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08/26/01 ****     RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)       **** VOL 9.205
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                    NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
 
 1  Radiobioassay Protocols for Responding to Abnormal Intakes of 
 2  Nordic nations protest about UK’s radioactive emissions and 
 3  Editorial: Resurrect search for waste site
 4  S.C. going nose to nose with government again 
 5  Utilities question nuclear power plant sites 
 6  Hodges takes win-win position on plutonium 
 7  Invitation to comment on Draft Regulatory Standard C-210, 
 8  DJ Environmentalists Ask NRC To Stop Plutonium Fuel Plant 
 9  Uranium waste found on ranch 
10  Bush's Energy Plan Bares Industry Clout 
11  Funding cuts hit birth defects monitoring 
12  Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe Richard
13  S.C. governor calls for a fight over plutonium
14  In These Times 25/21-22 -- Nuke Train
15  Clinton questions proposed nuclear dump in Nevada
16  S.C. won't take Colo. nuke waste
17  LETTERS: A problem more serious than Yucca Mountain
18  Environmental Racism Shifts the Costs of Industry to the Poor
19  Real solutions to N-waste needed 

                    NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
 
 1  Wildlife finds safe haven on dangerous acres Cold War-era 
 2  Russian governor warns of radioactive contamination of rivers   
 3  Ottawa firm halts imports of 'bomb-grade' uranium
 4  GOP, federal officials to meet on SRS 
 5  Plutonium makes strange bedfellows 
 6  India to Take First Step Towards Nuclear Weaponization 
 7  Plutonium cleanup plans in limbo
 8  Russia hurries Kursk salvage to hide missile 
 9  DOE will postpone shipments to SRS 
10  Report says safety oversight lacking for Hanford tanks
11  Plutonium Shipments in S.C. Suspended

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                     NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
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 1 Radiobioassay Protocols for Responding to Abnormal Intakes of 
Radionuclides

CNSC - Information Bulletins
 
[Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] <img
   
Information Bulletin
 		 		
01-12           
2001-08-17              
 		
Subject: Invitation to comment on Draft Regulatory Guide C-147, 
 
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is issuing for 
public review and comment Draft Regulatory Guide C-147, 
<I>Radiobioassay Protocols for Responding to Abnormal Intakes of 
Radionuclides</I>.
 
The proposed guide is intended to help licensees of the CNSC 
ascertain and control radiation exposures and doses to workers in 
accordance with regulatory requirements, including the Radiation 
Protection Regulations and any relevant licence conditions. The 
document describes two radiobioassay protocols that may be used 
by CNSC licensees to respond to situations where persons who 
perform duties in connection with activities authorized by the 
Nuclear Safety and Control Act and regulations may have 
experienced an abnormal intake of radioactive material; and also 
provides advice on how to collect and handle radiobioassay 
samples.
 
The CNSC invites interested persons to assist in the further 
development of Draft Regulatory Guide C-147 by commenting in 
writing on the document's content and potential usefulness. 
Please respond by November 30, 2001. Direct your comments to the 
postal or e-mail address below, referencing file 1-8-8-147.
 
The CNSC will take the comments received on the document into 
account when developing it further. These comments will be 
subject to the provisions of the federal Access to Information 
Act.
 
Draft Regulatory Guide C-147, <I>Radiobioassay Protocols for 
Responding to Abnormal Intakes of Radionuclides</I>, can be 
viewed on the CNSC website (www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca). To order a 
printed copy of the document in English or French, please 
contact:
 
Operations Assistant Regulatory Documents Group Canadian Nuclear 
Safety Commission P.O. Box 1046, Station B 280 Slater Street 
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5S9 CANADA
 
Telephone: (613) 996-9505 Facsimile: (613) 995-5086 E-mail:        
reg@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca
 		 		 		   		 		
© Canadian Nuclear Safety 
*****************************************************************
 2  Nordic nations protest about UK’s radioactive emissions and 
reaffirm emissions trading commitment       
 
edie news:  

Environment ministers from North European countries and 
autonomous regions have written a joint letter of complaint to 
the British Prime Minister concerning radioactive emissions from 
the Sellafield reactor and the same nations recommitted to 
establishing a Baltic Sea trading scheme for emissions. 
		 		 		 	 		
Meeting in Ivalo in northern Finland on 21 August, environment 
ministers from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland and the 
autonomous territories of Greenland, Faroe Islands and Åland 
expressed their worry in a joint letter to British PM, Tony 
Blair, over reports that technetium 99 has been found as far 
north as the Kola peninsula, the Barents Sea and Svalbard.

 “The emissions from Sellafield are no longer just a threat to 
the environment in the North Sea but also for the extremely 
vulnerable environment in the Barents,” Norwegian minister for 
environmental protection Siri Bjerke said of the substance which 
takes thousands of years to biodegrade and may cause biological 
damage in the long term. The radioactive material is carried by 
the sea currents and originates from the British nuclear 
processing plant Sellafield, which had concerned the Norwegian 
environmental authorities for years.

 Another important discussion at the meeting of Nordic 
environment ministers was environmental co-operation with Russia. 
The ministers, who also visited Murmansk in northern Russia, 
expressed grave concern about Russian plans to import nuclear 
waste (see related story).

 In the same week, the Nordic Council, which represents the five 
nations and Danish and Finnish territories said it was going 
ahead with a pilot project for trading in environmental quotas in 
the Baltic region (see related story), the world’s first such 
pilot project. “At the Nordic Council’s extra session in June, we 
recommended to the Nordic governments that they promote the 
introduction of green accounts for energy, establish a 
price-fixing system for green taxes and duties levied on 
electricity production and set up a project to test the Kyoto 
mechanisms in the Baltic region,” commented the President of the 
Nordic Council, Svend Erik Hovmand. “The Baltic environment and 
energy ministers supported the proposals, so does the EU 
environment commissioner and the Nordic Investment Bank is now 
setting up an ‘environmental bourse’ for trading emission quotas 
in the region.” 
		 	 
© Faversham House Group Ltd 2001. This article may be copied or 
*****************************************************************
 3  Editorial: Resurrect search for waste site
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
August 24, 2001 
 
It's no secret that scientific considerations have been absent in 
deciding where 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste should be 
stored. Still, it was refreshing to see former President Clinton 
not mince any words Friday about the controversial Yucca Mountain 
Project. In an exclusive interview with the Sun, Clinton 
questioned whether Yucca Mountain was the best and most remote 
site to store nuclear waste, and said that Congress should 
consider revisiting other sites that may be safer. Clinton got in 
a sly jab at the Bush administration, suggesting it should 
promote a more remote location: "The last time I looked at the 
map, the Texas site was farther away from any populated area than 
the Yucca site."

 At one time Deaf Smith County, Texas; Hanford, Wash.; and Yucca 
Mountain all were being studied to see which site would be the 
best to store nuclear waste, but in 1987 Congress targeted Nevada 
as the only place to be considered. At the time Texas was erased 
as a possible repository, it wasn't a coincidence that George W. 
Bush's father was vice president. The political landscape has 
changed significantly in the past few months, and Clinton noted 
that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's elevation to assistant majority 
leader is the state's best chance of stopping a repository.

 Divorcing politics from the issue has been next to impossible, 
but there still is hope. For instance, scientists at Argonne 
National Laboratory-West in Idaho are making progress on a 
technological advance that could render high-level nuclear waste 
less harmful, which could eliminate the need for a repository. We 
hope that more members of Congress will consider the issue the 
same way that Bill Clinton is doing.
 
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 4  S.C. going nose to nose with government again 

| The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC The Associated Press "> The 
Associated Press "> 

Sunday, August 26, 2001         <img
    
By Jeffrey Collins
 The Associated Press 

Gov. Jim Hodges says he will personally block shipments of the 
radioactive plutonium from entering the state if necessary. 

Gov. Jim Hodges says he will personally block shipments of the 
radioactive plutonium from entering the state if necessary. 

COLUMBIA | It probably won't lead to armed conflict or articles 
of secession, but South Carolina is thumbing its nose at the 
federal government once again. This time the battle's over 
plutonium, not slavery or tariffs. And the darling of Dixie is 
taking her cue from Idaho, whose governor successfully stared 
down Washington nearly 15 years ago. 

Gov. Jim Hodges says he will "lie down in front of the trucks" if 
necessary to prevent shipments of the radioactive material taken 
from nuclear weapons from making it to the Savannah River Site 
near Aiken. He has ordered state troopers to practice blocking 
roads Wednesday. 

The brinkmanship effort is part of the state's plan to get a 
binding, written agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy 
about when the plutonium has to leave the state. 

About 50 tons of plutonium is coming to SRS so workers can 
convert it into power plant fuel or immobilize it in glass rods 
for storage in Nevada. Hodges' staff now fears the current White 
House may back out of the deal, leaving the plutonium unprocessed 
and kept in a facility not designed for permanent storage. 

The plutonium shipments were planned to begin sometime after Oct. 
1 on a convoy of 18-wheelers from Colorado, although the Energy 
Department has promised to suspend shipments until an agreement 
can be reached with the state. 

"We must have a legally enforceable agreement with concrete 
milestones and timetables that would ensure a clear and timely 
exit strategy," Hodges wrote to President Bush last week. 

For its part, DOE is willing to negotiate with the state as long 
as the talks are "constructive, rational and logical," spokesman 
Joe Davis said. Hodges' threat isn't too far out of line for a 
state whose only native son to become vice president - John C. 
Calhoun - wrote an article in office saying the S.C. General 
Assembly could nullify federal laws. 

Now, Hodges is taking up the states' rights banner, although he 
prefers to characterize his action in more caring terms. 

"I am worried about the health and safety of South Carolinians," 
Hodges said. "Plutonium is dangerous stuff linked to cancer and 
other health problems." 

Most of Hodges' critics in the state only find a fault in how he 
is protesting the plutonium shipments. 

"Now is the time to stop talking about laying in the road and 
stop talking about lawsuits," said Rep Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., 
whose district includes part of the Savannah River Site. 

State Attorney General Charlie Condon wants to sue the Energy 
Department instead of taking what he calls the "George Wallace 
approach," referring to the Alabama governor who stood in the 
doorway at the University of Alabama in 1963 defying a federal 
order to allow blacks. 

But unlike Calhoun and Wallace, Hodges' stance may pay off. 
Blocking the state's borders worked for Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus 
in 1987 when his move forced DOE officials to negotiate a deal to 
move radioactive materials out of the state. 

Like the plutonium slated for South Carolina, the materials 
destined for Idaho at the time were said to be a temporary 
shipment from Rocky Flats, a now-defunct nuclear weapons plant in 
Colorado. 

For years, the Energy Department has been trying to ship all of 
its waste out of Rocky Flats and close the facility. But critics 
contend the department is just trying to shift its problems from 
Colorado. 


The federal government knew it had the right to still ship the 
waste to Idaho because the U.S. Constitution forces states to 
uphold federal laws. But to defy a governor trying to protect his 
citizens would have looked terrible, Boise State University 
political scientist John Freemuth said. 

"A little fed bashing can't hurt," he said. "And quite frankly 
the DOE has been horrible on keeping its promises." 

Andrus said the art of subtle negotiation is lost on the federal 
government. "You've got to create a crisis to get them to pay 
attention," he said. That's what Hodges is banking on, University 
of South Carolina historian Walter Edgar said. 

"I believe the governor will stand in the road, and you will see 
thousands of South Carolinians standing with him," he said. 

SRS has long been the state's biggest employer with a work force 
of 25,000 in its heyday, down to 14,000 now. The 310-square-mile 
site was founded in the early 1950s, displacing more than 6,000 
residents. 

No one voiced concern over the environmental impact of the site 
or the materials brought into the state for years. 

But South Carolina has tired of its status as a dumping ground, 
Hodges says. 

Hodges said he hopes it doesn't come down to him blocking a 
convoy of trucks. "But I have to protect the interests of South 
Carolina and the nation," he said. 

