protect against no more than a single insider and/or three external attackers, acting as a single team, wielding no more than hand-held automatic weapons. Security personnel at power reactors are not required to be prepared for: • more than three intruders; • more than one team of attackers using coordinated tactics; • more than one insider; • weapons greater than hand-held automatic weapons; • attack by boat or plane; or • any attack by “enemies of the United States,” whether governments or individuals. For years, reactor sites were not even required to provide protection against truck bombs. But after a decade of efforts by the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Nuclear Control Institute to get the agency to strengthen security and repeated refusals by the NRC to require greater protection, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an intrusion event at Three Mile Island finally propelled the agency to amend the rules. But the truck bomb rule is still a concern because of the limited size of the explosion that operators must protect against. It apparently requires protection against truck bombs of roughly the size used at the World Trade Center in 1993, but not the larger quantities of explosives that have been used in similar attacks since then. The NRC is behind the curve, “fighting the last war” rather than protecting against threats that can materialize without warning. To deal with the limited threat that the NRC does recognize—called the “design basis threat” (DBT)—the agency requires a nuclear power plant to be guarded by a total of five individuals. It may seem incomprehensible in today’s world that targets capable of producing tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties and hundreds of billions of dollars of damage are protected by a mere five guards, but that is the minimum the NRC mandates. The events of September 11 demonstrated the inadequacy of the agency’s quarter-century-old security rules. There were 19 terrorists on the planes, and possibly additional participants in the conspiracy—far in excess of the three external attackers the NRC envisages. They acted as four coordinated teams, but the NRC rule requires the nuclear industry to guard against only a single team. They used jumbo jets filled with jet fuel as their weapons, far more lethal than the hand-carried automatic weapons and explosives contemplated in the regulation. They were very sophisticated, training for months to fly big jets, and willing to die—a level of motivation and capability far beyond that upon which the NRC rules are predicated. None of the details of the agency’s DBT are secret. With a single exception discussed below, they can all be found in the Code of Federal Regulations, available in most libraries and on the Internet. Any potential adversary can immediately learn that the required security arrangements that protect these high-value targets are inadequate. Three external attackers . . . The only aspect of the DBT that is not explicitly stated in the Code is the famous number “three”—the maximum number of external attackers against which reactor owners must provide protection. The Code indicates that reactors must be protected against an attack by “several” intruders, and that “several” is less than the number required to operate as more than one team. This is enough to give a pretty clear indication of exactly how small the DBT is, but other publicly available documents make it clear that “several” means three. The number was publicly revealed as a consequence of the licensing hearings for the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California in the early 1980s. The Governor of California was a party in the hearings, in which the adequacy of security at the plant was a key issue. The state’s security experts testified that a dozen attackers was a credible number to safeguard against. But the utility, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and the NRC staff argued that irrespective of any threat that might exist, NRC requirements were far more modest. The precise number in the DBT became a key issue in the hearings. The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board decided in favor of PG&E and the NRC staff, expressly ruling on how many attackers a reactor operator is required to protect against. The ruling was not immediately published on the theory that it contained sensitive information. The specific number for the DBT, according to the Diablo decision, was withdrawn at the last minute from the published regulations and replaced with “several,” not for any security reason, but because the commission thought it would have trouble explaining to the public why it was requiring a lesser level of protection against sabotage for reactors than against theft at non-reactor sites. This remains the case today—NRC nervousness about public discussion of the DBT of three external attackers is not motivated by a security concern, but by fear of embarrassment were it widely known that it only required reactors be capable of protecting against no more than a trivial terrorist challenge. The Governor of California, however, asked that an expurgated version of the decision be published, and the agency agreed. When the “sanitized” Appeal Board decision was released, the actual number had been deleted. But ironically, the remaining text explained what “several” meant, and other underlying documents cited in the text—which had been publicly released—gave away the actual number. The Appeal Board ruling cited a number of NRC documents it relied on in concluding that the DBT should be limited to three attackers. And although the ruling was redacted, all of the underlying documents were available in the NRC’s public reading room. Those documents, the “SECY Memoranda,” are the agency’s actual decision documents on adopting the rule. Over and over again the SECY Memoranda state that the DBT in the rule is “an external threat of one to three persons armed with pistols, shotguns, or rifles (including automatic weapons), and who may be assisted by an insider (employee or unescorted person).” This is the so-called “three-and-one” threat described in publicly available NRC documents. The Appeal Board decision discloses some of the rationale for settling on three external attackers. First, the board states, power plants by rule are not required to protect against more than one team of attackers—only fuel-cycle facilities with weapons-grade material must do that. Because the minimum number of attackers who could operate as more than one team is obviously four, three is the maximum number of attackers who cannot act as more than one team. . . . and five guards Second, and perhaps most astonishingly, the Appeal Board discloses how the regulation’s minimum force of five guards was derived: “A response force ratio (i.e., ratio of guards to attackers) must be equal to 1 [1 to 1] to protect power reactors. The report [the NRC staff report that formed the basis for the numerical determination for the design basis threat] then states: ‘Given the above response force ratio modified by a measure of conservatism, the minimum number of guards available for response to an assault may be determined. Therefore, for the presently specified threat, the minimum number of guards available for response at a nuclear power plant is judged to be 5’” (emphasis added). The Appeal Board decision went on to indicate that the “presently specified threat” referred to was the external threat (of three) along with a single insider capable of participating in a violent attack. This three-and-one threat created a maximum total of four attackers. A 1:1 ratio of guards to attackers would require only four guards. But modifying the ratio “by a measure of conservatism” (giving the guards a one-person advantage) resulted in the regulations requiring a minimum of five guards. (The actual regulation mentions a “nominal” number of 10 guards, with a minimum of five. But the Diablo decision and underlying documents indicate that this “nominal” number was employed to “camouflag[e] the exact threat.”) Thus, the NRC security regulations, unchanged except to require protection against small-sized truck bombs, require operators to protect against an attack by three outsiders, perhaps aided by one insider, with no team-maneuvering tactics, no attack by boat or air, and minimal hand-held weapons. This rule made little sense when it was first adopted, and it makes even less today. The September 11 attacks—with at least 19 attackers, four times as many teams, and a level of sophistication far beyond that contemplated by the agency—blew away the NRC’s security regulations. Yet those regulations remain unchanged. Seventeen years of trying For 17 years, my group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, joined by the Nuclear Control Institute, has worked quietly behind the scenes in a largely futile effort to convince the NRC to upgrade its security requirements. With one partial exception, the truck bomb rule, we have failed. In 1984, in the wake of truck bombings in the Middle East, the NRC staff decided to consider requiring protection against truck bombs at U.S. power reactors. It commissioned Sandia National Laboratories to study the vulnerability of plants to truck bomb attacks. The results were frightening—small truck bombs could cause “unacceptable damage to vital reactor systems,” and larger truck bombs could have the same effect, even if detonated off site, because the exclusion zone surrounding many facilities is small. Inexplicably, after the study was conducted, the agency dropped the idea of a truck bomb rule. In 1985, the Committee to Bridge the Gap testified before the Safeguards and Security Subcommittee of the NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, pointing to data showing increasing terrorist capabilities and actions, urging the agency to upgrade the regulations to deal with larger attacking forces and with truck bombs. The response was unenthusiastic, with many subcommittee members indicating that there were so many ways to destroy a reactor that, if you protected against truck bombs, you’d have to protect against all those other vulnerabilities as well. Over the next few years, both the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Nuclear Control Institute continued to push the NRC to upgrade security regulations, to no avail. In 1991, at the time of the war with Iraq and the prospect of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, we formally petitioned the NRC to upgrade its regulations. In addition to urging protection against truck bombs, the petition called for a new DBT with 20 external attackers (ironic in light of the 19 terrorists on the planes on September 11) capable of operating as two or more teams, with weapons and explosives more significant than hand-held rifles. The NRC denied the petition, ruling that “there has been no change in the domestic threat since the design basis threat was adopted that would justify a change.” Finally, after the truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and an event at Three Mile Island in which an intruder drove a station wagon through the perimeter and into the turbine building, where he stayed for hours while security tried to figure out if he had a bomb, the NRC adopted a new rule requiring some measure of protection against truck bombs. However, the rule may not be sufficient to protect against truck bombs of the size that have been used since 1993. The rest of the DBT remains unaltered, despite the NRC’s promises in 1994 that in a second phase it would consider upgrading the rest of the security regulations. In fact, a number of actions have weakened security. For example, in 1996 the NRC issued Generic Letter 96-02, “Reconsideration of Nuclear Power Plant Security Requirements Associated with an Internal Threat.” It permitted “reductions in unnecessary or marginally effective security measures,” granting licensees the option, for instance, to keep “doors to vital areas . . . unlocked.” One counterterrorism program, killed In late 1998, I received a plain manila envelope in the mail. Inside were documents indicating that the NRC had recently terminated its only counterterrorism program, called the Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation program, (OSRE). The program evaluated nuclear plant security by undertaking mock terrorist attacks—“black hat” force-on-force exercises. The documents contained astonishing information: Given six months advance warning, including the date on which the security test would occur, plants prepared by increasing their guard force by as much as 80 percent. Even so, security failed the tests. In nearly half of the tests conducted at the the country’s reactors, mock terrorists penetrated security and reached at least one “target set” that, had the intruders been actual terrorists, could have resulted in a meltdown and massive radioactivity release. This failure rate is extraordinary. No terrorist group is going to give notice six months in advance of when and where it intends to attack. And these tests were against the existing DBT—against only three intruders. Other publicly available NRC documents from the early 1990s indicate that in an OSRE test at the Peach Bottom reactor, it took only 17 seconds for the mock terrorists to penetrate the perimeter fence and breach the access control barrier. It took intruders 18 seconds at San Onofre, 30 seconds at Duane Arnold, and 45 seconds at Maine Yankee. And what was the response to this dismal failure rate? The NRC killed the program—there could be no more failures if there were no more tests. My organization passed the OSRE documents along to the Los Angeles Times, which ran a major story about the program’s termination. The agency was sufficiently embarrassed that a couple of days later Shirley Jackson, then NRC chair, reinstated