***************************************************************** 06/26/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.159 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Wellstone: Nuclear waste must be moved 2 Cooper Nuclear Station declares first-ever alert 3 Shutting nuclear power plants may cost US$10bn 4 Nuclear power boost feared 5 Anorak: A need for power 6 Revamp drives AEA into the red 7 BNFL losses to near £200m 8 UK announces energy review, including nuclear 9 State Regulator Rips Daschle For Stance On Nuclear Waste 10 Nuclear power back on agenda 11 UK nuke group BNFL faces contract delays - report 12 Energy review to consider building nuclear plants 13 Congress Votes to Increase Funds for Renewable Energy, Waste Cleanup 14 Open sesame for nuclear power 'an exercise to save BNFL' 15 Shutting nuclear power plants may cost US$10bn 16 NRC to Meet with Nuclear Management Company to Discuss Safety 17 NRC Monitoring Events at Cooper Nuclear Station 18 Officials inspect N-plant phaseout 19 Simmons goes to mountain searching for solution 20 NRC Approves Transfer of Operating Licenses for Nine Mile Point 21 Spending in Energy Proposal Boosted 22 Decisions on MDS Nordion Facilities Operated By AECL 23 Congress May Help With Moab Tailings 24 Tribe may have say in Yucca project planning 25 County to air Yucca concerns 26 EPA begins inquiry into radiation health standards 27 Nuclear power? No thanks. It is too expensive and still far too 28 SELLAFIELD PLANS MASSIVE INCREASES IN DISCHARGES OF NUCLEAR WASTE 29 Turks Protest Nuclear Shipments in Narrow Bosphorus Strait 30 ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners said last night they would "fiercely 31 Study flags radioactive threat Problem exceeds federal estimates 32 Tainted uranium, danger widely distributed Tons of material 33 Editorial: Oil drilling vote offers us lessons 34 EPA official launches probe of Yucca radiation standards 35 Blair opens way for a nuclear comeback 36 U.S. nuclear cos limited liability renewal has bipartisan support - senator 37 Review 'will revive nuclear power' 38 Exposure to uranium likely higher 39 G8 Governments Exporting Nuclear Reactors Despite Global Collapse 40 Press Release Fast Flux: The Reactor the Wouldn't Die 41 GAO Gets Tough With Cheney Over Energy Task Force 42 Leaders back nuclear energyNews NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 The Scotsman Online - 2 Metro: Beryllium case jury deliberates 3rd day 3 Mayors Ask Bush to Commit to Eliminating Nuclear Weapons 4 Team Will Cut Into Sunken Submarine 5 Study flags radioactive threat 6 Army study finds fouled weapons safe Some vets say they were 7 Radiation Payments Criticized 8 Ex-Army Head: Pakistan Had Nuclear Arsenal in 1989 9 Radiation safety in Barents Sea to be ensured 10 Lockheed Martin to Negotiate 5-Year Contract with Fluor Hanford 11 A debt long overdue | The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12 Specialist: Radiation, Paducah workers' cancer likely tied 13 Stripped for cash / Impoverished Russian sailors stealing submarine parts 14 'Important' ORNL discoveries recognized by DOE 15 No impact found for ORNL rebuild 16 Accidents in space, getting to Mars, and how to kill a mission. 17 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space 18 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space 19 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space 20 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space 21 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space 22 Sellafield emissions predicted to rise 23 Kazakhstan's forgotten nuclear tragedy 24 Amid the rusting hulks of a nuclear graveyard, a plea to help **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Wellstone: Nuclear waste must be moved Red Wing Republican Eagle Anne Jacobson, News EditorJune 25, 2001 U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone told Red Wing leaders he is committed to getting nuclear waste off Prairie Island. Joking aside about his liberal politics and past "no" votes on siting a federal waste repository, he pledged to write legislation that will ensure safe shipment of used radioactive fuel to a repository. Safe shipping is the only reason he said he has opposed opening the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Once that's satisfied, he'll vote in support, he said. "I don't see where we disagree," Wellstone told an audience of about 20 people Saturday. "You may have thought that past legislation was better than I did. That's where we disagree." Should Xcel Energy's Prairie Island nuclear plant stay open? Should it continue to provide good, well-paying jobs? Should the spent fuel be removed? Should the federal government to held accountable to open the repository? "Yes," Wellstone responded to his own questions. Accompanied by state Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, Wellstone first met privately with Prairie Island tribal leaders Saturday morning before touring the nuclear plant. He then met over the noon hour with business, labor, city and county representatives. The focus was energy policy and Prairie Island nuclear plant's dwindling storage space. The two-unit facility has enough dry-cask storage to operate into 2007, Red Wing Area Chamber of Commerce President Dennis Egan reminded Wellstone. If the waste isn't removed or more space approved, the plant will close, Minnesota will lose a major power source, and 300 to 500 jobs will be lost. Minnesota isn't far behind California, which is suffering rolling blackouts, civic leaders warned. Person after person stressed the need to keep the reliable, clean, cost-efficient plant running. "It's very critical for us to have a reliable energy source," said Jerry Dietzman of Red Wing Shoe Co. The issue ranks with skyrocketing health-care costs in whether the company continues to employ 1,600 people in Minnesota, he added. County Commissioner Gary Iocco said farmers are straining to survive. Raise energy costs 25 to 35 percent, he said, and more farmers will go out of business. "I'm not interested in shutting down nuclear power in Minnesota or anywhere else," Wellstone reassured them. Wellstone said he thinks nuclear waste at power plants across the country will be sent to an interim, above-ground facility - either at Yucca Mountain or in Utah, where the Goshute tribe is negotiating with Xcel Energy and other utilities to open a dry-cask facility. There's no chance the current Senate will initiate legislation to open the repository at Yucca Mountain, Wellstone stressed, because Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada is the majority whip. However, Wellstone predicted that plans will proceed along an administrative avenue. A report stating that Yucca Mountain engineers have met the regulations will reach President Bush's desk soon. Bush will sign it, Wellstone said, and then the only way it can be overturned is if a majority of lawmakers reject it. "You'll have my vote," Wellstone promised, provided there is language ensuring safe passage of the radioactive waste as it travels through cities en route to the repository. "I will write language. I will work with you," he said, adding, "I want the waste out of Minnesota." The Prairie Island community wants the waste away from the reservation, too. Unfortunately, the federal repository, even the temporary one, won't be ready until 2010, he added. Scott Northard of Xcel Energy pointed out that the nuclear industry has a good shipping record. In the 1980s, 33 trains bearing spent fuel from the Monticello, Minn., plant passed through three states without incident. There have been 3,000 similar shipments nationwide over four decades. "It's pretty well demonstrated technology," he said. We must satisfy people's perception of the hazards, Wellstone responded. "Let's give them assurance." Wellstone then took questions and comments about some key issues before Congress, primarily health-care costs, Patients' Rights legislation and the tax code. annej@republican-eagle.com ©Red Wing Republican Eagle 2001 ***************************************************************** 2 Cooper Nuclear Station declares first-ever alert Journalstar.com: Nebraska BY AL J. LAUKAITIS Lincoln Journal Star An electrical transformer fire at Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville early Monday morning put the power plant on its first-ever alert. Plant employees put out the blaze, which broke out at 4:33 a.m. and knocked out power to some administration and training buildings, said Dave Simon, spokesman for the Nebraska Public Power District. The fire lasted about 16 minutes. No injuries were reported and there was no threat to public safety, Simon said. But because the loss of the transformer has the ability to affect safety systems, plant officials declared an "unusual event," the lowest of four emergency response conditions. A short time later, they upgraded the emergency response to "alert" status as a precaution. An alert activates emergency problem-solving groups within the plant and immediately notifies federal regulators and local authorities. Cooper never shut down and there was no damage to safety equipment, Simon said. However, the plant will operate at about a 60 percent capacity until the repair work is finished. Some of the electricity from the plant, three miles south of Brownville, is used by the Lincoln Electric System. The accident forced LES to buy higher priced power on the spot market or generate more costly power via a peaking turbine, said Doug Bantam, power supply manager for LES. The transformer that caught fire operated one of two pumps that re-circulated coolant water to the plant, Simon said. When the transformer caught fire, a second pump, powered by a different transformer continued to operate. "We've never had this happen before," Simon said of the accident. The transformer that caught fire was outside the plant but still within a fenced area. A line crew from Lincoln began repairs Monday. No damage estimate was available. Plant officials ended the alert about four hours after the fire. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials are monitoring the situation. The alert declaration was a first for the plant since it began operations in 1974, Simon said. "The decision to cancel the alert was made after it was determined the fire was no hazard to the plant or its personnel and the plant was in a stable condition," he said. Reach Al J. Laukaitis at 473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com. Copyright © 2001, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 Shutting nuclear power plants may cost US$10bn The Taipei Times Online: 2001-06-26Tuesday, June 26th, 2001 AFP, TAIPEI Taiwan's plans to close three nuclear power plants ahead of schedule may cost around US$10 billion, it was reported yesterday. The three power plants would be shut down in 2001, 2004 and 2007 respectively, or seven years earlier than planned, according to an economic ministry report, the Chinese language media said. "The cost of the plans may run up to NT$350 billion (US$10.14 billion)," an unnamed official said. The plans would be implemented only if Taiwan Power Co's (Taipower, ¥x¹q) output capacity was 15 percent higher than peak demands. The government and opposition parties agreed early this year to build a nuclear-free zone in the wake of a row over the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¥|). The government scrapped the partly built US$5.6 billion power plant on Oct. 27 last year without consulting the legislature as required by the Constitution, plunging the country into months of political crisis. The DPP, which had listed the scrapping of the project on its party platform, reinstated the project in February. It opposed nuclear power on grounds of safety and difficulty in disposing of the nuclear waste. Since the first nuclear power plant started in 1987, the three nuclear power plants have generated 180,000 drums of low-radiation waste. To solve the pressing problem, Taipower plans to build a disposal site on the remote Wuchiu (¯QËú) islet, where up to 160,000 barrels of low-radiation waste could be stored. The plan is strongly opposed by hundreds of Wuchiu residents and Beijing. This story has been viewed 448 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/06/26/story/0000091547] Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 4 Nuclear power boost feared The Scotsman Online - Jon Hibbs (Jhibbs@scotsman.com) GREEN campaigners yesterday voiced fears that nuclear power was back on the agenda after Brian Wilson, the energy minister, was appointed to head a Whitehall inquiry into Britain’s future energy needs. Environmentalists claimed the Cunninghame North MP would not be impartial because he was on record as supporting plans to expand the Hunterston nuclear power station in his constituency. The row broke out after Tony Blair gave Mr Wilson the task of chairing a wide-ranging Cabinet Office review of all the options for meeting the country’s long-term energy objectives. The review will include balancing Britain’s international commitment to tackling global warming by cutting greenhouse gases against the need to ensure reliable and competitive energy supplies in the UK. Although nuclear power still provides about a quarter of Britain’s energy needs, this is expected to fall to only five per cent by 2020 as the country’s existing network of ageing nuclear power stations are decommissioned. However, the review has raised hopes in the industry that the Prime Minister is prepared to jettison Labour’s traditional hostility to nuclear power in order to guarantee that the country does not become over-dependant on imports of gas. Mr Wilson said the future role of nuclear power would be considered, but insisted his views as an MP would not affect the outcome of the inquiry. He said: "There is no predisposition to come down on one side or the other. This is about asking questions. We do not yet know the answers." Charles Secret, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said: "Given the sensitivities around the energy choices to this country it would have been much better if the government appointed someone genuinely independent." FoE warned that proposals for any new nuclear plants would be met with fierce opposition and challenged ministers to exploit the vast potential of renewable energy instead of building more reactors. ***************************************************************** 5 Anorak: A need for power 26 Jun 2001 WHILE Ken Clarke is set to electrify the nation by taking on Portillo, the Prime Minister may 'Nope, wasn't me at that rally.' have to resort to a more worrying technique. According to a report in the Independent, Tony Blair has signalled that he may start building more nuclear power stations to cope with the imminent energy crisis and environmental pledges. Brian Wilson, the Industry and Energy Minister, is to chair a review of the nuclear industry into its potential "to balance the country's future energy demands with the Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions". As is the general trend with Labour policy, the move is directly against a 1997 manifesto pledge. As well as promising not to build any more nuclear plants, 'old' New Labour were committed to reducing greenhouse gases by 23 per cent by 2010, and also promised to look into renewable sources of energy. But according to Professor Ian Fells of Newcastle University: "To generate just 5 per cent of renewable electricity from wind will require one 80m-high turbine to be installed off the coast each day from now until 2010." Another option is to build just one huge turbine in Westminster and power it with the combined hot air arising from the 1997 and 2001 election manifestos. ©2001 e-Space Limited Photographs ©2001 Reuters Limited editor@e-space.co.uk ***************************************************************** 6 Revamp drives AEA into the red Business Day AEA Technology, best-known for its nuclear technology interests, crashed into the red last year thanks to one-off charges linked to its revamp. But chief executive Peter Watson predicted a strong future for the company, which will now concentrate on technology for the rail industry and on environmental operations including advanced weather forecasting products. The restructuring charges helped to push AEA to a £9.4m loss for the year to 31 March, from a £29.7m profit last time. Operating profits dived 40% to £19.8m. The shares, which fell from 482p last autumn to 155p in the spring after successive profits warnings, were trading at 292 1/2p, off 1 1/2p. The dividend was held at 11.1p a share. Watson confirmed plans to sell the nuclear technology and engineering software businesses. Accentus, which is developing technologies for destroying chemical weapons and cleaning up diesel emissions, remains under review. 'We are now focused on two strong businesses, rail and environment, both of which are well-positioned in growing markets,' he added. © Associated Newspapers Ltd., 26 June 2001 ***************************************************************** 7 BNFL losses to near £200m 26 2001 All times: GMT By Matthew Jones Published: June 25 2001 19:07GMT | Last Updated: June 25 2001 19:17GMT British Nuclear Fuels, the state-owned UK atomic services group, is expected on Thursday to report an operating loss of about £200m ($280m) for last year following problems at its Wylfa power station in north Wales and Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield in northwest England. Wylfa, which is the newest of the first generation Magnox plants and accounts for almost 40 per cent of BNFL's generating capacity, has been out of action since the group found flawed welds on its steam pipes in March 1999. Thorp has been down for most of the past six months due to a blockage in a downstream treatment plant and concerns over staff response times to emergency alarms. The operating loss is expected to be partially offset by a £200m exceptional payment by the Ministry of Defence, understood to relate to the repayment of a loan. This should limit the loss before tax to £65m compared with a loss of £337m last year. The worsening in operating performance, from an underlying profit last time of £65m, comes as the government is preparing to decide on a partial privatisation of the company and on whether to allow a new recycled fuel plant to open at Sellafield. The plant, which will produce mixed-oxide fuel using plutonium recovered from reprocessed waste, suffered a fresh blow last week when ministers conceded a further round of public consultations was needed before taking a decision to start operations. Main construction of the £480m plant was completed four years ago and there have already been four public consultations. ***************************************************************** 8 UK announces energy review, including nuclear Planet Ark UK: June 26, 2001 LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair announced yesterday a root-and-branch review of Britain's energy needs which will include a look at the future for nuclear power. Blair, in a written answer to parliament, said the review would look at tackling global warming and ensuring "secure, diverse and reliable energy supplies at a competitive price." A review group will report by the year-end. Energy minister Brian Wilson, who will chair the group, said: "The review will consider the role of coal, gas, oil and renewables in our future energy balance as well as combined heat and power and the enhancement of energy efficiency. "The review will also need to consider what, if any, role the nuclear industry should play in meeting the environmental and security of supply objectives." Just two days before he was swept back to power at a June 7 election, Blair said he had no plans to increase Britain's nuclear power capability. His Labour Party's election manifesto was slightly more opaque, saying coal and nuclear energy "currently play important roles in ensuring diversity in our sources of electricity generation." Speculation has been rife that the review, which will be conducted by the Performance and Innovation Unit which reports direct to Blair, will sanction an extension of nuclear power. Experts say Britain will become a net importer of oil and gas in the future. The government's investment in renewable energy sources - solar, wind power and the like - is unlikely to fill the gap. Nuclear power stations generate around 30 percent of Britain's electricity. Renewables currently meet less than three percent of electricity demand. "In future we expect to become increasingly dependent on imports of fuel and particularly gas which could eventually become a dominant source of our supplies," Wilson said in a statement. "And in the longer term we will need to reduce our carbon emissions further in order to play our part in meeting the challenge of global warming." Britain's newest nuclear power station is Sizewell B which was commissioned by British Energy in 1995. British Nuclear Fuels owns the country's oldest power stations and has already started to shut them down. All are due to close by 2021. Laying out its legislative plans last week, the government said it wanted to cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, almost double the UK's target under the Kyoto Protocol of a 12.5 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Story by Mike Peacock REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 9 State Regulator Rips Daschle For Stance On Nuclear Waste PowerMarketers.com: Energy News From Dow Jones Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A group of state utility regulators and nuclear utilities is criticizing Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., for playing "politics as usual" on the issue of nuclear waste disposal. The Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, which involves state utility commissioners, state attorneys general, utilities and others, upbraided Daschle for saying development of a proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is "dead" as long as Democrats control the Senate. Daschle made the statement last month at a fundraiser for Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the second-ranking Senate Democrat and a committed foe of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, shortly after Democrats assumed control of the Senate. "The nation's ratepayers demand accountability and not political rhetoric," LeRoy Koppendrayer, a Minnesota utility commissioner, said on behalf of the coalition. Koppendrayer noted the role nuclear power plants play in providing electricity to South Dakota, and how Daschle's constituents are paying for development of the repository. South Dakota electricity ratepayers, along with those in Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Iowa, have paid more than $1 billion, including interest, into the U.S. Nuclear Waste Fund for development of the waste repository. That's a fraction of the total $18 billion paid into the fund since 1983. "We continue to pay at the rate of $114,000 every hour of every day," Koppendrayer said. "After cashing our checks for 18 years, we expect promises made are promises kept." Koppendrayer warned that Daschle's opposition to development of Yucca Mountain could force the premature closure of nuclear power plants serving South Dakota and other states across the nation and provide 20% of U.S. electricity supply. "South Dakota will be one of the first states that will be hit with a shortage of electricity and with higher energy prices if the waste isn't removed from (Xcel Energy's (XEL) Prairie Island nuclear power plant) and the plant is forced to shut down prematurely by 2007," Koppendrayer warned. "As a public official, you have the power to block any efforts made by the administration to move this program along. However, these actions will be detrimental not only to your constituents in South Dakota, but also to the nation's electric ratepayers," said Koppendrayer, a Republican. The Minnesota regulator noted that the U.S. Department of Energy is making progress on the Yucca Mountain site characterization effort, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is due by year-end to forward his recommendation to the White House on whether to pursue Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing of the repository. Perhaps Daschle's declaration that Yucca Mountain is dead was "fundraising rhetoric," Koppendrayer said. "You have also been quoted as saying in the past that your decision to support the Yucca Mountain project is based on 'sound science.' However, it appears that it is now politics as usual. This is unfortunate, as you did support passage of legislation to reform the high-level nuclear waste disposal program in past legislative sessions," Koppendrayer said. There was no immediate response from Daschle's office. -By Bryan Lee, Dow Jones Newswires; 202-862-6647; mailto:Bryan.Lee@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires 25-06-01 ***************************************************************** 10 Nuclear power back on agenda FT.com > By Brian Groom, Matthew Jones and John Mason Published: June 25 2001 20:44GMT | Last Updated: June 26 2001 00:11GMT Tony Blair on Monday launched the first comprehensive review of energy needs for 20 years in a move that could lead to a long-term revival for nuclear power. Downing Street said the review by the Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit, which reports to the prime minister, would aim to meet "the challenge of global warming while ensuring secure, diverse and reliable energy supplies at a competitive price". The review will be chaired by Brian Wilson, energy minister, an advocate of nuclear power. The government said his views would not prejudice the outcome but environmentalists said the review must not be a "smokescreen" for building nuclear power stations to meet global warming targets. Friends of the Earth said nuclear technology remained dangerous and uneconomic. Greenpeace said putting Mr Wilson in charge was like "putting a fox in charge of the hen coop". Mr Wilson said the review, to report by the end of the year, would consider the role of coal, gas, oil, renewable energy, combined heat and power, and enhanced energy efficiency. "The review will also need to consider what, if any, role the nuclear industry should play in meeting the environmental and security of supply objectives." In its manifesto Labour shelved a pledge not to build nuclear stations. Some ministers believe a nuclear revival is inevitable if Britain is to maintain security and reduce carbon emissions. Mr Wilson said Britain was self-sufficient in energy at competitive prices, had diverse supply sources and was on target to meet its Kyoto commitments on global warming by the end of the decade. But he also said: "In future we expect to become increasingly dependent on imports of fuel and particularly gas... And in the longer term we will need to reduce our carbon emissions further in order to play our part in meeting the challenge of global warming." Robin Jeffrey, chairman of British Energy, the nuclear generator, said recently that high costs and planning constraints meant the industry was a long way from making a business case for new stations, but the political case must be made if Britain was to have a balanced long-term strategy. Energy companies that own the gas pipeline between Britain and continental Europe are planning to increase its import capacity before an expected decline in domestic production and sharp increase in demand in the next few years. The UK has been a net exporter of North Sea gas. But Tony Mulcare, company secretary of Interconnector UK, which runs the pipeline, said on Monday: "There is a perception that... the interconnector will become more of an import line than an export line. The current timing of this is expected to be October 2005." Consumer groups have complained that increased gas imports from the continent have doubled prices in the UK over the past year to higher continental levels because the main producers - Russia, Algeria and Norway - index their gas prices to oil prices. ***************************************************************** 11 UK nuke group BNFL faces contract delays - report UK: June 26, 2001 LONDON - Britain's state-owned nuclear group British Nuclear Fuels could miss by up to 10 years deadlines set in contracts to reprocess customers' waste nuclear fuel, according to a report by activist group CORE released on Sunday. The report by Martin Forwood of Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE) said difficulties at BNFL's showcase THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Cumbria in northwest England, could mean the completion of some reprocessing contracts might not occur until 2015, up to 10 years later than certain customers expect. BNFL said it was not prepared to comment on the report. "We have not seen this report, which is by a known anti-nuclear campaigner" BNFL spokesman Bill Anderton told Reuters. "THORP has an order book worth 12 billion pounds and will continue to operate profitably," he said. Conceived in the 1970s and started in the early 1990s at a cost of nearly two billion pounds THORP (Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant) generates between 25-30 percent of BNFL's 1.5 billion pound turnover by reprocessing spent uranium reactor fuel, much of it from overseas power stations. Any delay in reprocessing as suggested in the CORE report would add to customers' costs at a time when Europe's electricity generators are increasingly sensitive to the heightened competitive market which has followed partial liberalisation. TROUBLED TIMES BNFL has had a difficult 18 months following an international scandal over data falisification which led to cancelled contracts, the shelving of its slated 1.5 billion pound partial privatisation and the departure of senior staff. The group which has striven to rebuild relations with overseas customers continues to be dogged by the government's refusal to allow it to start-up a 482 million pound nuclear fuel manufacturing plant four years after it was built. The Sellafield Mox Plant (SMP), is designed to use the plutonium extracted by THORP, to make Mox fuel, a combination of plutonium and uranium oxides which was at the centre of the data falsification scandal. Regulatory approval to begin operations has been withheld over fears there are not enough customers for the fuel. Before the government can grant permission to start-up it must ensure the plant passes a test of justification required by European law, proving the benefits of a practice involving ionising radiation outweighs any adverse environmental impact. A report by government appointed consultants Arthur D Little into Mox's economic viability is expected in the next few weeks. Story by Matthew Jones REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 12 Energy review to consider building nuclear plants The Times TUESDAY JUNE 26 2001 BY CARL MORTISHED, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS EDITOR THE Government is to consider building new nuclear power stations as part of a review of future energy security. The review, announced by the Prime Minister yesterday, will address growing concern about Britain’s future dependence on imports of natural gas and, at the same time, the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Tony Blair has asked Brian Wilson, the Energy Minister, to chair a review group in the Performance and Innovation Unit, with the aim of developing a strategy to ensure reliable and competitive energy supplies for the next generation. Mr Wilson said that Britain had diverse sources of supply but must not be complacent. “In future we expect to become increasingly dependent on imports of fuel . . . gas could eventually become a dominant source of our supplies.” He added: “The review will also need to consider what, if any, role the nuclear industry should play in meeting the environmental and security of supply objectives.” The proposed review follows an energy policy shift in the United States where the authorities are reconsidering their attitude to nuclear power after the collapse of the deregulated electricity market. Nuclear power, which produces no carbon emissions, currently generates 30 per cent of Britain’s electricity but the country’s ageing nuclear plant will close over the next two decades. Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided ***************************************************************** 13 Congress Votes to Increase Funds for Renewable Energy, Waste Cleanup FOXNews.com Monday, June 25, 2001 WASHINGTON — A House committee voted Monday to beef up plans for spending on renewable energy and nuclear waste cleanup as lawmakers demonstrated anew their sensitivity to the energy issue this year. The increases were included in a $23.7 billion measure financing energy and water programs that the House Appropriations Committee approved by a voice vote. The measure also included almost $4.5 billion for hundreds of dredging, beach restoration and other Army Corps of Engineers water projects, which are big favorites with lawmakers because of the spending they bring their districts. The bill, covering fiscal 2002, was approved with little debate. Democrats said they might offer amendments on electricity price caps and other energy issues when the measure reaches the full House, perhaps later this week. Overall, the measure would provide $18.7 billion for the Energy Department, $641 million more than President Bush requested and $444 million more than this year. Spending on solar, geothermal and other forms of renewable energy would grow to $377 million, $100 million more than Bush sought and $1 million more than this year. Money for nuclear cleanups and managing nuclear waste, mostly for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons work, would exceed $7 billion, $699 million over Bush's proposal and $253 million over this year. Programs aimed at preventing the spread of Russia's nuclear arsenal to other countries and terrorist groups would get $544 million, $87 million more than Bush requested and $86 million above this year's figure. ***************************************************************** 14 Open sesame for nuclear power 'an exercise to save BNFL' Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search David Gow Guardian Tuesday June 26, 2001 The government yesterday opened the door for a nuclear power renaissance in the UK to fill any future gap in the country's energy supply. It conceded there was only a limited role for renewable energy in combating a growing dependence on potentially insecure supplies of oil and gas. The prime minister, in setting the terms for a review of Britain's energy objectives over the next 50 years, also indicated a radical shake-up of the present system of energy regulation, to avoid California-style black-outs. The review, first disclosed by the Guardian in early April, will be conducted by the cabinet office's performance and innovation unit (PIU), within the context of meeting the challenge of global warming and a potential energy gap. But Friends of the Earth signalled a fierce campaign by environmental groups against the renewed nuclear option by insisting the review should not become "an exercise for saving British Nuclear Fuels from bankruptcy". Brian Wilson, the energy minister, who is "aggressively pro-nuclear" in the eyes of Greenpeace, said the review would "consider the role of coal, gas, oil and renewables in our future energy balance as well as combined heat and power and the enhancement of energy efficiency." But he added: "The review will also need to consider what, if any, role the nuclear industry should play in meeting the environmental and security of supply objectives." The PIU, pointing out the likely need for a 60% cut in British emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, said that, on current policies, renewable energy sources and cuts in energy demand would not be enough to reduce dependence on imported oil and gas. It foresees renewables, including hydro power, accounting for 4.6% of generation by 2010, well short of the government's 10% target, and 4.4% in 2020. With subsidised coal, now given a 17.4% share of the mar ket, down to 6.4% and nuclear, now at 25%, down to 3% by 2020, oil will account for 37.5% and gas 48.9% of primary energy. The PIU points out that as early as 2006 Britain will be importing up to 15% of its gas, compared with 2% now, and will be a net oil importer - leaving an energy gap. Industry experts and government advisers warn that supplies could increasingly come from high-risk areas such as Algeria, Iran and Russia. Mark Johnston of Friends of the Earth thought it unlikely British Energy would apply to build new nuclear stations. But BNFL, which reports annual losses on Thursday, could fill the breach. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 15 Shutting nuclear power plants may cost US$10bn The Taipei Times Online: 2001-06-26 June 26th, 2001 AFP, TAIPEI Taiwan's plans to close three nuclear power plants ahead of schedule may cost around US$10 billion, it was reported yesterday. The three power plants would be shut down in 2001, 2004 and 2007 respectively, or seven years earlier than planned, according to an economic ministry report, the Chinese language media said. "The cost of the plans may run up to NT$350 billion (US$10.14 billion)," an unnamed official said. The plans would be implemented only if Taiwan Power Co's (Taipower, ¥x¹q) output capacity was 15 percent higher than peak demands. The government and opposition parties agreed early this year to build a nuclear-free zone in the wake of a row over the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¥|). The government scrapped the partly built US$5.6 billion power plant on Oct. 27 last year without consulting the legislature as required by the Constitution, plunging the country into months of political crisis. The DPP, which had listed the scrapping of the project on its party platform, reinstated the project in February. It opposed nuclear power on grounds of safety and difficulty in disposing of the nuclear waste. Since the first nuclear power plant started in 1987, the three nuclear power plants have generated 180,000 drums of low-radiation waste. To solve the pressing problem, Taipower plans to build a disposal site on the remote Wuchiu (¯QËú) islet, where up to 160,000 barrels of low-radiation waste could be stored. The plan is strongly opposed by hundreds of Wuchiu residents and Beijing. This story has been viewed 446 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/06/26/story/0000091547] Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 NRC to Meet with Nuclear Management Company to Discuss Safety Performance at the Duane Arnold Nuclear Plant Region III -- 2001 - 26 - UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 No. III-01-026 June 25, 2001 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630)829-9663/e-mail: rjs2@nrc.gov Pam Alloway-Mueller (630)829-9662/e-mail: pla@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will meet with Nuclear Management Company officials July 2 to discuss the NRC's annual assessment of safety performance at the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. CDT at Cedar Rapids City Hall. It will be held in the Council Chambers on the fourth floor of City Hall, 50 Second Avenue Bridge in Cedar Rapids. The public is invited to observe the meeting. NRC officials will be available afterwards to answer questions. The annual assessment, referred to as the End-of-Cycle assessment, evaluates safety performance at the Duane Arnold plant from April 2000 through March 2001, and informs plant officials of NRC's plans for future inspections at the facility. The Duane Arnold assessment letter and inspection are available at http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/ppror from the Region III Public Affairs Office. Current performance information for the plant is available at http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/index.html. ***************************************************************** 17 NRC Monitoring Events at Cooper Nuclear Station Region IV -- 2001- 37 - UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 No. IV-01-037 June 25, 2001 CONTACT: Breck Henderson Phone: 817-860-8128 Cellular: 817-917-1227 e-mail: bwh@nrc.gov The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has been monitoring events at Cooper Nuclear Station, a nuclear power plant near Brownville, Nebraska, from its Incident Response Center in Arlington, Texas. Cooper Nuclear Station is operated by the Nebraska Public Power District. At 4:33 a.m., a fire broke out in one of the plant's electrical transformers, prompting plant operators to declare an Unusual Event, the lowest of the NRC's four emergency response conditions. At the same time one of the reactor's recirculation pumps that is powered through the affected transformer shut down due to loss of power. This resulted in a reduction of plant power output to less than 70 percent. At 4:55 a.m. Cooper operators declared an Alert, the next step in the NRC's emergency response conditions, because of the potential for safety equipment to be affected. However, no safety equipment was damaged or lost power. The plant remains in safe and stable condition at about 70 percent power. There were no injuries to personnel, and no damage to other plant equipment. The fire was extinguished at 4:49 a.m., and the Alert terminated at 9:08 a.m. The NRC has secured its Incident Response Center and begun normal follow-up activities. The need for additional inspection has yet to be determined. State and local officials were notified of all activities associated with this event, in accordance with NRC procedures. ***************************************************************** 18 Officials inspect N-plant phaseout AUGUSTA — State and local officials are touring the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant in Wiscasset this week to see how its decommissioning is proceeding, and how radioactive fuel rods will be packed and moved during the next 18 months. --> Tuesday, June 26, 2001 By DAN McGILLVRAY, Staff Writer Copyright © 2001 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. AUGUSTA — State and local officials are touring the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant in Wiscasset this week to see how its decommissioning is proceeding, and how radioactive fuel rods will be packed and moved during the next 18 months. Art Cleaves, director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency, is driving to the closed plant Tuesday with one or two other employees from the agency, which responds to emergency situations throughout Maine. "We'll be there for a few hours," Cleaves said. While the plant was generating electricity, MEMA was the state government's first point of contact if a potentially threatening or dangerous situation developed on the grounds, he added. For nearly 25 years, from 1972 to 1996, Maine Yankee produced electricity through nuclear power in the plant's domed-shaped containment building. The plant was closed permanently in August 1997 and is about halfway through a decommissioning schedule that is intended to make the 800-acre property suitable for other uses, include recreational and business development. Cleaves said he intends to learn how the spent fuel rods, which have been submerged in a deep pool of water, will be moved to thick concrete casks for long-term storage. "I'm sure those spent fuel rods will be sitting there (in the casks) during our lifetime," he added. The casks are engineered for a life expectancy of at least 50 years. The complete decommissioning, including the fuel assembly relocation, is projected to cost about $589 million. The fuel rods must be moved because the containment building where the pool is located will be torn down. Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes said the first of the 1,434 fuel rods probably will be relocated to a dry environment in August. The work will take about 18 months. "Before we move the fuel out, we're conducting the tours. We've already conducted tours for state police and for the (Department of Human Services) division of health engineering," Howes said Monday. Each high-level radioactive fuel rod will be loaded into a 24-slot stainless steel canister. Those canisters, when full, will then be lowered into a concrete dry cask that is 28 inches thick and reinforced with steel. The casks are about 17 feet long. While the fuel rods are now stored indoors, in the pool, the new site will be outdoors on a six-acre lot surrounded by two fences and an earthen berm. Howes said divers will load the fuel rods into the casks in the water. Any water that gets inside during the maneuver will be removed before a "shield lid" is welded onto the cask for a tight seal, he explained. Cleaves said MEMA no longer oversees rehearsals of emergency evacuations that were conducted for years within a 10-mile radius of the Wiscasset power plant. Those drills, with help from local public safety officers, were necessary in case residents needed to be moved because of a disaster on the Maine Yankee grounds. In addition to the 60 dry casks required for the used fuel, four other casks will be set on the uncovered outdoor concrete storage pad. They will contain some radioactive parts from the reactor. "We'll be starting to load that waste in July," Howes said. The nuclear reactor will be hauled to Barnwell, S.C., for disposal. All the dry concrete casks eventually are expected to be moved from Wiscasset after the federal high-level waste repository opens at Yucca Mountain, Nev. That site could be operational in 2010, but years could elapse before all of Maine Yankee's fuel rods are accepted there, Howes said. To reach Dan McGillvray Phone: 621-5642 dmcgillvray@centralmaine.com Copyright © Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 Simmons goes to mountain searching for solution Nevada site proposed for nuclear waste storage TheDay.com: Local and National News June 26 By Paul Choiniere - More Articles Published on 6/26/2001 U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, R-2nd District, spent Monday visiting the proposed site of a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a fact-finding trip about an issue that Simmons said is vitally important in his home district of eastern Connecticut. What to do with the nuclear waste generated during the nearly 30 years of operations at the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Station has divided the community of Haddam. The plant ceased operations in 1996. Nuclear waste also continues to be pile up at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford where it has been stockpiled since operations began in 1970. Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has long been studied as the final resting place for all the nation's nuclear waste, but the proposal has remain mired in a political and scientific debate over its suitability. Simmons said he wants to get his own sense of how appropriate the site is to receive highly radioactive waste for long-term storage. The government has spent $8 billion studying Yucca Mountain. The money has been collected from customers of nuclear utilities, including $731 million from Connecticut consumers. “This is an issue that has been left unattended for too long,” Simmons said. “Today there is more than 1,500 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in Connecticut.” At Connecticut Yankee, the company has proposed moving the spent nuclear fuel from a storage pool in the plant into protective casks that would be stored on a concrete pad. The company wants to build the pad on land it owns about three-quarters of a mile from the plant, but town officials rejected a zone change for the project and want it instead located next to the closed nuclear station. Connecticut Yankee officials say that would interfere with plans to develop a new gas-fired electric power plant at the site. Having seen the zone change rejected, Connecticut Yankee has filed for a town building permit to build the storage facility at the location it proposed. It fully expects the town to reject the permit, a decision that would force the matter back into court. It expects that once in court a judge will determine that federal regulations supercede local land-use laws and will rule that the facility can be built as planned, said spokeswoman Kelly Smith. Materials for the new storage facility have already begun arriving at Connecticut Yankee, she said. Negotiations haven't worked Negotiations between the town and nuclear plant owners to settle the dispute have failed. The town and the utility are at odds because the federal government has not done its job, Simmons said. “It is not unreasonable to expect the federal government to honor the commitment it made to dispose of this waste,” Simmons said. “This is not an issue that local government, the residents of small communities or the utilities should have to deal with. They would not have to if the federal government were prepared to meet its obligation.” At Millstone station in Waterford the situation is less urgent. Millstone 1 has closed, but two reactors, units 2 and 3, continue to operate. Dominion Nuclear Connecticut has concluded it has enough space to safely store the waste in the plant storage pools for at least another 25 years, though anti-nuclear activists have legally challenged those assumptions. Under the current timetable, nuclear waste would not be fully removed from Connecticut Yankee until 2030. That is assuming that the Yucca Mountain project meets it current schedule for gaining needed approvals. The project has failed to keep on schedule for 20 years. Even if approved by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Yucca project is certain to face court challenges and political opposition. Nevada, which has consistently opposed the project, can submit “a notice of disapproval” if the Yucca Mountain site is ever approved. It would take a majority vote in Congress to overturn the disapproval notice. Paul Choiniere can be contacted at p.choiniere@theday.com. © 1998-2001 The Day Publishing Co. ***************************************************************** 20 NRC Approves Transfer of Operating Licenses for Nine Mile Point Nuclear Plant Press Release 2001 - 074 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: Web Site: No. 01-074 June 25, 2001 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of the operating licenses for the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2, to Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, LLC, a subsidiary of Constellation Nuclear, LLC. Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. had been the licensed operator and sole owner of Unit 1, and a co-owner of Unit 2, located near Oswego, New York, since the two units began operation -- Unit 1 in December 1969 and Unit 2 in March of 1988. Other co-owners of the facility's Unit 2 included New York State Electric & Gas Corp., Rochester Gas & Electric Co., Central Hudson Gas & Electric, Corp., and Long Island Lighting Co. (LILCO). LILCO will continue to retain a minority ownership interest in Unit 2. On February 1, Constellation, on behalf of Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, LLC, submitted an application to the NRC requesting approval for the license transfer. The key issues considered by the NRC technical staff included adequacy of decommissioning funding, insurance and Constellation's technical and financial qualifications. The Commission published a notice on the transfer request and an opportunity for a hearing in the Federal Register on April 2. No comments or requests for a hearing were received. ***************************************************************** 21 Spending in Energy Proposal Boosted June 25, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP) - A House committee voted Monday to beef up plans for spending on renewable energy and nuclear waste cleanup as lawmakers demonstrated anew their sensitivity to the energy issue this year. The increases were included in a $23.7 billion measure financing energy and water programs that the House Appropriations Committee approved by a voice vote. The measure also included almost $4.5 billion for hundreds of dredging, beach restoration and other Army Corps of Engineers water projects, which are big favorites with lawmakers because of the spending they bring their districts. The bill, covering fiscal 2002, was approved with little debate. Democrats said they might offer amendments on electricity price caps and other energy issues when the measure reaches the full House, perhaps later this week. Overall, the measure would provide $18.7 billion for the Energy Department, $641 million more than President Bush requested and $444 million more than this year. Spending on solar, geothermal and other forms of renewable energy would grow to $377 million, $100 million more than Bush sought and $1 million more than this year. Money for nuclear cleanups and managing nuclear waste, mostly for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons work, would exceed $7 billion, $699 million over Bush's proposal and $253 million over this year. Programs aimed at preventing the spread of Russia's nuclear arsenal to other countries and terrorist groups would get $544 million, $87 million more than Bush requested and $86 million above this year's figure. The Senate has yet to write its version of the bill. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 22 Decisions on MDS Nordion Facilities Operated By AECL NEWS RELEASE TRANSMITTED BY CCN NEWSWIRE - A SERVICE OF ITG FOR: CANADIAN NUCLEAR SAFETY COMMISSION JUNE 25, 2001 - 14:17 EDT OTTAWA, ONTARIO--Following public hearings on March 8 and May 29, 2001, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) today announced the following decisions: NON-POWER REACTORS The Commission approved the renewal of the operating licence for the MAPLE 1 and MAPLE 2 non-power reactors operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) for a term of 16 months, ending October 31, 2002. This licence allows the licensee to continue preparation of the facilities for commissioning. The licensee is required to appear before the Commission at a public hearing prior to resuming low power commissioning of MAPLE 1 and before fuel loading of MAPLE 2. PROCESSING FACILITY The Commission approved the renewal of the operating licence for the New Processing Facility (NPF) operated by AECL, for a term of 16 months, ending October 31, 2002. This licence allows the licensee to continue preparation of the facility for active commissioning. The licensee is required to appear before the Commission at a public hearing prior to commencing active commissioning of the facility. The NPF and the MAPLE reactors, located at the Chalk River Laboratories, Chalk River, Ontario, comprise the MDS Nordion Medical Isotopes Reactor Project that will be dedicated to the production of medical isotopes. MDS Nordion of Ottawa, Ontario, will have legal title to the facilities while AECL is the licensed operator. During the public hearings, the Commission considered written material and presentations from AECL and CNSC staff. It concluded that AECL is qualified to continue preparation of the facilities for commissioning while making adequate provision for the protection of the environment, the health and safety of persons, and the maintenance of national security and measures required to implement Canada's international obligations. Records of Proceedings, including the Reasons for Decisions, will be available on the CNSC web-site at www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca or by contacting the CNSC. The CNSC regulates the use of nuclear energy and materials to protect health, safety, security and the environment and to respect Canada's international commitments on the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Documents related to CNSC hearings are available upon request. You may e-mail us at info@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca, or call us at 1-800-668-5284. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Sunni Locatelli Manager, Commission Communications (613) 996-6860 E-mail: media@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca ***************************************************************** 23 Congress May Help With Moab Tailings The Salt Lake Tribune -- Tuesday, June 26, 2001 BY JUDY FAHYS Work would go forward on the Atlas uranium tailings pile in Moab under a bill making its way through Congress. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a supplemental defense spending bill that includes $1.9 million that the U.S. Energy Department can use for the radioactive mining waste. All three Utahns in the House voted for the measure. The Senate this week is expected to take up a version of the bill that dedicates $1.4 million for the work. Money is needed to study the best way to remove the tailings, to keep the tainted dust from blowing into town, to prevent contaminated silt from leaching into the adjacent Colorado River and to transfer the 130-acre site into the ownership of the Energy Department. Currently the tailings pile is owned by an accounting firm, the bankruptcy trustee of the defunct Atlas Corp. Under legislation Congress passed last year, the accounting firm was responsible for stabilizing the pile before the Energy Department assumed responsibility for it. Estimates for removal of the mill tailings have been as high as $300 million. Gov. Mike Leavitt and Utah Reps. Chris Cannon and Jim Matheson asked for $10 million earlier this year to continue with the work. "These funds will allow us to plan an expedited cleanup process of the Atlas pile and safeguard both the residents of Moab and the Colorado River," said Cannon. "President Bush is to be commended for prioritizing the health and safety of the citizens of Moab, as well as the millions of Americans who rely on the Colorado River for the water supply." ***************************************************************** 24 Tribe may have say in Yucca project planning [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Having learned a lesson from nuclear weapons testing, the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe today becomes the second tribe to ask Interior Secretary Gale Norton to designate that it is affected by the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. A designation as an affected American Indian tribe would give it full participation in the Yucca Mountain Project planning process, allowing the possibility for oversight money appropriated by Congress. "Department of Energy programs lack an understanding of tribal culture and are not always sensitive or appropriate when applied to tribal society," according to a statement released by Duckwater Shoshone officials. "This we have learned from our own tragic experience as down-wind victims from 928 U.S. weapons tested near Yucca Mountain at the Nevada Test Site," the statement read. Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site the Department of Energy is studying to entomb the nation's highly radioactive waste. Currently there are no tribes with affected status involving the Yucca Mountain Project. The Timbisha Shoshone council of Death Valley, Calif., 50 miles west of Yucca Mountain, applied for designation as an affected tribe in April, citing concerns about health and safety. Similarly, Duckwater Shoshones say they "may be substantially and adversely affected by the siting of a repository at Yucca Mountain." "The Duckwater Shoshone Tribe intends to participate in the oversight of Department of Energy site characterization activities at Yucca Mountain, to participate in licensing for construction authorization, and to participate in licensing of actual repository operations as contemplated by Congress," the tribe's statement read. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-26-Tue-2001/news/16401196.html ***************************************************************** 25 County to air Yucca concerns [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal REVIEW-JOURNAL Clark County officials will hold two meetings Wednesday to discuss their concerns for federal plans to bury nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. The meetings at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. at the Clark County Government Center, 500 S. Grand Central Parkway, will give residents a chance to express their opinions on the Yucca Mountain Project. "The Department of Energy's efforts to inform the public have been inadequate," Commissioner Myrna Williams said in a statement from the county's Comprehensive Planning Nuclear Waste Division. "We feel we have a responsibility to give the residents of Clark County a balanced reporting of facts, and provide opportunities for public involvement and input." she said. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-26-Tue-2001/news/16401381.html ***************************************************************** 26 EPA begins inquiry into radiation health standards [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- An independent investigator within the Environmental Protection Agency issued a call for documents Monday as he began an initial inquiry into radiation health standards the EPA set for the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository. Robert J. Martin, the EPA's national ombudsman, said he thinks he has authority to investigate how the agency formed the standards, which are expected to play a role in determining the suitability of nuclear waste burial at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Martin said EPA higher-ups think he does not have jurisdiction to get involved, but he said he will press forward until he is convinced otherwise. "At this time I am making a rebuttable presumption that I have the authority to investigate concerns in connection with the Yucca Mountain site," he said. Martin's announcement comes a week after he traveled to Las Vegas at the request of Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. He met with state and county officials who complained about the standards. Martin sent notices Monday to representatives of 35 groups including the Energy Department, Yucca Mountain contractors, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Nevada Resort Association, Nevada state, county and city officials, University of Nevada, Las Vegas officials and environmental groups. He gave them 30 days to submit comments "in connection with the EPA's involvement in the Yucca Mountain site." He said he may decide to grant some respondents extra time. Martin asked the EPA's regional office and the state of Nevada to provide permits and other documents regarding hazardous materials at Yucca Mountain. The site had been assigned a hazardous waste identification number, which Martin says supports his involvement. The EPA ombudsman referees disputes involving the agency and communities affected by its hazardous waste management programs. A spokesman said Martin would decide within 30 days after receiving the comments whether to launch a fuller investigation, which could involve holding public hearings and conducting on-the-record interviews of participants. The ombudsman does not have binding authority to make recommendations stick, but he said his findings are accepted more than half the time. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jun-26-Tue-2001/news/16404842.html ***************************************************************** 27 Nuclear power? No thanks. It is too expensive and still far too much of a risk © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd 26 June 2001 Blair opens way for a nuclear comebackThe announcement yesterday by the Prime Minister that the Government's "performance and innovation unit" will review its energy policy seems innocuous enough; few would object to "meeting the challenge of global warming while ensuring secure, diverse and reliable energy supplies at a competitive price". But we should not be under any illusions about what the Government is considering – in particular Tony Blair and his advisers – even though the word "nuclear" was carefully omitted from Mr Blair's words and confined to a supplementary "project scoping" note. The Government is not, we suspect, revisiting the case for nuclear power out of some new-found affection for the dreams propagated by the men in white coats. The impetus is much more practical – and immediate; ministers are worried that Britain will be unable to meet its emissions targets under the Kyoto agreement, let alone make further progress. How, they wonder, can we do that and maintain economic growth while running down our nuclear industry – which meets about 25 per cent of our energy needs? After all, nuclear power has the great advantage over its rivals of not producing carbon dioxide, the chief cause of man-made global warming. The nuclear industry claims that new technologies are safer and more cost-effective than their predecessors, although it is wise not to repeat the claims of the 1950s – that electricity from nuclear plants would be "too cheap to meter". Forget "gas-cooled" and "fast breeders", let alone the terrifying Soviet-era designs; we are now in the friendlier-sounding world of "pebble-bed" technology. And we have the powerful example of the United States to draw on, where, last month, President Bush announced a new national energy strategy, with its strong support for nuclear power. Even the Japanese, for obvious historical reasons sensitive about nuclear issues, are building two new plants. Is nuclear power the cheap green fuel of the future? We still doubt it. It is true that the nuclear industry's new methods are (probably) more cost-effective and, above all, safer. But that is not enough. While there is such a thing as human error and the possibility of mechanical or electronic breakdown, however remote, the case for nuclear power will be weak. The reason is not hard to recall. Remember the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, that put millions at risk? The worst nuclear disaster in history, the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, will remain a source of contamination for hundreds of thousands of years. The 1999 accident at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokaimura, Japan, showed that the problem of radioactive-waste disposal remains acute. And don't forget the many smaller emergencies, in places such as Sellafield, that have been anxiously hushed up. The risks of nuclear power may be more remote than before, but the stakes – at worst, millions of human lives – are as high as ever, and unacceptably so. Besides, nuclear power is not the only way that Britain and, indeed, the wider world can deal with global warming. The case for a carbon tax, which penalises the polluter in a much more neutral fashion than the present mish-mash of duties and levies, would go a long way towards that objective, as would a much more substantial investment in renewable energy sources. As for the costs of nuclear power, the capital price remains extremely high. But even if nuclear electricity were "too cheap to meter" we would still be queasy about building new plants. The risk to life is too high. As a one-time nuclear pioneer, Britain is in a strong position to lead the world into a cleaner, safer, post-nuclear world. ***************************************************************** 28 SELLAFIELD PLANS MASSIVE INCREASES IN DISCHARGES OF NUCLEAR WASTE TO SEA 26 June 2001 Leaked documents published in the UK Telegraph newspaper today show that massive increases in nuclear discharges into the Irish Sea from the notorious Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria are planned. The documents (1) show that Sellafield's operator, BNFL, plans to breach international commitments to reduce the discharges, made by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in 1998. Prescott stated "This is the day the UK finally throws off the mantle of Dirty Man of Europe" when he made the commitment to the 1998 ministerial meeting of the OSPAR Commission in Sintra, Portugal (2). "Sellafield's nuclear pollution contaminates the shores of Ireland and our Nordic neighbours, as far north as the Arctic," said Dr Helen Wallace of Greenpeace. "The Government promised not to be a dirty neighbour, but Sellafield has secret plans to pour yet more deadly radioactivity into the sea." Greenpeace is providing the leaked documents to the annual meeting of the OSPAR Commission meeting in Valencia, Spain this week. Sellafield discharges some 8 million litres of nuclear waste into the sea each day. The radioactivity contaminates sea water, sediments and marine life such as winkles and lobsters. Nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield, and at La Hague in France, is the major source of radioactive discharges in the OSPAR region. "If the UK is to meet its international commitments, it must stop nuclear reprocessing today," said Dr Wallace, "There is no safe dose of radiation and these massive discharges threaten the environment and health of future generations." Last year in Copenhagen, OSPAR adopted a decision to review reprocessing "as a matter of priority" and implement dry storage of existing nuclear waste fuel as an alternative. However, the UK and France refused to accept the decision, which was supported by the 13 other OSPAR member countries. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Greenpeace UK Press Office: +44 (0)20 7865 8255 Helen Wallace: +44 (0)20 7865 8241 Mobile: +44 (0)7801 212972 For more information, including documents, visit www.britishnuclearfuels.com Notes for editors: (1) The documents, available from www.britishnuclearfuels.com, show predicted discharges from Sellafield from 2000 to 2008. The predictions appear to have been made by BNFL for the UK Environment Agency, for its forthcoming review of Sellafield's discharges. Discharges of many radioactive substances are predicted to double, and some to increase four-fold by the next OSPAR ministerial meeting in 2003. (2) The OSPAR Commission is charged with reducing and eliminating marine pollution in the North-East Atlantic region. Members are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the EU. The Objective agreed by ministers in 1998 was "...to prevent pollution of the maritime area from ionising radiation through progressive and substantial reductions of discharges, emissions and losses of radioactive substances, with the ultimate aim of concentrations in the environment near background values for naturally occurring radioactive substances and close to zero for artificial radioactive substances"[emphasis added]. The timeframe included commitments for the years 2000 and 2020. ***************************************************************** 29 Turks Protest Nuclear Shipments in Narrow Bosphorus Strait Environment News Service: By Jon Gorvett ISTANBUL, Turkey, June 25, 2001 (ENS) - With klaxons blaring and the smoke from dozens of distress flares billowing in the sea breeze, Turkish environmentalists marked the end of a week of protest Sunday, with a flotilla of small boats surrounding tankers in the waters off Istanbul. The seaborne demo came after a decision by the Russian parliament on nuclear waste which many Turks believe dramatically increases the risks of environmental catastrophe in the Turkish Straits - the narrow Bosphorus and Dardanelles passages that separate Europe from Asia, and the Black Sea from the Mediterranean. On June 6, Russian lawmakers voted to accept nuclear waste from other countries for reprocessing and disposal in the country's southern region of Mayak. This would likely mean a dramatic increase in nuclear waste materials transiting the Turkish Straits to Russia's Black Sea ports. [fire] Fire following a 1994 collision of the tanker Nassia in the Bosporus Strait (Photo courtesy Turkish Maritime Pilots Association) Turks are already up in arms about the likelihood of a surge in transportation of other dangerous substances through the Straits - most notably oil and other oil products. With the opening up of Caspian oil fields - and most recently the signing of an agreement to ship oil from the Tenghiz field by tanker - there is concern that a tanker accident in the Straits could be fatal, particularly if it happened in the Bosphorus. This 20 mile channel runs straight through the heart of Istanbul, a city of some 12 million people. The Bosphorus already has an accident rate twice that of the Suez canal, and 30 times that of the Mississippi River. But despite the fact that around 50,000 vessels transit every year, 6,000 carrying hazardous materials, there is no obligation on ships to carry a pilot or accept instructions from the Turkish Coast Guard. The reason is the post-World War One Treaty of Montreaux, which defined the Straits as international waters. "Under the treaty," says Yuksel Ustun, the organizer of Sunday's boat protest on the Bosphorus and head of the environmental NGO Peace with Nature, "ships dont have to declare their cargo either, unless it is dangerous - but who is to check this? Under the treaty, ships don't even have to listen to Coast Guard requests." What this means, according to Ustun, is that radioactive and other hazardous substances are regularly going through the Straits - and in the Bosphorus sometimes passing within a few hundred meters of densely populated urban areas. "Nuclear waste is being brought through the Straits to the Black Sea thanks to this manipulation of the Montreaux Treaty," he says. In addition, Ustun claims that, "often in the past other countries would load up an old ship with hazardous materials, sail it through into the Black Sea and simply scuttle it there as a form of waste disposal. As the Black Sea littoral countries were until recently divided by the Cold War, there was never any real overall control." Greenpeace Mediterranean co-ordinator Melda Keskin agrees. She says, "The majority of Russians do not want this hazardous or radioactive material either. A petition campaign in Moscow collected 2.1 million signatures against Russia accepting the nuclear waste. Under the Russian constitution, you need two million signatures to automatically trigger a national referendum on an issue. However, the government appointed referendum commission said that 600,000 of the signatures were invalid and threw out the petition." In addition to protest demonstrations, the Turkish government has also reacted strongly to the Russian parliament's decision. Maritime Undersecretary Ramazan Mirzaoglu told reporters last week in response to news of the Russian move that, "The Straits traffic is very important to the Black Sea countries and to Turkey. We will not give permission to dangerous passages that would delay that traffic." Meanwhile, on his recent visit to Turkey, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave assurances that any nuclear waste shipped to Russia would be transported "according to current international standards." This promise is unlikely to satisfy many Istanbulans who live along the densely crowded shores of the Bosphorus, one of the world's most historic waterways. © Environment News Service ***************************************************************** 30 ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners said last night they would "fiercely oppose" any government plans for a new generation of nuclear power plants. The warning came as the prime minister yesterday announced Brian Wilson, energy minister, would head a new energy review to consider the options for meeting Britain's long-term energy needs. Greenpeace expressed concerned that it could be a "smokescreen" to provide new subsidies for the nuclear industry, while Friends of the Earth urged the government to ensure renewable energies were properly exploited. Matthew Spencer, head of the climate and energy campaign at Greenpeace UK, said: "Reducing the UK's dependence on nuclear power and fossil fuels requires huge changes to our energy system, so this study is timely and welcome. Unfortunately putting Brian Wilson in charge of the energy review is like putting a fox in charge of the hen coop." Mr Spencer described Mr Wilson as "aggressively pro-nuclear" and said there was a danger he would use his position to push the nuclear industry's case that it deserved new public subsidy. Mark Johnson, Friends of the Earth's energy campaigner, said building more nuclear power plants would be "economic and environmental madness". "Any plans to build new nuclear reactors will be met with fierce opposition," he said. In a written reply to a parliamentary question, Mr Blair said the aim of the review was to "set out the objectives of energy policy and to develop a strategy that ensures current policy commitments are consistent with longer-term goals". Mr Wilson, joined on the group by Michael Meacher, environment minister, and Andrew Smith, treasury chief secretary, said Britain was self-sufficient, had diverse sources of supply, and was set to exceed its obligations under the Kyoto global warming agreement. "However we must not be complacent. In future we expect to become increasingly dependent on imports of fuel, and particularly gas, which could eventually become a dominant source of our supplies." He added: "The review will consider the role of coal, gas, oil and renewables in our future energy balance as well as combined heat and power and the enhancement of energy efficiency." The review will also need to consider what, if any, role the nuclear industry should play in meeting the environmental and security of supply objectives." The group is due to report by the end of the year. -June 26th ***************************************************************** 31 Study flags radioactive threat Problem exceeds federal estimates By Peter Eisler USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- Thousands more people than anticipated face health and pollution threats from plutonium and other highly radioactive elements that fouled vast amounts of uranium recycled by the U.S. nuclear weapons program over the past 50 years. Recycled uranium was shipped worldwide from 1952 until 1999, when distribution was halted by revelations of its contamination. Now, new federal studies reviewed by USA TODAY show that the program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium -- roughly double the estimates of two years ago. The material was handled at about 10 times the number of sites revealed previously, reaching more than 100 federal plants, private manufacturers and universities. The studies suggest that thousands more workers than expected might have unwittingly faced radiation risks beyond those associated with normal uranium, increasing their odds of developing cancer and other ailments. That places an unexpected burden on a soon-to-begin federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers. Contaminants from the tainted uranium also raise the potential for soil and groundwater pollution at some of the newly recognized processing sites. That threatens to complicate cleanup plans. Most recycled uranium went back into nuclear weapons production or was used as fuel for power reactors. But thousands of tons also were used in everything from academic research to the making of armor for Army battle tanks. The vast majority of the material contained only traces of impurities -- too little, scientists say, to pose risks beyond those posed by natural uranium, which is mildly radioactive and raises health hazards if inhaled as dust. But some plants handled recycled uranium in ways that concentrated its contaminants, significantly boosting its hazards. ''This stuff circulated much more widely than we'd thought,'' says Robert Alvarez, an official at the Department of Energy when it launched the new studies in 1999. ''The problem is, they really don't have reasonable estimates of how much (contamination) was in a lot of this recycled uranium,'' adds Alvarez, now a scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. ''It could range from very tiny amounts to relatively high levels.'' Federal researchers conclude in the new studies that contamination generally was ''extremely low.'' But that finding masks problems. The uranium's contaminants apparently were concentrated at a dozen or more previously unrecognized sites, raising pollution and worker health threats. But it's unclear which batches of uranium were most dangerous -- or where they went -- so not all high-risk sites are identifiable. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., says, ''The government has a responsibility to follow up.'' © Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 32 Tainted uranium, danger widely distributed Tons of material recycled from nuclear weapons program went to labs, universities, manufacturers By Peter Eisler USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- In 1952, when federal officials began recycling uranium used in making nuclear weapons fuel, no one foresaw any health or environmental risks. Tiny particles of plutonium, neptunium, technetium and other dangerous isotopes contained in the recovered material didn't add significantly to the radiation that would be expected from natural uranium, scientists reasoned. For the next 50 years, as the weapons program shipped thousands of tons of recycled uranium around the world, officials rarely even measured the contaminants. It wasn't until 1999 that the contamination began getting serious attention, and the government acknowledged that federal plants in Paducah, Ky., Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn., had processed the recycled uranium in ways that concentrated its impurities. The government conceded that thousands of workers faced radiation risks from the contaminants that went well beyond those from normal uranium, raising their chances for cancer and other illnesses. And the worries didn't stop at plant fences: Evidence indicated that the contaminants also were polluting soil and water. The Department of Energy, which had taken over the weapons program in the mid-1970s, shut down the recycling operation and launched a series of studies to assess the full scope of the contamination problem. Now a USA TODAY review of new data from those studies reveals that recycled uranium circulated far more widely than first believed -- and so did the health risks. The studies, released quietly this spring, show that more than 250,000 tons of the tainted uranium circulated among hundreds of government plants, private manufacturers and university labs. The material handled at most of those sites contained only minute levels of impurities. However, some of the newly identified processing sites, such as the three government-owned plants where the contamination first surfaced, performed work that concentrated contaminants at dangerous levels. The possibility that workers at those sites, which employed thousands, might face higher odds of cancer and other ailments linked to exposure to the contaminants has significant implications for a soon-to-begin federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers. The government has promised to expedite claims for people who handled recycled uranium at the federal facilities where the contamination problem first surfaced, but officials have no plans to extend the same consideration to those who worked at newly identified processing sites. The new data also suggest the potential for previously unanticipated pollution at some facilities that weren't thought to have handled the material. Some state regulators worry that plans to clean up uranium wastes at those sites might have to be expanded to account for more dangerous contaminants. That raises questions about federal liability for additional costs. New risks shown USA TODAY studied more than 1,000 pages of new reports and documents on recycled uranium, some obtained by requests under the Freedom of Information Act, to assess the impact of the contamination problem. Some findings: * A dozen or more facilities beyond those initially identified appear to have processed the uranium in ways that concentrated its highly radioactive contaminants. Those include federal and private sites in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and other states. * Several thousand workers at those sites risked exposure to plutonium and other contaminants at levels that significantly increase their odds for cancer and other radiation-related illnesses. * There has been little or no investigation to check for contaminants from recycled uranium in soil and groundwater at most of the higher-risk processing sites, though such elements might only be detected by special tests. Ellen Livingston, senior environmental policy adviser at the Department of Energy, says the facilities where contaminants in recycled uranium posed serious hazards ''were handling the material in different ways than most of the sites.'' At the vast majority of facilities, she says, ''the contaminants did not present high health risks.'' Energy officials, however, have no plans to assess exactly what was done with the uranium at most of the newly identified processing sites, so it's difficult to know precisely how many might have processed the material in ways that concentrated its contaminants at dangerous levels. New pollution, old sources For years, state investigators wondered why radioactive technetium-99 was turning up in drinking water wells near the old Mallinckrodt Chemical uranium fuel-making plant in Hematite, Mo. Now they think they have an answer: The plant was one of several in and around St. Louis where Mallinckrodt and its successors used thousands of tons of recycled uranium to fabricate metallic fuel rods for nuclear reactors. ''We believe the contamination we're now seeing at the site is related to the (recycling) program,'' says Ron Kucera of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Plans to clean up extensive pollution from uranium wastes at Hematite are snagged by questions over who is responsible for the technetium. That element requires special disposal because it has a half-life of 213,000 years and moves easily into soil and water. Technetium wasn't expected at Hematite because it is produced only when uranium is irradiated in a nuclear reactor -- and Hematite had no reactor. ''The Department of Energy has resisted efforts to become involved because even though they may have some liability, they don't want to pay anything,'' Kucera says. The Hematite facility was part of a nationwide network of private and federally owned plants and labs that produced fuel and other components for the nearly 70,000 U.S. nuclear weapons built before production was phased out in the early 1990s. Many of them used recycled uranium. The recycling began at the dawn of the Cold War. Officials in the weapons program were seeking ways to reuse the costly uranium that was irradiated in reactors to make plutonium and other fissionable explosives for bomb cores. In the early 1950s, scientists hit on a succession of chemical baths and filters to separate uranium from the stew of reactor wastes. Most recycled uranium had its genesis at the weapons program's plutonium-production sites: the Hanford compound near Richland, Wash., and the Savannah River Site outside Aiken, S.C. Uranium recovered at those places was sent on for initial processing at the federally owned gaseous diffusion plants in Paducah, Portsmouth and Oak Ridge. Those sites enhanced the material's radioactive properties to make reactor fuel. Until now, the greatest health and environmental threats from the uranium's contaminants were thought to be limited to the five federal sites that initially handled most of the material. The impurities were progressively removed as the uranium moved through other facilities, particularly those involved in certain processing jobs that concentrated its contaminants in ash, residues and other wastes. The uranium that emerged from the processing chain -- as reactor fuel, for example, or metal for tanks and munitions -- contained only minute levels of contaminants. Now, the government's new studies show that a dozen or more newly identified processing sites were concentrating the uranium's contaminants in ways very similar to the five federal facilities that initially handled most of the recycled material. They include private and federal plants in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri. Officials in New York plan to check soil and water for contaminants in residential areas near a former Sylvania-Corning plant in Hicksville on Long Island. The facility, newly identified as a major processing site for recycled uranium, is one of several in the state that handled the material. ''We'll have to evaluate each site individually to see if there's a need to check for contaminants,'' says Barbara Youngberg, radiation studies chief at the state Department of Environmental Conservation. ''It's possible we wouldn't have seen it. You'd have to do specific tests.'' Although soil and water tests can pinpoint environmental damage from the contaminants in recycled uranium, assessing threats to workers' health is more difficult. Thousands of shipments of tainted material shuttled among more than 100 sites. Most landed at the weapons program's big plants, but tens of thousands of tons went to smaller, mostly private sites across the Northeast, around the Great Lakes and down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Some also ended up at universities, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California-Berkeley, which did substantial amounts of experimental processing, to Texas Tech, Utah State, Vanderbilt and dozens of others that did small-scale research. Although the new studies found that the material typically contained very little contamination, that finding is largely speculative. Most of the impurities went unmeasured for decades, so many of the contamination estimates are extrapolated from readings taken in the 1970s and '80s -- long after the dirtiest shipments circulated. Facilities that processed recycled uranium ''frequently and deliberately concentrated the contaminant isotopes, diluted them and blended them with natural uranium,'' federal researchers concluded in one report. ''The blending caused considerable uncertainty in the data. Also, data on (contaminant) levels are incomplete, and the data between sites is not consistent.'' Contamination problems generally were most pronounced in the early years of the recycling operation, but it's hard to know which shipments were most contaminated -- or how workers handled them. Even so, there are clues. New hot spots In 1952, officials in the weapons program shifted initial treatment of some of the most contaminated batches of recycled uranium to Harshaw Chemical, a Cleveland contractor that had secretly processed normal uranium for weapons use since the mid-'40s. Harshaw already had a history of exposing unknowing workers to high levels of radiation and toxins. This would be its most dangerous job yet. In 1952-54, Harshaw cooked the recycled uranium with fluorides and other chemicals in ways that would ''remove the objectionable impurities,'' concentrating them in ash and other wastes, according to a now-declassified 1954 report. In all, the plant handled more than 1,700 tons of the stuff. ''We'd take a scoop and load (powdered uranium compounds) into trays that went into a furnace'' says James Southern, 77, who worked at Harshaw. ''The next morning, we'd unload the trays, scoop everything out. Nothing was said that this was hazardous to your health or anything like that.'' Employees in similar jobs at Oak Ridge faced ''high'' threats of exposure to the uranium's impurities, according to one new federal report, which suggests ''follow-on study to provide a more detailed assessment'' of their risks. No similar assessment has been considered for Harshaw workers, though it might help predict increased odds of cancer and other ailments. ''We already knew conditions at Harshaw were terrible. This just adds to that,'' says Arjun Makhijani, a specialist in radiation risks at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a non-profit think tank. Monitoring of Harshaw workers ''should be pursued with some urgency. The government owes that to them as much as it does to workers in government facilities.'' Harshaw isn't the only newly identified processing site where contaminants were concentrated. Records show, for example, that ''special shipments'' of highly fouled ash and residues from processing at Paducah were shipped to the government's Fernald treatment complex in Cincinnati. Smaller batches also appear to have gone to Vitro Manufacturing in Canonsburg, Pa. At both sites, workers manually loaded the waste into trays and casks for more processing. Former Vitro employees recall chipping out residues by hand after mixing jobs. Investigators at Fernald reported in March that such jobs ''represent a higher potential source of exposure to recycled uranium and its constituents.'' No effort is planned to assess risks at Vitro. Looking ahead The contamination of recycled uranium got its first public attention in 1999, when workers at the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant filed a lawsuit alleging illnesses from exposure to the plutonium and other stray elements. The resulting disclosures prompted the Department of Energy to shut down the recycling operation. Officials quickly concluded that workers at the government's three diffusion plants were exposed to plutonium and other contaminants at levels that brought significant health risks. A monitoring program was set up, and 4,500 workers have been checked for lung cancer and other problems. Also, when Congress passed legislation last fall to compensate thousands of ill nuclear weapons workers, people at the diffusion plants were put in a ''special cohort'' with streamlined access to benefits. The processing of claims is set to begin later this year. The government also launched environmental investigations for contaminants in soil and groundwater at the diffusion plants. In the fall of 1999, then-assistant Energy secretary David Michaels told Congress that at least 13 federal facilities used the tainted uranium. ''We are committed to getting accurate information,'' he testified. He vowed to identify sites where the material was used and to assess pollution and health risks. Now, despite findings that the number of facilities that processed recycled uranium is 10 times what was anticipated, the new administration plans no additional study. Energy officials say the existing compensation plan for sick weapons workers offers sufficient redress. Consequently, they say, there is no need to further define risks at newly identified facilities where contaminants were concentrated. Similarly, no effort is planned to check for pollution at those sites, where cleanup responsibilities lie with private owners, states or the Army Corps of Engineers. The Department of Energy's Livingston says, ''We will make our records available, and we'll provide people to help interpret them.'' Some lawmakers and interest groups say the department isn't doing enough to account for previously unknown risks to workers and the environment, especially at sites that handled the recycled uranium in early years. ''That's the part of the stream you have to be most concerned about,'' says Steve Fetter, a physicist and public policy professor at the University of Maryland. ''Some of that stuff was quite hot. There might be unidentified problems at some of these sites that you'd learn about if you followed this up.'' © Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 33 Editorial: Oil drilling vote offers us lessons Today: June 26, 2001 at 9:10:47 PDT It was stunning last week when the House voted 247-164 to stop President Bush's plan to drill for oil off the Florida coast. What made it all the more remarkable was that 70 Republicans defied the president and GOP House leaders on the controversial proposal, which also was opposed by environmentalists. The parallel is by no means perfect, but Florida's victory offers encouragement to Nevada's fight against federal government efforts to bury nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain. First, a key element to Florida's success was the near unanimity of that state's residents, including support from coastal businesses that argued oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could wreak havoc with tourism. Here in Nevada, elected officials have had a tough time getting casinos on board in the fight against a nuclear waste dump. But in a promising sign, as the Sun reported Friday, casino executives now are acknowledging that a dump could harm Nevada's tourism industry and are poised to wield their clout with Congress on this issue. Second, it was noteworthy that Florida's members of Congress were able to build bridges with congressmen from other states that didn't have a direct stake in the outcome. As the New York Times reported, many conservative Republicans from far-flung regions of the nation voted with the Floridians in order to get Florida's support on environmental concerns in their own back yards. Admittedly nuclear waste is a significantly different issue in that Nevada not only is a small state, but it also is the only state being targeted as the permanent dumping ground for 77,000 tons of the lethal waste. This makes it more difficult to pick up support from elsewhere, but the Achilles' heel of the nuclear waste dump always has been transportation. It's been estimated that to get the waste to Yucca Mountain there would have to be 100,000 shipments through 43 states, and these states would be natural allies since a transportation accident could have devastating consequences for them, too. The irony for Bush is that his proposals to solve the energy crisis have created fierce opposition, unintentionally creating more public support for environmental protection. While Bush, as part of his national energy strategy, has advocated a single dump to handle nuclear waste, the evidence over the years has shown Nevada a dangerous place to bury it. Nevadans can only hope that Bush's embrace of nuclear power has the same boomerang effect generated by his other controversial energy proposals. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 34 EPA official launches probe of Yucca radiation standards Today: June 26, 2001 at 11:11:08 PDT Ombudsman requests comments from industry, environmental groups By Mary Manning LAS VEGAS SUN The Environmental Protection Agency's ombudsman opened a preliminary probe Monday into radiation exposure standards for a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain. Ombudsman Robert Martin said he has requested written comments within 30 days from environmental groups and state and nuclear industry officials on whether he has the authority to formally delve into safety standards at Yucca Mountain. While in Las Vegas last week, Martin had questioned whether he had the authority to conduct an investigation, but Monday he said he will be able to launch the formal investigation requested by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., by August. Berkley, who accompanied him to Las Vegas, had no comment Monday. Martin also asked for documents relating to Yucca Mountain as a hazardous waste site from the EPA's Region 9 office in San Francisco and from the state of Nevada. He said he was looking for evidence of previous chemical or metal contamination. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive commercial and defense wastes. The EPA recently issued a limit that would restrict the amount of radiation allowed to escape from the proposed repository, if it is built. The EPA's rule -- 15 millirems per year of exposure to the average person outside the repository boundaries, with 4 millirems of that allowed to come through ground water -- are stricter than those sought by the nuclear industry. A chest X-ray is about 5 millirems. Martin said the ombudsman's role is to conduct independent investigations and make recommendations in connection with hazardous waste sites falling under the EPA's regulations. In the course of an independent investigation, the ombudsman conducts public hearings and on-the-record interviews, requests documents and makes non-binding recommendations to the EPA management, Martin said. The ombudsman's investigation could have been stopped in its tracks before it started. A proposal earlier this year would have allowed the EPA to veto the ombudsman's role in some cases. But EPA Administrator Christie Whitman pledged she would work with Congress to create an independent and accountable ombudsman. Last week Martin said his office has no power to compel the EPA to accept his findings. Yet in his nine years as ombudsman in the EPA's Office of Solid Waste, the agency has agreed with his recommendations about 80 percent of the time. An EPA spokesman said the entire process will be "very open" and "cast a wide net" in seeking comments from everyone involved in ongoing studies at Yucca Mountain. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 35 Blair opens way for a nuclear comeback © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd 27 June 2001 06:35 GMT+1 Independent Prime Minister announces a review of energy needs that may lead to the revival of an industry traditionally scorned by Labour By Steve Connor Science Editor 26 June 2001 Leading article: Nuclear power? No thanks. It is too expensive and still far too much of a riskA revival of nuclear power is the likely consequence of an energy review announced by Tony Blair yesterday. In a policy U-turn, the Prime Minister signalled the possibility of nuclear power stations being built for the first time since 1987 to reduce greenhouse gases while averting a California-style energy crisis. Such a policy would end the moratorium on nuclear plants and set the Labour Government against its traditional supporters in the anti-nuclear movement, who expect the party to honour its 1997 manifesto pledge to build no more nuclear stations. Brian Wilson, the Industry and Energy minister and an advocate of nuclear power, will chair the review, to be done by the performance and innovation unit (PIU) of the Cabinet Office, which will attempt to balance the country's future energy demands with the Kyoto agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "The review will also need to consider what, if any, role the nuclear industry should play in meeting the environmental and security of supply objectives," said Mr Wilson, whose constituency includes the Hunterston nuclear plant. Mr Blair said the work of the PIU review had already started and would cover all aspects of energy consumption and power generation up to 2050. Michael Meacher, minister for the Environment, and Andrew Smith, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will also sit on the review's advisory group. Britain is facing a long-term energy crisis. It is running out of North Sea gas, it is increasingly reliant on expensive energy from unstable regions of the world and its greenhouse gas emissions are due to rise. "The main aim of the project will be to set out the objectives of energy policy and to develop a strategy that ensures current policy commitments are consistent with longer-term goals," the PIU said. Energy analysts take this as a green light for a revival of the nuclear industry, which for more than a decade has faced an uncertain future with no new power stations planned. Ian Fells, Professor of Energy Conversion at Newcastle University and a frequent adviser on energy policy to Whitehall, said: "Some joined-up thinking on energy policy would be a really good thing." About 30 per cent of the UK's electricity is generated by gas-fired power stations, which have the advantage of being cheap to build and are relatively clean and efficient. The number of gas-fired stations has grown over the past decade, but North Sea gas is running out. By 2006 the UK is expected to be importing 15 per cent of its gas, compared with 2 per cent currently, according to the PIU. The same is true of North Sea oil, with the UK destined to become a net importer of oil by 2007. Another 30 per cent of electricity production is generated by nuclear power, but the last plant to be built was Sizewell B, construction of which began in 1987 after the longest public inquiry in history. Remaining electricity is generated by coal-fired stations ­ considered dirty and costly ­ and renewable energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, wind and tidal-wave power. To meet the Government's pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 23 per cent by 2010 ­ and still further by 2050 ­ it would ideally build up renewable sources of energy, but the sums "don't add up", according to Professor Fells. "The UK is committed to 10 per cent of electricity supply from renewables by 2010. It is currently 2.5 per cent with hydropower supplying 1.5 per cent and wind 0.25 per cent," Professor Fells said. "A fourfold increase in renewable electricity in 10 years, although laudable, will require considerable government intervention," he said. Wind power, seen by many as the greatest hope for renewable energy, is technically limited. "To generate just 5 per cent of renewable electricity from wind will require one 80m-high turbine to be installed off the coast each day from now until 2010," Professor Fells said. The Government has announced that 20 per cent of the 23 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases will be accounted for by a fall in carbon dioxide emissions, but these actually rose by 2 per cent last year. "This is because cheaper and less controversial coal-fired generation replaced nuclear and gas-fired generation," Professor Fells said. "If I could do without nukes I would, but when you do the arithmetic there is no way of doing the sums without bringing in nuclear power." The PIU review is clearly designed to reopen the debate over the nuclear-power industry, which has suffered a string of public relations setbacks, from the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 to the scandal over falsified safety data at the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria in 1999. With current policy aimed at the progressive decommissioning of existing nuclear power stations, one of the greatest fears over being forced to rely increasingly on imported oil and gas is "security of supply". If existing trends continue, by 2030 Britain could be forced to rely on imports from Russia, the Middle East and North Africa for 70 per cent of its gas and oil needs ­ hardly the most stable, or friendly, places in the world. The PIU said: "With the UK's nuclear stations decommissioned and coal generation likely to have only a limited role, UK energy consumption is likely to be increasingly dependent on oil and, in particular, gas." ***************************************************************** 36 U.S. nuclear cos limited liability renewal has bipartisan support - senator Story Filed: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 1:27 PM EST WASHINGTON, Jun 26, 2001 (AFX-Europe via COMTEX) -- U.S. lawmakers said that legislation which limits the liability of nuclear power companies in the event of a nuclear accident is likely to be renewed, but concerns about radioactive waste disposal persist. Lawmakers on the Senate Energy Committee, who are considering renewal of the Price-Anderson Act which protects nuclear operators against unlimited liability, heard testimony today from industry representatives who argued that nuclear power has become safer and more efficient in recent years. However, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are concerned that amendments to the Price-Anderson Act's renewal could encourage some nuclear operators to cut corners on vital maintenance. "Although not everyone agrees, I think there's reasonably strong bipartisan support for renewing the Act," the newly-installed Democratic chairman of the committee, Senator Jeff Bingaman, said in opening remarks. The White House is keen to get the Act renewed quickly, it is due to expire Aug 1, 2002, as part of President George Bush's wider plan to boost domestic energy output. "Without Price-Anderson protection, most private contractors and suppliers could not prudently take the financial risks associated with assisting the Department of Energy (DOE) to perform its vital cleanup, national defense, and other missions," John Bradburne, president and chief executive officer of Fluor Fernald Inc, told the committee. Fluor Fernald, British Nuclear Fuels PLC, Nuclear Fuels Services Inc and USEC Inc, as well as others, form the DOE's energy contractors Price-Anderson Group. The Act could be put forward to a Senate and House vote as a stand-alone bill, or it could be incorporated into other energy legislation before the committee, according to a spokesman for Bingaman's office. He said a decision has yet to be made on how, and when, it will be put forward for a vote. There are currently 103, out of a total 106, NRC-licensed nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. No new nuclear power plants have been built in the last 25 years. Under the Act's current terms, nuclear power companies are obliged to provide up to 200 mln usd in insurance for each reactor, in the event that that insurance is exhausted, each reactor must then pay into a pool up to 83.9 mln usd to cover any excess damages. The 83.9 mln usd is payable in annual installments not to exceed 10 mln usd, but the total pool of commercial and reactor insurance makes over 9.0 bln usd available to the public in the event of a nuclear leak or meltdown. Although the NRC supports renewal of the Act, John Gray, Associate General Counsel to the NRC, told AFX News on the sidelines of the hearing that the regulator is concerned about an incentive that would grant generators a 1 Kilowatt hour of additional production within twelve months. "These kind of incentives tend to make a licensee defer maintenance...we would certainly push to ensure that the necessary maintenance is done, but this kind of short term incentive program does give us some concern that licensees may cut corners in a way that we can't catch them," Gray said. Aside from this concern, lawmakers on the committee voiced some concern about the thorny issue of nuclear waste. Senator Mary Landrieu who is an "advocate of nuclear power," asked witnesses what kind of progress the industry has made to improve nuclear waste disposal and storage. "We've got safer, and far more efficient in this process," said Bradburne. Marvin Fertel, a senior vice president at the Nuclear Energy Institute, responded that "Wall Street's impression on waste has modified a bit...as long as they see movement, Wall Street is prepared to support the industry." The DOE is due to decide by the end of this year whether or not to approve the construction of a permanent nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The site could potential store thousands of tons of nuclear waste. jjc/gc Copyright 2001. AFX News Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 37 Review 'will revive nuclear power' etad.telegraph.co.uk ISSUE 2223 Tuesday 26 June 2001 By Charles Clover Sellafield emissions predicted to rise TONY BLAIR has commissioned a review of where Britain's electricity is to come from over the next 50 years which industry sources believe will inevitably lead to a revival of nuclear power. The review of energy policy has been set up following California's experience of power shortageswhen demand outstripped the capacity of heavily regulated power generators. It will also take into account Britain's commitment to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels under the Kyoto climate treaty. Mr Blair said the review had been set up to enable the Government to respond to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution last year which said 50 new nuclear power stations would be needed to give Britain the energy it uses today without adding to global warming. The commission said Britain would also need 200 offshore windfarms, 7,500 wave power devices and a tidal barrage across the River Severn. But it also said that an increase in nuclear generating capacity was not the answer without an acceptable solution to the problem of nuclear waste. The review, announced by Mr Blair in a Parliamentary written answer, will set Britain's needs "in the context of meeting the challenge of global warming, while ensuring secure, diverse and reliable energy supplies at a competitive price". Mr Blair, who has taken a personal interest in energy matters since he was front-bench spokesman for energy in Opposition, said: "The aim of the review will be to set out the objectives of energy policy and to develop a strategy that ensures current policy commitments are consistent with longer-term goals." The review will be carried out by the Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit, which is to report directly to Mr Blair by the end of the year. www.telegraph.co.uk. ***************************************************************** 38 Exposure to uranium likely higher Published Tuesday, June 26, 2001 ASSOCIATED PRESS ARLINGTON, Va. -- Thousands more workers than first thought could face serious health threats from exposure to plutonium and other highly radioactive matter that fouled a large amount of uranium recycled by U.S. nuclear weapons programs, a published report says. From 1952 until 1999, when the shipments ended because of the contamination threat, vast quantities of recycled uranium were shipped worldwide. New government studies, reviewed by USA Today and reported in Monday's editions, found that the recycling program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium, or about twice as much as earlier estimated. The highly radioactive material was handled at about 10 times the number of sites previously revealed and reportedly reached more than 100 federal plants, private manufacturers and universities. "This stuff circulated much more widely than we'd thought," said Robert Alvarez, an official at the Energy Department when the new studies were started in 1999. USA Today said the latest studies suggest that thousands more workers than expected might have unwittingly faced radiation risks beyond those associated with normal uranium. That exposure could significantly increase their odds of developing cancer and other diseases. headlines from ContraCostaTimes.com ***************************************************************** 39 G8 Governments Exporting Nuclear Reactors Despite Global Collapse NEWS FROM NIRS/WISE-AMSTERDAM Nuclear Information and Resource Service/World Information Service on Energy-Amsterdam 1424 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20036, 202.328.0002; f: 202.462.2183; nirsnet@nirs.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Michael Mariotte, 202.328.0002 June 25, 2001 Antony Froggatt, 44 20 7923 0412 Desperately Seeking New Markets: U.S., other G8 Governments continue to support the export of nuclear reactors despite collapse in domestic markets The United States and other industrialized nations are propping up the sagging nuclear power industry through use of their Export Credit Agencies, such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank, despite what amounts to a rejection of the technology in these same nations, according to a new report released in the U.S. today by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). The report, written by environmental groups and researchers across the world, highlights the growing problem of ECA and International Financial Institutions (IFI) support for nuclear power. At the Genoa G8 Summit in July, world leaders will discuss environmental reform of ECAs. The authoring groups are highlighting the problems that financing nuclear power projects can bring. The report carefully documents how approximately $10 billion in credit guarantees have been awarded by the ECAs of the G8 to support current nuclear projects globally. The main recipient of this assistance is China, with seven of the eight countries supporting nuclear development there. In addition, the completion of partly build reactors in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is a target for nuclear constructors and the subsequent financial support from Governments. The use of ECAs is used not only to support domestic industries but also political objectives. In Ukraine, ECAs are proposing to support the completion of two reactors in Ukraine (Khmelnitsky 2 and Rovno 4, or K2/R4), despite the country’s poor nuclear safety record and economic performance. This performance has led to other projects in Ukraine that were seeking ECA assistance being abandoned. These funds were made on the basis of a political agreement in 1995 and not on current day reality or need. The European Commission is also becoming increasingly active in its financial support for nuclear power, with two loans approved in 2000, the first for over a decade and the first outside Member States of the EU. As a result of these loans the European Commission is preparing a proposal to expand its lending capabilities inside and outside the Union. Globally nuclear power is on the decline; it has been rejected by the public and the majority of electric utilities. The abandonment of nuclear power is due to increased transparency of costs and more information about the environmental and social costs of nuclear technology. Because of this the nuclear constructors are desperately seeking new markets to save their manufacturing capabilities. The companies are using ECAs to support their export bids, which are mostly clouded in secrecy, without clear public or parliamentary scrutiny. If similar scrutiny were to be made on reactor exports as for domestic construction in most G8 countries, this trade would stop. In Genoa, the G8 will review the environmental record of ECAs and propose new environmental guidelines. These new guidelines must expose the full environmental and social impacts of all projects. "Nuclear power has been largely rejected across the World. Countries in the G8 are now exporting more reactors than they are constructing in their own countries," said Antony Froggatt, co-author of the report. "ECAs are an essential part of the export of redundant nuclear technology. The ECAs lack of transparency aids this process; it is time for ECAs to be subjected to the same democratic scrutiny as other financial institutions and domestic constructions." "The U.S. Export-Import Bank is in the process of revising its nuclear funding guidelines," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of NIRS. "As a first step, ExIm should forbid funding of unsafe Russian-designed reactors like K2/R4. As the next step, ExIm should stop funding nuclear projects entirely, and use its limited resources to support environmentally sound energy sources." Mariotte noted that ExIm so far is refusing to fund K2/R4 because of Ukraine’s poor financial position, and said that NIRS encourages the bank to continue to reject funding for this project on both environmental and economic grounds. Notes to editors: The report, Financing Disaster, How the G8 is Supporting the Global Proliferation of Nuclear Technology was prepared by NGOs and Environmental Specialists in the G8 Countries, including: Sierra Club of Canada; Amis de la Terra (France); Urgewald (Germany); An Eye on Sace (Italy); Citizen’s Nuclear Information Centre (Japan); ECODEFENSE (Russia); EU Enlargement Watch (UK); NIRS (US). The full report is available on and Paper copies of the executive summary are available free to media and environmental organizations from NIRS. Paper copies of the full 150-page report are $15.00. ***************************************************************** 40 Press Release Fast Flux: The Reactor the Wouldn't Die June 25, 2001 The Reactor That Wouldn’t Die: Another Attempt to Revive Fast Flux Test Facility? Dangerous Breeder Reactor Should Be Permanently Shut Down SEATTLE, Wash. – In comments submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Fast Flux Test Facility Review today, Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program urged the department to follow the original Record of Decision, which specified permanent deactivation of the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) – the most contaminated nuclear site in the western world. On Janury 19, 2001 then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson signed a Record of Decision that stated "the Fast Flux Test Facility in Washington will be permanently deactivated." On April 25, 2001, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham suspended that Record of Decision for 90 days. During the suspension a review of the decision to permanently shut down FFTF is being conducted. Comments are due by July 3rd. The comments provided by Public Citizen outline six reasons against the re-start of the FFTF, and for the original Record of Decision to permanently shut it down. These include: + There is no genuine need for the facility to operate. Stated purposes of a restarted FFTF could be achieved at other extant facilities. + Food irradiation is a dangerous, controversial technology, and the form that requires sealed sources of isotopes (that FFTF could create) is not being favored by food industries. Food irradiation should not be used as justification for restarting FFTF. + "Fast breeder" reactors, such as FFTF, are unstable and dangerous, and have experienced at least two meltdowns in the US. Further, it is an internationally rejected technology. + Reopening the FFTF would only worsen the radioactive waste problems at the Hanford site. + Restarting the FFTF would be a wholesale waste of taxpayer money. + Opening the facility to create more sealed sources of radiation runs counter to the EPA's program to locate and collect dangerous "orphaned" radiation sources. Elaborating on the food irradiation aspect, Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program, said, "Claims by the DOE that we need to produce radioactive material to irradiate food are absolutely false." Technology currently exists that does not require sealed sources of radioactive isotopes. Public Citizen stands against any form of food irradiation, however. "Using irradiation to make our food supply safe is like using a chainsaw to cut butter - it's excessive and unnecessary. Cleaning up filthy factory farming and slaughtering practices will provide American families with safe, wholesome food." The FFTF was built at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington in 1980, and began running in 1982 to serve as a fuel and material irradiation test facility, but was closed in 1992. It was considered unprofitable to keep open solely for research purposes, and commercially viable uses for it could not be identified. Decommissioning the plant would cost about $70 million, while restarting it would cost more than $284 million with an additional $100 million per year to operate at full power. "The DOE is creating a new taxpayer boondoggle," Hauter said. "Instead of concentrating on cleaning up the environmental nightmare at Hanford, it is trying to restart the reactor to create more radioactive material. It is nothing but a welfare program for the nuclear establishment, and the US and international experience with this type of reactor argues against restarting it." Critical Mass Home ***************************************************************** 41 GAO Gets Tough With Cheney Over Energy Task Force June 25, 2001 Reuters WASHINGTON--The General Accounting Office has demanded that Vice President Dick Cheney's office immediately turn over information about the activities of the White House energy task force. At the request of several Democratic lawmakers, the investigative arm of Congress is trying to find who met with the White House panel that was headed by Cheney and how much money was spent by the task force. The White House has refused to provide the list of names and has questioned the authority of the GAO to even investigate the task force. In a letter Friday to David Addington, the vice president's counsel, the GAO said a month has lapsed since the agency's first request for facts about the energy task force's activities and the information must be "provided immediately." "We trust that the Office of the Vice President will proceed expeditiously to respond to our existing and future access requests on this review, as well as allowing us to interview appropriate officials," wrote GAO general counsel Anthony Gamboa. If the White House does not provide timely access to the information requested, the GAO is prepared to issue a demand letter, Gamboa said. Under the law, if the White House does not respond to such a demand letter within 20 days the GAO could bring a civil action to compel a response. The White House task force met with officials from the oil, natural gas, electric, and nuclear industries, among others, in developing the Bush administration's new national energy plan that was unveiled last month. Democratic Reps. John Dingell of Michigan and Henry Waxman of California asked the GAO in April to investigate the task force's members and proceedings. "It is past time for the American people to find out what went on in Cheney's energy task force," Dingell said. "What are they hiding?" "The Vice President should stop stonewalling and start cooperating with GAO's investigation," Waxman said. Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 42 Leaders back nuclear energyNews The Spokesman-Review.com - June 25, 2001 Idaho Associated Press IDAHO FALLS _ State leaders voiced their support for nuclear power during a weekend panel discussion about solutions to the rising demand for energy. The panel of seven energy experts -- including U.S. Sen. Larry Craig and U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, both R-Idaho -- agreed that higher-than-expected consumption is the main reason for the energy crisis that has hit California and threatens the Pacific Northwest. It also agreed that the solution might be nuclear power. "We don't have to count on snow and rain. We don't have to depend on wind or sunny days," Simpson said. "Unfortunately, most people in this country, when they hear the word `nuclear,' think of a mushroom cloud." Dennis Beller, who works at the Center of Environmental Studies at the University of Nevada -- Las Vegas, said nuclear power is cleaner than other alternatives, including coal and hydropower. Beller said it also is more affordable, more reliable, environmentally friendly, safe and sustainable. "If the `greens' can hug a tree, I can caress nuclear energy," he said. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 The Scotsman Online - Submarine storage plans for Highlands could ruin economy John Ross PLANS to store decommissioned nuclear submarines near a picturesque crofting community will ruin the local economy, Highland Council will claim today. In a meeting with the Ministry of Defence, council officials will argue that, as well as being too expensive, the idea could destroy vital agriculture, fish farming and tourism income. The issue created a storm when it was revealed that an MoD investigation had identified a potential site at the crofting community of Mellon Charles, near Aultbea in Wester Ross, to store material from decommissioned subs. The council has been invited to a consultation meeting being held in Edinburgh by a team from Lancaster University, after protesting that its views were not sought before some of the proposals were made public. The UK’s 27-strong fleet of nuclear submarines will be ready for decommissioning by 2040. Nine have already been defuelled and are being stored afloat - six at Rosyth and three at Devonport in Plymouth. But by 2012 there will be insufficient storage at the dockyards and disposal at sea has been banned following environmental concerns. The ISOLUS (interim storage of laid-up submarines) investigation carried out by the MoD suggests land storage is viable at Rosyth or Devonport, as well as Barrow-in-Furness and other commercial yards. But it said storage is also possible at MoD sites in remote areas, although Mellon Charles, near the naval base at Loch Ewe, was the only location mentioned. Government ministers rejected SNP claims of the Highlands being used has a dumping ground, but it is unclear whether Loch Ewe has been ruled out. According to the study, the location could face strong opposition because of a perceived "out of sight, out of mind" attitude. Under decommissioning plans, fuel is removed from the submarine and taken to Sellafield for storage. Other equipment is then removed and the vessel, including the reactor compartment - the size of two double decker buses - is prepared for long-term storage. Bill Fulton, Highland Council’s protective services spokesman, said: "It came as some surprise to the council that sites within our area could be considered without the council being informed first. "If it did come to the point that these submarines were stored here, and they would have to be stored for at least 60 years to allow them to become less radioactive so they could be processed further, it would seriously affect the area’s reputation for a clean environment." "That would damage our agriculture, our aquaculture and would probably destroy the fishing and tourist industries." The council will also make clear to the MoD that there is a strong economic argument for ruling out the Highlands as a possible storage site. "It is not a case of dumping these submarines and forgetting about them", said Mr Fulton. "This will require special storage facilities to be built, if a site off the Highland coast is chosen, to ensure there is no leakage of radioactivity. Suitable facilities would cost a fortune to construct. "We will be suggesting that it would make far more sense to put the submarines, or at least the radioactive portions of them, on to sites such as Sellafield, which already has facilities to store and handle them." The authority will also be pressing to be represented on the steering group that will be involved in making the final decision on the submarines. ***************************************************************** 2 Metro: Beryllium case jury deliberates 3rd day Denver Post.com --> Tuesday, June 26, 2001 - Jefferson County jurors today begin their third day of deliberations in the case of ill Rocky Flats workers who have sued the Ohio-based maker of beryllium. Jurors told the judge Monday evening they were still struggling to reach a verdict. Four Rocky Flats workers and their wives claim Brush Wellman Inc. caused employees at the former nuclear weapons plant to get chronic beryllium disease, a lung ailment that can be fatal. The jury listened to 13 days of testimony about what Brush knew about the toxic metal it supplied to Rocky Flats. The workers believe Brush covered up vital information about beryllium's hazards. The company countered that the workers were made ill through sloppy conditions at a poorly run plant. Ecstasy suspect guilty in other case The 20-year-old man accused of selling the Ecstasy that led to 16-year-old Brittney Chambers' death pleaded guilty Monday to unrelated drug charges in Denver. Travis Schuerger pleaded guilty to felony possession of cocaine stemming from a November arrest. He had sold drugs to an undercover officer. Schuerger faces two to six years in state prison when sentenced Aug. 17. He still faces four narcotics charges in Boulder in connection with the Chambers case. In January, Schuerger supplied his girlfriend, now wife, Rebecca Sheffield, 18, with Ecstasy, authorities say. Sheffield allegedly sold the drug to Chambers' friends, who gave it to Chambers as a 16th birthday present. Shortly after swallowing the drug, Chambers lapsed into a coma and was removed from life support a week later on Feb. 2. Schuerger is due back in Boulder court July 25. DPS plans checks on new managers Denver Public Schools will begin security checks on new administrators, Superintendent Jerry Wartgow said Monday. The new policy comes in the wake of a published report that Andre Pettigrew, whom Wartgow chose Thursday as his assistant superintendent for administrative services, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault for slapping his son's face in 1996. Pettigrew still has his new job, which officially starts Sunday, Wartgow said. The family went to counseling and has lived peacefully since the 1996 episode, Wartgow said. "I don't believe it's going to have any impact on his work with DPS," Wartgow said. Pettigrew said the difficult start to his new job wouldn't prevent him from doing his utmost. "It's most unfortunate to the members of the DPS community because it really does distract from what we're all trying to achieve," he said. Romanowski trial set to begin today Denver Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski is scheduled to go on trial today on charges he illegally obtained prescription drugs. Romanowski is charged with one count of unlawful possession of a controlled substance, two counts of conspiracy and one count of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and deceit. Prosecutors allege Littleton doctor Randall Snook prescribed phentermine, an appetite suppressant and central nervous system stimulant, to Julie Romanowski and to a family friend, even though it was meant for Bill Romanowski's use. District Judge Thomas Curry ruled in May that prosecutors cannot use the only statements made to investigators by the Romanowskis. Those are from an Aug. 21, 1999, interview in their home. Jury selection is to begin at 8:30 a.m. Julie Romanowski is scheduled for trial Aug. 14. All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 3 Mayors Ask Bush to Commit to Eliminating Nuclear Weapons U.S. Newswire 25 Jun 15:46 U.S. Mayors Ask Bush To Commit To Eliminating Nuclear Weapons To: National Desk Contact: Stephen Kent of Kent Communications, (office) 845-424-8382, (cell) 914-589-5988 or Tyler Stevenson of Global Security Institute, 415-775-6760 DETROIT, June 25 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As President Bush addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Detroit today, a statement from mayors of major cities in the U. S. and abroad was released, calling on him to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons "with all deliberate speed," and "to declare your firm commitment to the task of eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the earth." In addition, minutes before the President's arrival