  All content © 2001 The Sun News
*****************************************************************
 5  Utilities question nuclear power plant sites 

In the Carolinas | The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC
 
Saturday, August 25, 2001           
    
SOUTH CAROLINA 
COLUMBIA 

South Carolina's three investor-owned utilities are questioning 
U.S. Rep. Henry Brown's interest in studying whether to build 
nuclear power plants at sites owned by the U.S. Energy 
Department. 

Such properties include the 200,000-acre Savannah River Site in 
parts of Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell counties. 

Brown, a freshman Republican whose district includes Horry and 
Georgetown counties, included the call for a study in the federal 
energy bill that the House approved in late July. 

"My amendment didn't name the Savannah River Site, but I hope the 
study will explore the possibility of using it for nuclear power 
plants," Brown said Thursday. 

Brown hopes to promote nuclear energy as the best means of 
meeting the nation's insatiable demand for energy without relying 
more heavily on imports. 

Yet the three utilities - Scana Corp., Progress Energy and Duke 
Energy - believe the river site is hardly an ideal site for a 
nuclear power plant. 

"The most logical place for a new nuclear plant is next to an 
existing nuclear plant," said Becky McSwain, a spokeswoman for 
Charlotte-based Duke Energy. McSwain said existing nuclear plants 
already have access to trained personnel, storage, roads and 
transmission lines. 

"The Savannah River Site is a very different animal," she added. 
"It has never been used to produce power." 

Most utilities throughout the Southeast, including those in South 
Carolina, already produce more energy than they use. 

  All content © 2001 The Sun News
*****************************************************************
 6   Hodges takes win-win position on plutonium 

| The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC
 
    Sunday, August 26, 2001           
    
POLITICAL SAVVY 
LEE BANDY 

President Bush owes his nomination and election to South 
Carolina. 

Had he lost the primary here last year to Arizona Sen. John 
McCain, he would still be governor of Texas. He knows it. His 
staff knows it. 

So what does the Palmetto State get in return? Tons of surplus 
plutonium to be shipped here and stored at the Savannah River 
Site. 

Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges is furious. He's threatening to use 
state troopers to block roads into the SRS site and even to stand 
in front of the trucks himself to keep the radioactive material 
out. 

He can't lose. 

At issue is an agreement worked out with the Clinton 
administration to get rid of the excess plutonium from Cold 
War-era warheads and plutonium found at various weapons 
facilities around the country. Under the plan, some 33 metric 
tons would be shipped to SRS and transformed into mixed oxide 
fuel to power civilian nuclear reactors. 

An additional 17 metric tons would be immobilized in glass 
containers and eventually buried in Nevada. 

The Bush administration has put both programs on hold. In its 
frenzied budget-cutting, the White House erased the $159 million 
slated for SRS projects, and so shattered federal promises to 
South Carolina. Hodges fears SRS will become the final dump. 
Caring for plutonium is problematic - it is radioactive, 
fissionable, toxic and combustible. 

The first shipments are set for October. Unless a legally binding 
agreement can be reached, Hodges says he will block the 
shipments. He has ordered troopers and other public safety 
workers to hold exercises Wednesday to practice how they might 
block the radioactive waste. 

The controversy has caused political heartburn for Republican 
gubernatorial candidates. Two of them, Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler and 
Attorney General Charlie Condon, served as state co-chairs of the 
Bush campaign. They've sided with Hodges to keep the plutonium 
out of the state but have taken issue with his plans to block the 
roadways. 

Hodges has the upper hand, however. He has succeeded in putting 
the controversy in the context of the state vs. the all-intrusive 
federal government, a stance normally played to advantage by 
Republican candidates. 

"What this allows is for the governor ... to say to South 
Carolinians that he is standing firm to protect the state and its 
citizens from encroachment from the federal government," said 
Clemson University professor Bruce Ransom. 

Bush political operatives must recognize the political 
ramifications of this issue. It's win-win for Hodges. Whatever 
they do - even if they back down - it gives Hodges political 
advantage in the governors' race. He can't lose. 

Hodges jumped in the fray early and took a strategic position 
that cast him in a favorable light among soccer moms in suburbia, 
a playing field that the GOP largely has had to itself. 

"Hodges is on the right side of the issue in this fight," said 
Francis Marion University analyst Neal Thigpen. "South 
Carolinians by and large don't trust the federal government. I 
don't see where Hodges can go wrong with respect to his own 
re-election plans. Smart move. It can only benefit him." 

Once again, the GOP has underestimated Hodges and his political 
acumen. 

_ The (Columbia) State 

  All content © 2001 The Sun News
*****************************************************************
 7  Invitation to comment on Draft Regulatory Standard C-210, 
Maintenance Programs for Nuclear Power Plants.

CNSC - Information Bulletins
 
 	  [Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] <img

2001-08-17              
 
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is issuing for 
public review and comment Draft Regulatory Standard C-210, 
<I>Maintenance Programs for Nuclear Power Plants</I>.
 
The proposed standard describes the maintenance program for the 
structures, systems and components of a nuclear power plant that 
a CNSC licensee shall develop, submit or implement when required 
to do so by a condition of the licence to operate the plant.
 
The CNSC invites interested persons to assist in the further 
development of the Draft Regulatory Standard C-210 by commenting 
in writing on the document's content and potential usefulness. 
Please respond by November 30, 2001. Direct your comments to the 
postal or e-mail address below, referencing file 1-8-8-210.
 
The CNSC will take the comments received on the document into 
account when developing the regulatory standard further. These 
comments will be subject to the provisions of the federal Access 
to Information Act.
 
Draft Regulatory Standard C-210, <I>Maintenance Programs for 
Nuclear Power Plants</I>, can be viewed on the CNSC website 
(www.nuclearsafety.gc.ca). To order a printed copy of the 
document in English or French, please contact:
 
Operations Assistant Regulatory Documents Group Canadian Nuclear 
Safety Commission P.O. Box 1046, Station B 280 Slater Street 
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5S9 CANADA
 
Telephone: (613) 996-9505 Facsimile: (613) 995-5086 E-mail: 
reg@cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca
		 		 		   		 		
© Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission 2000 Notice to users of this 
*****************************************************************
 8   DJ Environmentalists Ask NRC To Stop Plutonium Fuel Plant 

PowerMarketers.com: Energy News From Dow Jones
	
 Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones &Company, Inc. 	
 
Dow Jones Newswires ( August 23, 2001 ) 
--> 
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Environmental groups have asked the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission not to grant a construction license for a 
South Carolina plant that would turn plutonium into fuel for 
nuclear reactors. 

The request Wednesday by Georgians Against Nuclear Energy, the 
Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and Environmentalists 
Inc. raised new questions about the future of a Clinton-era 
nonproliferation program to dispose of American and Russian 
plutonium. 

"This project is very important," said Tom Kaish, spokesman for 
DCS, the consortium of Duke Energy (DUK) unit Duke Power, Stone 
&Webster Inc. and French reprocessing company Compagnie Generale 
des Matieres Nucleaires (F.CGM) that will design and run the 
conversion plant. "We are going to take weapons grade plutonium 
off the street and get it into a form in which it can't be used 
again," said Kaish. 

DCS has asked the NRC to ignore the environmentalists' challenge, 
Kaish said. An NRC administrative law judges is expected to rule 
on the matter in the next two to three weeks, the commission 
said. 

The DCS consortium was awarded a $130 million contract in 1999 to 
design and seek a license for a facility, to be built at the 
Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, 
that would convert U.S. plutonium into fuel for two of Duke's 
commercial nuclear reactors. 

But the future of the DCS facility, and another intended to 
convert Russian plutonium, appeared to be in trouble this week, 
after a report in The New York Times indicated the Bush 
administration was backing away from the project. 

The news drew an uproar from South Carolina Democrats and 
Republicans, who are concerned the state could end up a dumping 
ground for weapons-grade plutonium if the conversion program 
stalls. 

Officials from Gov. Jim Hodges' office of environmental policy 
were scheduled to meet Thursday with Department of Energy 
Undersecretary Bob Card. 

"We want the DOE to create a timetable for when it (plutonium) 
will leave," said Courtney Ownings, a spokeswoman for the 
governor's office. "And a promise that the conversion facility 
will be built." 

The Savannah River Site is one of the state's largest employers. 

The Energy Department maintains it hasn't scrapped the program, 
under which U.S. and Russian plutonium would be converted into 
mixed oxide fuel or immobilized in glass cylinders to be stored 
in a permanent waste repository. 

"We have a record of a decision on this, and that is what we are 
committed to," said DOE spokesman Joe Davis. 

Environmentalists, however, opposes the plan to convert plutonium 
as a dangerous and toxic process that supports the nuclear 
industry. 

"The more people look at MOX, the more it looks iffy," said Glenn 
Carrol, coordinator for Georgians Against Nuclear Energy. 

Several tons of plutonium are scheduled to arrive in the state in 
mid-October. The original deal with DOE included storing the 
plutonium in an empty reactor until the conversion facility was 
built. 

-By Jennifer Morrow, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4377; 
mailto:jennifer.morrow@dowjones.com 

*****************************************************************
 9  Uranium waste found on ranch 

Star-Telegram | 

Saturday, August 25, 2001                         <

By NEIL STRASSMAN 
Star-Telegram Staff Writer 

FORT WORTH - A 22-ton shipment of low-level radioactive waste - 
lost for nearly a month - was found this week on a North Texas 
cattle ranch near the Oklahoma border.

 The material - the waste from nuclear-fuel manufacturing that is 
the consistency of white toothpaste - had been sent from Illinois 
on July 25 but never arrived at its West Texas destination in 
Andrews County, where it was due two days later.

 A tip led sheriff's deputies Wednesday to the waste pile on a 
ranch 20 miles northeast of Gainesville, officials said.

 Officials said the waste had been removed by Friday but that the 
site would be tested for contamination.

 The waste apparently was dumped by a driver employed by 
Richland, Ohio-based Wills Trucking of Richland, Ohio, officials 
said.

 "It was shipped and never received," said Jan Strasma, a 
spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Chicago. "The 
material doesn't pose a threat to human health from a radiation 
point of view and doesn't require special handling or disposal."

 Even so, most landfills will not accept waste that is slightly 
radioactive, Strasma said. The material was being shipped to 
Waste Control Specialists, a Texas company licensed to process 
and store radioactive waste.

 Wills Trucking officals in Ohio could not be reached for 
comment. Ron Wallace, service center manager at the Wills 
terminal in Gainesville, declined to comment.

 The shipment contained 500 parts per million of natural uranium, 
which is used in the creation of fuel for commercial nuclear 
reactors. The waste originated at Honeywell International in 
Metropolis, Ill., a company that processes uranium ore.

 The 44,480-pound load - about 19 pounds of which was uranium - 
was made up of 80 percent calcium fluoride and 20 percent lime, 
according to a commission report.

 Cooke County Chief Deputy Jim Carter said the ranch owner was 
unaware that the waste had been dumped on his property.

 "A friend of the driver worked on the ranch and the driver 
convinced him the material wasn't dangerous," Carter said.

 A ranch hand led deputies to the site Wednesday evening. It was 
not clear when the material was dumped and officials have been 
unable to locate the driver, Carter said.

 Mike Hull of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission 
in Arlington said the waste appeared to have been piled on 
plastic.

 "It was about a 10-foot circle about six feet high," Hull said. 
"It had been covered with dirt."

 Neil Strassman, (817) 390-7657 strass@star-telegram.com
 
© 2001 Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas       
*****************************************************************
 10  Bush's Energy Plan Bares Industry Clout 

[Los Angeles Times - latimes.com]      [latimes.com advertising

  August 26, 2001     	

SUNDAY REPORT

 [*] Cheney-led task force consulted extensively with corporate 
executives. Its findings boosted their interests. Environmental 
groups had little voice.

(Associated Press) 

By JUDY PASTERNAK, Times Staff Writer

 WASHINGTON -- Throughout February and March, executives 
representing electricity, coal, natural gas and nuclear interests 
paraded quietly in small groups to a building in the White House 
compound, where the new administration's energy policy was being 
written. 