the program. Since then, however, the industry and the agency have worked together to gut the tests. Earlier this year, the NRC approved the industry’s proposed self-evaluation program that would replace NRC-run force-on-force tests. Companies failing the independent tests are now able to test themselves! The problems inherent in self-regulation should be obvious. After September 11 Our two organizations have persisted in so-far-fruitless attempts to get the DBT upgraded. Last year, we met with NRC Chairman Richard Meserve, trying once again to get the NRC to fix gaping security problems. Nothing came of the meeting. As we were leaving, Meserve said we should feel free to see him again, adding something to the effect that he meets with industry “all the time,” and there is no reason he can’t meet with public groups from time to time as well. (And indeed, as we left we saw a number of industry lobbyists sitting outside his office waiting to go in.) After September 11, we wrote to Chairman Meserve, urging him to recommend that the National Guard be called out to protect all the nation’s reactors, that air defenses be deployed to protect them, and that employees and contractor personnel be thoroughly re-vetted. We also asked the NRC to upgrade its security regulations immediately to protect against attacks involving greater numbers, operating as multiple teams, with more than one insider; require a strong two-person rule and other enhanced measures to protect against insiders; require protection against a truck bomb as big as a large truck can carry; require protections against boat and airplane attacks; require full security protection of spent fuel storage pools and dry cask storage, including after reactor closure; and that the Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation program be reinstated and expanded. The NRC response was business as usual. The agency is continually reviewing the DBT, we were told, just as we have been told for the last 17 years. But no improvements were promised and none has been made. Both the Committee to Bridge the Gap and the Nuclear Control Institute have decided that after years of quiet work it is time to go public about these problems. It is clear that the United States has sophisticated adversaries out there and everything we know is available to them as well. The only people not taking the danger seriously are the ones who should be required to do something about it—the nuclear industry and the agency that is supposed to regulate it. All the NRC has done in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is to recommend—not even require—that licensees go to a higher state of alert within their existing security system and within the existing DBT. A no-fly-zone excluded small planes from flying near power reactors, but after a week that restriction was lifted. The federal government has failed to call out the National Guard—although in the absence of federal action, some governors have taken that step on their own. The NRC and the industry strongly oppose legislation introduced by Sens. Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, Jim Jeffords, Joe Lieberman, and Cong. Ed Markey that would have required the agency to upgrade security regulations. In 1981, the NRC and industry argued against the Governor of California’s contention in the Diablo case that there should be protection against up to a dozen terrorists, saying such an attack wasn’t credible. In 1991, the NRC and industry argued against our rulemaking petition that the DBT be increased from three to 20 external attackers operating as several teams, against asserting that there was no evidence there could ever be an attack of more than three as a single team. Protections against attacks by boats, large truck bombs, or from the air remain beyond the design threat. On September 11, 19 attackers in four teams using planes caused the worst terrorist event in U.S. history. Yet the NRC and industry refuse to upgrade the DBT regulations to a level consistent with the now-evident threat. The industry’s response is shocking. Rather than conceding the vulnerability of its facilities and the need to upgrade security, at a press conference on September 25 a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute took the extraordinary stand that greater security isn’t required because Chernobyl wasn’t that bad. Why does the industry continue to ignore the need to protect its facilities? First, more security means more expense, and its every instinct is to avoid current expenses. Second, if it admits its reactors are vulnerable, the industry’s dream of a nuclear renaissance is diminished. Having received a big boost from the Cheney energy plan, the industry had been hoping to build new reactors, supposedly of the new pebble-bed design. In order to save money, these “passively safe” reactors would be built without a containment structure. In addition, they are made of graphite, which burns readily, as evidenced by Chernobyl and the earlier Windscale accident in Britain. As poorly resistant to terrorism as today’s reactors are, pebble-bed reactors would be far worse. Furthermore, the industry-Cheney proposals involve a revival of the idea of reprocessing spent fuel to separate plutonium, which would then be used in civil reactors, creating a massive additional risk that terrorists might acquire nuclear weapons materials from poorly guarded civilian power plants. The nuclear industry hopes that its post–September 11 problems will go away, without having to upgrade security. And why has the NRC not imposed upgraded security requirements? Put bluntly, the NRC is arguably the most captured regulatory agency in the federal government, a creature of the industry it is intended to regulate. Efforts to separate its promotional and regulatory functions, which led to the breakup of the Atomic Energy Commission in the mid-1970s, have failed utterly. The NRC’s principal interest is in assisting the industry, keeping regulatory burdens and expenses to a bare minimum, and helping to jumpstart the nuclear enterprise. simply too great to allow this failed agency and the industry it allegedly regulates to continue to ignore the need to provide reasonable protection. The industry’s short-term economic or political concerns pale in comparison to the damage that would occur if attackers turn the nation’s reactors into radiological weapons. Daniel Hirsch is president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los Angeles- based nuclear policy organization. ©2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ***************************************************************** 13 POINT OF VIEW: Nuclear plant could have saved remote Miyama asahi.com : ENGLISH Katsunobu Mogi It might have looked like just another referendum designed to kill one of those megaprojects that have stirred up strong local opposition. It was not. In the first place, no concrete project existed to fight against. Further, where referendums are usually proposed by those opposed to megaprojects, such as projects to build a nuclear power plant or dumping grounds for industrial waste, the recent vote in Miyama, Mie Prefecture, was proposed by proponents of a nuclear power plant. Yet, even for the town's proponents, the idea of inviting Chubu Electric Power Co. to build such a plant was an option of last recourse. Although residents opposed to the idea scored an overwhelming victory in the Miyama referendum by a score of 5,215 to 2,512, the results of the vote underline strong concern held by the local populace over the future of the depopulated town. Just before the referendum, a succession of accidents occurred at Chubu Electric Power's Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. The spate of accidents naturally increased the number of those who would vote for safety, and this was what swayed the referendum. Even so, one in three voters approved the idea of inviting the power company to build a nuclear power plant in Miyama. ``We can no longer count on forestry and fisheries to provide jobs to the unemployed, and no industry is in sight that can take the place of the construction industry,'' says an official of the town's association of commerce and industry, the core of the invitation movement. ``We believe our campaign will do good for the future of the town.'' This argument will sound bizarre to urban residents. A nuclear power plant means money-lots of it. If a nuclear reactor capable of producing 1.35 million kilowatts of electricity were built in Miyama, about 91 billion yen would flow in from the national coffers to the town, the neighboring municipalities and Mie Prefecture under three laws concerning electric power development, according to the Agency of Resources and Energy. Compared with Miyama's general account budget of about 4.7 billion yen, the size of the expected income seems temptingly large to local residents, especially when they appear to be doomed to hard times. Forestry and fisheries, the town's mainstay industries, have declined. Prices of cypress have dropped to half in the past 20 years, while those of sea bream have plummeted from 2,800 yen per kilogram to 800 yen. The construction industry, which has emerged as Miyama's mainstay industry, now faces a crisis because of cuts in public works spending. In addition, access to the nearest expressway junction takes a little more than an hour, dooming hopes for bringing in new industry. The remoteness of the town seems to be no problem for some outside companies. ``Because of the recession, major housing reform companies from the big cities are making inroads into this town,'' complains a pro-invitation Miyama reform firm operator. Chubu Electric Power has yet to present a concrete plan to build a nuclear power plant in the town. In the absence of such a plan, proponents collected signatures of endorsement from 5,606 people, or 64 percent of the town's eligible voters. On the basis of the collected signatures, they had the town assembly set up the referendum to give their campaign needed momentum. For opponents of megaprojects across the country, a referendum had been a trump card to kill them. The Miyama residents in favor of inviting a nuclear power plant attempted to use the trump card for the opposite purpose of promoting their plan, aware that failure to win the gamble would doom their best hope to save the town. Although they lost the vote, they can take comfort in the fact that their campaign, having been carried on for several years, has produced relatively fewer scars in the town, nothing like long and deep divisions that resulted from Chubu Electric Power's project to build a nuclear power plant at a location different from Miyama in southern Mie Prefecture. Proponents and opponents bitterly fought over the proposed Ashihama Nuclear Power Plant for 36 years until the plan was wiped to a clean slate in February last year. The Miyama town assembly later approved a petition against accepting any plans for a nuclear power plant. The author is an Asahi Shimbun reporter working for the paper's Tsu Bureau in Mie Prefecture. (12/25) ***************************************************************** 14 British Energy says lack of subsidies hasn't affected decision on reactors Reactor-Sale, STEPHEN THORNE OTTAWA (CP) - The recommended phase-out of British government subsidies to its nuclear power industry hasn't affected a potential multibillion-dollar sale of Canadian reactors to Britain, a spokesman for the buyer says. "Nothing has changed," said Doug McRoberts of British Energy, which is looking at buying up to 10 Candu reactors from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. "We are very clear that, as far as British Energy is concerned, our intention is to replace our existing UK nuclear power stations with new nuclear power stations when they reach the end of their working lives." AECL and British Energy have launched a year-long study into start-up costs, economics, risk-sharing and government support for Candu reactors to replace BE's advanced gas-cooled reactors. AECL spokeswoman Louise Duhamel said the study is only a month old and has not yet addressed financing issues. But no foreign sale of a Candu reactor has ever been made without some form of Canadian government assistance. "All nuclear power plants in the developing world are financed by export credits," said Duhamel. Britain is not part of the "developing world" but a spokesman for Canada's Export Development Corp., which provides such financing, said that wouldn't necessarily rule it out in any potential purchase of AECL products. "If it's an export transaction, export financing would be possible," said Rod Giles, adding he hasn't heard of any overtures yet. AECL, British Energy, or both, could approach the government agency seeking financing, usually in the form of loans and especially if they're competing with other suppliers, said Giles. EDC financed two such sales of Bombardier jets in the form of loans to U.S. buyers - Air Wisconsin and Northwest Airlines - this year. "Presumably, British Energy would be looking for some form of sales financing with a purchase that size and AECL would be normally expected to come to the table with some sort of preliminary financing commitment." British Energy is familiar with Candus - it is a majority shareholder in Bruce Power, which has leased nuclear generating stations in Ontario for 18 years. The London Financial Times reported last week that a draft government review of energy policy commissioned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair rules out any further tax breaks or subsidies for new reactors. The decision would mean private investors would have to pay the full cost of recycling and disposing of waste, as well as eventual decommissioning of old plants and full insurance costs on new ones. It said the decision means that as the UK's 15 existing reactors reach the