to address them today, the plenary meeting of the U. S. Mayor's Conference reaffirmed from the floor its policy in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons. The mayors' interest in nuclear policy is significant in light of the Bush administration considering a proposal for deep cuts in U.S. arsenals down to 1000 warheads, the upcoming nuclear posture review, and the White House's interest in framing a new post-Cold War nuclear policy. The mayors are concerned about the fact that the two most plausible nuclear threats against the U. S. today, a terrorist attack or an accidental launch of Russian nuclear missiles, would be targeted to U. S. cities. The possibility of a terrorist strike via boat or truck bomb or other form of surface transportation would not be mitigated by the Bush administration's proposed national missile defense. An accidental launch in which Russia's deteriorating early warning systems mistake a weather rocket or meteor for a ballistic missile, triggering a mistaken retaliatory strike, cannot be deterred by maintaining U. S. nuclear arsenals. In fact, they can only be prevented by nuclear disarmament and elimination of fissile material that might fall into terrorist hands. According to such nuclear security experts as Ambassador Richard Butler, the former chief arms inspector in Iraq, the global, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons is the only safeguard we have against the nuclear threat to U. S. cities. Russian command and control systems have deteriorated further and the danger of accidental launches has grown accordingly since the last documented close brush with a mistaken nuclear strike by Russia against the U.S. in 1995. Meanwhile, nuclear states' continued production of fissile material increases the likelihood of terrorist groups obtaining a nuclear weapon. "Many cities represented by mayors at the U. S. Conference today are specifically targeted by nuclear weapons," said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. "No matter what the likelihood of the weapons actually falling on our cities, the catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear mishap are unacceptable and unnecessary." "We believe it is our responsibility to speak out," says the mayors'statement released today, "for if nuclear weapons are ever again used, it is virtually certain that one or more of our cities will be the target and the people we represent will be the victims." "What the mayors are essentially saying," said Tyler Stevenson of the Global Security Institute, "is that we have a fundamental choice before us. We can choose to maintain and modernize our arsenals, endlessly managing the dangers of nuclear deterrence, which perpetuates the targeting of our own cities. Or we can choose to get rid of the weapons, taking U.S. cities and their residents out of nuclear harm's way." The new statement was spearheaded by the Global Security Institute (GSI) and its founder, the late Senator Alan Cranston, who died on December 31, 2000. The full text and list of signatories is available on the GSI website, www.gsinstitute.org. Among the signers of statement are past and present mayors from 37 major U. S. cities, including: -- Albuquerque Mayor Jim Baca -- Ann Arbor Mayor Ingrid Sheldon -- Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell -- Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and former Mayor Kurt Schmoke -- Boston Mayor Thomas Menino -- Chapel Hill Rosemary Waldorf -- Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley -- Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken -- Cleveland Mayor Michael White -- Dallas Mayor Ronald Kirk -- Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, chair of the 2001 U.S. Mayors'Conference International Affairs Committee -- Des Moines Mayor Preston Daniels -- Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, host of the 2001 U.S. Conference of Mayors -- Hartford Mayor Mike Peters -- Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris -- Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey -- Louisville Mayor David Armstrong -- Madison Mayor Susan J. M. Bauman -- Newark Mayor Sharpe James -- New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, incoming president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors -- Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and former Mayor Elihu Harris -- Philadelphia former Mayor Edward Rendell -- Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy -- Portland (ME) former Mayor Thomas Kane -- Portland (OR) Mayor Vera Katz -- Providence Mayor Vincent Cianci -- Sacramento Mayor Jimmie Yee and former Mayor Joe Serna, Jr. -- Salem (OR) Mayor Mike Swaim -- San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown -- San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales and former Mayor Susan Hammer -- San Juan, P.R., Alcadesa Sila Maria Calderon -- Santa Cruz Mayor Keith Sugar -- Seattle Mayor Paul Schell -- Saint Louis Mayor Calrence Harmon -- Salt Lake City MMayor Rocky Anderso and former Mayor Deedee Corradini -- Tucson Mayor George Miller -- Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams Several of these mayors are available to the media for comment on today's statement on eliminating nuclear weapons. In addition, others who can speak to the statement, including Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Detroit Archdiocese, several officials of the Global Security Institute and nationally recognized nuclear policy experts are also available for interviews. For more information and interviews, please call Stephen Kent in Detroit today at the U. S. Conference of Mayors at 914-589-5988. Thereafter, please call 845-424-8382. /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ ***************************************************************** 4 Team Will Cut Into Sunken Submarine Today: June 26, 2001 at 11:30:30 PDT MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian-Dutch team in charge of lifting the Kursk nuclear submarine will begin working July 10 to fasten cables to the mangled wreck, an official said Tuesday. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said the first phase of the operation would last from July 10-15, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The engineers will slice into the steel hull to attach the cables, and also will cut off the front section of the submarine, Klebanov was quoted as saying. The front section suffered the heaviest damage from the explosions that sank the Kursk in the Barents Sea last August, killing all 118 men aboard. The second phase of the project is scheduled for September. That is when the submarine will be lifted to the surface and floated on four large pontoons, then be towed to a dock for examination. Russian officials say they are raising the submarine to remove a potential radiation threat from the sub's nuclear reactors. They also say they hope raising the vessel will help determine what caused the explosions that sank it. Russia signed contracts with the Netherlands firms Mammoet Transport for the project. The Dutch firm Smit International is also expected to help build the pontoons. The amount of the contract was not made public, but is expected to cost tens of millions of dollars. All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 Study flags radioactive threat 06/25/2001 - Updated 01:39 PM ET By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY WASHINGTON — Thousands more people than anticipated face health and pollution threats from plutonium and other highly radioactive elements that fouled vast amounts of uranium recycled by the U.S. nuclear weapons program over the past 50 years. Recycled uranium was shipped worldwide from 1952 until 1999, when distribution was halted by revelations of its contamination. Now, new federal studies reviewed by USA TODAY show that the program yielded 250,000 tons of tainted uranium — roughly double the estimates of two years ago. The material was handled at about 10 times the number of sites revealed previously, reaching more than 100 federal plants, private manufacturers and universities. The studies suggest that thousands more workers than expected might have unwittingly faced radiation risks beyond those associated with normal uranium, increasing their odds of developing cancer and other ailments. That places an unexpected burden on a soon-to-begin federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers. Contaminants from the tainted uranium also raise the potential for soil and groundwater pollution at some of the newly recognized processing sites. That threatens to complicate cleanup plans. Most recycled uranium went back into nuclear weapons production or was used as fuel for power reactors. But thousands of tons also were used in everything from academic research to the making of armor for Army battle tanks. The vast majority of the material contained only traces of impurities — too little, scientists say, to pose risks beyond those posed by natural uranium, which is mildly radioactive and raises health hazards if inhaled as dust. But some plants handled recycled uranium in ways that concentrated its contaminants, significantly boosting its hazards. "This stuff circulated much more widely than we'd thought," says Robert Alvarez, an official at the Department of Energy when it launched the new studies in 1999. "The problem is, they really don't have reasonable estimates of how much (contamination) was in a lot of this recycled uranium," adds Alvarez, now a scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. "It could range from very tiny amounts to relatively high levels." Federal researchers conclude in the new studies that contamination generally was "extremely low." But that finding masks problems. The uranium's contaminants apparently were concentrated at a dozen or more previously unrecognized sites, raising pollution and worker health threats. But it's unclear which batches of uranium were most dangerous — or where they went — so not all high-risk sites are identifiable. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., says, "The government has a responsibility to follow up." © Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 6 Army study finds fouled weapons safe Some vets say they were sickened from exposure By Peter Eisler USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- Since the 1980s, the Pentagon has relied increasingly on the super-hard, super-dense qualities of depleted-uranium metal, using it in tank shielding and armor-piercing munitions. And much of it is fouled with traces of plutonium and other dangerous radioisotopes. The Army got word of the problem in August 1999, when the Department of Energy told commanders that the depleted-uranium armor in the latest Abrams tanks was made with recycled material contaminated during nuclear weapons production. The Army quietly studied 60 samples of the tainted metal before concluding early last year that ''the presence of these trace radionuclides in armor is safe.'' This year, amid charges that U.S. and NATO troops were sickened from exposure to depleted-uranium ''tank-killer'' munitions in the Persian Gulf War and the Balkans, the Pentagon revealed publicly that the bullets were made from contaminated metal. Although federal studies suggest that workers who made the recycled uranium metal may face health risks, military officials insist that the contamination posed no threats in the finished military products. Even so, at least two branches of the service have abandoned use of the controversial munitions. The Pentagon's troubles with the contamination have intensified a heated global debate on the use of munitions and military hardware made with depleted uranium, so-called because much of the uranium's natural radioactivity was sapped when it was fed into nuclear reactors to make weapons fuel. Studies to date support the contention that the levels of contaminants in depleted-uranium metal are tiny and account for little, if any, increase in the already low risks normally associated with the material. Depleted uranium produces a roughly 1% increase in the ''background'' radiation people normally absorb from sunlight and other natural sources. But many veterans, environmentalists and public health officials are unconvinced. Their skepticism is heightened by the Pentagon's failure to announce the contamination of munitions and tank armor for more than a year after it learned of the problem. Some experts recommend more study of the mix of radioactive substances. ''You need to check to see if there's a cocktail that includes some of these more radioactive (contaminants),'' says Malcolm Grimston, a senior fellow specializing in chemical and nuclear studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. ''You need to redo the calculations.'' Munitions appear to be the most widely used military product containing depleted uranium. U.S. forces fired more than 300 tons during the Gulf War. Iraq claims the spent rounds littering its land caused broad environmental damage and increased cancer rates. The same armor-piercing munitions were used extensively by U.S. and NATO warplanes during the 1999 bombing of Kosovo. That prompted ongoing risk studies by NATO and the World Health Organization. The stakes are high, given depleted uranium's wide military use. A draft document prepared by the Energy Department in 1999 and obtained by USA TODAY shows that the fouled material was shipped to at least 50 U.S. military installations, foreign and domestic, for various uses, ranging from the tank armor and munitions to counterweights in military planes and ships. Pentagon officials say substantial precautions are taken in using depleted uranium, but there have been problems. In 1999, for example, a maintenance bay at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia was contaminated with mildly radioactive dust after a technician used a hammer to break counterweights made of depleted uranium off a C-141 cargo plane. Urine and blood tests were done on the technician and other workers, but no harm was reported. Amid all the controversy, the Navy and Marines have decided to abandon use of the depleted-uranium munitions. Both have switched to tungsten, a non-radioactive, high-density metal. ''We're not considering depleted uranium anymore because of the environmental problems associated with it, be them real or perceived,'' says Col. Clayton Nans, head of the Marines' Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle program and former chief of the service's firepower division. ''We don't want to be in a position of having someone say, 'You can't bring your armor-piercing rounds on the battlefield.' '' © Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 Radiation Payments Criticized Tuesday, June 26, 2001 Albuquerque Journal--> By Jennifer McKee Journal Staff Writer A sluggish, uncooperative bureaucracy could shackle a new law designed to pay nuclear bomb workers sickened by radiation and other workplace hazards, critics said. "It's not uncommon for DOE to stonewall records," said Betty Gunther, a Los Alamos National Laboratory employee and president of the University Professional and Technical Employees Union, which has been organizing at the lab for several years. The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, passed last October, goes into effect July 31. The law calls for a lump sum of $150,000 for every Department of Energy worker diseased by his or her work, plus medical assistance for the disease. The law covers every DOE worker or DOE contract worker — except soldiers — who worked at Energy Department sites starting from the earliest days of the Manhattan Project, said program director Pete Turcic of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. The law contains a list of certain ailments, such as beryllium disease and silicosis, which are uniformly covered, he said. In those cases, he said, there's no medical doubt that an employee developed the disease because of his or her occupational exposure. But other diseases are trickier, such as cancer. Because cancer has a host of causes, not every former DOE worker who gets cancer is automatically covered under the law, Turcic said. The law sets out a complicated formula for proving if workers with cancer got their disease from work. And according to Gunther, the process isn't perfect. According to Turcic, workers must write to the Department of Labor saying what disease they have, where they worked and when. If the person has cancer, the Labor Department will forward that claim to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There, workers will calculate how much radiation the worker likely absorbed on the job and try to figure out if that radiation caused the cancer. Then, a Labor Department worker will decide if the employee is covered by the law. According to Larry Elliot, with the national institute's lab in Cincinnati charged with estimating each workers radiation dose, the lab isn't trying to pinpoint every radiation exposure a DOE employee may have had. Instead, he said, they're only going to verify where and for how long the employee worked and what radioactive materials were present at that time. From there, health workers will ascertain whether such a so-called radiation "dose" could cause cancer. "We put confidence limits around those estimates," Elliot said. "The less we know, the more our uncertainty is." But to get all that information, his office must request records for every single employee who applies. At Los Alamos, according to Turcic, some 69,000 current and former employees are eligible. Elliot, who has worked with DOE sites before, said he is already anticipating some snags getting the necessary records. "I'm not naive enough to say we're not going to have any problems," he said. His office has an agreement with the DOE to provide the records and said the employees who will view the documents all have the necessary security clearances to see secret information. But according to Gunther, the DOE, especially at Los Alamos, has a history of freezing out investigators searching records. She cited an ongoing effort by the CDC to cobble together a list of all the radioactive pollution that has left the lab in its entire half-century history. In that case, the lab's buckled-down security measures froze out a team of workers for months and almost canceled the study altogether. Furthermore, Gunther said, the law includes no time limits for when the DOE must provide the records. "You have to depend on them doing it correctly and willingly," she said. The lab keeps many of its records in "banker boxes," she said, making finding specific records about a specific employee difficult. "It's not like a library," Gunther said. "You can't just go in and look up your own records." The union has other problems with the bill. For example, survivors of workers who died from their diseases are also covered. But the law only offers cash payments for children under 18 right now, not children who were under 18 when their mother or father died. Gunther said she knows of one widow trying to send her college-aged children to school with no support. "They can't get help and their father is dead," Gunther said. A local DOE spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment Monday. Copyright Albuquerque Journal ***************************************************************** 8 Ex-Army Head: Pakistan Had Nuclear Arsenal in 1989 Tuesday June 26 8:46 AM ET By Jack Redden RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan had completed its nuclear buildup nine years before it finally ended international speculation by exploding its first nuclear bomb in 1998, the head of the armed forces at the time said on Tuesday. Mirza Aslam Beg, who now heads an independent think tank, said Pakistan had concluded by 1989 it had an adequate nuclear deterrent and did not need to increase it. He said he believed Pakistan now had no more than 30 nuclear weapons. ``We wanted a credible minimum deterrent and that deterrence is related to the very minimum number of devices that we needed and a very minimum capability to deliver those,'' Beg said. ``And that we achieved in 1989 when Benazir Bhutto was prime minister and that is (still) the policy we follow,'' the retired army commander said in an interview with Reuters television. Beg said Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is completely safe both because the National Command Authority was set up a year ago to control nuclear weapons and because there is nothing comparable to the warheads sitting atop U.S. and Russian missiles. ``We have a bomb-in-the-basement policy where not even a bomb is placed over there, not a device, but components are there to put it together if needed,'' said Beg. ``And then it is many miles away from the delivery system, that is, the missiles and the aircraft,'' he said. ``That by itself provides tremendous security, an in-built safety which is not understood by people who don't understand the real logic of our program and the restrictions we have imposed on ourselves.'' Beg, a vigorous 73-year-old, has run the Foundation for Research on International Environment, National Development and Security (FRIENDS) since retiring from the military in 1991 after more than four decades service. HOW MANY BOMBS? Beg said he believed India had 60 or 70 nuclear devices by 1989 and had continued to build a stockpile that now numbers 200. But he said Pakistan had concluded in 1989 it did not need more. ``How many do you need? For what?'' he said at his office in Rawalpindi, which houses army headquarters. ``You need 10, 20, 30 -- that is all that we need and that is all we have. There is no need to add to it. I don't think they have added any more.'' The nuclear capability of Pakistan -- and neighboring India -- was a subject of international speculation until May 1998 when India suddenly carried out five nuclear blasts. Other countries, alarmed at the prospect of nuclear war in densely populated South Asia, appealed for Pakistan not to match the India blasts. But Pakistan answered what it saw as an Indian challenge by carrying out six nuclear explosions the same month. Despite U.S. anger at the blasts, following years of warning Islamabad not to develop nuclear weapons, Beg said Washington had long known Pakistan was building up a nuclear force. Beg said he learned the details of Pakistan's nuclear research in 1987 when he was deputy chief of staff and when he took the top position a year later the program, launched in 1975, was nearly complete. ``The United States purposely tried not to believe Pakistan had that capability because that was a time when we were at the height of our fight with the Soviets in Afghanistan (news - web sites),'' Beg said. ``It was a question of, I would say, convenience for them -- a diplomatic need not to declare that Pakistan had acquired it.'' Once Soviet forces were driven from Afghanistan, the United States began demanding Pakistan halt its nuclear program and imposed economic sanctions -- after the date Beg said Pakistan already had completed its program. Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 Radiation safety in Barents Sea to be ensured [ITAR/TASS News Agency] Story Filed: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 8:18 AM EST MOSCOW, Jun 26, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- Russian military ecologists share Russian scientists' concern over a possible deterioration of radiation safety in the Barents Sea during the operation to raise the submarine Kursk and are taking necessary measures to ensure ecological and radiation safety, Lieutenant-General Boris Alexeyev, chief of the ecological safety service of the Russian armed forces, told Tass on Tuesday. He said the ensurance of ecological and radiation safety is the main criterion for adopting a technical project to raise the Kursk. Alexeyev said all military ecological services will be involved in the operation of monitoring radiation safety and for preventing possible flaws. Regarding the fashioning of the situation for depressurising the submarines's nuclear reactors, Alexeyev said strong underwater currents in the Kursk disaster area can quickly remove radioactive matter from the accident's area and dilute it to a level where it is not hazardous. Alexeyev said the radiation background in the area where the Kursk sank is within norm. He said the radiation situation in the Barents Sea is constantly monitored. Moreover, vessels of the hydrographic services of the Northern Fleet survey the area four times a day. The radiation level is not above natural background and radiation indexes are registered constantly, Alexeyev said. By Sergei Ostanin, Vladislav Kuznetsov (c) 1996-2001 ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 10 Lockheed Martin to Negotiate 5-Year Contract with Fluor Hanford Story Filed: Monday, June 25, 2001 3:08 PM EST RICHLAND, Wash., Jun 25, 2001 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Lockheed Martin Services, Inc., (LMSI) received notification of a five-year contract extension to provide Information Resource Management (IRM) services to the Hanford site under subcontract to Fluor Hanford. LMSI's contract has an estimated value of $300-$400 million dollars. This announcement followed a Department of Energy Richland Operations Office (DOE RL) press release earlier this morning regarding their decision to keep IRM services under site manager, Fluor Hanford. Linda Gooden, President of Lockheed Martin Information Support Services, LMSI's parent company, said, "We look forward to forging a continued strong relationship with DOE RL and Fluor Hanford. Our integrated strategic planning and systems engineering approach will take IRM services to a new level, helping accomplish the Hanford mission through innovative, cost-effective application of technology." "By combining DOE's vision and mission leadership with Fluor Hanford's operational expertise and LMSI's IRM expertise, we have the right team in place to develop and implement an IRM strategy that will help accomplish the site's overall mission," agreed Darrell Graddy, LMSI Vice President and General Manager. "Our customers, DOE RL and Fluor Hanford, will be looking for LMSI to step up in an expanded leadership role for the planning, provisioning, and delivery of IRM services across the site. By maintaining a focus on teamwork, technology, and mission success, I am confident that LMSI will continue to find inventive approaches that better serve our customers. This extension also positions LMSI to continue to bring more non-Hanford business and professional jobs to the Tri-Cities and remain an active member of this community, Graddy said." LMSI has been providing IRM services to the Hanford site under subcontract to Fluor Hanford since August 1996. Supporting hundreds of site business and scientific systems as well as approximately 10,000 computer users, LMSI has been providing IT services, including: systems development and integration; network engineering, design, and operation; telecommunications; computer technical support; records and information management, and multimedia services. In addition, LMSI has been winning large IT support contracts with non-Hanford customers that bring new jobs to the Tri-Cities. A plutonium production operation from the 1940s until the late 1980s, the Department of Energy's Hanford site is the largest environmental restoration and cleanup project in the world today. Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is a global enterprise principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced-technology systems, products and services. The Corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics, and technology services. Information Support Services is a business unit of Lockheed Martin providing information technology business systems, managed services and infrastructure solutions to major government agencies. SOURCE Lockheed Martin Technology Services, Inc. Copyright © 2001, PR Newswire, all rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 A debt long overdue | The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists July/August 2001 Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 38-48 A debt long overdue By Michael Flynn Nuclear weapons work made people sick—at last, workers may be compensated. Clara Harding was used to telling the story of her husband Joe’s bitterly slow and painful death from stomach cancer. Since his death in 1980, she had repeated it over and over again to government officials and representatives of Union Carbide—which for 30 years managed the Energy Department’s uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky—all in an effort to get her husband’s pension. In 1971, Union Carbide, citing a leg injury Harding suffered at the plant, promised him a full-disability pension—if he would retire quietly. Harding, who after 17 years on the job was already suffering from several work-related ailments, agreed. The checks, however, never arrived, and Harding’s medical insurance and pension were later rejected. “This left me 50 years old with no job, and a crippled leg,” wrote Harding shortly before his death. “No stomach. Bad lungs. No way to get a job, no way to make a living.” After Joe’s death, Clara sold her house and began baby-sitting to make ends meet. In the meantime, she continued to fight for her husband’s pension in court for several years, before finally accepting a nominal settlement. (Union Carbide and the Energy Department felt so threatened by the pension case that they sent more than a dozen lawyers and experts to confront Clara and her attorney in court.) On September 21, 2000, Clara, by then in her late 70s and still baby-sitting, was ready to tell her story again, this time to members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, which was debating whether to support a compensation program for workers who had become ill while laboring in the government’s nuclear weapons complex. Although the Senate voted to adopt the compensation program three months earlier as part of the 2001 Defense Authorization Bill, several House Republicans were speaking out against the measure, arguing that there had been no House committee hearings and that the program would be too costly. Leading the opposition was Cong. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who chaired the subcommittee. Clara, along with several former workers, union representatives, and government officials—including then–Energy Secretary Bill Richardson—had been invited to testify before the subcommittee. According to Richard Miller, then the lead lobbyist for the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Workers International Union (PACE), the hearing proved to be a strategic blunder for opponents of the bill. Instead of providing the momentum to kill the bill, “the hearing inadvertently created a media platform for continued scrutiny” of the plight of the workers. As reporters from the Associated Press, USA Today, CNN, and several other major press outlets looked on, former nuclear workers recounted how they had been made ill after being exposed to the numerous toxic and radioactive materials used in the government’s bomb program, how their employers had systematically lied about the dangers of their work, and how the government had spared no expense in fending off their requests for compensation. Ann Orick, a former worker who contracted a host of debilitating ailments while employed at the government’s uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, told the subcommittee: “It is not right that we should have to come here to plead for a bill to pass. We’re not asking for the moon. We’re just asking for some help.” Secretary Richardson supported the workers’ claims: “The nation shares a shameful legacy of neglect. . . . I have learned that the government and the contractors were almost, in many cases, not always straight with the workers about their illnesses and that is wrong and as a government we need to redress that grievance.” It was Clara Harding who provided the hearing’s most memorable moment. The year before, in September 1999, Richardson visited Paducah soon after a series of articles in the Washington Post revealed that workers there had unknowingly been exposed to plutonium. During a town hall meeting, Richardson admitted that the government had not been “forthcoming” about workplace exposures at the plant. “On behalf of the United States government, I am here to say I am sorry. . . . The men and women who have worked in this facility helped the United States win the Cold War and now help us keep the peace. We recognize and won’t forget our obligation to them.” Near the end of his speech that day, Richardson said, “Before I close, I want to recognize someone in your community who—with courage, persistence, and determination—has reminded us of that obligation: Mrs. Clara Harding . . . the widow of Mr. Joe Harding, a former worker at Paducah. I want to present you with this gold medal as a symbol of our sincere appreciation.” During a private meeting with Clara and her attorney, Jackie Kittrell, Richardson asked if there was anything he could do for her. Clara responded, “I want my pension.” Richardson promised he would look into it and advised Kittrell to speak with the Energy Department’s general counsel. Instead of expediting the request, says Kittrell, the general counsel dragged the process out for months, arguing that Energy couldn’t do anything because the pension was Union Carbide’s responsibility. Exasperated, Clara asked Kittrell to tell Richardson’s office that she wanted to go to Washington to personally return the medal. But later, after Energy agreed to allow a “neutral evaluator” to resolve the pension case, Clara decided to bring up the medal at the upcoming House subcommittee hearing. (Although the evaluator eventually settled in favor of Clara, Kittrell says they have received no word from Energy about when or if pension checks will be issued.) Almost a year to the day after Richardson’s visit, Clara found herself in front of the subcommittee, armed with her gold medal and determined to shame House members into supporting the compensation program. After describing her husband’s plight and her unsuccessful struggle to get a pension, Clara turned to Congressman Smith, saying, “I would like to give this medal to you and ask you . . . to hold it for me until this legislation is passed, then you can give it back. If you don’t pass it you can keep this medal and hang it on your wall to remind you that this bill was killed. You can call it the Joe Harding Memorial Legislation because it has been killed just like DOE killed my husband.” Says Richard Miller of Clara’s testimony: “Good move, right? But it was clearly not spontaneous—it was designed to make a point. Clara’s instincts were probably to throw the damned medal in Richardson’s face because she was so angry with the department for failing to settle [the pension issue]. But this move was more effective politically. And I think it was properly directed—it was Lamar Smith who was trying to kill the bill.” In fact, Clara’s “good move,” caught live on CNN, seems to have had its intended effect. Later that day, Smith told reporters: “There is broad-based support in Congress to compensate the workers. I think it ought to be done sooner rather than later, and I think before the end of Congress.” Although the Senate’s plan would still face fierce opposition in the House, a modified compensation bill eventually passed both houses of Congress. On October 30, 2000, it was signed into law by then–President Bill Clinton. The program The “Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act,” as the program is officially called, is widely regarded as landmark legislation. Not only does the legislation establish the first federal entitlement program to be created in more than 30 years (the last one was the Black Lung program to compensate ailing coal miners), it also represents the first substantial acknowledgment by the government that all its nuclear weapons workers were put at risk building the country’s arsenal. The program, which officially begins on July 31, is vast in scope, covering some 600,000 people who over the past six decades worked in the nuclear weapons complex. A list of sites published in the Federal Register in early January reveals that more than 300 government and privately owned facilities located in 37 states were at one time or another employed in the bomb production effort. (See “The Sites,” page 58). Officials estimate that during its first six years the program will cost nearly $2 billion and compensate some 4,000 current and former workers or their survivors. Eligible workers—those suffering from illnesses resulting from exposure to two toxic substances, beryllium and silica, or who have contracted a radiation-induced cancer—will receive a lump sum payment of $150,000, plus medical benefits. Importantly, because it is an entitlement program, money for the program will not have to be voted on every year by Congress. Instead, the funds will come from the “mandatory” side of the budget, as do funds for other entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. The program identifies a “Special Exposure Cohort” of workers at the Energy Department’s three gaseous diffusion plants—in Paducah, Oak Ridge, and Portsmouth, Ohio—and at the Amchitka nuclear test site in Alaska. Because the government failed to adequately track exposures at these sites, program administrators will assume that workers’ cancers are work related, thus relieving the workers of the near-impossible task of having to prove the connection. The legislation also establishes the possibility that other sites and illnesses may be added to the cohort at a later date. (See Arjun Makhijani’s article “The Burden of Proof” on page 49 for a further discussion of the special cohort and other radiation-related elements of the legislation.) Finally, the program includes an added benefit for uranium miners already covered by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a program established in 1990 for miners and the “downwinders” exposed to fallout from nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site. Miners covered by RECA, who receive a smaller lump sum payment than the one offered by the new compensation program, will have their payments increased to $150,000 and receive medical benefits. A common criticism of the program is that it will not compensate workers with the numerous other illnesses associated with nuclear weapons work, like nickel or mercury poisoning. For those workers, last year the Energy Department established the Office of Worker Advocacy, which is tasked with aiding workers in filing state compensation claims. The legislation also allows the executive branch to add other illnesses to the program in the future. Many people, however, are skeptical of the impact the advocacy office will have or of the possibility that additional illnesses will be added any time soon. (For more on the various potential flaws of the legislation, see “Making It Work,” by Robert Alvarez, on page 55.) But most critics agree that the legislation is an exceptional first step. The fact that any compensation program—no matter how flawed—was created in the first place is widely regarded as a remarkable achievement. For decades, the government spent extraordinary amounts of money fighting allegations that the production of nuclear weapons was jeopardizing workers’ health. According to a 1994 General Accounting Office report, in 1992 alone the Energy Department spent $40 million defending contractors from litigation brought by sick workers or individuals living near weapons plants. When the government wasn’t busy fighting lawsuits, it was aiding and abetting contractors in their efforts to keep information about workplace hazards hidden. A striking example of this deceit surfaced shortly after the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick broke the Paducah story in early September 1999. In a September 21 Post article, Warrick described a 1960 memo addressed to Union Carbide and Atomic Energy Commission officials that had recently been discovered by Energy officials investigating a lawsuit brought against former Paducah contractors. In the memo, a government physician writes that workers were being exposed to dangerous “transuranic” elements like neptunium, which had been found in the uranium arriving at the plant. The physician wrote that although there were “300 people at Paducah who should be checked out,” officials were opposed to screening workers because they feared that the union might use the screening “as an excuse for hazard pay.” Richard Miller underscores the significance of this find: “When the memo turned up, the issue was no longer about one individual worried about one single lawsuit. It was now institutional.” So why, after hiding the truth for so many years and spending hundreds of millions of dollars fighting every lawsuit that came its way, did the U.S. government finally change its tune and admit that it had put workers in harm’s way? The political planets align For decades, union leaders, activists, and various crusading politicians fought unsuccessfully to force the U.S. government to acknowledge its debt to nuclear workers. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s, during Bill Clinton’s second term in office, that all the necessary pieces for a successful campaign began falling into place. Says Robert Alvarez, who served for a time as the senior policy adviser for environment and health to Secretary Richardson, “Several elements came together—some by accident, some by design—that ultimately led to the enactment of [the compensation program]. It required the coming into alignment of the political planets and the concerted effort of several people to pull this thing off. . . . But in terms of timeline, you have to begin with the appointment of Richardson.” January 6, 2000: Energy Secretary Bill Richardson (right) and Assistant Secretary David Michaels listen to former nuclear workers at Burlington’s Iowa Army Ammunition Plant—where bombs were assembled between 1949–1975—during a town hall meeting. (Courtesy Chris Curry, Iowa Hawk Eye.) Bill Richardson, a former Democratic congressman from New Mexico who also served briefly as U.N. ambassador, took office as energy secretary in August 1998. Although his tenure at Energy was plagued by scandals—espionage allegations, the Wen Ho Lee debacle, missing hard drives at Los Alamos, out-of-control fires at department facilities— Richardson is widely praised for his role in reversing the government’s decades-old policy of ignoring the plight of sick nuclear workers. (Not surprisingly, Richardson, who is planning to run for governor of New Mexico, has on more than one occasion highlighted the nuclear worker compensation program as his “good legacy.” During an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last December, Richardson said that his “happiest moment [at the Energy Department] was knowing that some of the work I did is responsible, for instance, for [aiding] thousands and thousands of nuclear workers that in the past may have been contaminated. And now because of efforts that we made, and the president made, they will be compensated and treated and their families will be taken care of. I think that’s a good legacy.”) Soon after taking office, Richardson began focusing much of his attention and resources on the plight of sick workers, visiting former bomb production sites, and speaking with workers about their problems. These visits, say those who worked with Richardson, left a strong impression. “He was stricken by what he saw when he visited those sites,” says Alvarez. “And so he decided early on that he wanted to do something to help these people.” As his tenure in office progressed, Richardson made increasingly bolder statements—many of which were spurred by revelations made in the press—about the government’s culpability in making workers sick. He also ordered or oversaw several studies and investigations that would form the basis for these announcements. The most influential and far-reaching of these studies was the White House National Economic Council (NEC) report, issued on March 31, 2000. The report, which was based on a massive and unprecedented review of worker health studies at nuclear weapons plants, concluded that workers “may be at increased risk of illness from occupational exposures to ionizing radiation and other chemical and physical hazards associated with the production of nuclear weapons.” The report also concluded that there were serious flaws in state worker compensation programs that covered contractor employees, which prevented many sick nuclear workers from being adequately compensated. These conclusions would serve as the basis for the Clinton administration’s first broad-based compensation plan, unveiled in April 2000. To help formulate department proposals and lead the administration’s compensation efforts, Richardson appointed David Michaels as his assistant secretary of environment, safety, and health. Regarded as one of the country’s preeminent experts on worker compensation issues, Michaels is credited by many as having played a central role in the effort to aid nuclear workers. Richardson, says Miller, allowed Michaels to “mobilize a whole undercurrent of concern that had been sitting there silent for years.” One of the first sites Richardson visited after assuming office was the Oak Ridge complex in Tennessee. Like most weapons sites around the country, Oak Ridge is located near a small, remote town. For decades, workers in these company towns were notorious for their “collective deference to authority on national security matters,” as Alvarez puts it, and rarely spoke out about their work-related problems. But Oak Ridge was different. In the years leading up to Richardson’s visit, several current and former workers had formed an outspoken group that pressured plant officials to address their health concerns. According to Janet Michel, a former worker at the Oak Ridge uranium enrichment plant, both the local union and the town’s congressional representative, Republican Zach Wamp, shunned the group because they felt it threatened the plant. But all that began to change after Richardson’s visit. “Because the Energy Department was willing to recognize that there was a problem,” Michel told me, “so was the union—and, eventually, Zach Wamp.” According to David Michaels, the Oak Ridge workers—who, he says, were the “proximate cause” in the worker compensation effort—left a big impression on Richardson. In an interview last November, shortly after the compensation bill was signed into law, Michaels said: “On the very day I was sworn in to office, December 11, 1998, [Richardson] told me, ‘The first thing I want you to do is to go to Oak Ridge, meet with workers there, and tell them I want to help.’” The Oak Ridge workers were not alone in their efforts. After Richardson made a series of admissions about health problems in the weapons complex in late 1999 and early 2000, workers at other sites around the country began speaking out about their illnesses, packing town hall meetings convened by Energy Department officials, and pressing their congressional representatives for help. “The boss [Richardson] said it was O.K., and this created an unprecedented outpouring in these communities,” says Alvarez. The unions, particularly PACE and the AFL-CIO, also played an important role, working behind the scenes to generate support for legislation and organizing workers. According to Miller, the unions “played a major role in shaping the outcome of the legislation by generating turnout for public hearings, funding travel expenses for victims to lobby and testify, and lobbying for passage and improvements in the [compensation program].” They also assisted members of Congress in drafting legislation, built support among conservative members, and helped bring media attention to the issue. It was an Oak Ridge worker who initially helped generate attention from the press. In 1996, as part of a letter-writing campaign by Oak Ridge workers, Ann Orick sent dozens of letters to the media—including the New York Times, various tv networks, and Oprah Winfrey—about unusual illnesses that she and others had contracted. “We are faced with illnesses that employees of the plant, including myself, feel are related to multiple toxins in the workplace,” she wrote. Only one person responded—Frank Sutherland, the editor of a Nashville daily, the Tennessean. As a result of Orick’s letter, the Tennessean undertook what was perhaps the first lengthy newspaper investigation into health problems around the country’s nuclear weapons complex. Between 1997, when the Tennessean began its series, and October 2000, several other national and local newspapers undertook similar investigations. The outpouring of media attention was a key factor in creating a powerful, bipartisan coalition of legislators who would later pass the nuclear workers compensation legislation. (Ironically, Orick will not receive compensation under the current program because her multiple ailments are linked to toxic substances that are not covered by the program.) The final piece of the puzzle that allowed all the political planets to align was the fact that the Cold War had been over for more than a decade. As Richard Miller told me: “This comp bill could never have been passed during the Cold War because the admissions by Richardson and others would have been viewed as a knife at the throat of the weapons production system.” The local papers Splashed across the top of the February 9, 1997 Tennessean ran the headline: “Toxic Burn, Fear and Fire in Oak Ridge.” The story, the first in a series that would appear over the next several days, described the many ailments of workers at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge weapons complex—including organ failure, diminished vision, blistering rashes, depression, loss of memory, and other mysterious complaints. Although doctors were unable to pinpoint the cause of these maladies, many of the workers were convinced that they were tied to an experimental waste incinerator that had recently begun operating at the weapons complex. In 1996, the Energy Department started shipping tons of toxic waste—including radioactive materials, heavy metals laced with cadmium and arsenic, and PCBs—to the Oak Ridge incinerator from bomb production sites across the country. Although Energy officials denied that the incinerator posed any health or environmental concerns, several health experts interviewed by the newspaper argued that trace amounts of waste escaping from the incinerator constituted a potential hazard. According to one expert quoted by the Tennessean, Michael McCally of the Mount Sinai Medical School, part of the difficulty with identifying the causes of the illnesses at Oak Ridge was that the effects of exposure to a combination of toxins were not well known. “We don’t know the interaction at any dose of multiple metals,” McCally said. “Part of the problem is that we approach pollutants one at a time. But to demonstrate what would happen with multiple metals would take decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Over the next year and a half, the Tennessean broadened its investigation to include several bomb production facilities across the United States where workers and nearby residents were exhibiting health problems similar to those at Oak Ridge. Although the series, titled “Special Report: An Investigation into Illnesses around the Nation’s Nuclear Weapons Sites,” was denigrated by Energy Department officials and largely ignored by the national media, it helped build the initial foundation in the effort to compensate nuclear workers. Soon after the series appeared, Tennessee Republican Sen. Fred Thompson and Georgia Democratic Cong. Cynthia McKinney called for investigations into the allegations. Thompson would later be a principal agitator in the Senate for passage of the compensation program. In March 1999, shortly after the Tennessean series ended, the Toledo Blade published dozens of articles by reporter Sam Roe (now at the Chicago Tribune) detailing how the government and its contractors—in particular, a Cleveland-based company, Brush Wellman—knowingly allowed workers to be exposed to unsafe levels of beryllium, an extremely strong but light-weight metal used as cladding in nuclear weapons. (When inhaled, beryllium dust can cause a debilitating, and frequently fatal, lung disease.) The series, titled “Deadly Alliance: How the Government and Industry Chose Weapons over Workers,” was based on a 22-month Blade investigation that uncovered several formerly secret documents detailing the government’s relationship with beryllium contractors. The documents revealed that for decades the government willingly allowed contractors to sidestep health regulations in order to churn out ever larger quantities of the metal and keep costs down. By the late 1940s, as beryllium production began to expand, it was already apparent to the government that workers and residents living near beryllium plants were being exposed to dangerous amounts of the toxic metal. Instead of pushing for stronger workplace protections, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) secretly washed its hands of responsibility for health problems at beryllium plants. During a 1949 meeting, AEC officials decided that the government would no longer bear “the responsibility for health conditions associated with the procurement and production of beryllium materials. . . . Further considerations of medical reasons would be dropped and [future arrangements with contractors] would be based strictly on economics.” According to the Blade’s Roe, the only attempt to seriously set safe beryllium exposure limits came in 1975, when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed cutting exposures in half—from two micrograms per cubic meter of air to one. When the beryllium industry expressed outrage at the new safety plan, then–Energy Secretary James Schlesinger lobbied to kill it. In a letter to several Carter administration officials, Schlesinger wrote: “The loss of beryllium production capability would seriously impact our ability to develop and produce weapons for the nuclear stockpile and, consequently, adversely effect our national security.” (In 1988, some 10 years after Schlesinger wrote his letter, Sen. John Glenn, who was investigating the deteriorating state of the weapons complex, said: “It will do precious little good to protect ourselves from the Soviets if, in the process, we poison or irradiate our own people.”) Today, according to the Blade, the number of cases of beryllium disease at Brush Wellman facilities continues to increase. A 1997 study cited by the newspaper found that one in 11 workers at the company’s plant in tiny Elmore, a town just outside Cleveland, had either contracted the disease or exhibited early signs of it. Like the Tennessean investigation, the Blade series—which won numerous awards and was a Pulitzer finalist for investigative reporting—forced the plight of sick workers to the top of the agenda of several local legislators. Cong. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat with long-standing ties to Brush Wellman, and Cong. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat whose district includes a former beryllium production site, called for a congressional investigation into the Blade report. Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine asked the General Accounting Office to undertake a similar investigation. DeWine and Kanjorski would later play influential roles in getting compensation legislation though Congress. On July 15, 1999, four months after the Blade series broke, the Energy Department proposed a compensation program for workers suffering from beryllium disease. Though extremely limited in scope, this plan represented the first substantial reversal in the government’s treatment of nuclear workers. It signaled a “new era,” Richardson declared at the time. Although the Blade series neatly dovetailed with the Energy Department’s announcement, according to David Michaels, the administration’s beryllium compensation plan had been in the works long before the newspaper series appeared. The Energy Department, he told me, decided to initially focus on a beryllium plan because there was overwhelming evidence that the metal was making workers sick. It was also clear that state compensation programs were not adequately covering these workers. “It was a two-part decision: Let’s move forward with legislation on beryllium and then let’s examine these others questions: Did we make people sick [by exposing them to other hazardous substances], and if so, are they being adequately compensated?” Thus, the National Economic Council study was launched. On August 8, 1999, just three weeks after the beryllium plan was announced, the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick broke his story about plutonium exposures at the Energy Department’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion plant in Kentucky. No longer just a story of local interest to small-town America, the plight of sick nuclear workers was becoming a national issue. The Post story, which was initially spurred by allegations made in a class-action lawsuit brought against the plant’s former contractors by Paducah workers, detailed how, for 23 years, the government knowingly allowed workers to be exposed to high levels of plutonium dust as part of an experiment in recycling spent uranium from nuclear reactors. (As little as one-millionth of an ounce of plutonium, which is thousands of times more radioactive than uranium, can induce cancer if inhaled.) Warrick described a host of abuses that were heaped upon plant workers and the surrounding environment: woefully deficient exposure records, the dumping of radioactive contaminants into nearby fields, collusion between government agencies and a succession of contractors who hid dangers from workers and the public, and inadequate protections for workers. Thomas Cochran, the nuclear program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Warrick: “The situation is as close to a complete lack of health physics as I have observed outside of the former Soviet Union.” Response to the Post story was swift. Within days, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell called for congressional hearings, and Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton appointed a task force. Nearly a month after the story broke, Secretary Richardson announced that the Energy Department would create a “pilot program” to compensate workers at Paducah. Instead of winning applause, however, the announcement provoked outrage among workers, legislators, and union leaders. “How do you justify compensating workers at one plant, while saying another plant across the river doesn’t merit compensation?” Richard Miller told reporters at the time. The day before the pilot program announcement, the Columbus Dispatch revealed that abuses similar to those uncovered by the Post had been committed at Paducah’s sister facility “just across the river” in Portsmouth, Ohio. Galvanized by the Dispatch revelations, and angered by the limited scope of the pilot program, several Ohio legislators started clamoring for fair treatment for their workers. Leading the charge were Democratic Cong. Ted Strickland and Republican Sens. Mike DeWine and George Voinovich, who heavily lobbied the Energy Department to expand the compensation program. Despite the congressional pressure, and an unrelenting drumbeat of reports by the Dispatch and other newspapers, the Energy Department’s next compensation proposal—announced on November 18, 1999—included only beryllium sites and Paducah. According to Robert Alvarez, although Richardson wanted to include more sites in the program, he was prevented from doing so by White House budget officials. The Defense Department also stepped in to stem the tide. An infuriated Congressman Strickland told the Dispatch that Defense officials were worried that nuclear workers from sites around the country would demand compensation. “I was told by a high-ranking Energy Department official that these workers [at Portsmouth] are being left in the cold because the Defense Department fears setting a precedent that will force it to pay for countless Americans who may have been exposed to radiation during weapons testing and research.” Richardson, however, had a trump card up his sleeve—the National Economic Council study. The draft study, released in January 2000, reported that workers at the government’s 14 largest bomb production facilities—including Portsmouth— were at increased risk of contracting cancer as a result of workplace exposures. In a January 29 interview with the New York Times, Richardson said, “This is the first time that the government is acknowledging that people got cancer from radiation exposure in plants.” Two days later, he told the Post that the study removed “a major roadblock” to compensating sick workers. On April 12, two weeks after the final NEC draft was released, Richardson unveiled the Energy Department’s first broad-based compensation program. “We are moving forward to do the right thing by these workers,” he said in announcing the program. “The men and women who served our nation in the nuclear weapons industries of World War II and the Cold War labored under difficult and dangerous conditions with some of the most hazardous materials known to mankind. This is a fair and reasonable program. It will compensate workers and get them the help they have long deserved.” Meanwhile, Ohio’s Congressman Strickland (along with Kentucky Republican Cong. Ed Whitfield) and Senator Voinovich were busy introducing their own, more ambitious compensation proposals in their respective chambers. Although the Strickland/Whitfield initiative met opposition in the House, Voinovich’s proposal received broad, bipartisan support in the Senate and served as the basis for the bill that was passed as part of the Senate’s 2001 Defense Authorization Bill. “A pretty good start” According to an unofficial tally put together by Energy Department staffers, some 600 newspaper stories about nuclear workers were published last year. In mid-2000, as House Republicans tried to kill the compensation program, the media blitz generated an enormous groundswell of support for the workers which, together with strong pressure from the Senate, helped erode the opposition’s resolve. Says Alvarez: “The news media basically engaged in carpet bombing. It was like bringing in the B-52s.” In late June 2000, shortly after Senator Voinovich introduced his compensation bill, the Louisville Courier-Journal ran a three-day series about the Paducah plant. Expanding on some of the revelations made in the Post, the Courier-Journal’s series, titled “Cold War Poison: The Paducah Legacy,” detailed the legacy of contamination and health problems left behind by the plant’s operations. Wrote reporters James Malone and James Carroll in their June 25 introductory article, “Sloppy safety practices, concealed health concerns, and decades of ignorance, expediency, and poor oversight have left workers, nearby wildlife, and the land itself damaged by chemical and radioactive toxins.” According to Miller, the Courier-Journal played a critical role in turning the tide of opposition in the House. “The Courier-Journal helped elevate the Paducah issue to a statewide level, which in turn propelled the state’s two Republican senators [Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning] to play hardball . . . with the leadership in the House.” The newspaper also prompted the Paducah Sun, “a sort of company paper,” to run front page stories, which put a lot of pressure on local legislators, including Congressman Whitfield. Republican leaders, says Miller, “viewed Whitfield’s seat, which was in a traditionally Democratic region of Kentucky, as vulnerable. [With elections just around the corner] Whitfield twisted the arms of his Republican colleagues to make this compensation program happen. If there had been a safe seat in Kentucky, Republican leaders might not have focused so much attention on the issue.” By early September, with the compensation legislation stalled, Whitfield and Wamp, the representative for Oak Ridge, began pressing their fellow Republicans for quick passage of the legislation. According to a September 4 Associated Press story, the two congressmen asked the House committees with jurisdiction over the legislation to forgo hearings. By this time, however, Rep. Lamar Smith had already set a date for his subcommittee hearings. In early September, another newspaper series appeared that significantly altered the landscape of the compensation effort. Beginning on September 6, USA Today ran a series of stories by reporter Peter Eisler about how in the 1940s and 1950s the government secretly hired hundreds of private companies to process bomb materials. During its 10-month investigation, the newspaper reviewed thousands of declassified government documents detailing where these secret facilities were located, the type of work they did, and the various dangers that workers at these plants had been exposed to. The newspaper also published a list of more than 300 private companies and former sites that had possibly participated in the government’s early bomb production efforts. The USA Today series, which was called “Poisoned Workers & Poisoned Places,” had an enormous impact. By revealing the vast scope of the early weapons complex and listing sites across the country where workers were potentially made sick, legislators who had no idea that weapons sites had ever been located in their districts were suddenly concerned. According to Richard Miller, the series served as an excellent lobbying tool: “The USA Today series brought several more people to the table. . . . I mean, we went out and bought hundreds of copies of the newspaper and made sure every congressional office that had an affected facility got a copy of it.” The USA Today report also initiated a chain reaction of media coverage. Soon, newspapers in towns across the country began running articles about how local citizens had been put at risk working at the local factory when it produced bomb material for the U.S. government. (This media wildfire was fanned again when the Clinton administration published an official list of covered sites in the Federal Register in early January.) As new Labor Secretary Elaine Chao recently learned, the media’s interest in sick nuclear workers and the broad congressional support it helped generate continue to this day. Chao’s proposal in early March to shift the compensation program to the Justice Department was met with a severe backlash by a bipartisan group of senators and representatives. Following Chao’s every move were dozens of newspapers from Nevada to Iowa to Illinois to Massachusetts (many of which were fed a stream of stories by the Associated Press’s Katherine Rizzo)—newspapers that until recently might not have considered a seeming bureaucratic technicality very newsworthy. Says Miller of Chao’s blunder: “After this intense effort last year [to pass the compensation program] we wound up with a secretary of labor who, in complete apparent ignorance of the amount of groundswell this thing had, tried to pour cement boots over the program. [This program] was an attempt to remedy the betrayal of an entire work force that faced systematized lies and systematized cover-ups and systematized litigation regardless of merit—and then along comes [Chao] who says, ‘Oh, we don’t want any part of this.’ The fact that she is now singing off the right sheet means that if you screw around with this program, you are probably going to pay a price. So that is a pretty good start.” Michael Flynn is associate editor of the Bulletin. ©2001 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ***************************************************************** 12 Specialist: Radiation, Paducah workers' cancer likely tied Others dismiss conclusion of plaintiffs' witness Daily news from Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana from courier-journal.com June 26, 2001 By James R. Carroll and James Malone The Courier-Journal Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers who developed cancer after years of radiation exposure almost certainly became ill because of their jobs, a British radiation specialist concluded. However, critics say the conclusion of Michael Thorne, contained in an affidavit filed to support a $10 billion lawsuit against the uranium plant's former operators, is faulty in assessing blame. Thorne is an expert witness being paid by the plaintiffs. ''Attorneys want to be able . . . to either predict or assign blame for a (person's) cancer, but you can't do that,'' said Joel Cehn, a California radiation safety consultant who is not involved in the case. ''There's no way to know if an individual -- even if that individual was exposed to radiation, develops cancer -- was it caused by radiation? There is no way to know that.'' Thorne's affidavit filed this month said there is a significant likelihood -- greater than 50 percent to more than 90 percent -- that career Paducah employees who worked around high radiation levels and then got cancer did so because of their jobs. ''On the basis of internationally accepted radiation biology models and . . . risk assessment, the workers at (Paducah) were exposed to illegally excessive levels of radiation at the plant, and, if still living, have a significant and unacceptable probability of dying as a result,'' the affidavit said. Bill McMurry, a Louisville attorney who represents the plaintiffs, called Thorne's conclusion ''the linchpin to the issue of whether the workers sustained injury even though they don't have cancer, or even though they don't have symptoms of radiation-related diseases.'' The lawsuit, filed in 1999 by current and former plant workers and survivors of workers who have died, contends that plant operators exposed the workers to high levels of radiation without telling them, and that workers should be compensated for their increased risk of developing cancer. The trial is scheduled for July 2003. ''We are not championing the cause of dead people who died from cancer, or even of people with cancer,'' McMurry said. ''This is about those who live at risk of cancer . . . and suffer the emotional damage of living in fear.'' David Fuller, president of Local 3-550 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union that represents several hundred workers at the Paducah plant said Thorne's study is one of the first on plant conditions that isn't tied to the Department of Energy, and as such its implications were disturbing. ''I've not seen anything except what DOE has done and DOE can be conservative,'' Fuller said. '' . . . I'm wondering if we have cancer in our future.'' Thorne said exposure levels he tracked at the plant were close to what the Energy Department found in a survey released last year. From the 1950s through the 1980s, Thorne said in a telephone interview from his office in West Yorkshire, England, plant workers received radiation doses that exceeded the acceptable limit of 5 rem per year. In addition, some workers were likely to have been exposed at levels as high as 62.5 rem per year and perhaps higher, he said. Thorne, a former scientific secretary on the International Commission on Radiological Protection, then calculated probabilities that cancers in workers were caused by onthe-job exposures, primarily due to inhalation of neptunium, plutonium and uranium isotopes. He offered the following analysis, based on 300 hours of research: ''Assume a man worked in the production facilities . . . for a period of 20 years, beginning on his 20th birthday and retiring on his 40th birthday. Assume such a man received in excess of 5 rem per year, as the data suggest is the case for (Paducah) production facilities. Assume that at age 65 this same man presents himself with cancer and dies from such cancer. ''According to the model, and the underlying assumptions . . . there is better than a 50 percent chance that such a cancer death was caused by radiation . . . and not from any other sources. This probability rises sharply with the overall level of exposure. At annual exposures of over 60 rem, which DOE documents on the basis of air (sample) data, the probability exceeds 90 percent for a 20-year exposure period.'' Radiation exposure is measured in units called rem, or millirem. The 5-rem-per-year exposure limit is equal to 5,000 millirem. Experts say the average annual radiation dose in the United States is 360 millirem, from natural sources such as radon gas and cosmic radiation to man-made sources ranging from medical x-rays to bricks in houses. Cehn, the radiation safety consultant, whose expertise was offered by the Nuclear Energy Institute, said one in four Americans develops cancer. He said that makes the probability of developing the disease in the general population fairly high to begin with. Gail Rymer, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin Corp., one of the former Paducah plant operators being sued, said Thorne's study ''runs contrary to known science.'' Tomm Sprick, a spokesman for defendant Union Carbide, now part of Dow Chemical, said Thorne's affidavit was ''one of many documents that have been filed in this case, and our attorneys will be reviewing this latest filing within the context of the entire case.'' The Energy Department did not return a call seeking comment on Thorne's study. Jim Chesnut, 71, a retired Paducah plant worker who is not a party to the lawsuit, said he doesn't doubt Thorne's conclusions. ''I have lost so many buddies, and I can't help think much of it was caused by radiation,'' he said. But J.W. Cleary, who has worked at the plant since 1990, said safety has improved in recent years. ''We realize now that there was some danger,'' said Cleary, who also is not involved in the lawsuit. An ongoing medical testing program of current and former Paducah workers is aimed, in part, at detecting cancers in their early stages. Copyright 2001 The Courier-Journal. ***************************************************************** 13 Stripped for cash / Impoverished Russian sailors stealing submarine parts June 25, 2001 Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia -- In Russia's Far East, home to the country's Pacific submarine fleet, thieves within the navy are stripping subs of everything from radio equipment to radioactive isotopes and selling them to criminals. The crime wave threatens the fleet's safety and has sparked fears about the spread of nuclear weapons. It is all the more alarming because of the area's proximity to North Korea, whose agents operate in the region and have attempted to acquire submarine technology and information. The most recent known incident occurred in Petropavlovsk on April 24, when three officers were arrested on charges of stealing parts that included radioactive isotopes. The crime is the second to draw the attention of authorities this year, said Yury Sazonov, military prosecutor with Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky garrison, which is handling the cases. Earlier this year, an officer and a civilian colleague stole similar parts from another submarine. At least 10 people are believed to have been arrested last year for stealing parts from diesel and nuclear submarines, said Igor Kravchuk, a military reporter with the newspaper Vesti. He suspects that many more thefts went unreported; the military does not publicly report convictions. One of the most frightening scenarios is that thieves could accidentally touch off a nuclear accident. Last year in Kamchatka, two sailors sneaked into the nuclear reactor compartment of a submarine and stole the catalysts for igniting the reactor because they contained palladium, a metal of the platinum group, Interfax news service reported. The nine stolen tubes were worth $3,571 apiece. The thieves also stole 12 radioactive calibrating plates, which looked like gold. (The sailors didn't realize the material was radioactive and hid it under the mattresses of their beds.) The sailors even tried to lift the control rods but failed because an engineer had welded the lever down. If it hadn't been, they could have sparked a catastrophe, venting radioactive material over the port and thousands of people in the surrounding area. The crime rate among navy officers on the Kamchatka peninsula has been mushrooming. In 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, the military crime rate was growing by about 20 percent annually, said Sazonov. "There are constant attacks on the submarines by navy personnel, because they are so poorly paid that they have to steal metal and cable and other things in order to get by and get their families food," said James Clay Moltz, a research professor and associate director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. "The senior navy officials have described it as 'a state of war,' and that's really what it is." Publicly, at least, the navy is in denial about what is going on. Rear Admiral Konstantin Sidenko, commander of the Northeast Armed Forces, dismissed the reports from newspapers and his own prosecutorial staff. "Nobody has stolen anything this year," he said in a phone interview. "What was written in the newspapers is nothing but lies. There was a wave of thefts in 1998, but those who did that have been punished recently." However, Sazonov, the military prosecutor, said theft from submarines is a booming and lucrative business. "Unfortunately, this market is developing quite fast, so we are trying to fight it," he said. Behind the epidemic of thievery is the harsh reality of post-communist Russia. Newly inducted sailors are paid less than $3.50 a month, according to the Pacific Fleet headquarters, and even veteran submarine officers make only about $63 a month. And like some civilian workers, their wages are often unpaid for months at a time. The national daily Trud reported recently that 48 percent of military officers earn wages at below the national poverty level. Submarines are tempting targets because they are packed with expensive equipment. And despite Russia's current economic troubles, it boasts a large submarine fleet in the Far East. In Kamchatka, there are nine Delta III nuclear submarines with a total of 143 long-range missiles carrying 429 nuclear warheads, along with an older Delta I sub carrying 12 missiles with single warheads, Moltz said. Another 12 nuclear attack and guided-missile submarines in port are designed to fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and torpedoes at enemy ships. Many of these submarines no longer go to sea and are guarded only by two-man skeleton crews. Twelve more nuclear attack submarines and another Delta I are based in the nearby region of Primorye. Most of these submarines, too, are decommissioned and guarded by light crews. The risky situation has resulted in international attempts to pare the fleet. The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program has been paying to help Russia dismantle 14 Delta and Yankee-class nuclear submarines in Bolshoi Kamen, near Vladivostok. Likewise, the Japanese have offered $120 million to dismantle submarines, but only in Primorye, along the Sea of Japan. Navy officials and Western Russia watchers aren't the only ones who have taken an interest in the thefts from subs. North Korea is eager to get its hands on Russian nuclear submarine technology. In 1999, a former employee of the Zvezda shipyard near Vladivostok was arrested trying to sell radioactive materials to undercover agents posing as a broker for North Korea. In 1996, 17 North Korean guest workers were caught trying to infiltrate a nuclear submarine facility in the Primorye region and were repatriated. And authorities have arrested North Korean workers for trying to buy dismantlement schedules and cruising patterns for nuclear vessels, Moltz said. Many sailors and officers who steal parts melt the metal at home, producing impure ingots, Sazonov said. Precious metals such as beryllium and lithium are particularly in demand, but thieves often sell gold and platinum to local jewelry stores. Open a newspaper in this city, and it is obvious that a thriving enterprise has sprung up. "Company buys new and used radio equipment," state classified advertisements in the newspaper Vesti. The ads list electronic components for which the buyer offers up to $600. The dispatcher of one company that buys equipment salvaged from the navy said her company pays up to $1,000 for some parts. "We have a lot of competitors all over the city," said the woman, who declined to give her name. "Some are very close to the military units, so they get more business than we do." Nuclear submarines are not the only vessels being looted. Last year, the diesel submarine fleet was even more subject to pillaging, said Kravchuk. An entire division of Kilo class submarines was disabled by thefts, he said. The thieves even stole parts from the reactor areas, including equipment for measuring radioactivity, and they ripped out hydrogen-burning furnaces for the platinum and palladium they contained. The suspects are awaiting a verdict in a closed trial. After the theft from the nuclear reactor compartment of the submarine in Kamchatka, Russian Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov fired two senior submarine officers, and 10 other officers and admirals were penalized for negligence. But that is hardly enough to allay fears of a disaster. "You don't want disgruntled individuals handling nuclear submarines, not to mention weapons," Moltz said. "It's a very bad recipe." ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle   Page A - 9 ***************************************************************** 14 'Important' ORNL discoveries recognized by DOE Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 1:20 p.m. on Tuesday, June 26, 2001 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Three Oak Ridge National Laboratory projects are among the 101 most important discoveries supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Staff members from the Office of Science recently compiled the unranked list from discoveries occurring over the past 25 years. The ORNL projects are as follows: * Improving intermetallic compounds -- Materials and processing research in Oak Ridge has increased scientific understanding of intermetallic compounds. This work overcame the brittleness problem and improved manufacturability, thus making it practical to use nickel and iron aluminides for high temperature engineering applications. * Ion beam techniques enhance materials science -- The process is used to improve the wear resistance of titanium alloys in artificial prostheses for hip and knee replacements. By eliminating the need to rework failed replacement joints, this technology spares individuals from additional surgeries and saves as much as $100 million per year. * A new type of microscopy -- Z-contrast microscopy has had major impact on the study of materials structure. It has achieved the highest resolution of a crystal structure ever recorded in a microscope and provided new information on the atomic-scale structure and chemistry of a variety of materials -- correcting previously published quasicrystal structures, for example. Other discoveries to make the list include the development of neutron scattering facilities, the development of lithium batteries, making solar energy more affordable, sequencing the first plant genome, measuring the magnetic field inside plasma, the launch of Internet conferencing and improving neutron beams for cancer treatment. The complete list of scientific discoveries and a description of each is available on the Internet at www.sc.doe.gov/feature_articles_2001/June/Decades/index.html All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 15 No impact found for ORNL rebuild Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 1:12 p.m. on Tuesday, June 26, 2001 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy has issued a finding of "no significant impact" regarding the modernization of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "Based on the results of the impact analysis reported in the environmental assessment, DOE has determined that the proposed action is not a major federal action that would significantly affect the quality of the human environment," the document states. "Therefore, preparation of an environmental impact statement is not necessary." The environmental assessment released earlier this year specifically stated that no major environmental impact existed for the preferred alternative of building new facilities at ORNL on "brownfield" sites -- previously contaminated and/or developed areas. Up to 24 new facilities could be constructed under the preferred alternative including 16 DOE-funded structures, four state-funded buildings and four funded through the private sector, according to the assessment. The new facilities would encompass a total of 1.2 million square feet of space and include areas for biological, computer and neutron sciences research. Most of the current ORNL facilities are aging and need to be replaced or upgraded in order to support ORNL's long-term research missions. The declining condition of facilities increases overhead costs due to additional controls required to ensure worker safety, high energy consumption, increased maintenance requirements and research inefficiencies. The environmental assessment also examined three alternatives regarding the modernization of ORNL, including remodeling six existing buildings, constructing no new facilities and deactivating five structures, with the potential of demolishing four of them. The other two alternatives are taking no action and building the new facilities on natural, undeveloped areas. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 16 Accidents in space, getting to Mars, and how to kill a mission. With increasingly ambitious missions planned to Mars and beyond, and with solar energy having demonstrated its limitations, engineers and managers inside and outside NASA say nuclear energy may be powering its way to a new dawn in space. "The fact that the country is willing again to consider use of nuclear energy for commercial power may improve the prospects of applying this technology to space exploration." - George Schmidt, Marshall Space Flight Center Dusty plans, dying experts, and Three Mile Island in the rearview mirror. The fuel of the future, in the minds of many spacecraft engineers, has a bad name. In fact, it stinks. And that is no accident. For an insider's view of the prospects for using nuclear power to propel future spacecraft, we turned to the deputy manager of the Propulsion Research Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Low-power RTGs are most advantageous for surface rovers or deep space missions, where solar power can be impractical. POLL Should nuclear power be used in space? It's a possibility made more likely by recent shifts in U.S. energy and military policies. It's also a move anticipated by antinuclear activists, who are already planning their opposition to any effort to use nuclear power in space. Fueled by the desire to go farther and faster with fewer dollars, managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- where many of the agency's robotic missions are conceived and carried out -- are analyzing how to justify the use of nuclear power in space, both technically and in terms of the benefit to science. "We've been thinking about this, and trying to raise it as a question that warrants some consideration, for a couple of years," says Firouz Naderi, a longtime JPL manager and newly appointed leader of the Solar System's Exploration Programs Directorate. "I think we are going to raise it again and see if the [political] system is amenable to it." In an interview at his JPL office, Naderi said any such political balloon would have to be floated in Washington by NASA headquarters. "I believe that if a good case can be made, not only for the science return but for safety, then I could see that [nuclear power] could be in our future," he said. Others think Naderi may be right. And support could come from the top. President Bush's recently released energy plan features increased reliance on nuclear power back here on Earth. In several interviews, scientists and mission planners said they were hopeful this might put space-based nuclear power generation back on the table after suffering from years of what they call misinformation. "The fact that the country is willing again to consider use of nuclear energy for commercial power may improve the prospects of applying this technology to space exploration," said George Schmidt, deputy manager of the Propulsion Research Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Two sides, very far apart The last nuclear-powered spacecraft launched by NASA was Cassini in 1997. Antinuclear activists protested heavily against it, saying a launch accident or potential mishap in a 1999 Earth flyby en route to Saturn could kill billions of people who might develop cancer after contact with radioactive material. Cassini scientists have called such claims "hogwash," saying that the radiation risk is less than normal background radiation in the air or in rocks. Before the launch, NASA did admit that "there is a small potential for public health effects." But in 1997, Cassini project manager Richard J. Spehalski said the public was "badly misinformed by alarmists." Spehalski said that even in the highly unlikely event that the 73 pounds of plutonium on board were somehow released into the atmosphere in a breathable form, and ingested, "the radiation dose an individual would receive over a 50-year period from that exposure would be ... 15,000 times less than a natural lifetime exposure." In the end, there were no Cassini accidents. Yet the dangers still are debated. Few debate the potential benefits of nuclear power in space. The life of a Mars rover could be extended from days to years. Maneuverability would be measured in miles instead of feet. And many engineers agree that a human trip to Mars would go from highly impossible to practical. Further, if humanity is ever to leave this planet permanently and set up colonies on the Moon or Mars, a nuclear power station would be nearly indispensable, most space industry experts agree. No nukes in space As talk of space-based nuclear power increases, so do the efforts of opposition groups. Bruce K. Gagnon is a coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. The organization represents 150 groups around the world with, Gagnon says, millions of members. Gagnon said the groups have been expecting space-based nuclear power initiatives to resurface, and they've been making plans to mount a concerted effort against all uses, from planetary exploration to military. The U.S. military would benefit from having nuclear generators in space to power huge orbiting radar stations for reconnaissance. And Bush is also pushing for a fresh look at the so-called Star Wars missile defense system. "We see a deadly connection between each of them," Gagnon said, arguing that the nuclear industry views space as a new market and would love to get a foot in the door any way it can. Gagnon said the missile defense system would use nuclear energy aboard satellites to refuel lasers that would shoot down foreign missiles. Bush has not committed to any specific system, however, and some expect the weapons would ultimately be ground-based or mounted on ships or aircraft. Gagnon also argues that relying on nuclear power tends to kill research into alternatives, such as solar power. "When you go with nuclear power you're basically saying nothing else works," he says. Exploration, not war Meanwhile, those who plan missions to Mars and beyond have a more modest goal: getting there. And they say that a new generation of nuclear propulsion systems is safe. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs as they are called, use the natural decay process of plutonium to generate heat needed to protect a spacecraft in the cold environment of space. Some of the heat is converted to electricity, which can be used for flight propulsion or to power a surface rover. In future plans, conventional chemical rockets would be used to launch spacecraft powered by RTGs, and the reactors would not be turned on until after they are launched. Still, critics fear a release of plutonium during launch or in the atmosphere, when a rocket is accidentally or intentionally blown up. In the case of such an accident "the radioactivity in the reactor is nil, less than that received by laying on the beach in sunny California or in Long Island," says Mohamed S. El-Genk, director of the Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies at the University of New Mexico. Gagnon, however, says the greatest danger might come well before a spacecraft is even launched. In order to use nuclear power in space, he points out, the Department of Energy would have to ramp up plutonium production. "As you contemplate expansion of the use of nuclear power in space, you'll have a dramatic escalation in worker contamination," Gagnon said. And finally, Gagnon said a launch accident is inevitable, due to faulty parts, human error, or sheer odds. Accidents in space, getting to Mars, and how to kill a mission or any SPACE.com experience. ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space Plenty of company If nuclear power returns to space, it will find a lot of company. In the most recent tally provided by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, there are roughly 75 nuclear devices in space, 38 from the United States and 37 from Russia. Of these, 46 are in Earth orbit, 12 were left on the Moon or Mars, and 17 power deep-space probes. "People think [landing on Mars] is like driving to Grandma's on Sunday. But it is expensive and it is horribly difficult to land on Mars. Once you do, you want to last more than 90 days." - Firouz Naderi, NASA's JPL In 1999, the nuclear-powered Cassini spacecraft made an Earth flyby in order to set a course for Saturn. Artist's rendering shows Cassini over the South Pacific. Click to enlarge IMAGE: NASA/DAVID SEAL And accidents have occurred. In 1964, for example, an American satellite failed and re-entered Earth's atmosphere. As planned, it jettisoned its nuclear payload, releasing radiation over the Indian Ocean at an altitude of 75 miles, according to the Bulletin. In 1973, the Apollo 13 spacecraft carried an RTG to be used to power a seismic station on the Moon. The mission was aborted and the spacecraft returned to Earth. The RTG was attached to the lunar module, which broke up on re-entry. NASA officials say the RTG re-entered intact, with no release of plutonium, and now sits on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. In 1978, a Soviet radar reconnaissance satellite malfunctioned and crashed in Canada's Northwest Territory, releasing thousands of highly radioactive fragments into a lake and the surrounding area. No evidence has tied these mishaps to any cancer cases or deaths. Destination Mars Still, over the years, political and social pressure from these accidents, and others in terrestrial nuclear reactors, have combined to compel NASA to design Mars probes and rovers that rely on solar power. But for robotic exploration, especially on the surface of a planet far from the Sun, with nighttime darkness and changing seasons thwarting solar collectors, nuclear power would be an indisputably more powerful exploration tool. A stark example of solar power's shortcomings was provided by the successful Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, which worked in tandem with the Sojourner rover to beam back pictures of the surface of Mars. While outlasting its 30-day life expectancy, the craft's batteries died just shy of three months after landing. Researchers expected the batteries to die, because they required constant recharging from the solar panels. Solar energy cannot be used directly, because it fluctuates so much. And solar panels are heavy, not to mention complicated to unfurl in space or on a planet. How to kill a mission Bob Anderson, a geologist and mission planner, said in a recent interview at JPL that the weight of solar panels and their poor performance compared to nuclear power severely constrain the amount of science that can be done for a given mission's price tag. "Two things will kill a mission," Anderson says. "Power and mass." And future Mars missions will require more of both. A pair of missions in 2003 will send the most advanced and capable rovers ever designed to study Martian geology and search for signs of water. If there, this water could provide the trail to any past life that might have existed on the Red Planet. The craft may be sent inside giant craters, where orbiting spacecraft have spotted signs of water. But to ensure safety, the spacecraft will land in flat areas, likely near the crater center. "But the best information is probably in the rim," Anderson says. Anderson is helping engineers design rovers that will allow the geologist to remotely drill into rocks and figure out what they're made of. It is a critical science tool, but also a tremendously power-draining activity, he said. Nuclear power could turn short, daytime-only missions into long, 24/7 operations, Anderson said. He notes, however, that rovers would have to be redesigned to make all their parts capable of sustaining such a long mission. Naderi, the JPL manager, worries that Americans have been jaded into assuming that going to Mars is a relatively simple operation nowadays. But given that favorable planet alignments limit Mars missions to launching every 26 months, he laments solar-powered rovers die before the next one can be launched. "People think [landing on Mars] is like driving to Grandma's on Sunday," Naderi said. "But it is expensive and it is horribly difficult to land on Mars. Once you do, you want to last more than 90 days." Living on the Moon While nuclear power can improve the efficiency of a rover, some say it is imperative for more ambitious missions. An increasingly vocal group of space enthusiasts argues that the post-Apollo space program is stagnant due to the lack of a major goal. Many think that what's needed is a firm plan to set up permanent human colonies on the Moon or Mars. Peter Eckart, of the Institute for Astronautics at the Munich University of Technology in Germany, says that if a lunar base is to be built anywhere except at the poles, where sunlight is constant, then "the only reasonable engineering solution is to go with nuclear power." Likewise, others say, any future colonization of Mars will likely depend not just on nuclear electric propulsion, but nuclear power generation on the surface. Most engineers question whether even the most perfectly situated site can be sustained by solar power. And at best, these sites would not necessarily be located where researchers would want to explore. Despite the benefits of nuclear power, Eckart is not one to discount the dangers. "I'm personally not too much in favor of using nuclear power on Earth, if we can avoid it," he said after a recent conference on space colonization at Princeton University. "But in space, it's not a problem." Eckart calls the fear of contaminating the lunar surface with radiation "total nonsense, because up in space there's so much radiation already -- all the galactic and cosmic radiation, all the stuff that's coming in from the Sun. A nuclear reactor does not make a difference at all. The only risk is launching it, and there you have to be careful from an engineering point of view." Such a system would be launched in safer pieces, then assembled once at its destination, providing a further measure of safety, proponents say. ©2001 SPACE.