Some firms sent emissaries more than once. Enron Corp., which 
trades electricity and natural gas, once got three top officials 
into a private session with Vice President Dick Cheney, who 
headed the energy task force. Cheney did "a lot of listening," 
according to a company spokesman. 

Many of the executives at the White House meetings were generous 
donors to the Republican Party, and some of their key lobbyists 
were freshly hired from the Bush presidential campaign. They 
found a receptive task force. Among its ranks were three former 
energy industry executives and consultants. The task force also 
included a Bush agency head who was involved in the sensitive 
discussions while his wife took in thousands of dollars in fees 
from three electricity producers. 

The final report, issued May 16, boosted the nation's energy 
industries. It called for additional coal production, and five 
days later the world's largest coal company, Peabody Energy, 
issued a public stock offering, raising about $60 million more 
than expected. While Peabody was preparing to go public, its 
chief executive and vice president participated in a March 1 
meeting with Cheney. 

The report also touted new gas extraction technologies. An early 
draft noted controversy over a gas recovery technique offered by 
Halliburton Co., the firm Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000, before 
becoming vice president. The plan released to the public deleted 
the negative language. 

Cheney continues to resist demands by Congress to disclose who 
met with administration officials during the 106 days earlier 
this year when the energy plan was fashioned. The private nature 
of the work fostered candid and creative discussions "from new 
and unused quarters," said Cheney Press Secretary Juleanna Glover 
Weiss. 

But interviews and a review of task force documents show how the 
administration relied on familiar faces who stood to benefit from 
the process. 

Just once, the task force departed from its pledge to keep secret 
the names of people invited to pitch their opinions face to face. 
After producers of power from the sun, wind and geothermal heat 
met with Cheney, officials led the group to the front of the 
White House and waiting reporters. 

The date was May 15, just one day before the plan was sent to 
President Bush. 

Others whose views might conflict with industry--the Union of 
Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, even federal agency 
staff--found themselves shut out or overruled. 

In the sessions they held while they worked on the plan, Cheney 
and his staff generally heard a message reinforcing their own 
mind-set: Free markets, fewer pollution rules and expanded 
development of traditional fuels. 

Using less energy and energy in different forms were notions 
mentioned but not emphasized. "What do you expect?" asked one 
energy industry insider whose colleagues met with Cheney. "These 
people make their living from coal and natural gas and nuclear 
power. Do you think they're going to push for solar and wind?" 

The influences are evident in the final product. 

The report focuses on easing regulation for oil and gas drilling, 
coal-fired generators, nuclear power plants and transmission of 
electricity, while providing energy assistance to poor 
households. Though the plan also backs alternative fuels and 
conservation, it gives the most support to increasing the supply 
of traditional sources of energy. 

One passage adopts word for word a proposal on global warming 
from the U.S. Energy Assn.'s National Energy Strategy, which is 
dominated by trade groups. The section suggests encouraging other 
countries to build factories with clean technologies sold by U.S. 
companies. 

Even basic assumptions in the report were tailored to industry's 
measure. 

A briefing paper prepared for a March 19 task force meeting with 
Bush said that, "on the whole, U.S. energy markets are working 
well, allocating resources and preventing shortages." But two 
months later, the final task force report proclaimed that 
"America faces the most serious energy shortage since the oil 
embargoes of the 1970s." 

The energy situation hadn't changed. One staffer recalls seeing a 
memo that discussed "utilizing" California's rolling blackouts 
and the past summer's high-priced gasoline to press for more 
drilling for gas and oil. 

The task force began work in late January, nine days after Bush's 
inauguration. 

By all accounts, the vice president dominated the meetings. 
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham; Bush's chief economic advisor, 
Lawrence B. Lindsey; and Environmental Protection Agency Chief 
Christie Whitman were the others with the most to say, one 
administration official said. But everyone jumped in on matters 
outside his or her own immediate jurisdiction. 

There was no shortage of private energy experience. Besides 
Cheney's stint as Halliburton's chief executive, Commerce 
Secretary Don Evans ran an oil company and Lindsey served on an 
Enron advisory board. 

The committee still gathers on occasion, most recently last 
month, to monitor progress of its recommendations. The House of 
Representatives passed an energy measure that reflects the plan. 
Once the Senate votes next month and the two houses of Congress 
sit down to negotiate a final bill, "we'll be bringing a lot of 
pressure to bear," Weiss said. "Our objective is to get that 
legislation as close to the policy as possible." 

To Howard "Bud" Ris, who heads the Union of Concerned Scientists, 
the process represents an opportunity lost. He disagrees with the 
report's conclusions but says he would have felt better if task 
force members and staff had thoroughly explored all sides. 

"They should have done a really rigorous review. They foreclosed 
all kinds of options." 

Electricity
 
If any group had the White House wired, it was the electricity 
industry. 

The director of its major lobbying arm, the Edison Electric 
Institute, roomed at Yale University with George W. Bush. 
Electricity generators and marketers contributed $19.7 million to 
Republicans since 1998, roughly double what they gave Democrats, 
according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And electricity 
companies negotiated contracts with administration friends, 
political operatives and, in one case, a family member. 

Take Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National 
Committee. In the spring of 2000, the Bush campaign recruited him 
to help with strategy. 

A year later, as a lobbyist for several electricity producers, he 
pushed Bush and Cheney to renege on a campaign promise to 
restrict power plant emissions of carbon dioxide. The gas has 
been linked to global warming. 

On March 1, Barbour sent a sternly worded memo on the subject to 
Cheney. "A moment of truth is arriving," the note began. 
Complying with carbon dioxide limits would be so expensive that 
Bush should reverse his position, Barbour argued. 

"Clinton-Gore policies meant less energy and more expensive 
energy," he wrote. "Most Americans thought Bush-Cheney would mean 
more energy, and more affordable energy." 

Within weeks, Cheney's task force had adopted the same reasoning 
on carbon dioxide. Bush cited the task force position when he 
announced in March that he had changed his mind. 

The National Electric Reliability Council, an industry trade 
group, hired former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot as a Washington 
representative. Racicot was a close Bush advisor during the 
tumultuous postelection days in Florida. 

Racicot said he met with Cheney and his energy director, Andrew 
Lundquist, on the subject of the EPA's forcing old plants to 
update their clean air equipment. 

The task force report suggested that the Justice Department 
consider dropping lawsuits it has already brought for alleged 
violations. 

Three electricity companies employ Diane Allbaugh as a lobbyist. 
She is married to Joe Allbaugh, the only member of Bush's 
so-called iron triangle of trusted Texas cohorts to serve on the 
energy task force. During meetings of the panel, Joe Allbaugh 
always took a chair at one end of the table, with Abraham to his 
right and Whitman to his left. He serves by virtue of his 
position as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 

In her most recent disclosure reports in January, Diane Allbaugh 
said that the three firms--Reliant Energy, Entergy and TXU, paid 
her $20,000 apiece in the previous three months. She wrote that 
she did no lobbying on their behalf. The companies say she 
performed other consulting duties. 

Reliant spokesman Richard Wheatley said the company is "actively 
supporting" the energy plan, but Diane Allbaugh's "minimal 
assignments have not involved the task force, specifically to 
avoid any specter or allegation that there is a conflict of 
interest." She is a consultant on "Texas-related" issues, he 
said. 

Spokeswomen for TXU and Entergy said Diane Allbaugh's work for 
them is likewise restricted to their Texas operations. 

Meanwhile, her husband, Joe Allbaugh, has participated in task 
force talks with a direct bearing on the energy companies' 
interests generally, such as environmental rules for power plants 
and electricity deregulation--a specialty of his wife's. 

At least twice he was privy to updates from economic advisor 
Lindsey on California's malfunctioning market, where Reliant 
stands accused by the state of overcharging. The company denies 
any wrongdoing. 

Joe Allbaugh's spokeswoman, Christi Harlan, said that nothing 
"about the situation would suggest that the director would need 
to seek ethics guidance" and added that his wife's lobbying 
reports "are going to have to speak for themselves." 

Diane Allbaugh declined comment. Visited at the townhouse that 
the Allbaughs bought in March from the Cheneys, she said: "I 
appreciate the effort you've gone to, but I don't think we're 
going to talk." 

In 1996, the Dallas Morning News reported that she represented 
clients with interests in pending Texas state deregulation of 
telecommunications and utilities markets, while her husband 
served as then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff. At the time, Bush said 
he was troubled "if it creates a public perception that something 
unfair is taking place." 

At the time, she wrote the governor's counsel that she was 
withdrawing from her contracts. And Bush instituted a policy that 
division heads and senior aides could not be married to 
registered lobbyists, according to Texas newspapers. 

As president, Bush has no special guidelines beyond those of the 
Office of Government Ethics, said White House spokeswoman Claire 
Buchan. These regulations appear less stringent, prohibiting 
participation only if a particular matter applying to a specific 
company is addressed. 

TXU Chief Executive Erle Nye--a client then and now--said Diane 
Allbaugh has been a consultant on deregulation issues. She 
registered as a lobbyist, he said, just in case she happened to 
talk about a pertinent issue to a politician. "To my knowledge, 
we would not have let her lobby," he explained, "because she is 
the wife of Joe." 

Natural Gas
 
Natural gas was connected in high places too. 

When the Energy Department drafted a chapter for the report about 
how to increase domestic energy production, the text mentioned 
the importance of hydraulic fracturing, a method of accelerating 
production of natural gas wells. It so happens that Halliburton 
is a major provider of the service. 

Chemicals and sand are injected under high pressure into 
gas-bearing geological formations, causing underground cracks. 
The gas rises into the cracks and moves closer to the well, 
making recovery easier. 

The process has its foes. Neighbors of natural gas wells in 
Alabama complained of oily goop and sulfur smells streaming out 
of faucets just after a company conducted fracturing. An Alabama 
federal appeals court ordered the state to regulate the 
process--and EPA to step in if needed. Natural gas drillers, and 
hydraulic fracturing purveyors, expect similar lawsuits to be 
filed in the Rocky Mountain states, according to material 
submitted to the task force by the Domestic Petroleum Council. 

The EPA is studying whether hydraulic fracturing is linked to 
water well contamination but doesn't expect to finish its 
preliminary inquiry until at least February. The agency will 
decide then if further research is warranted, officials said. 

Halliburton complained in federal court, during Cheney's last 
year at the company, that new federal restrictions on the process 
would "have a significant adverse effect" on its business. 

The Energy Department chapter mentioned the environmental 
controversy as well as the potential of hydraulic fracturing. 
With the Energy Department chapter in hand, a Cheney assistant 
informed an EPA official in late March that hydraulic fracturing 
would go on the April 3 agenda for the Cabinet-level gathering. 
The agency was advised to prepare a recommendation. 

EPA officials balked at suggesting any actions for the task force 
before the study was completed. The subject disappeared from the 
agenda by the day of the meeting. 

But it didn't disappear from the final report. The document 
emphasized the technique's importance as "one of the 
fastest-growing sources of gas production" and noted that "each 
year nearly 25,000 oil and gas wells are hydraulically 
fractured." The information about potential water well 
contamination, the appeals court decision and the possibility of 
EPA controls had all been dropped. 

A few paragraphs after the hydraulic fracturing discussion comes 
the task force recommendation that the nation "promote enhanced 
oil and gas recovery from existing wells through new technology." 

Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said company executives did 
not discuss the energy report with Cheney. "Of course, we talk to 
him; you don't work with someone for that long and then not talk 
to him. But not about the plan, and not about hydraulic 
fracturing." 

Coal
 
Perhaps the biggest winner in the task force report was coal. 

Though coal produces more than half of the country's electricity, 
natural gas dominates the next generation of power plants. The 
reason: clean air rules. Burning coal produces a significant 
amount of carbon dioxide, which has been linked to global 
warming, and other elements tied to acid rain and smog. 

Under President Clinton, " 'coal' was a dirty word," said John 
Feddock, an industry analyst based in Bluefield, Va. 

Not so under Bush, whose U-turn on carbon dioxide was the coal 
industry's biggest victory in Washington in years. 