end of their lives over the next 20 years, replacement power stations will be effectively priced out of the market. It estimated that by 2020 nuclear power would be up to three times more expensive than electricity generated from renewable sources or gas-fired stations. But the report also says "there are good grounds to taking a positive stance to keeping the nuclear option open," McRoberts noted, and British government officials have since repeatedly stated, the need for continued nuclear power. "We do not believe that this program of new nuclear build will need government subsidy," McRoberts said in an interview. "And we do not expect the UK government ever again to build new nuclear power stations. "We believe this whole program can be financed in principle from the private sector if the market and political frameworks are right." The government paper also wants the cost of insuring against accidents and disposing of radioactive waste to be borne by nuclear stations rather than the government, ostensibly making nuclear power prohibitively expensive. The firm plans to replace existing capacity, not increase it, McRoberts said. "And with new designs of reactors with inherent safety and reliability characteristics, we believe that in risk terms - both financial and real - that this is a valid and sensible way to proceed." British Energy has identified two designs it deems suitable - the Candus and the AP1000 by British-based Westinghouse. Its study will also address licensing and regulatory issues associated with the Candu design. A sale would be AECL's first since it sold two reactors to China in 1996. The agency receives $100 million a year in federal subsidies and has come under fire from critics who say the return has been minimal. © The Canadian Press, 2001 ***************************************************************** 15 NRC criticized on monitoring of plants' financial requirements Tuesday, December 25, 2001 Go to: S By Leigh Strope ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has failed to adequately ensure that owners of nuclear power plants have enough funds to safely operate and later decommission the facilities, according to a new congressional review. The commission needs to tighten its review process for license transfer requests, especially because the future costs to dismantle a plant and dispose of radioactive waste could increase, said the study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The review was requested by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D., Mass.) because of concerns that deregulation and recent license transfers have affected decommission funds. Costs of decommissioning ranges from $300 million to $400 million per plant. The NRC has licensed 125 nuclear power plants for a limited time. Utilities have sold or are in the process of selling all or part of 15 plants. Thirty more plants have had licenses transferred. Before transferring a license to a new plant owner, the commission requires the owner to have decommission funds available by making periodic deposits into a trust fund, by prepaying, by obtaining a surety bond, by getting insurance, or by guaranteeing payment if a parent company can meet certain financial requirements. In general, enough money is being set aside to eventually take a plant out of service, the report said. But the NRC has not done enough to monitor the financial arrangements, it said. The commission's "reviews were not always rigorous enough to ensure that decommissioning funds would be adequate," the report said. "Moreover, NRC did not always adequately verify the new owners' financial qualifications to safely own and operate the plants." The NRC should request guaranteed additional revenue sources and document its review of any financial information, including revenue projections, the report said. The report also said the commission now allows plant owners to wait too long - about two years - before their licenses are terminated to perform radiological assessments to determine what additional cleanup might be needed. The General Accounting Office recommended the commission move up that deadline. The commission, in response, said requiring the surveys earlier "would not add significant value to the decommissioning process." It also disagreed that it should modify its review guidelines to include a checklist process "because many of the proposed license transfers are unique." ***************************************************************** 16 Nuclear Energy Institute seeks to challenge Nevada's Yucca suit Tuesday, December 25, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Agency's lawyers submit motion asking permission to intervene DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Nuclear Energy Institute has filed a motion in federal court seeking to challenge Nevada's lawsuit against site guidelines for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The agency's lawyers submitted a motion on Friday asking permission to formally intervene in the case. The motion was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "NEI has a clear interest in the instant proceeding," the organization said in its filing, since used nuclear fuel from power plants operated by its members would be stored in a repository. NEI members pay about $700 million per year into a fund to cover costs of repository studies. NEI spokesman Mitch Singer said the organization wants to help the Energy Department defend the Yucca Mountain guidelines, which became final on Dec. 14. The guidelines will be used by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to determine whether to recommend nuclear waste burial at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The state of Nevada filed its lawsuit on Dec. 17 against Abraham and the Energy Department, seeking to have the site guidelines declared invalid. The lawsuit charges the new guidelines are not what Congress intended when it passed a 1982 nuclear waste disposal law. The government, supported by the nuclear power industry, says the guidelines were changed to reflect developments in science and the law in the intervening years. The motion said Nevada does not oppose the nuclear industry entering the case. Singer said a lawyer from the Justice Department, which is defending the Energy Department, told the organization on Friday the government also supports its involvement. "They have a right to get involved if the court decides they have standing," said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Dec-25-Tue-2001/news/17742387.html ***************************************************************** 17 Well-preserved atoms provide next generation with healthy, decent life http://www.koreaherald.com The global crises we are facing in such areas as the environment, food, energy, and water are driving the new century and the new millennium to an era of more uncertainty. It is time for us to seriously discuss what to prepare for our next generation in the new era, demanding a huge paradigm change. Concerning the definition of life, one who is alive can change oneself by his own energy. However, one who is dead waits to be changed by external forces. Apart from religious meanings, the basic goal of life is very simple: "to live long in good health." A healthy and decent life requires basically a clean environment and enough food and energy. According to past statistics, the average lifetime of a nation's people is in proportion to the average amount of their energy use per person. That is, enough energy guarantees a higher quality of life and a longer lifetime in good health. In this regard, one of the most important things a nation should do for its people is to secure enough energy for their needs, preserve a clean environment, and prepare to leave them to the next generations. To prepare for the future, we should understand exactly where we are. The total amounts of energy and agriculture/fisheries imported during the ten years from 1988 to 1997 when we faced the IMF crisis were recorded at $152 and $80 billion, respectively. Imagine that the trade deficit during the period was $44 billion, far below the amount of energy imported. If we had achieved 50 percent self-reliance in energy, we could have avoided the IMF crisis. In 2000, our energy import ratio and amount of imports were recorded at 97.2 percent and $38 billion. Our domestic energy resources include nothing but charcoal briquettes, which a small portion of households are using, and hydraulic power, which provided only 2.2 percent of our total electricity in 2000. We live in the poorest country in terms of energy resources. The energy import ratio is expected to be over 99 percent within a few years unless we implement something meaningful. It is not an issue of uncertainty but an issue of survival that we fully depend on foreign countries for energy, a core element of national security. We cannot achieve national security without energy security. In the new millennium, we should do all we can for our future generations to enjoy healthy and decent lives on this earth. Is nature fair? I believe it is. Although we have few energy resources, we are blessed with a land of beautiful scenery and diligent and superior human resources, which I believe are more precious and valuable resources than energy resources. Nuclear energy, God's blessing hidden in tiny nuclei, is a high-tech energy, which can be produced massively with few natural resources and little waste. If we achieve full self-reliance on nuclear technologies in reactors and fuel, we can reduce our energy import ratio since the cost of fuel, which should be imported, holds only 2-3 percent of the total cost. In this sense, we can call nuclear energy semi-domestic energy. Nuclear energy is basically based on brains, not on natural resources. Fossil fuels such as coal and oil will be exhausted globally within 50 years, 100 years at most. Furthermore, if the Kyoto Protocol, an international regime for the reduction of carbon dioxide in the air, goes into force, it will become hard to use fossil fuel. In this context, we cannot pass on fossil fuels as major energy resources to our descendants. Nuclear energy has been playing an essential role in enhancing national competitiveness by providing cheap and massive electricity, for vitalizing national industry through technology spin-offs to various fields such as high-tech facilities, construction, materials, machinery, chemistry, electronics, computer, software and for enhancing national prestige in the international community. We should keep in mind that the major powers and advanced countries in the world are advanced countries in terms of nuclear energy. The most precious gifts we can leave to our next generation are a well-preserved land of beautiful scenery and nuclear technology self-reliance. The writer is president of the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) - Ed. By Chang In-soon 2001.12.25 (C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 Power Firm Touts Nevada Site For Spent Nuclear Fuel ctnow.com: CONNECTICUT December 25, 2001 By GARY LIBOW, Courant Staff Writer HADDAM -- The Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. is urging the federal government to expedite the process for removing spent nuclear fuel stored in Haddam Neck to a remote Nevada mountain. Connecticut Yankee President Russ Mellor, in a meeting last week with U.S. Department of Energy Undersecretary Robert Card, lobbied the agency to recommend to President Bush that Yucca Mountain be developed as a federal repository for spent nuclear fuel. Mellor heads a coalition of owners of decommissioned nuclear plants. After the Sept. 11 terrorism, Mellor said removing used fuel promptly and on a priority basis from Haddam Neck and other facilities across the nation will reduce security concerns. Reducing the number of sites needing protection from potential terrorist acts is a key, he said. Mellor argued that scientific evidence demonstrates that Yucca Mountain is suitable for the repository. Noting that electric consumers nationwide have paid more than $19 billion to the government to remove spent nuclear waste from former plants, Mellor reminded energy officials that the government has let the nuclear waste disposal program languish for two decades despite a contractual obligation to take responsibility for the waste. Mellor also encouraged the government to expedite long-term actions to assure that transportation infrastructure is in place to move the spent nuclear fuel and waste. Connecticut Yankee has filed federal lawsuits in an attempt to temporarily store its spent fuel in dry casks outside the Connecticut Yankee footprint. The town has prevented the company from doing so, arguing that a 1960's agreement with the town binds it to site the storage facility within the plant footprint. First Selectman Tony Bondi said the town hopes to begin negotiating with Connecticut Yankee shortly after Jan. 1, in an effort to forge a compromise. ctnow.com is Copyright © 2001 by The Hartford Courant ***************************************************************** 19 Franco Dino Rasetti, a Nuclear Pioneer, Is Dead at 100 December 25, 2001 By WOLFGANG SAXON r. Franco Dino Rasetti, who worked with the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi and the select team of Italian scientists that discovered one of the key processes in nuclear reactions, died on Dec. 5 at a retirement home in Belgium. He was 100. The discovery, made in a laboratory at the University of Rome, proved pivotal for the Manhattan Project and the postwar development of nuclear energy. The Fermi group patented the process in Italy in 1934 and in the United States in 1940, and Dr. Rasetti was the last surviving patent holder. Fermi, a central figure in the Manhattan Project, had invited Dr. Rasetti to join that quest for an atomic bomb, but Dr. Rasetti refused on moral grounds. He told his colleagues that he objected to using nuclear research for warfare. Dr. Rasetti specialized in molecular spectroscopy and neutron-induced reactions. But he was also known as an expert on a large class of fossilized arthropods like crustaceans, known as trilobites, and on the wildflowers of the Alps. After he retired from Johns Hopkins University, where he was a professor for more than 20 years, Dr. Rasetti donated the trilobite fossils he had amassed to the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Aihud Pevsner, a physics professor at Johns Hopkins, said: "People who found they could not identify trilobites all over the world would mail them to him. Every morning he would get a shoe box full of them, and every afternoon he'd have them all identified and ready to mail back." Dr. Rasetti was born in Castiglione del Lago, Italy. He was studying engineering at the University of Pisa when an encounter with Fermi led him to change his mind. He received his doctorate in physics at Pisa in 1923, and Fermi recruited him for the University of Rome. There, Dr. Rasetti found evidence that scientific theories of the composition of atomic nuclei were incomplete. He used spectroscopy to buttress his finding, and his experiments were an element in the successful creation of a nuclear reaction. Most of the Fermi team left the Rome laboratory in 1939 because of Mussolini's policies. Dr. Rasetti, who had been a visiting professor at Columbia University in 1936, went to Laval University in Quebec, where he remained until he joined the Hopkins faculty in 1947. He retired as a professor emeritus in 1970. He also wrote "Elements of Nuclear Physics" (1936), "Middle Cambrian Stratigraphy and Faunas of the Canadian Rocky Mountains" (1951), "The Flowers of the Alps" (1980) and many articles on physics, geology and paleontology. Dr. Rasetti is survived by his wife of 52 years, Marie Madeleine. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 20 Various factors caused welding crack at Hamaoka nuclear plant KYODO NEWS NAGOYA, Dec. 25, Kyodo - Too much heat during welding, and poor water quality and materials may have caused a welded part in a reactor to crack and radioactive water to leak in November at a nuclear plant in Hamaoka, Shizuoka Prefecture, Chubu Electric Power Co. said Tuesday. The Nagoya-based utility said the leakage had begun in early July and an average of about 80 liters of radioactive water were leaking per day, company officials said. The company reported the findings Tuesday to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, a branch of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Chubu Electric Power said it will send samples from the welded part to a facility linked to Toshiba Corp. for further investigation. The welded part and neighboring parts at the 540,000-kilowatt No. 1 reactor will be replaced, the officials said. The weld links one of the 89 control rod driving units to the bottom of a pressure vessel. It will be the first time for a power company in Japan to replace parts at the bottom of a pressure vessel, and the officials said it will be a difficult task. Fumio Kawaguchi, president of Chubu Electric Power, visited the town of Hamaoka on Tuesday afternoon and apologized to Mayor Yoshiaki Homma for the accident. ''I once again want to apologize for causing great worries to town residents and others,'' Kawaguchi said. Radioactive steam was discovered leaking from a pressure-injection system at the Hamaoka plant's No. 1 reactor Nov. 7. 2001 Kyodo News (c) Established 1945. ***************************************************************** 21 Anti-Sellafield campaign 'ignorant online.ie : News online.ie 24 Dec 2001 Irish opposition to the Sellafield nuclear waste reprocessing plant was hysterical and ignorant, former British government press secretary Bernard Ingham claimed today. Mr Ingham, a close aide of Lady Thatcher during her years in office, is now a member of the Supporters of Nuclear Energy organisation. He said the Irish Government's legal bid to force the closure of the newly-commissioned mixed oxide facility at Sellafield was "really very disturbing". He also attacked a recent full-page advertisement in The Times newspaper by Fianna Fail spelling out its opposition to the Cumbrian nuclear complex. Mr Ingham said that Fianna Fail had wasted its money on "an ignorant advert. When you read the advert, you realise how little they know and how hysterical it all is. "Where is the evidence? There is no evidence whatsoever that Sellafield has created, or continues to create, a health hazard through its discharges." Mr Ingham added: "Why is the British government not taking action if it poses an unacceptable and unnecessary risk to our environment? Those people who are supporting the Irish cause are wrong in fact. "What I find really fascinating is that Fianna Fail have not the slightest compunction in ending the jobs of 10,000 people in west Cumbria." The comments were immediately criticised by the Irish Government's Social Community and Family Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern, whose Co Louth parliamentary constituency lies across the Irish Sea from Sellafield. He said: "Mr Ingham is obviously an apologist for the nuclear industry in the United Kingdom and if anyone is hysterical and ignorant - particularly ignorant - it is him. "He is disregarding the views and the fears of the vast majority of the people - not just on this side of the border, but of all the people on this island. "The advice to us from our experts is that the Sellafield facility is particularly dangerous from discharges and also the risk of an explosion." Mr Ahern said the advertisement had been money well spent because Fianna Fail wanted to get its message across to the British people. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 EXCLUSIVE: RESEARCH THAT MAY PROVE LINK BETWEEN CANCERS AND DEPLETED URANIUM; SI Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 23:45:13 -0500 By Nic Fleming BRITISH soldiers who served in wars in which depleted uranium ammunition was used have suffered substantial genetic damage, according to new research. Eight veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo have high levels of deformed chromosomes, increasing the risks of cancers and abnormalities in their children. Initial results of the study, the first to investigate chromosome deformation in soldiers, reveals genetic damage in the group at least 10 times greater than that found in the general population. The research is the first scientific data to back up anecdotal evidence from veterans of widespread deformities and other unusual illnesses in their children. Scientists and MPs believe the work could help prove a link between high rates of cancers and abnormalities among Iraqi children and the use of DU in the 1991 Gulf War. A committee advising the Ministry of Defence on the DU screening programme for veterans is considering recommending the testing of hundreds more former soldiers for chromosome damage. Genetic factors are known to be at least part of the cause of medical conditions suffered by veterans and their children including cancers and leukaemia, diabetes, Down's syndrome, cystic fibrosis, and impotence. Professor Albrecht Schott, a retired chemist who worked at the Free University of Berlin until recently, is co-ordinating the research. He said: "This level of genetic damage doesn't occur naturally. "Alpha radiation from DU is the likely cause of the chromosome aberrations we found in the white blood cells of the veterans. Gene damage on this scale makes cancer, deformed babies and other genetic conditions more likely." Prof Schott took blood from the veterans in March. Six of the men saw action in the Gulf, and one of this six also served in Bosnia. Of the remaining two, one served only in Kosovo and one only in Bosnia. Chromosome deformation in white blood cells from the eight was compared to that of a group of German civilians. Previous studies have shown a normal chromosome aberration reading for a member of the public is 0.5 per 1,000 cells. Those of the former soldiers were closer to the average of 5.8 per 1,000 recorded in a group of staff at the Chernobyl power plant following the reactor meltdown in April 1986. Some were even higher. Prof Schott's results will be published early next year. There have been problems funding the study, and Prof Schott said he was out of pocket by GBP 30,000, having used bank loans to pay a laboratory to analyse the samples. After consulting the MoD, the Army Benevolent Fund turned down a request from the National Gulf Veterans and Families Association (NGVFA) to pay for the tests from the Gulf Trust Fund, money raised by the public to help veterans. The findings come after a US government survey of 21,000 American veterans released in October showed that those who served in the Gulf were two to three times more likely to report birth defects in their children, including webbed digits, heart murmurs, brain tumours and chromosome abnormalities. DU, a nuclear industry by-product, is used in armour-piercing shells because its high density allows it to penetrate and destroy hard targets such as tanks and underground bunkers. The US and Britain have admitted using some 350 tonnes of DU in the Gulf War against Iraq while American forces fired around 10 tonnes during the bombing of Kosovo. DU was also used in Bosnia in 1995. DU ignites on impact and turns into dust which can be inhaled and remain in the body for years emitting small doses of alpha radiation. In January, after it was revealed veterans from several European countries had died of cancer, the Government announced plans to test soldiers who served in the Gulf, Bosnia and Kosovo for DU poisoning. Some 53,000 British troops served during the Gulf war. Of these, at least 531 have died and more than 5,000 have reported a range of illnesses. George Galloway, MP for Glasgow Kelvin, last month visited hospitals in Basrah, Iraq, to investigate reports of increased childhood cancers and deformed babies. He said: "It does not surprise me that British veterans of the conflicts in the Gulf and the Balkans would have genetic abnormalities. "I have seen for myself the evidence of growth in childhood cancers in Iraqi hospitals. There are hundreds of babies born with congenital deformities. I mean babies born with no head, without eyes, or with two heads. The Government has a duty to pay for these tests." However an MoD spokesman said: "The results of the tests in Germany do not support claims by veterans that they were subjected to ionising radiation from DU-based ammunition. We consider the testing neither well thought out nor scientifically sound. We have informed the Army Benevolent Fund that we are not prepared to meet these costs." Former soldiers can get help by calling the NGVFA on 01482 808730 ***************************************************************** 2 Pasko sent back to prison Gregory Pasko, an investigative journalist who worked for the Pacific Fleet's newspaper, was arrested on 20 November 1997 by the FSB and charged with high treason for his writing about the nuclear safety issues in the Russian Pacific Fleet. The military court in Vladivostok finds Grigory Pasko guilty of high treason. The decision is based on secret military decree recently declared as illegal and invalid by the Russian Supreme Court. Igor Kudrik, 2001-12-25 09:30 Grigory Pasko was convicted for four years in labour camp on high treason charges on December 25th. The Pacific Fleet Military Court in Vladivostok said in the verdict that Pasko had the intention to pass over to a Japanese journalist a classified document. The 20 months he has earlier spent in custody reduce the overall term down to two years and four months. The document in question were handwritten notes Pasko made at a meeting of the Military Council of the Pacific Fleet. Pasko was present there as a reporter from Pacific Fleet's newspaper, the Battle Watch, and intended to write an article on this event. Originally, the charges against Pasko included ten items of allegedly classified information that he, according to the prosecution, intended to pass over to the Japanese journalists. The prosecutor in the case dismissed five of the ten documents Pasko was charged with. The judge today dismissed four more documents leaving only the handwritten notes. Pasko's attorneys have already appealed the verdict to the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court. Pasko was taken to custody in the courtroom. He will stay in confinement until the appeal is considered in the Supreme Court. It may take as long as one year before the Supreme Court considers the case. Earlier in the process, a group of experts from the 8th Department of the Defence Ministry said the documents in the Pasko case, including the handwritten notes, contained state secrets. The experts based their findings on secret military decree 055:96, which stipulates information pertaining to the state secrets. The use of the decree as the basis for the case violates article 15 (3) of the Russian Constitution, according to which unpublished normative acts cannot be used for prosecuting a person. In addition the Russian Supreme Court declared on November 6th 2001 the decree as "illegal and invalid" because it was not registered in accordance with the law. This ruling has reached legal force, but it did not deter the court to convict Pasko based on the decree. Moreover, almost 95% of the 'evidence' in the case are gathered illegally, including the part of the case which describes the intention to pass over the handwritten notes. No appeal for pardon Prior to the conviction of Grigory Pasko Sergey Mironov, the speaker of the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, said that Pasko was innocent but, due to unreformed judicial system in Russia, it would be hard to prove the opposite. Mr