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS ***************************************************************** 18 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space Three Mile Island in the rearview mirror Several experts say that whether nuclear power flies again depends upon public opinion. And while a significant chunk of the American public has traditionally held a dim view of nuclear energy, there is evidence that opinions can change, at least in the face of a compelling need. "Some leadership in Washington, which I hope the Bush administration will provide, and leadership at NASA, which will not happen with [Dan] Goldin's administration, is needed to clear up and shift political will and public opinion." - Gary E. Mueller, University of Missouri-Rolla Five years after the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, a nonpartisan Field Institute poll found that roughly 61 percent of Californians opposed nuclear power. But a new poll, released this May, found that about 59 percent of Californians were in favor of building new nuclear plants. Pollsters suggested the obvious: Rolling blackouts and soaring electricity bills had altered views. Most space industry experts say there is no direct relationship between the fate of Bush's energy proposal -- which offers tax breaks to the nuclear energy industry and promises to re-evaluate a controversial limitation on reprocessing nuclear waste into reusable fuel -- and the potential for a nuclear powered space program. But several of those interviewed by SPACE.com expressed optimism for a political and social trickle-down effect. "In order to line up national support, we need a NASA mission or missions that would inspire Americans of all ages," says the University of New Mexico's El-Genk. Dusty plan, dying experts A potentially more difficult challenge also looms, especially regarding the construction of large-scale nuclear power plants to support Mars or lunar colonies. Even if the social barriers were suddenly lifted, it is unclear how quickly NASA could ramp up the necessary technology, given that three decades worth of plans for nuclear propulsion and space-based power generation are stuffed away in dusty drawers around the country. Professors are loath to bring the topic up, says El-Genk, and a generation of engineers who understood the technology is largely retired or dead. "University education in this area is nil, due to the very low enrollment in nuclear engineering departments during the last two decades and the closure or combining of more than half the nuclear engineering departments that existed in the 80s," El-Genk told SPACE.com. With this dying generation may die the dream of sending humans to Mars. Or, at the least, the dream might be deferred until a new generation of engineers can be re-educated. So despite glimmers of hope within the space community, there is a realization that a tremendous public and political education effort would be needed to get nuclear energy off the ground and back into space. Some worry the obstacle might be insurmountable. Gary E. Mueller, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, said he's hopeful that Bush's efforts will translate into increased use of nuclear power in space. But, tossing another obstacle into the equation, he says NASA will have to find new money to support research. "Some leadership in Washington, which I hope the Bush administration will provide, and leadership at NASA, which will not happen with [Dan] Goldin's administration, is needed to clear up and shift political will and public opinion," Mueller said. If President Bush were to push for a nuclear-powered space program, the effort would have a familial echo. Bush's father spoke in 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the first Moon landing, of America's need to return to the Moon and lay plans for putting humans on Mars. His speech set no dates but spawned a flurry of studies and committees, resulting in recommendations that included nuclear power as a cornerstone for any possible Mars missions. Twelve years later, there are still no plans for a humans-to-Mars mission. And though space-based nuclear power may be on the brink of a return to the political spotlight, it is also an idea with an uncertain future. Plutonium, the fuel of the future in the minds of many spacecraft engineers, has a bad name. In fact, it stinks. And that is no accident. ©2001 SPACE.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ***************************************************************** 19 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space Why Plutonium Stinks Plutonium, the fuel of the future in the minds of many spacecraft engineers, has a bad name. In fact, it stinks. Spacecraft powered by RTGs have landed on the Moon and Mars, and still today explore the outer planets via the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, and Ulysses missions. INSIDE AN RTG And that is no accident. The chemical letters Pu were given on purpose, as a joke, in 1941 by the element's discoverer, Glenn Seaborg. Even so, nuclear energy's re-entry into space, if it occurs, would likely involve a new breed of spacecraft propulsion called nuclear electric power, a plutonium-based system that engineers say is dramatically safer than conventional notions of nuclear energy. The low-power nuclear generators now called radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, were developed in the 1950s. Nowadays, RTGs usually rely on plutonium-238 (Pu-238), which has a half-life of 87.7 years, meaning that after 87.7 years, half of the original fuel remains. This coupled with the fact that RTGs contain no moving parts makes the setup a reliable alternative for long-term missions. The first RTG in space generated 2.7 watts aboard a U.S. Navy satellite launched in 1961. Spacecraft powered by RTGs have landed on the Moon and Mars, and still today explore the outer planets via the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, and Ulysses missions. Only practical way Most engineers say RTGs are the only practical way to provide electricity and heat for a spacecraft in the frigid outer reaches of the solar system, where temperatures can dip to -400 degrees Fahrenheit and where using solar panels to tap energy from the distant Sun becomes increasingly difficult. And they say it is safe. Antinuclear activists warn that if ingested or inhaled, plutonium is deadly. Few question this. But when prepared for space flight, plutonium is not in a form that can be ingested or inhaled even if a launch accident pulverized the rest of a rocket and its spacecraft, supporters say. As it decays, Pu-238 emits radiation mainly in the form of alpha particles, which have a very low penetrating power compared to other potential fuel sources. Only lightweight shielding is necessary because alpha particles cannot penetrate a sheet of paper. Still, the material is housed inside several protective layers, including an outer heat-resistant shell, to prevent leaks even in a launch or re-entry accident. And inside those layers, plutonium is packed into ceramic pellets, four per capsule, each about the size of a marshmallow and flexible to resist breaking apart. The pellets cannot dissolve in water. NASA officials say the grade of plutonium used in RTGs, even were it to be released, would have no more effect on people than mammograms or high-altitude airline flights. Cassini, focus of criticism As part of a pre-launch Environmental Impact Statement that NASA was required to file for the Cassini mission, the space agency issued this statement: "In the unlikely case of a launch accident that resulted in the release of plutonium, the risk to public health is assessed to be negligible. In the even less likely event of an inadvertent atmospheric reentry of Cassini during its Earth swingby, there is a small potential for public health effects, according to studies reported in the [Draft Environmental Impact Statement]. However, NASA is designing the spacecraft and mission to ensure that the probability of an Earth reentry, after the spacecraft has left Earth orbit, is less than one in one million." Further, Cassini scientists and many health experts say, even if plutonium were vaporized and spread into the atmosphere, it is unlikely that very many people would be affected. One Cassini scientists likened this hurdle to that of spreading the common cold: "There are enough germs in one sneeze to give a billion people a cold," he said, "It's the distribution problem that stops this from happening." Related Story: A Q&A with NASA's George Schmidt For an insider's view of the prospects for using nuclear power to propel future spacecraft, we turned to the deputy manager of the Propulsion Research Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. ©2001 SPACE.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ***************************************************************** 20 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space A Q&A with NASA's George Schmidt We asked George Schmidt, deputy manager of the Propulsion Research Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, for his thoughts on the prospects for using nuclear power to propel future spacecraft. "We are now entering an era where the transportation requirements for scientific missions have become much more sophisticated." SPACE.com: Given that the Bush administration has put Earth-based nuclear power back on the table, do you think this stands to renew interest and support for using nuclear power in space? SCHMIDT: The potential benefits of using nuclear fission for space power and propulsion have been recognized for some time. The United States and former Soviet Union/Russia have conducted many research and development programs focused on this technology since the late-1950s. Although the former Soviet Union/Russia has placed over 30 reactors in Earth orbit to support sophisticated high-power spacecraft, the U.S. has flown only one – SNAP-10A in 1965, which was shut down after only 43 days of operation. The fact that the country is willing again to consider use of nuclear energy for commercial power may improve the prospects of applying this technology to space exploration. However, it is important to note that the rationale and context for space nuclear systems are very different from those for ground-based applications. For one, space fission systems do not begin operating until they are deployed safely in space. Before then, radiation levels in these devices are extremely low and are at least four orders of magnitude less than the power sources used on current deep space probes. Space nuclear systems also benefit by circumventing the issues of waste handling and disposal. NASA's current interest is in power systems to propel sophisticated scientific probes into the outer solar system and deep space. For these applications, the reactor would never return to Earth. Admittedly, some ground-based nuclear testing will be necessary to develop these systems for flight. However, the size of these reactors is considerably smaller than most university research reactors in use today, and their power levels are roughly 10,000 times lower than commercial power reactors. In addition, much of the development testing will employ high-performance electrical heaters in the cores to simulate fission heat release, thus minimizing use of nuclear materials. SPACE.com: Is there a misunderstanding about the safety of nuclear propulsion for space travel, and if so what would be needed to clear it up and shift political will and public opinion? SCHMIDT: Most people associate "nuclear propulsion" with NERVA/Rover, the nuclear thermal rocket technology program conducted from 1955 to 1973. They may also be aware of the brief renewal of interest in the late-1980’s and early 1990’s for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and NASA’s Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). This propulsion concept heats hydrogen directly in a reactor core and expands it through a nozzle to produce thrust. It utilizes propellant nearly twice as effectively as chemical rockets, while delivering the large thrusts necessary for human missions to Mars and other near-Earth destinations. The NERVA/Rover program evaluated many reactor and engine prototypes in open-air tests at the Nevada Test Site. One of the most notable demonstrations was the 12-minute test of the Phoebus-2A. It was the most powerful nuclear reactor ever built and delivered over 4,000 megawatts of thermal energy. Although NERVA/Rover showed that nuclear thermal rockets could be developed and operated safely, the cost for developing and testing such a system with today’s stricter environmental policies would be very high. The current interest in nuclear propulsion is focused on "nuclear electric propulsion," an entirely different concept in which a small nuclear power plant produces electrical energy to power high-performance electric thrusters. The fact that these reactors are much smaller than commercial reactors and are closed to the environment makes this system much easier to test than open-cycle thermal rockets. In addition, safety features that could absolutely prevent inadvertent reactor startup in any credible launch accident would be much easier to implement with these types of reactors. It is important that public be made aware of the tremendous benefits offered by nuclear electric propulsion and the minimal risk it poses to the environment. SPACE.com: Has research into potential use for nuclear power in space been thwarted by political and social resistance over the past decade, or has it progressed in anticipation that it might become politically viable again? SCHMIDT: There are many reasons why nuclear fission has not been used in space. But in general, there has never been a firmly established and approved space mission that clearly depended on this technology. While it would have been useful and even enhancing for several missions in the past, other power systems (solar cells, batteries, RTGs) and propulsive techniques (chemical rockets, gravitational swingbys) have always been able to meet the requirements of both robotic and human exploration. Research and development continued, but at a very low level in anticipation for the ambitious missions of the future (fast outer planetary missions, human missions to Mars). We are now entering an era where the transportation requirements for scientific missions have become much more sophisticated. Nuclear electric power and propulsion offers a means of more rapidly accessing and maneuvering around deep space destinations. It also offers a power-rich environment that could support much more sophisticated scientific instruments and enhanced data communication with Earth. SPACE.com: If nuclear power became politically and socially acceptable, what would be the single biggest advantage to space exploration, and in what time frame? SCHMIDT: Nuclear power affords several advantages to space exploration. All of these stem from its unique ability to provide large quantities of energy from a relatively small compact source, and to do so in virtually any extraterrestrial environment. The latter feature is particularly important when we consider applications involving high power in deep space, beyond the orbit of Mars. At this location, the energy flux available for solar-based power systems is too low to support anything other than small space vehicles and low-power scientific experiments (e.g., Pathfinder). Radioisotope sources (e.g., Galileo and Cassini) are effective for power levels below 100 Watts to 1 kilowatt, but fuel cells and batteries are severely restricted in terms of the amount of energy they can store relative to their mass. The most immediate and attractive application of nuclear power is in the area of propulsion. Power systems based on nuclear fission could provide ample power to extended operation of high-performance electric propulsion thrusters. The concept of nuclear electric propulsion has been around for some time, and the supporting technologies (e.g., small lightweight reactors, power conversion, electrostatic and electromagnetic thrusters) have matured to a point that such a system can be seriously considered for flight development. Assuming that proper resources are placed in this area, it is reasonable to assume that missions using this technology could be initiated by the latter part of this decade. Low-power nuclear generators called radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, are most advantageous for surface rovers or deep space missions, where solar power can be impractical. ©2001 SPACE.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ***************************************************************** 21 Nuclear Power Poised for Re-Entry into Space Nuclear-Powered Spacecraft Low-power nuclear generators called radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs, are most advantageous for surface rovers or deep space missions, where solar power can be impractical. Earth-orbiting spacecraft, however, are more capable of operating with solar power. Several popular missions operate entirely without the aid of nuclear power, including the Hubble and Chandra telescopes and the International Space Station. Below is an overview of U.S. missions that have used RTGs (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy): POWER SOURCE SPACECRAFT MISSION TYPE LAUNCH DATE STATUS SNAP-3B7 Transit 4A Navigational 6-29-61 RTG operated for 15 years. Satellite now shut down but operational. SNAP-3B8 Transit 4B Navigational 11-15-61 RTG operated for 9 years. Satellite operated periodically after 1962 high altitude test. Last reported signal in 1971. SNAP-9A Transit 5-BN-1 Navigational 9-28-63 RTG operated as planned. Non-RTG electrical problems on satellite caused satellite to fall after 9 months. SNAP-9A Transit 5-BN-2 Navigational 12-5-63 RTG operated for over 6 years. Satellite lost ability to navigate after 1.5 years. SNAP-9A Transit 5-BN-3 Navigational 4-21-64 Mission was aborted because of launch vehicle failure. RTG burned up on re-entry as designed. SNAP 19B2 Nimbus-B-1 Meteorological 5-18-68 Mission was aborted because of range safety destruct. RTG heat sources recovered and recycled. SNAP 19B3 Nimbus III Meteorological 4-14-69 RTGs operated for over 2.5 years. ALRH Apollo 11 Lunar Surface 7-14-69 Radioisotope heater units for seismic experimental package. Station was shut down 8-3-69. SNAP-27 Apollo 12 Lunar Surface 11-14-69 RTG operated for about 8 years until station was shut down. SNAP-27 Apollo 13 Lunar Surface 4-11-70 Mission aborted on the way to the moon. RTG re-entered earth's atmosphere and landed in South Pacific Ocean. No radiation was released. SNAP-27 Apollo 14 Lunar Surface 1-31-71 RTG operated for over 6.5 years until station was shut down. SNAP-27 Apollo 15 Lunar Surface 7-26-71 RTG operated for over 6 years until station was shut down. SNAP-19 Pioneer 10 Planetary 3-2-72 RTGs still operating. Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter and is now beyond orbit of Pluto. SNAP-27 Apollo 16 Lunar Surface 4-16-72 RTG operated for about 5.5 years until station was shut down. Transit-RTG "Transit" (Triad-01-1x) Navigational 9-2-72 RTG still operating. SNAP-27 Apollo 17 Lunar Surface 12-7-72 RTG operated for almost 5 years until station was shut down. SNAP-19 Pioneer 11 Planetary 4-5-73 RTGs still operating. Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. SNAP-19 Viking 1 Mars Surface 8-20-75 RTGs operated for over 6 years until lander was shut down. SNAP-19 Viking 2 Mars Surface 9-9-75 RTGs operated for over 4 years until relay link was lost. MHW-RTG LES 8 Communications 3-14-76 RTGs still operating. MHW-RTG LES 9 Communications 3-14-76 RTGs still operating. MHW-RTG Voyager 2 Planetary 8-20-77 RTGs still operating. Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and beyond. MHW-RTG Voyager 1 Planetary 9-5-77 RTGs still operating. Spacecraft successfully operated to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. GPHS-RTG Galileo Planetary 10-8-89 RTGs still operating. Spacecraft en route to Jupiter. GPHS-RTG Ulysses Planetary/Solar 10-6-90 RTG still operating. Spacecraft en route to solar polar flyby. GPHS-RTG Cassini Planetary 10-15-97 RTG still operating. Spacecraft en route to Saturn. ©2001 SPACE.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ***************************************************************** 22 Sellafield emissions predicted to rise ISSUE 2223 Tuesday 26 June 2001 By Charles Clover Review 'will revive nuclear power' RADIOACTIVE emissions from Sellafield will rise over the next three years, despite a treaty signed by John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, three years ago to reduce them steadily, according to a leaked report. It is predicted that emissions to the sea of carcinogenic substances such as plutonium and tritium will peak in 2003 and remain above 1998 levels until 2008. Several plutonium isotopes are among the likely discharges, according to the predictions, confirmed yesterday by the Environment Agency. Plutonium is a substance with no safe level of exposure and even a speck, if it found its way into food for human consumption, would be enough to cause cancer. One of the British Nuclear Fuels documents leaked to Greenpeace and Cumbrians Opposed to the Nuclear Environment says that, in the worst case, discharges could be above legal limits. The predictions were published by Greenpeace on the eve of this week's meeting of signatories to the Ospar treaty, which governs sea pollution in the north-east Atlantic. At a meeting in Sintra, Portugal, in 1998, Mr Prescott, then Environment Secretary, signed up to the "progressive and substantial reductions" of Sellafield discharges, with the aim of concentrations of artificial radioactive substances in the environment being "close to zero" by 2020. Coincidentally, emissions, which are currently all within discharge limits set by the Environment Agency, are predicted to peak by the time of the next meeting of ministers from Ospar countries in 2003. Dr Helen Wallace, Greenpeace nuclear campaigner, said: "Emissions going up is clearly not what most Ospar governments understand by Britain's commitments under the treaty which says that emissions should progressively be going down. A spokesman for BNF said: "The Government should stand up to BNF and make sure they keep their promise. These discharges are polluting countries from Ireland to the Arctic with dangerous radioactivity. We're committed to help the Government reach its commitments under Ospar. "These emissions are partly from processing historic arisings from the nuclear industry over the past 50 years that we are committed to the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate to work off. The figures compiled by Greenpeace conveniently do not show that Magnox reprocessing will end in 2012, well within Ospar's commitment period." Sellafield's Magnox nuclear reactors are all due to closeby 2010. www.telegraph.co.uk. ***************************************************************** 23 Kazakhstan's forgotten nuclear tragedy ireland.com - The Irish Times - IRELAND Tuesday, June 26, 2001 By Olivia Kelleher The effects of nuclear testing on the people of Kazakhstan is one of the world's forgotten tragedies despite the area being described as worse than 116 Chernobyls. This is according to Fiona Corcoran, executive officer of the Chernobyl Orphans Fund. Chernobyl was one terrible accident, but nuclear weapons were deliberately tested for more 40 years in Kazakhstan, where the death rate has exceeded the birth rate. Kazakhstan is the second-largest of the former Soviet republics and possesses enormous untapped fossil fuel reserves, as well as plentiful supplies of other minerals. Ms Corcoran was recently presented with an honorary diploma from the Kazakhstan government, in recognition of her humanitarian work for the people of Semipalatinsk, which was home to a nuclear testing ground. The nuclear testing began in Semipalatinsk in 1949 and ended in 1991. The presence of the site wreaked havoc on the health of the people in the area. Eighty per cent of the 1.2 million people of the Semipalatinsk area suffer from a weak immune system. Infant mortality has grown tenfold since 1950 and statistics for birth defects are much higher than in neighbouring regions. Photographer Yuri Kuidin captured many of the deformities of the people of Semipalatinsk in his book, Kazakhstan Nuclear Tragedy. The pictures do not make comfortable viewing: a hideously deformed foetus born with just one eye; a man born armless who uses his feet to paint scenes of nuclear horror; even a calf with six legs. Ms Corcoran is raising funds to aid an orphanage in Semipalatinsk. "I first went to the orphanage in 1999 and met a woman called Natalayia who runs the place. She turned to me and said `People come, look at the place and never return'. I told her I would be back. I didn't know how I would fund the trip but I had to do something." The orphanage needs funds to feed and clothe the children and to supply urgent medical care. Heating an orphanage that experiences winter temperatures of minus 40 can also be a challenge. Ms Corcoran became involved with the orphanage when she travelled to rescue a baby named Ildar Bashirov, who had a large tumour on the base of his spine. Ildar was operated on in January and is now living with his adopted family in Co Kildare. The orphanage Ildar has left behind receives less than £60,000 from the state each year and houses children like Aliman Kylembayeva, a child with microcephaly described as having a face but no brain. Three-year-old Victoria Iranova has only a forefinger and thumb on her right hand, while Katya Arapetyova's eyes are permanently crossed and her brain is damaged. The Chernobyl Orphans Fund is also raising funds for the Lubitina orphanage in Kharkiv near Chernobyl. The charity aims to make the children of the orphanage self-sufficient and encourages companies to donate sewing machines and gardening equipment on which children can learn practical skills. The charity is involved in a sponsor-a-cow project and has called on schoolchildren and companies to donate the £300 needed to buy one cow. For further information about Chernobyl Orphans Fund, contact Fiona Corcoran at (021) 430 7328 or (087) 242 3148. It can also be contacted at Abbey House, 4 North Abbey Street, North Mall, Cork. 2001 ireland.com ***************************************************************** 24 Amid the rusting hulks of a nuclear graveyard, a plea to help Russia avoid apocalypse © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd By Steve Crawshaw in Snezhnogorsk 26 June 2001 Lethal legacy of the arms race At the end of the Second World War the United States Navy was much bigger and more powerful than the Soviet Union's. To counter this the Soviet Union built many nuclear submarines, and new naval bases and shipyards on the Kola peninsula. The peninsula is strategically important because it is close to the Atlantic and its coast does not freeze. The Northern Fleet has five bases on the Kola peninsula and nuclear waste is stored at most of them. The first Soviet nuclear submarine began service in the Northern Fleet in 1958. The fleet grew rapidly to become the world's largest. The former Soviet Union built a total of 247 nuclear submarines and five military nuclear-powered battle ships. There are 67 working nuclear submarines in the Northern Fleet, but a number of them remain inactive due to economic difficulties. There are five shipyards for repairing and maintaining new nuclear submarines in Murmansk and Archangel counties. Nuclear waste is also stored at the yards. Solid nuclear waste is stored at 11 places along the coast of the Kola peninsula and in Severodvinsk. All of the facilities are full and, at some of them, solid nuclear waste is stored outside without any kind of protection, according to a report by the Norwegian pressure group Bellona. Liquid radioactive waste is stored at almost all of the naval bases. Many of the storage tanks are full or in very poor condition. More than 130 Russian nuclear submarines have been taken out of service, 88 of which belong to the Northern Fleet. There have been many accidents on the Fleet's nuclear submarines. Three have sunk, and four serious fires have killed crew members. Russia operates eight nuclear ice-breakers, although two have been taken out of operation. Leyla Linton On the north coast of the desolate Kola peninsula – bare granite and low-growing birch trees for mile after desolate mile – three nuclear submarines lie rusting in the icy waters of Snezhnogorsk. These submarines will never again be used; in that sense, their presence is good news. But those with responsibility for looking after them fear that these vessels, and dozens of others like them, could yet cause a catastrophe which would make the Chernobyl disaster pale into insignificance. Two years ago, when he was Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook promised £5m to help with the nuclear clean-up in the Murmansk region, as part of a larger programme in the former Soviet Union, where environmental considerations always came bottom of the list. None of the money has been delivered; a crucial set of talks between the two sides last week ended inconclusively. But if the hesitation continues for much longer, Russians believe it may be too late. Yuri Yevdokimov, governor of the Murmansk region, says: "I don't want to be rude. But I think that few people in Europe have appreciated the nature of the real risk." Until recently, the Nerpa submarine repair yard at Snezhnogorsk was absolutely off limits. Even now, you sense that the plant managers are wary of their own bravery in opening the rusting gates. And yet they reckon they have little option. They want the rest of the world to help them stave off the danger of nuclear apocalypse – and they believe that the danger is real. Pavel Steblin, director of the plant, says: "God forbid that a tragedy should happen here. But if it does, the world would be involved." In theory, Western countries already acknowledge the dangers posed by this rusting nuclear graveyard. British officials argue, however, that Russian bureaucracy is obstructive; there is said to be a lack of transparency, and the legal framework, especially for liability guarantees, is unclear.The only thing both sides agree on is that if something goes wrong, it could go very wrong indeed. Russian officials talk of "200 Hiroshimas". Snezhnogorsk is just north-west of Murmansk, a city of half a million inhabitants and endless crumbling apartment blocks. Here the economic turnaround that is getting under way in other parts of Russia is still a distant prospect. We are well inside the Arctic Circle, and it is broad daylight at midnight. Even that strange, never-fading light fails to lend Murmansk real charm, however. This is a place of Soviet-style desolation. This week the local electricity company has threatened to cut off the power supply to the base because it is almost a year in arrears. If the pumps which keep the submarines afloat with compressed air are switched off, there is a danger of the vessels sinking at the piers where they are moored. The Snezhnogorsk submarines are only part of a much larger problem in the Murmansk region. There are 200 nuclear reactors and 80 nuclear submarines waiting to be decommissioned, throughout the region; the Northern Fleet has its main base at Severomorsk, west of Murmansk. The Lepse, an old Soviet supply ship in the Murmansk bay, has hundreds of spent nuclear fuel assemblies on board. Alexander Ruzankin, chairman of the nuclear conversion and radiation safety committee for the region, says: "I don't know of any technology that could treat that boat properly." And yet, if the rusting Lepse were to sink, it would unleash radioacitivity on a catastrophic scale. At Andreyeva Bay, further west, 20,000 spent fuel rods stored in rusty containers will be equally difficult to deal with. The region is a catalogue of environmental nightmares. According to Mr Ruzankin, submarines are being decommissioned at the rate of about 15 a year; to do it safely is a hugely expensive business. The Russians calculate that a total of $1.5bn is needed to get the nuclear problems of the Barents Sea region safely under control. Russia itself, it is generally agreed, cannot possibly afford to foot the whole bill. Other money comes from the Norwegians, the Americans, and the European Union. Russian officials insist that the problem of openness and access, so much argued over in the past two years, is "now solved". Frankness about environmental problems is much greater than it used to be; the attempted cover-up of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was famously damaging. Buttaboos remain. When the former Russian naval captain and nuclear inspector Aleksandr Nikitin exposed the problem of nuclear waste in the Murmansk region for a Norwegian environmentalist organisation in 1996, the authorities reacted furiously and charged him with espionage. He was eventually acquitted on all charges and released. Even now, however, old habits die hard. Soviet-style nerves are on edge when foreigners enter this hallowed ground. We are allowed to look at parts of the yard's operation, including a submarine conning tower awaiting dismantling and a machine that crunches up the submarine's parts before spitting out twisted shards. But we are forbidden to photograph the three submarines floating forlornly in the harbour, including one from which the nuclear reactor has been torn, leaving a gaping hole. "I have ordered it. That is why," was the only reasonMr Steblin would give for the ban. Bafflingly, he changed his mind as the result of an old-fashioned Soviet-style banquet, full of compulsory vodka toasts. In response to a bombastic toast from The Independent, Mr Steblin suddenly declared that his previous ruling was overturned. Of such illogical moments is this country still made. It was from near here that the Kursk submarine sailed on its fatal final voyage last year – a human tragedy that could yet have serious environmental knock-on effects. But the remaining problems could be worse by far. Mr Ruzankin is impatient both with his own government and with the European failure to acknowledge the potential problem for the rest of the world. He also suggests that the Kremlin is almost as reluctant to focus on the problem as the rest of Europe. Nobody in Murmansk or Snezhnogorsk can be unaware of the literally explosive problems that lurk on their doorstep. But, as Mr Ruzankin points out: "Moscow is far away; we're next door." ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************