"If rising electricity demand is to be met, then coal must play a 
significant part," the task force report stated. The plan 
recommended spending $2 billion in federal money for research 
into making coal-fired electricity cleaner. And the task force 
recommended directing federal agencies "to provide greater 
regulatory certainty relating to coal electricity generation." 

"The president is friendly to energy, and so is the vice 
president, and thank God," said Fred Palmer, a vice president at 
Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal producer. "Our society 
needs energy." 

Peabody, an affiliate called Black Beauty Coal and their 
employees have directed $900,000 to Republican coffers over the 
last two years. Peabody Chief Executive Irl F. Engelhardt 
personally gave $100,000 to Bush's inaugural committee. 

Two Peabody executives and one from Black Beauty were named to 
Bush's energy advisory team after his election victory. 

Two weeks after the task force was formed, Peabody announced 
plans to make a public stock offering. Several weeks later, on 
March 1, Palmer and Engelhardt attended a coal-interests meeting 
with task force members Abraham and Lindsey and Cheney's energy 
director. 

On May 21, five days after the task force report touted coal, 
Peabody's stock went on sale. The company received $420 million, 
about $60 million more than analysts expected. 

Could Peabody have gone public if Al Gore had beaten George W. 
Bush? 

"That's an interesting question," Palmer said. "We'd been working 
on [the stock offering] for a long time. But it picked up steam 
this year, no question. I am sure it affected the valuation of 
the stock." 

Conservation
 
Environmental leaders say they never got a real chance to 
influence the report in favor of greater conservation efforts and 
renewable power. 

Just after the election and again in January, when the task force 
was announced, several groups requested meetings with Bush, 
Cheney or both. 

Months passed without a reply. 

Dan Becker, legislative director at the Sierra Club, heard 
suddenly from an Energy Department staffer in late March: Please 
give us your thoughts on the plan. We need them within 24 hours. 
Then, he says, the caller mentioned that Abraham was traveling 
and wouldn't be reading the response. 

On April 3, the Energy Department submitted a briefing paper on 
nuclear power to the vice president's office, recommending the 
U.S. use more of it. Under "pros," the paper noted that this 
policy would be "a bold step" and added that it would underscore 
"the responsible approach of the administration towards carbon 
emissions"--the global warming issue. 

But under "cons," the paper noted: "Environmental groups will 
sharply criticize any proposed expansion" because of waste 
disposal issues and the history of accidents at Three Mile Island 
and Chernobyl. Environmentalists will "use the proposal to 
fund-raise and organize to defeat the administration's policy, 
and use the proposal to suggest our national energy policy is out 
of the mainstream." Nuclear power would go on to win a place in 
the report as "a major component of our national energy policy." 

By this time, the task force was well aware that 
environmentalists would be unhappy about many aspects of the 
report. 

The panel had already abandoned its original plan for a release 
date of April 6. It was too close to Earth Day, a staffer with 
knowledge of the discussion said, and it would offer much too 
tempting a target. 

In this wary atmosphere, Lundquist met April 4 with 15 emissaries 
from environmental groups. 

The assembled activists barely had time to introduce themselves 
in the allotted 50 minutes. "To characterize it as meaningful 
consultation is quite a stretch," said Elizabeth Thompson, who 
attended for Environmental Defense. 

Ris, from the Concerned Scientists, asked twice to meet directly 
with Cheney "to no avail," according to a memo written afterward 
by one of the participants. 

Environmental leaders finally sat down with Cheney on June 5, 
weeks after the report was released. 

The environmentalists' clear anti-Bush sentiments during the 
election campaign sealed their fate, said William K. Reilly, who 
headed the EPA when Bush's father was president. 

"They have roles to play," he said. "But they're not going to be 
insider roles." 

Times staff writers Robert Patrick, Megan Garvey and Richard 
Simon contributed to this story. For information about reprinting 
this article, go to http://www.lats.com/rights/register.htm

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times By visiting this site, you are 
*****************************************************************
 11  Funding cuts hit birth defects monitoring 

Local News - 

08/25/01
 
By DEON DAUGHERTY 
Morris News Service 

AUSTIN — A $200,000 cut to the state's birth defects monitoring 
program will stop the surveying in many counties throughout the 
Panhandle and South Plains.

 Two jobs — one in El Paso and one in Midland — that targeted the 
northern portion of West Texas won't be filled, said Dr. Mark 
Canfield, director of the Texas Department of Health's Birth 
Defects Monitoring Division.

 Birth defects found in Lubbock and Amarillo will continue to be 
monitored. Area children with birth defects often are referred to 
Lubbock hospitals, Canfield said. Officials decided that since 
Lubbock would be part of the continued study, Amarillo should be 
as well.

 But that's not good enough, say some Panhandle residents.

 Pam Allison, executive director of Serious Texans Against 
Nuclear Dumping (STAND), a community action group formed in 1985, 
said she hopes the department will reconsider.

 "I think they should do the whole state. I think that's 
reasonable," she said.

 A report from the Pantex Plant, located near Amarillo, released 
in the 1990s suggested some elevated levels of birth defects in 
the surrounding counties. That possibility worries Allison and 
other STAND members.

 Canfield said he believes the data was based on historical 
records and comparisons. The state's data, recorded in the area 
from 1998 to 2000, will be available next year. It will give 
researchers a better understanding of the area's needs, he said.

 Allison said she doesn't think just a few years' data will be as 
strong as consistent study through the entire state.

 "I think the communities deserve that (long-term study)," she 
said.

 The funding "is like a raindrop in the budget. I think maybe 
they should discuss it with the communities. Maybe we wish to 
spend our money differently in Austin." she said.

 "Our original intent was to have programs in those areas, and we 
were doing the surveys the best we could, but we had to cut 
somewhere," Canfield said. "Either there or some other region. 
... The option was to cut back in Dallas or Fort Worth. That 
would have really compromised" the data.

 The cut was not a legislative one, but a finance management 
decision by the department, a spokeswoman said.

 Surveys in the northeast also will be eliminated, Canfield said. 
One person was handling that task for the Tyler and Texarkana 
areas, and had left the position. As in the case in the Panhandle 
and Plains, a vacated position won't be filled, he said.

 A job in the central office that was going to be moved to 
Arlington isn't being filled either. And, the central office in 
Austin is cutting back on training, merit raises and operation 
costs, he said.

 The Birth Defects Monitoring Division operates with about $2.2 
million annually. It was created by the Birth Defects Monitoring 
Act in 1993.

 In 1991, several babies were born in Cameron County within 36 
hours with severe neurological birth defects. It prompted an 
international investigation and gave rise to the monitoring and 
registry.

 Deon Daugherty can be contacted at (512) 482-9429.
 			   								
  interAct | LubbockOnline.com   
		   		 
 2001 The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal • The Lubbock 
Avalanche-Journal - 806-762-8844 
*****************************************************************
 12  Chernobyl Record: The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe Richard
F. Mould IOP, Philadelphia, 2000. $57.00 (402 pp.). 

ISBN 0-7503-0670-X 

My problems with Richard F. Mould's Chernobyl Record start with 
the words "definitive history" in the title. The book is 
decidedly not a history of events that resulted in the 
catastrophe. It is rather a mixture of chronicle, traveler's 
journal, summaries of some aspects of nuclear civilization, and a 
great deal of statistics. The tone of the narrative varies from 
emotional eyewitness account to overly dry technical description. 
Along with authoritative, official information, there are bits 
with less-than-evident significance, such as pictures of the 
author's Soviet visa or a camel in the Kazakh steppe. While the 
comparison of the Chernobyl explosion to the nuclear accidents at 
Three Mile Island and Tokaimura seems to be too laconic, the 
comparisons to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic explosions and 
to nuclear weapons test sites seems out of place. 

The 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe was indeed a multidimensional 
phenomenon, and it may still be too soon to attempt a 
"definitive" history. But what is striking is that Mould has not 
even tried to address the very basic historical question: whether 
Chernobyl was just one of quite a few (even though the worst) 
accidents of the nuclear era, or whether the Soviet regime was 
mainly responsible for this misfortune. The question is much 
easier to ask than to answer, but no history should overlook it. 

The book's most interesting chapter for a historian (and the 
longest) is the concluding one, "The Legasov Testament." It is an 
English translation of reflections on the Chernobyl accident by 
academician Valery Legasov, a nuclear scientist, and one of the 
principal Soviet officials in the field of atomic energy at the 
time; he was the head of the Soviet delegation at the first 
international postaccident meeting. The document was published in 
the central Soviet newspaper Pravda 20 May 1988, two years after 
Chernobyl and a few weeks after Valery Legasov had committed 
suicide at age 51. 

Mould presents the Legasov text as "a valuable historical 
account." That may be true, but only within the real historical 
context of the Soviet Union's responsibility to its people in the 
management of science. So Legasov's account could--or maybe 
should--be a starting, rather than a concluding, point in a 
history of the Chernobyl catastrophe, if what is being built is a 
"definitive" history. 

According to Mould, Legasov's career was ruined "in large part 
because [he] began to speak out about the problems--instead of 
keeping quiet and voicing only the Communist Party line." 
Actually the cause and effect might be quite the other way 
around: Legasov began to speak after his extremely successful 
career had stumbled dramatically over Chernobyl in the time of 
the Communist perestroika. This possibility is supported by 
Russian sources: The style of the wording of Legasov's 
"testament" in the original Russian looks more like that of a 
high-ranking apparatchik rather than of a scientist. It is 
especially clear in its full version--a transcript of a five-tape 
recording of Legasov's oral account that is now circulating in 
Russian on the Internet (http://litportal.org.ru/catalog/a-rusl). 
Another source is Vladimir Gubarev, the science editor of Pravda, 
who urged Legasov to write his thoughts on Chernobyl and who 
published a heavily abridged version. 

David Holloway masterfully demonstrated the penetrability of the 
Soviet "enigma" in his definitive history of the Soviet atomic 
bomb, Stalin and the Bomb (Yale U. Press, 1994). The field of 
peaceful nuclear energy in the USSR has much weaker 
classification restrictions than the field of nuclear weaponry, 
but it is unlikely that anyone could probe its real context by 
relying on translators, as Mould did. 

The principal issue in question is personal professional 
responsibility. True, Soviet society was corroded by decades of 
totalitarian rule. And the Soviet nuclear establishment was a 
part of the whole story. But the general issue of professional 
responsibility has quite personal dimensions. In the same society 
and in the same nuclear establishment, another academician with a 
no-less impressive career than Legasov exercised his professional 
responsibility more than once: Andrei Sakharov, while considering 
himself entirely loyal to the essential purposes of the Soviet 
system, personally and officially voiced his professional 
understanding of the problem of nuclear testing in 1958, of the 
nuclear moratorium in 1961, and anti ballistic-missile defense 
issue in 1967. And it was his feeling of personal professional 
responsibility that led him to break the Soviet rules and to go 
public in 1968--each time in order to prevent a calamity. 

Musing over Chernobyl, Legasov came to the conclusion that it was 
"impossible to find a single culprit." Sakharov would have to 
have named himself a culprit, had he not taken responsibility on 
himself. The issue of scientists' responsibility in Chernobyl is 
still waiting for a definitive history. Gennady Gorelik Boston 
University Boston, Massachusetts 

*****************************************************************
 13  S.C. governor calls for a fight over plutonium
 
  [charlotte.com]       

  Published Sunday, August 26, 2001 

Cold War Cleanup 

 Hodges takes state's rights stand - at least until pact is signed
 
By JEFFREY COLLINS 
Associated Press 

COLUMBIA -- It probably won't lead to articles of secession, but 
South Carolina is thumbing its nose at the federal government 
once again.

 This time the issue is plutonium, not slavery. The state is 
taking its cue from Idaho, whose governor successfully stared 
down Washington about 15 years ago.

 S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges says he will "lie down in front of the 
trucks" if necessary to prevent shipments of the radioactive 
material taken from nuclear weapons from making it to the 
Savannah River Site near Aiken. He has ordered state troopers to 
practice blocking roads Wednesday.