Mironov 'advised' Pasko to appeal the Russian President for pardon, should he be convicted. Mr Mironov was recently appointed by President Putin to head the Federation Council. Pasko's defence attorneys said today that Pasko had no plans appealing the Russian President for pardon since he did not consider himself guilty of any crimes. Observers believe that the statement by Mr Mironov was a way-out proposal for Pasko in order not to offend the Russian Security Police, or the FSB. The head of the FSB in the Russian Pacific Fleet congratulated a week before the conviction of Pasko at the Chekist Day, holyday of the Russian Security Police, his staff with successful completion of the Pasko case. In other words, he knew that Pasko would be convicted beforehand. The court session today was open for public. But the public was mainly consisting of military personnel in uniforms. An old trick used by the KGB in the Soviet times. Bellona continues fight for Pasko Bellona Foundation has been working actively with the Pasko case since it was sent from the Supreme Court in Moscow back to Vladivostok for re-evaluation in the local court in November 2000. Bellona has provided Pasko with experienced defenders, who took part in the defence of Aleksandr Nikitin, and carried out information campaign around the case. Bellona will continue supporting Grigory Pasko. The immediate plan includes delivering of a complaint from Pasko to the European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg. Bellona believes that Pasko is innocent and his conviction is undermining the achievements made in the Nikitin case. Namely that it is illegal to charge a person on the grounds of secret normative acts, which are not in public domain. * Grigory Pasko was an investigative reporter with Boyevaya Vakhta, or the Battle Watch, a newspaper run by the Pacific Fleet. He was arrested in November 1997 and charged with high treason. He spent 20 months in custody, before being acquitted in July 1999. He was however, convicted of abuse of his official authority, but released under an amnesty. The verdict was appealed by both sides. On November 21, 2000, the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court cancelled the first verdict and sent the case back to a new trial in Vladivostok. Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62 * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway ***************************************************************** 3 editorial: Foot dragging on (Rocky Flats) disposal Denver Post.com --> Monday, December 24, 2001 - Rocky Flats' promising future has been detoured by international politics, because the Bush administration hasn't decided what to do with excess plutonium. Congress passed legislation to make the mothballed nuclear bomb factory near Golden into a wildlife refuge, but the refuge won't become a reality until the facility's plutonium is removed - and the plutonium isn't going anywhere until the Bush administration resolves a dispute with South Carolina. Ending the South Carolina spat will, in turn, require the Bush team to answer a question it so far has dodged: What does America do with dangerous nuclear material it no longer needs? Last week, U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, a Boulder Democrat, and U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, wrote National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, asking the Bush administration to explain its plutonium disposal policy. In previous years, the government said it would convert some excess plutonium into mixed oxide fuel (MOX) for commercial reactors, and combine other plutonium with glass-like materials to make the atomic material unusuable, a process called vitrification. Several months ago, however, the National Security Agency began reviewing the plutonium policy. Meantime, the Bush administration's budget provided money for MOX or vitrification, but not both. The indecision stems partly from the Russians' desperate financial need to use MOX to power their remaining nuclear reactors. The assumption in Washington has been that if the Russians use MOX, we should, too. But MOX carries high risks: It creates more nuclear wastes and is a tempting terrorist target, because it can be used for bomb-making or to spread radioactive contamination. In the post-Sept. 11 world, MOX makes no sense and should be discarded along with other Cold War thinking. By contrast vitrification would reduce theft and proliferation risks. DOE's pilot project had significant technical problems, so getting the process up to speed will take time and money. Yet if terrorism is now America's biggest security concern, then vitrification is the most logical option. The Bush administration reportedly is cogitating on a third alternative: building new nuclear reactors that would more thoroughly burn the plutonium. But even if the untested technology eventually works, it still would create more nuclear wastes and do almost nothing to eliminate terrorism risks. The Bush administration's foot dragging is squandering money, stalling environmental cleanups, confusing the Russians and leaving all of us vulnerable to terrorism. Rice should answer Udall's and Allard's letter posthaste. Editorials alone express The Denver Post's opinion. The members of The Post editorial board are William Dean Singleton, chairman and publisher; Glenn Guzzo, editor; Sue O'Brien, editorial page editor; Bob Ewegen, deputy editorial page editor; Peter G. Chronis, Angela Cortez, Al Knight, Penelope Purdy and Billie Stanton, editorial writers; Mike Keefe, cartoonist; and Barbara Ellis and Peggy McKay, news editors. All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 4 Cleanup finished at Flats building Denver Post.com Tuesday, December 25, 2001 - Cleanup workers at the former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant have finished removing all radioactive liquids three months ahead of schedule from a building where plutonium was processed. The action involved removing plutonium solutions from Building 771 and neutralizing them for shipment to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M. It significantly reduces risk to cleanup crews and keeps the full project on schedule for completion in 2006, said assistant project manager John Schneider of the U.S. Department of Energy. He said 38 liquid systems in the building were drained in the past three years. The cleanup project had been required to finish processing radioactive liquids from the building by the end of March. Building cleanup started in 1995. In 1999 workers removed about 28 pounds of plutonium. Demolition is scheduled in 2004. Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons for 40 years. It closed in 1989 after the end of the Cold War and after a raid by federal agents prompted by chronic safety problems. All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 5 Russian Reporter Sentenced for Treason Las Vegas SUN Today: December 25, 2001 at 4:10:16 PST VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) - A military journalist who reported on alleged environmental abuses by the Russian navy was convicted of espionage and sentenced Tuesday to four years in a maximum-security prison for treason. A military court in Vladivostok found Grigory Pasko guilty of illegally attending a secret meeting of Russian Pacific Fleet commanders in 1997 and possessing notes he made at the meeting, where officers discussed the results of naval maneuvers. Pasko had initially been accused of divulging state secrets on the combat-readiness of Russia's Pacific Fleet to Japanese media. He says he has been prosecuted in retribution for his reports of alleged abuses by the navy, including claims it dumped radioactive waste into the Sea of Japan. The 20 months Pasko spent in custody pending an earlier trial will count as time served, so Pasko must spend 28 months in prison, Judge Dmitry Kuvshinnikov said. He dismissed four of the five counts of Pasko's indictment, saying they were unsubstantiated. Pasko, who was also stripped of his military rank, was placed under arrest in the courtroom in Vladivostok immediately after the sentencing. Defense lawyer Anatoly Pyshkin called the verdict unjust and said the defense would consult with Pasko on whether to appeal. Appeals can be made to the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court within seven days of the verdict. U.S. Consul General James Shoemaker, who was present in the courtroom to observe what he called "a case for human rights," said the decision was "a bit unexpected." In his first trial, Pasko was acquitted in 1999 of treason but found guilty on lesser charges of abuse of office. He appealed the verdict, seeking a full acquittal, and prosecutors also appealed. Russia's Supreme Court sent the case back to trial in Vladivostok with a different judge. Prosecutors had demanded a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security prison - three years less than the minimum for high treason. Five counts were dropped from the initial 10-count indictment. According to the defense, the main charge against Pasko was that he passed a drawing of a naval facility for the storage of spent nuclear fuel to Japanese media. Pasko's case is one of several involving whistle-blowers and researchers accused of passing allegedly classified information to foreigners. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 6 Hanford 'burping' tank is back The Seattle Times: Local News: Monday, December 24, 2001 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific By Linda Ashton The Associated Press RICHLAND — The infamous "burping" tank at Hanford nuclear reservation is returning to storage duty, accepting more highly radioactive waste for the first time in 20 years. The rehabilitation of Tank SY-101, which was declared cured earlier this year of its potentially explosive gas emissions, or burps, is just one of the changes under way at the tank farms. CH2M Hill, which manages the tanks, and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of River Protection, which oversees the work, are moving dirt, experimenting with robots and trying to avoid complex solutions for their complex problems. "There are no textbook solutions," said Joe Cruz, a waste-retrieval engineer for the Office of River Protection. "You have to really seek out simple and effective solutions." Hanford's tank waste is the nation's biggest environmental-cleanup project, with 60 percent of the country's nuclear waste stored here. Taxpayers pony up more than $100 million annually to keep things safe at the tank farms, which Gov. Gary Locke once called an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen. More than 53 million gallons of deadly liquid, sludge and saltcake fill the 177 underground tanks in Hanford's 200 Area, a few miles from the Columbia River. In 2007, the Department of Energy and its contractors are supposed to be ready to start processing some of that strange brew into glass at a giant waste-processing, or vitrification, plant. Construction on the plant isn't to begin for a year, so the real action at Hanford is at the tank farms. Last week, CH2M Hill put its robot with a reptilian name, the "Pit Viper," into service for the first time. "This is like the lunar landing for us," said Richard Raymond, CH2M Hill's vice president for projects at Hanford, as video monitors showed the robotic arm spraying down walls in a contaminated pit. The prototype robot is designed to reduce radiation exposure to workers at the pits, which often serve as junction boxes for pipe systems among the tanks. Currently, much of the work is done by workers in protective suits using tools with handles about 10 feet long. The pits can be so radioactive that they emit in only one hour a dose of radiation 100 times higher than workers are allowed to receive in an entire year. There are 600 pits. Many need to be cleaned out and improved so they can be used in the transfer of waste from the tanks to the vitrification plant. Just how effective the Pit Viper will end up being has yet to be determined. "We're not betting the program on it," Raymond said. "But we believe it will allow us to do things safer, faster and cheaper." Also in the works is a cold-test facility, where crews will be able to practice waste retrieval with materials that are neither radioactive nor hazardous. Just a big hole in the ground right now, the one-of-a-kind test site should be ready next summer. Of the 177 tanks at Hanford, 28 are double-wall tanks, generally newer and considered safer than the 149 older, single-shell tanks, some of which date back to the 1940s. Although none is believed leaking now, some have leaked more than 1 million gallons over the years into the soil and ground water, threatening the Columbia River. The liquid has been pumped out of 130 of the single-shell tanks to minimize the likelihood of leaks. Pumping is under way on 14 tanks, and all 19 must be finished by 2004. In addition to posing an environmental hazard, 60 tanks once were listed as having the potential to explode or burn when gas or heat built up inside the stainless-steel walls. The last 24 tanks remaining on the congressional "watch list" were removed in the fall, after contractors and the Department of Energy spent seven years analyzing the contents of the tanks and developing a better understanding of how to prevent possible explosions or leaks. Only two of the tanks actually have required work before they could be removed from the list. A mixer pump was installed in Tank SY-101 to stop the burps, but that increased the chances of a leak. Last year, contractor CH2M Hill pumped waste from the tank and diluted the contents with water to solve the problem. Tank SY-101 will serve as a transfer tank as waste is moved to the vitrification plant. Another tank, C-106, contained a mix of waste that spontaneously heated, making it an explosive