 The effort is part of the state's plan to get an agreement from 
the U.S. Department of Energy about when the plutonium arrives 
and when it has to leave the state.

 About 50 tons of plutonium is coming to SRS so workers can 
convert it into power plant fuel or immobilize it in glass rods 
for storage in Nevada. Hodges' staff now fears the current White 
House may back out of the deal, leaving the plutonium unprocessed 
and kept in a facility not designed for permanent storage.

 The plutonium shipments were planned to begin sometime after 
Oct. 1 on a convoy of 18-wheelers from Colorado, although the 
Energy Department has promised to suspend shipments until an 
agreement can be reached with the state. For its part, DOE is 
willing to negotiate with the state as long as the talks are 
"constructive, rational and logical," a spokesman said.

 Hodges' threat isn't too far out of line for a state whose only 
native son to become vice president wrote an article while in 
office saying the S.C. legislature could nullify federal laws. 
John C. Calhoun's theory on state's rights may have cost him a 
job, but it also became the rallying cry not only for the Civil 
War but for Southerners opposing federally forced integration of 
schools and other institutions. 

Now, Hodges is taking up the state's rights banner, although he 
prefers to characterize his action in more caring terms. "I am 
worried about the health and safety of South Carolinians," he 
said. "Plutonium is dangerous stuff linked to cancer and other 
problems."

 Most of Hodges' critics in the state find a fault only in how he 
is protesting the plutonium shipments.

 "Now is the time to stop talking about laying in the road and 
stop talking about lawsuits," said Rep Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., 
whose district includes part of the Savannah River Site.

 State Attorney General Charlie Condon wants to sue the Energy 
Department instead of taking what he calls the "George Wallace 
approach." But unlike Calhoun and Wallace, Hodges' stance may pay 
off. Blocking the state's borders worked for Idaho Gov. Cecil 
Andrus in 1987, when his move forced DOE officials to negotiate a 
deal to move radioactive materials out of the state.

 Like the plutonium slated for South Carolina, the materials 
destined for Idaho were said to be a temporary shipment from 
Rocky Flats, a now-defunct nuclear weapons plant in Colorado.

 For years, the Energy Department has been trying to ship all of 
its waste out of Rocky Flats and close the facility. But critics 
then and now contend the department is just trying to shift its 
problems in Colorado to another state.
 
*****************************************************************
 14  In These Times 25/21-22 -- Nuke Train
 
A series of recent high-profile accidents involving trains and 
trucks carrying hazardous cargo has given new ammunition to 
opponents of the federal government's plan to build a national 
high-level in the Nevada desert. 

The accident that received the most attention from anti-nuclear 
forces was the July 18 derailment of a freight train in a tunnel 
beneath Baltimore. The train carrying hazardous chemicals burned 
for several days at temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees. If the 
train had been carrying nuclear waste, opponents suggest, the 
steel casks designed to protect radioactive waste could have been 
breached. "I hope everyone recognizes the tremendous tragedy that 
was just barely averted in Baltimore," Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) 
told reporters after the derailment. "Hydrochloric acid is bad, 
but not as bad as nuclear waste. A speck the size of a pinpoint 
would kill a person." 

Then, on August 5, a train derailed outside Houston, spilling 
thousands of gallons of 

Smoke billows from a train tunnel near I-395 in Baltimore. JOE 
GIZA/REUTERS
   
toxic chemicals and forcing the evacuation of 100 homes. Three 
days later, a tanker truck carrying hazardous chemicals 
overturned on a busy freeway in Chicago, shutting down area roads 
and forcing the evacuation of nearby housing complexes. "While 
these incidents were extremely serious and dangerous," said 
(D-Nevada), "one could only imagine the ramifications if any one 
of these trains contained nuclear waste." 

After Berkley made that statement, a truck transporting low-level 
nuclear waste from New York to Nevada was discovered to be 
carrying a cracked container. The driver noticed white foam on 
the truck bed and called authorities, who found an inch-long 
crack in one of the containers. inspectors said they did not 
detect radiation around the truck, but the incident nevertheless 
fueled renewed concerns. 

Reid, who recently ascended to the post of majority whip, has 
cited the Baltimore train accident and the cracked nuclear-waste 
container as "a wake-up call" about the dangers of transporting 
high-level nuclear wastes from reactors across 43 states to Yucca 
Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Reid's newfound clout--he's now the No. 2 person in the Senate 
behind Tom Daschle--has put any legislative movement regarding 
the nuclear waste dump on hold. But studies of Yucca Mountain 
continue, and nuclear regulators are pushing forward with the 
licensing process. As a result, Reid and other dump opponents are 
always looking for new ways to attack the plan. Yucca Mountain's 
opponents maintain that it would be safer to simply keep the 
waste at the reactor sites than to transport it to Nevada. 

Following the Baltimore accident, Reid introduced an amendment to 
a transportation appropriations bill to study the risks of 
transporting hazardous materials and to determine whether the 
nation's emergency response systems are sufficient. The amendment 
passed 96 to 0. 

Meanwhile, the government of Clark County, where Las Vegas is 
located, recently released a outlining the human and financial 
toll of a worst-case accident in Las Vegas involving high-level 
nuclear waste. The U.S. Department of Energy's planned routes to 
bring the waste to Yucca Mountain run through the middle of the 
gambling mecca. 

The study looked at the effects of a collision involving a truck 
carrying nuclear waste and a gasoline tanker on Interstate 15, 
which runs parallel with the neon-drenched Strip. The accident 
would expose more than 1,000 people to radiation and result in 
more than $1 billion in cleanup costs and economic losses. 

*****************************************************************
 15  Clinton questions proposed nuclear dump in Nevada
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
August 24, 2001 
 
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Former President Bill Clinton said Friday the 
country should consider alternatives to burying nuclear waste at 
Yucca Mountain. 

The former president, in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, 
questioned whether Yucca Mountain is the best and most remote 
site to store the waste. 

"The last time I looked at the map, the Texas site was farther 
away from any populated area than the Nevada site," Clinton said. 

Deaf Smith County, Texas, and Hanford, Wash., were the other two 
sites under consideration for the dump when Yucca Mountain was 
selected by Congress in 1987. 

Clinton said Congress should think about revisiting whether other 
sites may be safer. 

"If the administration believes so strongly that it ought to be 
done, why not put it in a place that's farthest from a populated 
area," he said. 

Nevada's "strongest and best chance" of derailing efforts to make 
Yucca Mountain the site of the nation's nuclear waste dump rests 
with the opposition mounted by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the 
Senate's majority whip, Clinton said. 

Reid, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, is leading the fight in 
Washington against Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las 
Vegas. 

"Certainly he might be able to delay it until the latest 
inquiries about what alternatives exist are fully exhausted," 
Clinton said. 

A preliminary report released this week by the Department of 
Energy, which is overseeing the scientific studies at Yucca 
Mountain, said the burial of 77,000 tons of nuclear waste there 
would pose no public health threat for at least 10,000 years. 

The report is considered a major step in the DOE's efforts to 
recommend Yucca Mountain to President Bush. 

Nevada officials, preparing to spend up to $4 million to fight 
efforts to bring the waste here, have criticized the DOE for 
showing bias in favor of Yucca Mountain, even though the federal 
agency now insists its decision will be based on science. 

Clinton was in town this week to attend a fund-raiser for the 
Democratic National Committee and to speak at a convention of 
sales representatives from the MIKI Group, a Japanese company 
that manufactures vitamins and a nutritional supplement. 

Information from: Las Vegas Sun 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 16  S.C. won't take Colo. nuke waste

Denver Post.com
 
By The Associated Press                          

--> Saturday, August 25, 2001 - 

COLUMBIA, S.C. - It probably won't lead to armed conflict or 
articles of secession, but South Carolina is thumbing its nose at 
the federal government once again.

 This time the battle's over plutonium, not slavery or tariffs. 
And the darling of Dixie is taking her cue from Idaho, whose 
governor successfully stared down Washington nearly 15 years ago.

 South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges says he will "lie down in front 
of the trucks" if necessary to prevent shipments of the 
radioactive material taken from nuclear weapons from making it to 
the Savannah River Site near Aiken. He has ordered state troopers 
to practice blocking roads Wednesday.

 The brinkmanship effort is part of the state's plan to get a 
binding, written agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy 
about when the plutonium arrives and when it has to leave the 
state.

 About 50 tons of plutonium is coming to SRS so workers can 
convert it into power plant fuel or immobilize it in glass rods 
for storage in Nevada. Hodges' staff now fears the current White 
House may back out of the deal, leaving the plutonium unprocessed 
and kept in a facility not designed for permanent storage.

 The plutonium will be shipped from Colorado by a convoy of 
18-wheelers sometime after Oct. 1, although the exact time and 
route is being kept a secret for security.

 "We must have a legally enforceable agreement with concrete 
milestones and timetables that would ensure a clear and timely 
exit strategy," Hodges wrote to President Bush this past week.

 For its part, DOE is willing to negotiate with the state as long 
as the talks are "constructive, rational and logical," spokesman 
Joe Davis said. But the department stands by its earlier 
agreements with South Carolina and will not talk about another 
pact now, he said.

 Hodges' threat isn't too far out of line for a state whose only 
native son to become vice president wrote an article while in 
office saying the South Carolina Legislature could nullify 
federal laws.

 John C. Calhoun's theory on state's rights may have cost him a 
job, but it also became the rallying cry not only for the Civil 
War but for Southerners opposing federally forced integration of 
schools and other institutions during the Civil Rights era.

 Now, Hodges is taking up the state's rights banner, although he 
prefers to characterize his action in more caring terms.

 "I am worried about the health and safety of South Carolinians," 
Hodges said. "Plutonium is dangerous stuff linked to cancer and 
other health problems." Most of Hodges critics in the state only 
find a fault in how he is protesting the plutonium shipments.

 "Now is the time to stop talking about laying in the road and 
stop talking about lawsuits," said Rep Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., 
whose district includes part of the Savannah River Site.

 State Attorney General Charlie Condon wants to sue the Energy 
Department instead of taking what he calls the "George Wallace 
approach," referring to the Alabama governor who stood in the 
doorway at the University of Alabama in 1963 defying a federal 
order to allow blacks.

 But unlike Calhoun and Wallace, Hodges' stance may pay off. 
Blocking the state's borders worked for Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus 
in 1987 when his move forced DOE officials to negotiate a deal to 
move radioactive materials out of the state.

 Like the plutonium slated for South Carolina, the materials 
destined for Idaho at the time were said to be a temporary 
shipment from Rocky Flats, a now defunct nuclear weapons plant in 
Colorado.

 For years, the Energy Department has been trying to ship all of 
its waste out of Rocky Flats and close the facility. But critics 
then and now contend the department is just trying to shift its 
problems in Colorado to another state.

 Energy officials tend be shortsighted and want to solve problems 
quickly with little forethought, said Marc Johnson, who was 
Andrus' chief of staff.

 "If they can store this nuclear waste in South Carolina or Idaho 
and no one raises a stink about it, then they've succeeded," 
Johnson said.

 The federal government knew it had the right to still ship the 
waste to Idaho because the U.S. Constitution forces states to 
uphold federal laws. But to defy a governor trying to protect his 
citizens would have looked terrible, Boise State University 
political scientist John Freemuth said.

 "A little fed bashing can't hurt," Freemuth said. "And quite 
frankly the DOE has been horrible on keeping its promises." 
Andrus said the art of subtle negotiation is lost on the federal 
government. "You've got to create a crisis to get them to pay 
attention," he said.

 That's what Hodges is banking on, University of South Carolina 
historian Walter Edgar said. "I believe the governor will stand 
in the road, and you will see thousands of South Carolinians 
standing with him," he said.

 SRS has long been the state's biggest employer with a work force 
of 25,000 during its heyday, down to 14,000 workers now. The 
310-square-mile site was founded in the early 1950s, displacing 
more than 6,000 residents.