hazard. The waste was pumped out. seattletimes.com home ***************************************************************** 7 FAS Welcomes Report on Bunker-Busters U.S. Newswire 19 Dec 15:13 Federation Of American Scientists Welcomes Report On Bunker-Busters; Report Shows Lack Of Enthusiasm For Nukes, Says FAS To: National Desk Contact: Michael Levi of the Federation of American Scientists, 202-546-3300 or 609-865-3384 (cell) WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) say that a joint DoD-DOE report to Congress on possible development of a low-yield nuclear weapon for destroying buried stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons indicates a clear lack of enthusiasm in the Defense Department for new bunker-buster nuclear weapons. The FY01 Defense Authorization Conference report mandated the joint DoD-DOE study to review U.S. requirements to defeat deeply buried targets as well as chemical and biological agent stockpiles. Though the congressional mandate contained no requirement to focus on nuclear attack options, the conference report explicitly asked that the study participants "provide information and other assistance required to help DOD make informed decisions on whether to seek any necessary modifications to existing law." But in spite of this invitation, the report did not recommend any changes to the law governing development of low-yield nuclear weapons. As requested by Congress, the report examines tasks for which it claims nuclear weapons would be best suited amongst existing weapons, and examines the many limitations of such weapons. Key technical details are only provided in the classified appendix, but it is not difficult to speculate as to what those limitations are: political aversion to using nuclear weapons, along with the massive loss of human life concomitant with the use of any bunker-buster nuclear weapon. "Using a nuclear weapon, no matter how small, could easily ignite a broader nuclear war," according to Michael Levi, deputy director of FAS' Strategic Security Project. "The report shows that there are significant forces in the Defense Department who have realized this and so have little interest in nuclear weapons." In a paper published by the FAS in April 2001, Princeton University Physicist Robert Nelson wrote: "No earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with especially intense and deadly fallout." Public advocacy of bunker-buster nuclear weapons has been greatly muted since the release of that study. Addressing the DoD-DOE report, Dr. Nelson noted "It's clear that the report's authors are aware of the massive civilian casualties that an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon would cause from radioactive fallout. I certainly hope those making the final decision on development will realize that new nuclear weapons aren't the way forward." Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire ***************************************************************** 8 Uranium found at bin Laden base -- The Washington Times December 24, 2001 LONDON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Uranium and cyanide have reportedly been discovered in drums at an al Qaida terrorist base near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. The discovery -- the first evidence that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had obtained materials for a nuclear arsenal -- was confirmed by U.S. officials, the London Telegraph said. The cache included a low-grade uranium which could be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb," or a crude radiological device wrapped around a conventional explosive. Such a bomb is designed to spread radiation over a large area after exploding. The suspicious substances were found in tunnels at the edge of an air base controlled by U.S. forces. Marine Corps Capt. David Romley said that he "cannot deny" that uranium had been found at the airport, USA TODAY reported. "We are aware that there are CBR (chemical-biological-radioactive)-type environments in the region," he said. USA TODAY quoted one U.S. official as saying some depleted uranium was found recently, but that the material did not appear to be dangerous and that it isn't clear whether Sunday's claim involves the same discovery. Other U.S. officials said they knew of no discoveries of any radioactive materials anywhere in the country. Haji Gullalai, the interim intelligence chief for Kandahar province, told The Telegraph that after capturing the airport area earlier this month, his men discovered the materials in the tunnels. "There were big drums the size of petrol drums and metal boxes with sides seven or eight inches thick," he said. "The bottles were labeled in four different languages -- Chinese, Russian, Arabic and English." The Telegraph quoted U.S. officials as saying that Russia, the Central Asian states of the former Soviet Union, China and Pakistan were all possible sources for the uranium. All site contents copyright © 2001 News World Communications, ***************************************************************** 9 Documentary details how Israel got the bomb December 24, 2001 Documentary details how Israel got the bomb Government officials admit France aided nuclear program Inigo Gilmore The Sunday Telegraph JERUSALEM - A television documentary in which Shimon Peres, Israel's Foreign Minister, discloses for the first time details about Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons is to be broadcast in the Arab world. It is intended, at a time of rising tensions, as a warning. In the documentary, Mr. Peres goes further than any other Israeli official in confirming the Jewish state has nuclear capability. He and former French officials give details about co-operation between Israel and France in launching Israel's nuclear program. The film, made by a leading Israeli documentary team, is a sign the government may be finally relaxing its rule of absolute silence on its nuclear program. Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility, is serving an 18-year jail sentence for revealing in 1986 that Israel had more than 100 warheads. The documentary, The Bomb in the Basement: Israel's Nuclear Option, was shown in Israel last month and is being sold to leading Arabic television stations including Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel. The makers of the film believe the government's co-operation was prompted by concerns over international terrorism and the expectation that Iran will have a nuclear capability within a few years. The documentary's Israeli director, Michael Karpin, who previously made a controversial film about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, said he was not sure until a few weeks ago whether censors would allow the show to be broadcast. "It could be that after Sept. 11 they [the government] decided that perhaps the time had come to reveal a little bit more about the Israeli nuclear project,'' Mr. Karpin said. "I think the decision to let it go ahead has to do with the idea of wanting to tell the Arab world: "Listen we have it'.'' The film reveals how France helped Israel on its nuclear plans in exchange for support in the Suez War. In the mid-1950s, relations between the two countries were warming because of their shared anxiety over burgeoning nationalist movements in North Africa. Israel feared the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt would embolden an already formidable foe, while France faced an Arab insurrection in Algeria, one of its last colonies. Their interests converged in 1956 when Israel agreed to team up with France and Britain in a war to punish Nasser for nationalizing the Suez Canal. In September, 1956, in Sevres near Paris, Mr. Peres, then a 30-year-old Defence Ministry official, accompanied David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, to a meeting with French and British delegations about the Suez crisis. Mr. Peres said: "In Sevres, when it was all over, I told Ben-Gurion, 'There's one piece of unfinished business: the nuclear issue. Before you agree, let me finish that.' Of the four countries which at that time had a nuclear capacity -- the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain and France -- only France was willing to help us.'' Mr. Peres is asked in the documentary whether Israel requested a nuclear reactor. He replies: "I asked for more than that. I asked for other things, too; the uranium and those things. I went up to Ben-Gurion and said, 'It's settled.' That's how it was.'' Mr. Ben-Gurion approved Israel's participation in the Suez campaign. On Oct. 29, 1956, 400 Israeli paratroopers were dropped in western Sinai in the first phase of the attack on Egypt. The agreement with France was unprecedented. Until then, no country had supplied another with the means for developing a nuclear capability. Mr. Karpin believes Mr. Peres may have been motivated to speak on the subject because he hopes that it will help to secure his place in history. In Paris, Jean-Francois Daguzan, the deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, said France's deal with Israel had been kept a secret for almost 30 years. "It was well known in military and political circles but it didn't become public knowledge until the mid-1980s after a book was published about that era and the agreement was mentioned." Copyright © 2001 National Post Online | Privacy Policy | ***************************************************************** 10 Pakistan military warns of nuclear conflict with India Tuesday December 25, 3:50 AM By Raja Asghar CHAKOTHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - A senior Pakistani army officer said on Monday continued border clashes with India could spark an uncontrollable flareup involving nuclear weapons. The two neighbours have reinforced positions on either side of their disputed border in Kashmir since a December 13 suicide attack on the Indian parliament which killed 14 people. New Delhi blamed two militant groups based in Muslim Pakistan. Local sources said on Monday that Pakistan's army had deployed anti-aircraft guns and moved most troops from the eastern garrison town of Sialkot to the border with India. Pakistani and Indian troops only watched each other with distrust from bunkers on either side of a broken bridge at Chakothi in the west of disputed Kashmir when a group of journalists visited the Pakistani side of the front line. But both sides reported exchanges of fresh mortar and heavy machinegun fire elsewhere in Kashmir and New Delhi expelled a Pakistani diplomat, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed adversaries ever higher. Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yaqub said the situation was "highly explosive". "Because in that situation, that tension, even a small little incident can result in a chain reaction which nobody will be able to control," he told Reuters Television at Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir. He said an all-out war between the two nations could "become really horrific for the entire world". Asked if nuclear weapons could be used, Yaqub, giving what he called his personal view, said: "But if there is a war between the two countries and if any country feels that it comes to its own survival, probably there won't be any hesitation to use nuclear weapons." A brief statement from the military's public relations department said the top-brass of Pakistan's armed forces met in the garrison town of Rawalpindi and "discussed matters relating to defence, national security and professional aspects". A source in Sialkot, just a few miles from the border in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, said most of the troops had left the cantonment. "The movement of troops to and from the border has increased. It is more than in routine times," he said. Artillery exchanges have increased recently in the Sharkargarh-Zafarwal sector of the working boundary, a 220-km (136-mile) stretch of border between the line of control dividing mountainous Kashmir, and the frontier that runs down the plains in an eastward direction up to the Arabian Sea. A senior local official in Sialkot said the army movements to and from the border had "not been very obvious," but declined to go into detail. New Delhi accuses Pakistan of fomenting a decade-old revolt in Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan denies sponsoring the rebellion, saying it only provides moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination. Kashmir's main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, asked the two nations to exercise restraint in the region, which has triggered two of the three wars they have fought since independence from Britain in 1947. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 DOE accidently releases 60 pages of restricted information BulletinWire On December 17, the Energy Department released an [http://www.osti.gov/opennet/fourthrpt.pdf] on inadvertent releases of classified information. Of the 28 million pages reviewed by trained specialists, 20 documents were found to contain 60 pages of inadvertently released restricted and formerly restricted data (about .0002 percent of the pages reviewed). The documents contained information on topics including nuclear weapons design, yield, and storage locations, among other things. According to the report, the pages that contained information on the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons abroad should have been kept out of the public domain because such information "may violate international agreements and harm diplomatic ties with foreign host nations." A similar explanation was given by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) after it released (in response to a Freedom of Information Act request) a heavily redacted version of the [http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/news/19991020/] . "According to the OSD, the deletions were necessary because the information could 'reasonably be expected' to damage U.S. national security or harm relations with other countries," reported Hans Kristensen in the November/December 1999 Bulletin. "But much of the deleted information has already been revealed in other declassified documents." The redacted History reveals nine foreign locations of U.S. nuclear deployments. Although 18 other location names are blacked out, researchers were able to identify them based on corroborating data, as the Bulletin reported in November/December 1999 ("Where They Were"). See: " [http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1999/nd99/nd99norris.html] ," by Robert S. Norris, William Arkin, and William Burr, November/December 1999 "Secrecy on a Sliding Scale," by Hans M. Kristensen, November/December 1999 " [http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2000/jf00/jf00norrisarkin.html] " by Robert S. Norris, William Arkin, and William Burr, January/February 2000 "Where They Were, Part 3," BulletinWire, December 22, 2000 Energy tries to sell radioactive scrap again The Energy Department seems determined to resume recycling of radioactive metals at its nuclear sites, reversing a Clinton administration decision to suspend the release of contaminated scrap. In a December 12 [http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/print_release.cfm?ID=972] , Public Citizen describes a draft memo prepared for Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham outlining procedures for testing and documenting the release of "scrap metals that may have originally contained small, but acceptable quantities of residual radioactivity." Oak Ridge, Paducah, and several other sites across the country have massive inventories of radioactive scrap metals resulting from the updating or decommissioning of buildings. According to the [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/nn11529.htm] (December 14), the Paducah plant has more than 60,000 tons of scrap iron, nickel, aluminum, copper, and stainless steel. Some administration officials and congressman think the metal could be turned into profit. Sen. Jim Bunning (Republican, Kentucky) told the Sun, "If recycling can be successful without causing contamination . . . and harming the public, then I'm 100 percent for it. We should try it on a trial basis and see how it works. There's a lot of money sitting in Paducah." In the November/December 1999 Bulletin, Bret Lortie described a push by the Energy Department to recycle 126,000 tons of radioactive scrap at Oak Ridge. Instead of burying the metal at a cost of $800 million, Energy contracted with British Nuclear Fuels, Ltd. (BNFL) to remove, clean, and sell the metal (see " [http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1999/nd99/nd99lortie.html] ," by Bret Lortie, November/December 1999). But this and other plans to recycle waste at department facilities were halted when then–Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, reacting to a storm of criticism over the plans, banned the release of any radioactivity contaminated scrap metal in mid-2000. According to author Terje Langeland, the 1999 Oak Ridge deal also resulted in an embarrassing law suit for BNFL. In the November/December 2001 Bulletin, Langeland wrote, "According to critics, BNFL sold Energy on the project under false pretenses. The Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, in a lawsuit, alleged that BNFL had fraudulently claimed to have experience in recycling the most valuable of the metals, nickel, when in fact it did not" (see "Here, There, Everywhere," by Terje Langeland, [http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2001/nd01/nd01toc.html] ). December 13, 2001 Can the president withdraw from the ABM Treaty without Congress's consent? President George W. Bush announced yesterday that the United States was formally withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The move will go into effect in six months. In his [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/20011213-4.html] announcing the decision, Bush said, "I have given formal notice to Russia, in accordance with the treaty, that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost 30-year-old treaty. I have concluded that the ABM Treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks." Some experts contend that the president doesn't have the constitutional authority to unilaterally pull out of a treaty without first receiving approval from Congress. According to Walter Clemens of Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the U.S. Constitution doesn't make clear whether the president has such authority. "If it takes two branches of government to make a treaty, can the White House alone terminate it? The U.S. Constitution provides no clear answers to [this question], and the courts have handed down contradictory or highly qualified rulings. But the precedents established over the past two centuries suggest that the president may not act alone to abrogate U.S. treaty obligations" (see " [http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2001/nd01/nd01clemens.html] " by Walter C. Clemens, November/December 2001 Bulletin.). See also: Bulletin Special Collections: [http://www.bullatomsci.org/research/collections/armscntrlabm.html] [http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/2001/nd01/nd01toc.html] [http://www.ceip.org/files/nonprolif/templates/article.asp?NewsID=1915] FBI's Wen Ho Lee investigation "flawed" A Justice Department report released earlier this week found serious fault with the FBI's investigation of former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee, calling it "deeply and fundamentally flawed." The report also rejected allegations that the Taiwan-born Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been investigated because of his race. Lee was arrested in December 1999 on 59 counts of mishandling national security information and held in solitary confinement for 278 days. Lee eventually pleaded guilty to a single count and was sentenced to time already served. Now Lee is being sued for defamation by Notra Trulock, the man who at one point led the Energy Department's investigation into possible Chinese spying. Trulock and Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, allege that affidavits posted on a website run by Lee's supporters imply that Trulock was racist or had focused on Lee because of his race. But as Steven Aftergood writes in [http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/2001/12/121201.html] (December 12), "the premise of this Judicial Watch claim is mistaken insofar as the affidavits in question were never posted on the [http://www.wenholee.org] web site, but rather were published on the Federation of American Scientists website. Wenholee.org merely provided embedded links to the documents on the FAS site. (Besides which, Wen Ho Lee has no responsibility for the contents of his supporters' web site.)" Lee was initially deposed in the defamation suit on December 7 ( [http://www.judicialwatch.org/cases/79/Leedeposition.htm] ), but has been scheduled for a further deposition later this month. For more on Wen Ho Lee, see: " [http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2000/nd00/nd00schwartz.html] ," by Stephen I. Schwartz, November/December 2000 "A Very Convenient Scandal," by Stephen I. Schwartz, May/June 1999 [http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/bellows/index.html] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Informed! Register for email updates. Note: If you have any comments or suggestions—especially about important topics, articles, or web sites we should know about—send them to the [cauer@thebulletin.org] . ©2001 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ***************************************************************** 12 Reagan Presidential Materials To Be Released, Jan. 3 U.S. Newswire 20 Dec 11:19 Previously Withheld Reagan Presidential Materials to be Released, Jan. 3 To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: National Archives Public Affairs, 301-713-6000 News Advisory: What: Approximately 8,000 pages of materials from the records of Ronald Reagan's Presidency that were previously withheld under the Presidential Records Act restriction for confidential advice between White House officials. These records are the first segment of the approximately 68,000 pages of records that the National Archives Records Administration proposed to release earlier this year. In accordance with Executive Order 13233, representatives of former President Reagan and President Bush have reviewed these records and have chosen not to assert any constitutionally based privilege. This opening consists of records from the staff member and office files, National Security Council files, and the alphabetically arranged Subject Files of the White House Office of Records Management (WHORM), beginning with Agriculture, Arts, Atomic/Nuclear Energy, and Business/Economics. Where: The Research Room The Ronald Reagan Library, 40 Presidential Drive Simi Valley, CA 93065-0600 PHONE: 800-410-8354 When: Thursday, Jan. 3, 2002 at 9 a.m. /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ***************************************************************** 13 Uranium and cyanide found in drums at bin Laden base news.telegraph.co.uk - By Barbie Dutter in Kandahar and Ben Fenton (Filed: 24/12/2001) URANIUM has been found in an al-Qa'eda base outside Kandahar - the first evidence that Osama bin Laden had obtained materials for a nuclear arsenal, it was revealed yesterday. The discovery gives some credibility to the fear that he could unleash a weapon of mass destruction as his dying act. Anti-Taliban leaders in Kandahar revealed that the uranium and other materials, including cyanide, had been discovered in a tunnel complex beneath the former base near the city's airport. The find was confirmed by American officials. It was also revealed that when tribal forces took the al-Qa'eda complex earlier this month they found hundreds of jars, drums and metal cases in an underground labyrinth at the desert compound where Arab fighters staged a bloody last stand before Kandahar was surrendered by the Taliban. The cache included low-grade uranium 238, which could be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb" if wrapped around a conventional explosive. It would spread radiation over a large area. Specialised equipment and facilities would be needed to turn uranium 238 into a fissile device like the Hiroshima bomb, and so it would not be suitable for building such a weapon. American intelligence officials told Newsweek magazine that al-Qa'eda had enough of the material to make a "dirty bomb" and it seems certain that their knowledge is based on the discovery at Kandahar airport. Haji Gullalai, now the interim intelligence chief for Kandahar province, told The Telegraph that immediately after capturing the airport area, his men had entered one tunnel and discovered the materials in a vast underground workshop. The find was reported the same day to "international military personnel", thought to be American special forces, who sent experts wearing masks and protective clothing to examine the substances, Mr Gullalai said. He added: "We knew we were not well equipped to deal with these things so we called in foreign experts who told us it was uranium. "For our own safety we did not touch the bottles but from a distance we saw there were hundreds of different kinds of containers - small jars and big jars, sealed with metal lids and containing powders and liquids, white and yellowish in colour. "There were big drums the size of petrol drums and metal boxes with sides seven or eight inches thick. The bottles were labelled in four different languages - Chinese, Russian, Arabic and English." American officials said that Russia, the states of the former Soviet Union, China and Pakistan were all possible sources for the uranium. It has been estimated that several hundred Arab al-Qa'eda fighters were killed in the battle for the airport, led by Gul Agha - now Kandahar's new governor - with Mr Gullalai playing a senior commanding role. The area where the tunnels were found is known locally as Turnak Farms. It is thought to have been the al-Qa'eda network's principal training and military base in southern Afghanistan and and held up to 1,800 people. Kandahar airport has now been taken over by around 1,500 US marines and coalition forces. 13 December 2001: Rogue scientists gave bin Laden nuclear secrets 9 December 2001: Corpses line the streets as I enter ruins of Kandahar 5 December 2001: Al-Qa'eda could be close to developing 'dirty' nuclear bomb 27 November 2001: US troops secure airport base for final battle 24 October 2001: How we can prevent a nuclear nightmare 15 September 2001: Blair warns of rogue nuclear strikes © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited ***************************************************************** 14 David Broder: DOE's Abraham an arms control Santa Claus? Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 10:07 a.m. on Monday, December 24, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Put whiskers and a red suit on him, and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham would make a passable Santa Claus. What Abraham brought home from his recent trip to Moscow and his negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), plus what others have accomplished on Capitol Hill, are some of the best Christmas presents anyone could have hoped to find under the tree. In sum, the path has been opened to greater progress in the new year on securing Russian nuclear materials and decreasing the chances that terrorists will be able to obtain the ingredients for suitcase nuclear bombs or other weapons of mass destruction. Here is the story, as gleaned from interviews with Abraham, members of Congress and others in the Bush administration. First, the final appropriations bill of 2001 contained virtually all the money that proponents had been seeking in vain all year to safeguard the atomic materials loosely stored and casually guarded at Russian sites. As readers of previous columns on this subject know, the green-eyeshade people in President Bush's OMB had inexplicably decided earlier this year that this was a place to save money, despite the fact that Bush had heartily endorsed the program during the campaign and since taking office. Bush's first budget cut the money for the Nunn-Lugar program, the 10-year-old bipartisan effort sponsored by former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana -- two of the nation's most foresighted national security experts -- to lock up those loose nukes and provide work for Russian nuclear scientists left unemployed by the breakup of the Soviet Union. But now Congress has boosted the appropriation by $120 million, just $11 million less than the sum a strong backer of the program, Texas Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards, had been seeking. Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, the senior Democrat on Appropriations, led the fight to restore the money. Lugar told me the outcome was "very good news'' and said he appreciated "the very strong bipartisan support'' for the program. But more good news is in store. Abraham has become a real advocate for the Nunn-Lugar program and said in an interview he is committed to "expanding and accelerating'' it in coming months and years. The former Michigan senator spent two days in Moscow last month with his counterpart, Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumyantsev, and with officials of the Russian navy, another partner in the project. They agreed to "establish a formal process to monitor progress'' in "improving measures on nuclear materials physical protection, control and accounting, as well as preventing illegal trafficking and handling of nuclear and radioactive materials.'' Beyond those formal words, Abraham said, there was a clear recognition on both sides of the central importance of such controls, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At the same time Abraham was holding these meetings in Moscow, the National Security Council was removing its hold on plans for disposing of Russian and American plutonium -- a principal ingredient of nuclear weapons -- through a process that converts it into a form safe to use in generating electricity. Some Bush aides had questioned the cost and complexity of the process, but they have now agreed that the disposal process can proceed, with adequate funding next year. Finally, Bush has signaled that money for safeguarding nuclear materials and blocking proliferation of nuclear weapons will be increased in future years. In a Dec. 11 speech at The Citadel, Bush called this "a vital mission.'' And, congressional sources tell me, his budgeteers actually have increased fiscal 2003 money for this program beyond the Energy Department's request -- a real rarity these days. The effort to safeguard nuclear material likely will expand beyond Russia. Abraham visited the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to promise joint U.S.-Russian initiatives to strengthen controls on cross-border movements of this lethal stuff. Lugar has talked with Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about his vision of developing similar programs for India and Pakistan, and eventually even for Iran and Iraq. Having previously criticized the Bush administration and some in Congress for shortsighted economies in this area, it is a pleasure now to commend them for this Christmas gift to the nation -- and to the world. (c) 2001, Washington Post Writers Group. ***************************************************************** 15 Saved baby teeth may hold clues about nuclear fallout Tuesday, December 25, 2001 By WILLIAM ALLEN St. Louis Post-Dispatch Washington University researchers on a spring cleaning mission in May swung open the door to a dark, musty ammunition bunker and rediscovered a scientific gold mine. The treasure, 85,000 baby teeth collected from St. Louis children, had been stored in the bunker at the university's Tyson Research Center since the 1970s. Scientists said the teeth will give them a unique chance to determine whether fallout from Cold War nuclear bomb tests caused cancer and other health problems years later. The teeth could settle a long scientific debate about whether the tests by the United States and the Soviet Union harmed civilians, especially those born from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. The teeth were part of the world-renowned St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey. In that study, thousands of children from the St. Louis region gave their baby teeth to science instead of the Tooth Fairy. From 1959 to 1970, they or their parents sent teeth to the Greater St. Louis Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information. Along with the teeth they sent a card with their name, address, birth date, and other information. The Baby Tooth Survey was a unique citizen effort to help scientists determine whether children were absorbing radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests. The study found that kids were, indeed, absorbing radioactive material. The study received international attention and helped persuade the nation to adopt a 1963 treaty banning atmospheric bomb tests. Now, like IBM stock that grandma stuck in a box in the attic and forgot, teeth not ground up in the original study may pay dividends to a new generation of scientists. Researchers in New York have launched a project to find the "owners" of the St. Louis teeth and determine whether they've experienced health problems. "We flipped out when we heard about the 85,000 teeth," said Joseph Mangano, national coordinator with the Radiation and Public Health Project, an independent, non-profit research group in New York City. "It was like an early Christmas present." Mangano is asking anyone born and living in St. Louis from the late 1940s through the 1960s, especially if they believe they submitted teeth, to contact his group. If matched with any of the baby teeth, the caller would be asked for a mailing address to receive a health questionnaire. After World War II, the U.S. government set off about 100 nuclear bombs in above-ground tests in the American West. Public concern about radioactive fallout rose as scientists began to find it in the environment and milk supply downwind from the explosions. Writing in the scientific journal Nature in 1958, Herman Kalckar, a scientist with the National Institutes of Health, proposed an international tooth survey to study accumulation of fallout material in children. Washington University biology professor Barry Commoner read the article and engineered the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey. The survey, begun in December 1958, combined a highly publicized collection campaign by the Citizens Committee for Nuclear Information with scientific analysis led by Harold Rosenthal, a biochemist with the Washington University School of Dentistry. The U.S. Public Health Service and Leukemia Society of Missouri and Illinois provided money for the project. The survey gained fame for mobilizing, for the first time, massive public participation in a scientific project. Key to that response was widespread support from Washington and St. Louis universities' dental schools, elementary school superintendents, churches, Scout groups, dentists, librarians, and others. Rather than putting them under pillows, children or their parents mailed newly fallen baby teeth to the committee along with a form. The forms were handed out at schools and dental offices. A child inside a giant model of a tooth handed them out at department stores, too. The Baby Tooth Survey became so well-known that letters addressed simply "Tooth Fairy, St. Louis" got to the committee's office. In return for sending teeth, each child received a thank you note and a button that said: "I gave my tooth to science." In all, the St. Louis project collected nearly 300,000 baby teeth, mostly from within a 150-mile radius of St. Louis. Rosenthal's lab analyzed the teeth for strontium 90. That substance, created by the bomb blasts, was readily absorbed by the fast-growing teeth and bones of infants. It left a telltale sign of exposure to fallout just before and after birth. Put simply, Rosenthal's analysis showed how the strontium 90 in baby teeth rose and fell in unison over the years with bomb tests, declining rapidly after the tests ceased. "We still don't know the effect of that on health," Rosenthal said. When the grant was cut during the administration of President Richard Nixon in 1970, the project stopped. Scientists shipped the remaining teeth to Tyson for long-term storage. Scientists with the project want to find the contributors of the baby teeth, most now in their 40s and 50s, for what is called a prospective study. Information from a simple health questionnaire filled out by baby teeth contributors would be compared with fallout exposure data gained by analyzing each person's baby teeth with radiation counters much more accurate than those used four decades ago. The researchers might find that exposure to higher levels of strontium 90 is linked to certain slow-developing health problems in later years -- thyroid cancer, for example. The study has no funding, so the Project is seeking grant support. Results of the study will be published in peer-reviewed medical journals, Mangano said. Copyright © 2001 North Jersey Media Group Inc. Contact The ***************************************************************** 16 Vladivostok News :: Pasko gets 4 years in treason verdict December 25, 2001 Pasko gets 4 years in treason verdict By Anatoly Medetsky Grigory Pasko and his defence lawyers are listening to the verdict A court in Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok on Tuesday sentenced military journalist Grigory Pasko to four years in prison for treason in the form of espionage and stripped him of his military rank. Pasko was accused of divulging state secrets on the combat-readiness of Russia's Pacific Fleet to Japanese media. Captain 2nd Rank Pasko, who already spent 20 months in custody during a previous trial on the same charges, will have to serve only the remaining 28 months, Judge Dmitry Kuvshinnikov said. Pasko was arrested immediately in the courtroom and he kissed his wife Galina Morozova before being whisked away by two armed policemen. His wife was left struggling with tears. The military court found Pasko guilty of illegally attending a secret meeting of commanders of the Russian Pacific Fleet in 1997 and possessing notes that he made there. Judge Kuvshinnikov dismissed four other counts of the indictment saying they were unsubstantiated. In his first trial, Pasko was acquitted in 1999 of treason charges but found guilty on lesser charges of abuse of office. Pasko appealed the verdict seeking a full acquittal, and prosecutors also appealed. Russia's Supreme Court sent the case back to trial in Vladivostok with a different judge. Pasko and his supporters maintain the charges are retribution for his reports of alleged environmental abuses by the navy, including dumping radioactive waste into the sea. Defense lawyer Anatoly Pyshkin said this second verdict is unjust, but the defense will have to consult with Pasko on whether to appeal it. "I think the verdict doesn't have the right to exist," Pyshkin said after police removed Pasko from the courtroom. "But we'll have to discuss the issue (of making an appeal) with Grigory." Appeals may be made to the Military Collegium of the Russian Supreme Court within seven days of the announcement of the verdict. The prosecution in the case had asked for nine years in a maximum-security prison, three years below the minimum 12 years required for treason, for a variety of reasons. The court lowered the sentence even further citing the same reasons. They are that Pasko didn't inflict any harm on Russia's national security, had two minor children, a good record of service and military decorations. Pasko will serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison for being illegally present at a secret meeting of Pacific Fleet top brass, where results of naval tactical maneuvers were discussed. The court said it had found from witnesses, including former Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Mikhail Zakharenko, that the meeting discussed sensitive topics including employment of military intelligence, new performance results of submarine locating and tracking systems, and faults in the performance of electronic warfare systems. Pasko made notes of the discussion and then kept them at home. Federal Security Service, or FSB, agents came across the notes during a search of Pasko's apartment after his arrest in 1997. "Divulging this information could have inflicted damage on the battle-readiness of the Pacific Fleet," Judge Kuvshinnikov stated. He added that Pasko had regularly provided information earlier to Tadashi Akano, a reporter for a Japanese news organization "hoping to receive remuneration," and that testified to Pasko's intentions to pass on the information in question. "With intentions to pass the information, Pasko was present at the military meeting and in fact collected and possessed classified data," the verdict read. "The court qualifies these actions as high treason in the form of espionage." U.S. Consul General James Shoemaker, who was present in the courtroom to observe what he called "a case for human rights," said "the decision was a bit unexpected." [engl@vladnews.ru] Copyright c 2001 "Vladivostok Novosti" This material may not be ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************