 No one voiced concern over the environmental impact of the site 
or the materials brought into the state for years. "It was 
patriotic - you did your thing and nobody asked questions," Edgar 
said.

 But South Carolina has tired of its status as a dumping ground, 
Hodges says. State environmental officials have shut down a 
medical waste incinerator in Hampton County and are working to 
get a hazardous waste landfill in Sumter County closed to new 
waste. The state also has limited how much radioactive waste goes 
into a landfill in Barnwell County.

 The governor and other state leaders will continue to negotiate 
with DOE officials until the shipments leave Rocky Flats.

 Hodges said he hopes it doesn't come down to him blocking a 
convoy of tractor-trailers. "But I have to protect the interests 
of South Carolina and the nation," he said.
 	 
 All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright 
*****************************************************************
 17  LETTERS: A problem more serious than Yucca Mountain

  [Las Vegas Review-Journal] 
  
Sunday, August 26, 2001
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 

To the editor: 

Re: the Aug. 23 story on Yucca Mountain by Keith Rogers: 

As a scientist, I'm always amazed at the rhetoric concerning the 
proposed nuclear waste repository -- for example, the idea that 
it could be a political issue and that it makes a sham of 
science, both of which are at least partly true. I'm even taken 
aback that former Gov. Robert List would dare to express an 
opinion other than the usual not-in-my-backyard, 
don't-screw-Nevada mantras. Is he "challenged" or crazy? Or is it 
possible that he has gained some wisdom, insight or knowledge 
that might have emboldened him to offer an alternative viewpoint 
-- which, by the way, is held by many more-pusillanimous 
Nevadans. 

The arguments against the science so far have been mostly 
defensive. They question studies and reports, and they bludgeon 
those daring to utter anything on the positive side. Meanwhile, 
one of the most obvious scientific issues is ignored completely 
by our political leaders, which is that there are 130 million 
curies of deadly radiation already in the groundwater at the 
Nevada Test Site, upgradient from Yucca Mountain in the same 
aquifer, that is migrating toward Oasis Valley, Amargosa Valley, 
and eventually Death (no pun) Valley. This contamination is not 
in canisters, engineered barriers, or 1,000 feet above the water 
table. Some of it has been migrating for 40 years, and the DOE 
predicted in 1996 that it could reach Oasis Valley in less than 
20 years. But, who's worried about that? 

That is a technical issue that has teeth. It is impossible to 
calculate the risk of the repository without considering the 
existing massive contamination in the aquifer below it. Yucca has 
been disproportionately political partly because many of the 
technical issues (i.e., volcanos and earthquakes) are 
speculative. The present migration of 130 million curies of 
radiation is not speculative and should be dealt with before the 
repository is seriously considered. Without solid technical 
arguments, Yucca may be an incredibly stupid idea whose time has 
come. 

DENNIS WEBER 

LAS VEGAS
  
This story is located at: 
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Aug-26-Sun-2001/opinion/16843403.html
*****************************************************************
 18  Environmental Racism Shifts the Costs of Industry to the Poor

Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) 
ANALYSIS 
August 24, 2001 
Posted to the web August 24, 2001 

By Robert D Bullard
 
Environmental racism affects individuals, groups or communities 
differentially, based on race or colour. It combines with public 
policies and industry practices to provide benefits for 
corporations, while shifting the costs to people of colour. It 
influences local land use, the enforcement of environmental 
regulations, the siting of industry and the areas where people of 
colour live, work and play. 

Environmental decision-making often mirrors the power 
arrangements of the dominant society and its institutions, 
disadvantaging people of colour while providing advantages or 
privileges for corporations and individuals in the upper 
echelons. A form of illegal "exaction" forces people of colour to 
pay the costs of environmental benefits for the public at large. 

Environmental decision-making and local land-use planning operate 
at the juncture of science, economics, politics and special 
interests that place communities of colour at special risk. This 
is especially true of the southern United States, which has 
become a "sacrifice zone", a sump for the rest of the nation's 
toxic waste. The Deep South is stuck with this unique legacy ñ a 
legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and white resistance to equal justice 
for all. 

The region is characterised by "look-the-other-way" environmental 
policies and give-away tax breaks. Lax enforcement of 
environmental regulations has left the region's air, water and 
land the most industry-befouled in the US. The Lower Mississippi 
river industrial corridor has over 125 companies that manufacture 
a range of products including fertilisers, gasoline, paints and 
plastics. Environmentalists and local residents have dubbed this 
corridor "Cancer Alley". Louisiana citizens subsidise this 
corporate welfare with their health and the environment; tax 
breaks given to polluting industries have created a few jobs at a 
high cost. 

There is a direct correlation between exploitation of land and 
exploitation of people. Native Americans have to contend with 
some of the worst pollution in the US and their lands are prime 
targets for landfills, incinerators, garbage dumps and risky 
mining operations. Pollution from industries is showing up in the 
Akwesasne mothers' milk in New York. Native and indigenous 
peoples' lands in Alaska and Hawaii have been poisoned by 
military waste. 

Native American reservations are under siege from "radioactive 
colonialism", operating in energy production (the mining of 
uranium) and the disposal of wastes on Indian lands. Mojave 
Indians in California are fighting to keep out a radioactive dump 
that would threaten their reservations. The Eastern Navajo Dine 
Against Uranium Mining, a grassroots group, is fighting a 
proposal to permit a uranium mining operation near their 
homelands in Church Rock and Crownpoint, Mexico. 

Environmental racism is also evident at the global level. 
Shipping hazardous wastes from rich communities to poor 
communities is not a solution to the growing global waste 
problem. Trans-boundary shipment of banned pesticides, hazardous 
wastes, toxic products and export of "risky technologies" from 
the US, where regulations and laws are more stringent, to nations 
with weaker infrastructure, regulations and laws, smacks of a 
double standard. 

Global alliances have formed among the victims of environmental 
injustice. Environmental justice activists have mobilised in 
central city ghettos, barrios and villages from Atlanta, Georgia, 
to the Arctic Circle, from Alaska to south central Los Angeles, 
from South Africa to rural Native-American reservations, from the 
US-Mexico border to rain forests in Colombia, Ecuador, El 
Salvador and Brazil. These groups have organised, educated and 
empowered themselves to challenge government and industrial 
polluters. They have also elevated their message and struggles to 
the international arena, including the United Nations Human 
Rights Commission, World Bank and World Trade Organisation. 

The unwritten policy of targeting Third World nations for the 
waste trade received international media attention in 1991. 
Lawrence Summers, at the time chief economist of the World Bank, 
shocked the world and touched off an international scandal when 
his confidential memorandum on waste trade was leaked. 

Summers wrote: "Dirty Industries: Just between you and me, 
shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the 
dirty industries to the [less developed countries]?" 

Environmental racism manifests itself in the sub-standard 
treatment of workers. Thousands of farm workers and their 
families are exposed to dangerous pesticides on the job and in 
labour camps. These workers endure sub-standard wages and working 
conditions. But environmental racism also extends to the 
exploitative work environment of garment district sweatshops, the 
microelectronic industry and extraction industries. A 
disproportionately large share of the workers who suffer under 
sub-standard occupational and safety conditions are immigrants, 
women and people of colour. 

More than 2 000 maquiladoras ñ assembly plants operated by US, 
Japanese and other foreign countries and located along the border 
between the US and Mexico ñ use cheap Mexican labour to assemble 
imported components and raw materials, and then ship finished 
products back to the US. All along the lower Rio Grande River 
valley, maquiladoras dump their toxic wastes into the river, from 
which 95% of the region's residents get their drinking water. 

Environmental racism reinforces the stratification of people, 
place and work. It institutionalises unequal enforcement and 
trades human health for profit as it exploits the vulnerability 
of economically and politically disenfranchised communities. 

Professor Robert D Bullard is director of the Environmental 
Justice Resource Centre at Clark Atlanta University in the US. 
This article is extracted from a paper prepared for the world 
conference on racism and public policy in Durban from September 3 
to 5, sponsored by the United Nations Research Institute for 
Social Development 


Copyright © 2001 Mail & Guardian. Distributed by AllAfrica Global 
Media (allAfrica.com). 
*****************************************************************
 19   Real solutions to N-waste needed 

Bangkok Post Monday 27 August 2001 - 

BANGKOKPOST.COM
   
The constant reminders from the anti-nuclear contingent of the 
problems and dangers of nuclear waste disposal begin to sound 
like a broken record. Unfortunately, though, the message is just 
as true now as when it was first heard, and a solution doesn't 
seem to be any closer, despite the possibility of a new nuclear 
arms race in response to George W. Bush's Son of Star Wars and a 
renewal of interest in nuclear power.
 
Though not so taboo as a few years ago, it is still politically 
unwise in most countries to come out in favour of building more 
nuclear plants. In the United States, however, President Bush and 
Vice President Cheney threw caution to the wind and made nuclear 
power a major part of their energy plan. Mr Cheney, who is the 
former CEO of the largest builder of nuclear power stations in 
the USA, announced that regulations for licensing new plants will 
be relaxed, and the approval process will be streamlined.
 
Because it does not produce greenhouse gases, nuclear power 
spokesmen have lately been using phrases like ``environmentally 
friendly'' in describing their product. But before that label can 
be earned, a very serious situation must finally be addressed.
 
Even without any more waste being generated, the piles of 
discarded nuclear material which have accumulated around the 
world will continue to cause big headaches, just a few of which 
are listed below. 

China has admitted to storing its nuclear waste beside the 
largest lake in Tibet, after years of denying the charges.
 
More than one nuclear submarine is at the bottom of the ocean, 
and others are corroding in the water.
 
Protesters in Germany line the roads along which shipments of 
spent nuclear fuel are transported to the reproccessing plant at 
Le Hague in France. Contamination from Le Hague has shown up in 
marine life in the nearby ocean.
 
In Britain, officials at the Sellafield reprocessing plant have 
been accused of falsifying radiation reports and discharging 
waste into the Irish Sea. 



Residents of the US state of Nevada are fiercely opposed to the 
planned establishment of a permanent nuclear depository in the 
subterranean recesses of Yucca Mountain. There is serious concern 
at the old Hanford Washington nuclear weapons production site 
because underground liquid waste tanks have sprung leaks and are 
in danger of contaminating the Columbia River. The most guilty 
nuclear waste offender is Russia. Some experts estimate that more 
radiation has leaked and spilled from its reprocessing complex at 
Mayak in the Ural Mountains than was released in the catastrophe 
at Chernobyl. Open reservoirs of liquid radioactive waste at 
Mayak are near to overflowing and contaminating three rivers 
which flow into the Arctic Ocean.
 
The response of Russian President Vladamir Putin to this state of 
affairs is, incredibly, to endorse a proposal to store the waste 
from other countries at Mayak, for a hefty price of course. The 
overwhelming majority of the Russian people are opposed to the 
plan, but it has the backing of a quasi-environmental group in 
the US known as the Non-Proliferation Trust, which has convinced 
President Bush to come on board.
 
While there may be a certain logic in concentrating the damage in 
an area that is already hopelessly contaminated, there is no 
method behind this plan.
 
Before more nuclear proliferation is undertaken, there should be 
a worldwide forum on how to deal with nuclear waste. 
Representatives from all nations should be included in the 
discussion. Unless a lasting solution is reached, contamination 
from the world's scattered nuclear dumps will increasingly make 
its way to the oceans over the thousands of years that it remains 
deadly.

© The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2001
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
                     NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
 1   Wildlife finds safe haven on dangerous acres Cold War-era 
weapons sites are highly polluted, largely untouched and nearly 
perfect for nature refuges
 
By Tom Kenworthy
USA TODAY
 
SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, S.C. -- Whit Gibbons opens the throttle on 
his small skiff and races across the Savannah River, slamming to 
a stop in a tangle of tree branches hanging over the south bank. 
In the bow, Cameron Young stabs at a branch and comes up 
triumphantly with a squirming -- and very large -- brown water 
snake.

For Gibbons, a University of Georgia ecologist, and Young, a 
graduate student, it's just another critter-rich day in one of 
the nation's most unusual outdoor labs.

The two herpetologists are among dozens of scientists attached to 
the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, a research facility in the 
middle of a 300-square-mile federal property carved out as a 
nuclear weapons plant site a half-century ago. For much of the 
Cold War, the Savannah River Site, 20 miles southeast of Augusta, 
Ga., produced plutonium and tritium for atomic bombs. As a 
result, it is one of the most heavily polluted places on earth.

But in a grand irony, this facility -- along with a handful of 
other large weapons plants in Colorado, Washington state, Idaho 
and Tennessee that were walled off from the outside world for 
decades -- also is a treasure-trove of biological diversity.

One unintended benefit of the race to produce weapons of mass 
destruction has been the protection of huge islands of wildlife 
habitat. With the arms race largely over, these sites, for all 
their ghastly contaminants, are increasingly being recognized as 
key refuges for wildlife largely unaffected by the nuclear and 
chemical pollution.

Ninety percent of the Savannah River site has been virtually 
undisturbed for decades. It contains a rich mix of ecosystems: 
hardwood and pine forests, Carolina bay wetlands, cypress-tupelo 
swamps.

The plant and animal life is breathtaking -- and has been 
documented by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory since the 
early 1950s, with most research conducted outside of highly 
contaminated areas. Here, there are more than 240 species of 
birds, more than 100 species of reptiles and amphibians, nearly 
100 species of freshwater fish. A creek running through the site 
has the greatest diversity of invertebrates of any in the Western 
Hemisphere.

The largest alligator ever found in South Carolina -- more than 
13 feet long -- came from here, and the largemouth bass are an 
angler's dream. These are not nuclear mutants, simply specimens 
grown large because they are not hunted or fished. ''It's a 
pretty simple formula,'' Gibbons says. ''The best protection for 
the environment is no people.'' 

What about having all this surrounding a plant struggling to deal 
with 35 million gallons of high-level nuclear waste and a devil's 
brew of toxic chemicals? ''It's ironical, it's paradoxical,'' he 
says.

But hardly unique.

On the outskirts of Denver, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was built 
by the Army during World War II to produce mustard gas and 
incendiary weapons. Later, agricultural chemicals were produced 
there, and at the height of the Cold War, nerve gas. Now, even as 
a $2 billion environmental cleanup proceeds, the 27-square-mile 
arsenal has been transformed into a national wildlife refuge. 

Undisturbed prairie

A fabulous example of largely undisturbed short-grass prairie, 
the arsenal is visited by up to 100 bald eagles in the winter and 
has thriving colonies of prairie dogs. Bird life abounds, 
including ferruginous hawks, burrowing owls and mountain plovers. 
Other attractions: mule deer with trophy-size racks and some of 
the best pond fishing in Colorado (catch-and-release only, 
because of the threat of contamination).

As the Army oversees the cleanup -- including disposal of a 
handful of nerve gas canisters found recently -- the U.S. Fish 
and Wildlife Service is restoring thousands of acres of native 
grasslands, giving escorted tours to tens of thousands of 
visitors and monitoring wildlife for contamination. On a recent 
tour, refuge manager Dean Rundle pauses by a lake and marvels as 
two Swainson's hawks engage in a courtship ritual, locking their 
talons in the air and tumbling toward the ground.

A short drive to the west lies the Rocky Flats nuclear site, 
where plutonium components were produced until the mid-1990s. 
Contaminated by thousands of cubic meters of radioactive and 
hazardous wastes, Rocky Flats is, like the other weapons sites, 
on the federal government's Superfund list of priority cleanups 
(see sidebar). The estimated price for restoration: nearly $7 
billion. 

But Rocky Flats' location, where the plains meet the Rocky 
Mountains, provides habitat for numerous species, including 
cougar, deer and the threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse. To 
preserve those resources, Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard, a 
Republican, and Rep. Mark Udall, a Democrat, have proposed that 
Rocky Flats be designated a federal wildlife refuge once the 
cleanup is completed. 

The story is similar at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in 
Washington. Created during World War II as part of the Manhattan 
Project, which developed the first atomic bomb, the 
586-square-mile site on the Columbia River housed reactors for 
producing plutonium.

Hanford contains some of the best undisturbed ''shrub-steppe'' 
habitat in the Columbia River basin. In addition, the only 
undammed stretch of that mighty river -- the Hanford Reach -- 
flows by, providing spawning habitat for the Columbia's 
healthiest population of wild chinook salmon, the famed ''upriver 
brights.''

Late last year, President Clinton set aside more than half of 
Hanford's property, nearly 200,000 acres including the Hanford 
Reach, as a national monument. 

Misguided cleanup?

Some believe that the Department of Energy's cleanup program for 
its many nuclear sites could threaten these extraordinary 
wildlife resources by eventually opening the areas to far greater 
public access and even development. The effort is estimated to 
cost $147 billion through 2070.

 It would be better to adopt a ''waste to wilderness'' policy 
that would permit a less thorough cleanup and manage these areas 
as wildlife refuges, wrote Robert Nelson, a senior fellow at the 
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy 
institute. He projects savings up to $50 billion. While it is 
unlikely the public would endorse scaling back the cleanup 
strategy, excluding the public from these sites has been the key 
to their success as havens for wildlife. At Savannah River, for 
example, the public is kept away except for an annual deer hunt

As with other nuclear sites where secrecy was paramount, Savannah 
River is a vast property with only a small portion devoted to 
nuclear production facilities. 

''Only 10% of it was ever used for industrial purposes,'' says 
Paul Bertsch, director of the ecology lab. Fish, wildlife and 
human visitors are largely unaffected by the pollution because 
high-level contamination is localized in waste tanks and other 
isolated structures, and lower level wastes are ''inaccessible to 
fish and wildlife'' because they are in groundwater and beneath 
the surface.

Some of the most important research at the Savannah River Ecology 
Laboratory, where scientists have produced more than 2,500 
academic publications, involves monitoring for radiation effects 
on wildlife. At Savannah's Par Pond -- named for the P and R 
reactors -- researchers have done exhaustive studies on bass and 
alligators to determine whether the animals are affected by 
radiation or the release of hot water from the plant's nuclear 
reactors. Despite jokes about ''glowing frogs,'' Gibbons says 
there is no evidence to date of genetic damage to wildlife. 

With the reactors shut down, Par Pond is home to more wintering 
ruddy ducks than the rest of South Carolina combined. 

Because of its long isolation, the Savannah River Site also 
provides unparalleled opportunities to examine plants and animals 
in a habitat as close to natural as almost anywhere in the world. 
The forests, fields and swamps here provide sanctuary for 
threatened and endangered species, including red-cockaded 
woodpeckers, wood storks and the smooth purple coneflower.

Leading a visitor on a tour of the site, Gibbons points out an 
unremarkable looking patch of forest and notes that it harbors 
one of the few coral snake populations in South Carolina. 

''Many, many species are localized like that,'' he says. ''Put a 
parking lot in there, and they're gone.''                                                                                                                   
 								     									 				 						
© Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.                                     
*****************************************************************
 2  Russian governor warns of radioactive contamination of rivers   
 
edie news:    

Edie weekly summaries   24/08/2001 

The governor of a Siberian city has warned the prime minister 
that liquid radioactive waste from some 40 years of the nation’s 
nuclear weapons programme may drain into the Ural Mountains’ 
rivers, devastating the environment. 

Chelyabinsk residents protest against the Mayak installation                                    
 			 			 			 	 	 		
Governor Pytr Sumin of Chelyabinsk warned Prime Minister Mikhail 
Kasyanov in a letter dated May, but which has only now been 
divulged by the Russian NGO Ecodefense!, that artificial lakes, 
containing vast amounts of waste from the Mayak nuclear 
processing plant, the only one in the nation, were filled to 
capacity and within a few years may leak into nearby rivers. “It 
becomes more and more dangerous to use the Techa River cascade, 
serving the Mayak facility of Minatom [Ministry of Atomic Energy] 
- open water reservoirs contain about 400 million cubic meter of 
radioactively contaminated water,” Sumin said in the letter. The 
level of these waters is about to become dangerous, with a 
possibility that the dam will burst, causing catastrophic 
consequences for the rivers Iset, Tobol and Ob” - one of Russia’s 
major rivers. The Chelyabinsk governor then demanded immediate 
action to solve the problem of radioactive pollution in the 
water.

 Chelyabinsk’s vice governor, Gennady Podtyosov, reportedly said 
that the water level in the lakes was only 12 inches below its 
maximum capacity, and that if no action were taken, contaminated 
water could burst the dam in three to four years, causing “a 
major catastrophe” and flow as far as the Arctic Ocean.

 Mayak, which was a major nuclear weapons plant during Soviet 
times, has already witnessed several accidents, including an 
explosion in 1957, which contaminated 9,200 square miles, the 
effects of which are still felt today.

The Chelyabinsk region, set in the foothills of the Ural 
Mountains in southwestern Siberia, along with the Kola Peninsula 
(see related story), has been referred to as the world’s most 
radioactive place because of accidents and the dumping of nuclear 
waste into lakes and rivers. Besides waste from its own nuclear 
weapons manufacture, Mayak could also store and process foreign 
nuclear waste under a law recently signed by President Vladimir 
Putin, despite protests by liberals and environmentalists (see 
related story). “Mayak must be shut down as soon as possible,” 
said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of EcoDefense!. “The more it 
operates, the more plutonium will be generated out of spent fuel 
reprocessing. Russia doesn’t need this plutonium, it already has 
more than enough, so it’s unlikely that this material will ever 
be properly watched and protected,”. Slivyak also called the city 
governor’s suggestion to construct a new nuclear plant as a 
solution to the Mayak problem “disastrous” and said that, 
according to a source at the plant, Mayak needs modernisation 
that would cost about US$600 million. 
		 	 
© Faversham House Group Ltd 2001. This article may be copied or 
*****************************************************************
 3  Ottawa firm halts imports of 'bomb-grade' uranium

[The Ottawa Citizen Online Business Page]                             
Sunday 26 August 2001                                   
 		   		 		
Critics accuse MDS Nordion of stockpiling material

 Norma Greenaway
 The Ottawa Citizen
 
A Canadian company has decided to temporarily halt imports from 
the United States of highly-enriched uranium needed to produce 
radioactive medical isotopes, easing fears south of the border 
that it was unnecessarily stockpiling the weapons-grade material. 

MDS Nordion has informed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
it will defer imports of uranium already approved and scheduled 
for delivery in the first half of next year. 

The Ottawa company said it decided to defer the shipments because 
of delays in the startup of new isotope-producing facilities at 
Chalk River, Ont. MDS Nordion, the leading world supplier of 
radioactive isotopes used in medical treatment and diagnosis, has 
already stockpiled a two-year supply of material while awaiting 
the startup of new reactors, dubbed Maple 1 and Maple 2, that 
will produce isotopes at the Atomic Energy of Canada-operated 
Chalk River facility. 

They will replace the existing NRU reactor at Chalk River, 190 
kilometres west of Ottawa, which is near the end of its 
productive life. 

Medical isotopes are used to locate the spread of cancer, to 
diagnose the severity of heart disease and to treat such diseases 
as prostate cancer. Nordion supplies isotopes for about 35,000 of 
the 50,000 diagnostic tests conducted around the world each day. 

Grant Malkoske, Nordion's vice-president of engineering and 
technology, says the company opted to defer the imports for at 
least six months, beginning next January, because it believes 
Maple 1 will not be commissioned before next summer and Maple 2 
even later in the year. 

Nordion's move was welcomed by U.S. critics who had urged the 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to impose a moratorium on 
exports of bomb-grade uranium to Nordion because the reactors 
weren't operating. 

In a letter to the commission last month, the Nuclear Control 
Institute of Washington, D.C., said the startup delays have "led 
to a dangerous accumulation" of the material. 

Institute president Paul Leventhal said he's satisfied -- for 
now. "It essentially provides what we were looking for, which is 
a moratorium on new shipments of HEU (high-enriched uranium) 
targets until such time as it becomes clear the Maple reactors 
are ready to start up," he said from Washington. 

Mr. Leventhal urged the U.S. commission to "draw the line" and 
bar exports of HEU targets until the Maple reactors are 
operating. Targets are the material that is bombarded by neutrons 
to create the desired medical isotopes. 

Among other things, the Nuclear Control Institute seeks to 
eliminate all commerce in bomb-grade uranium by pushing efforts 
to convert research reactors in Canada, Europe and elsewhere to 
non-weapons-grade uranium, or low-enriched uranium. 

Unlike low-enriched uranium and natural uranium, high-enriched 
uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs, The institute, which 
along with the U.S. regulatory commission is keeping a close eye 
on Nordion's stated plans to convert to low-enriched uranium 
targets, says it is important to prevent Nordion from building up 
a large surplus of high-enriched uranium targets as a means of 
delaying conversion. "We don't want to do anything to interfere 
with the flow of these life-saving isotopes," Mr. Leventhal said. 
"But we want a good-faith effort made to convert to the 
non-weapons material in producing these isotopes." 

Alan Kuperman, an institute consultant, says the organization is 
anxious for Nordion to convert because, as the largest producer 
of isotopes, it would send a signal to other producers using 
bomb-grade uranium targets. 

Nordion's Mr. Malkoske could not provide a date for conversion to 
low-enriched uranium targets at the Chalk River facility. But he 
rejected suggestions the firm is dragging its feet. 

"These things take time. There is a program under way. But you 
don't just snap your fingers and convert from HEU to LEU." 

For its part, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported in 
a recent letter to Leventhal that Nordion's conversion program 
"appears to be proceeding in good faith."
 
[UP] 		   		 		

 Copyright © 2001 CanWest Interactive, a CanWest company. All 
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 4  GOP, federal officials to meet on SRS 

The Associated Press

 Three top S.C. Republicans plan to meet with U.S. Energy 
Department officials today to discuss the dispute between the 
state and the federal governments on storing weapons-grade 
plutonium at the Savannah River Site.

 On Thursday, Hodges' senior adviser for environmental affairs, 
Hank Stallworth, discussed the plutonium issue with two key 
Energy Department officials in Washington, D.C.

 The discussions ended without a resolution, a DOE spokesman said 
Thursday afternoon.

 Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler, Attorney General Charlie Condon and House 
Speaker David Wilkins will attend the Friday afternoon meeting. 
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will join the meeting in a 
conference call.

 Peeler spokesman Luke Byars said the lieutenant governor's 
office has had discussions for a couple of weeks with White House 
and Energy Department officials about proposed shipments of 
plutonium to SRS.

 About 50 tons of the radioactive metal used in nuclear weapons 
is coming to SRS so workers can convert it into power plant fuel 
or immobilize it in glass rods for storage in Nevada. Hodges' 
staff fears the White House may back out of the deal forged with 
the Clinton administration, leaving the plutonium unprocessed and 
kept in a facility not designed for permanent storage.

 "We believe it's time to look for solutions and not headlines," 
Byars said, referring to Hodges' threats to stop the shipments 
even if he has to lie in front of the trucks. "This is clearly a 
decision for the Bush administration and not the Hodges 
administration." 

Hodges' spokeswoman Cortney Owings said the governor's office was 
unaware of Friday's meeting but will work with anyone who is 
willing to resolve the situation to keep plutonium from being 
permanently stored at SRS.

 Staff Writer Dave L'Heureux contributed to this report.

 More on SRS

 S.C. power companies don't favor U.S. Rep. Henry Brown's 
suggestion that the U.S. Energy Department build nuclear power 
plants at places such as the Savannah River Site near Aiken. 

 ? Copyright 2001 The State-Record Company 	        	   	 	
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 5  Plutonium makes strange bedfellows 

| The Sun News - Myrtle Beach, SC

 The Associated Press "> The Associated Press "> COLUMBIA | How 
important is it to Attorney General Charlie Condon to keep 
plutonium out of South Carolina? So important that he said Friday 
his fellow Republicans need to side with bitter rival Gov. Jim 
Hodges on getting a binding agreement on how long the radioactive 
metal..."
  
    Saturday, August 25, 2001           
    
By Jeffrey Collins

 The Associated Press 

Attorney General Charlie Condon said Friday: "I think Governor 
Hodges is absolutely right in terms of taking a hard line on this 
stuff coming into South Carolina. I just differ on the means." 

COLUMBIA | How important is it to Attorney General Charlie Condon 
to keep plutonium out of South Carolina? 

So important that he said Friday his fellow Republicans need to 
side with bitter rival Gov. Jim Hodges on getting a binding 
agreement on how long the radioactive metal can stay at the 
Savannah River Site near Aiken. 

"I think Governor Hodges is absolutely right in terms of taking a 
hard line on this stuff coming into South Carolina," Condon said. 
"I just differ on the means." 

Condon admits teaming up with the man he investigated for 
fund-raising violations, has sued in court and wants to replace 
in 2002 might come as a shock. 

But that's why he pulled out of a GOP-only meeting to be held 
this afternoon with the U.S. Energy Department. Condon said he 
knows that, even if an agreement is reached, the governor has to 
sign off on it. Rep Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also won't attend the 
meeting. 

Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler and House Speaker David Wilkins were still 
set to talk to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and his staff. 

Condon wants to talk with Hodges and Graham to form a unified 
strategy on dealing with the Energy Department. 

"I want to work with the governor of South Carolina on this," 
Condon said. Hodges is setting up a Monday phone call with 
Condon, spokeswoman Cortney Owings said. 

"I applaud the attorney general for supporting my effort to block 
plutonium dumping in South Carolina," Hodges said through Owings. 
"The attorney general realizes that a strong resolve is what is 
needed at this time." 

The governor and federal energy officials are at odds about 50 
tons of old nuclear weapons plutonium slated to come to the 
Savannah River Site. An agreement made with the state under the 
Clinton administration promised the plutonium would stay in South 
Carolina only long enough to be made into fuel for commercial 
nuclear reactors or encased in glass rods. 

But Hodges and others worry the Energy Department has changed its 
policy and has no concrete plans on how to get the plutonium out 
of the state. Hodges is so concerned, he has threatened to have 
troopers throw up roadblocks to keep out of the state the 
18-wheelers carrying the plutonium. 

A member of Hodges' staff met with Energy Department officials 
Thursday, but department spokesman Joe Davis said the governor's 
hard-line stance has made it nearly impossible to deal with the 
state. 

It's that kind of atmosphere that has Condon trying to play 
peacemaker. He said it is impossible for Republicans to broker a 
deal without Hodges and, if they do, they might harm the 
governor's efforts. 

"I would urge them to step back from this and put what's 
important for South Carolina first," Condon said. 

To Peeler, going to Washington without the governor was necessary 
because Hodges has antagonized the Energy Department. 

"We need good, constructive dialogue," Peeler spokesman Luke 
Byars said Friday as the lieutenant governor prepared to get on a 
plane. "It's time to look to making a deal, not making 
headlines." 

  All content © 2001 The Sun News
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 6  India to Take First Step Towards Nuclear Weaponization 

Saturday, August 25, 2001, updated at 17:04(GMT+8)   
   
India will take the first step towards nuclear weaponization of 
its missiles in a formal top-level interaction in early October 
this year, reported the Pioneer daily Saturday. 

Top generals of the Indian armed forces and scientists of the 
Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Defense Research and Development 
Organization (DRDO) and Bharat Dynamics Limit are scheduled to 
discuss nuclear weaponization at the School of Artillery, 
situated near Nashik, 1,222 kilometers southwest of here, said 
the daily. 

This would be the first concrete step ever taken by the Indian 
government towards nuclear weaponization since India's nuclear 
tests in May, 1998. 

Defense Minister Jaswant Singh, who is also the minister of 
external affairs, was expected to participate in the meeting, the 
paper said.. 

The experts would discuss the capabilities of Agni missiles, the 
first land-based strategic weapon designed to carry nuclear 
warheads and has been planned to be inducted into the Indian Army 
by the year 2002. 

The participants were likely to examine the Agni's nuclear 
warhead carrying capabilities and the type of nuclear warhead to 
be fitted on to the missile, added the Pioneer, which attributed 
the news to sources in New Delhi. 

Meanwhile, it said, the government had cleared the raising of a 
strategic rocket regiment for Agni missiles. 

The conclusions of the meeting would help the army concretize its 
nuclear planning including the conditions bust suited for 
operationalizing Agni strategic missiles. 

Bhabha Atomic Research Center knows the exact capabilities of 
India's nuclear warheads while the DRDO is the only Indian 
organization with the know-how to retain a nuclear warhead in the 
unweaponized state besides the maintaining and mating procedures 
with the missile in accordance with the second strike capability. 

The Bharat Dynamics is a government-run defense undertaking 
entrusted with the manufacturing of the strategic weapon. 

    India will take the first step towards nuclear weaponization 
of its missiles in a formal top-level interaction in early 
October this year, reported the Pioneer daily Saturday.   
  
  
  Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved     | 
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 7  Plutonium cleanup plans in limbo
 
Published Sunday, August 26, 2001 

+ Lawrence Livermore Lab was working on technology to immobilize 
unused weapons material 

By Andrea Widener
 CONTRA COSTA TIMES 

The quiet closing of a Lawrence Livermore Laboratory research 
facility has spawned a national shouting match and international 
grumbling over 50 tons of plutonium no longer needed for nuclear 
weapons.

 Pushed by President Bush's budget cuts, the Department of Energy 
in March sacrificed the lab's $180 million program studying a way 
to immobilize excess plutonium to save a research project that 
turns excess plutonium into reactor fuel. The fuel project has 
since been criticized for rising costs and may be delayed as 
well.

 At stake are plans to clean up and consolidate the radioactive 
legacy of dozens of former nuclear weapons sites throughout the 
South and West, as well as tons of Russian nuclear materials.

 South Carolina's governor has threatened to "stand in front of 
trucks" to prevent the plutonium from coming into his state 
without a strategy to ship it out, a plan disrupted by closure of 
the Livermore lab facility and other delays. 

Originally, the DOE planned two plants at the Savannah River Site 
in South Carolina to turn the weapons-grade plutonium into either 
tamper-resistant disks using the immobilization plan being 
developed by Lawrence Livermore or to convert the plutonium to 
fuel for nuclear reactors. The immobilized plutonium would then 
be sent out of state. 

But with both strategies being criticized, Gov. Jim Hodges fears 
the South Carolina lab will become a permanent dumping ground for 
this dangerous material.

 Western states and their nuclear facilities may need to postpone 
shipping the plutonium there if a resolution isn't found soon. 
The Rocky Flats site near Denver has plans to begin shipping 
excess plutonium in October.

 Lawrence Livermore also plans to ship part of its plutonium to 
Savannah River beginning next fiscal year, but details are 
stalled pending resolution of the conflict.

 Of further concern is an agreement between the United States and 
Russia that commits both countries to getting rid of 34 tons of 
the radioactive material, enough to make thousands of nuclear 
bombs. Neither country will move forward without the other, and 
Russia cannot afford to get rid of the material without 
assistance.

 "You essentially have an agreement that is not going anywhere," 
said William Hoehn, Washington office director for the nonprofit 
Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. "Going back 
to the drawing board at this phase is going to cause unnecessary 
delay."

 The National Academy of Sciences selected the two approaches for 
dealing with excess plutonium in 1995 from dozens of options. The 
DOE later affirmed this two-track strategy with its own study and 
pushed plans for two large-scale processing facilities at 
Savannah River.

 One of the plans combines plutonium with uranium, then turns it 
into long rods that fuel nuclear energy reactors, a process known 
as MOX. Though it is costly to create, Russians favor this method 
of converting the plutonium to a more terrorist-resistant form 
because they say the material is an asset that should earn them a 
profit.

 Livermore lab led research on the alternative: encasing 
plutonium in ceramic disks the size of hockey pucks. That 
immobilization process also makes it difficult for terrorists to 
turn the vital material into nuclear weapons.

 The lab proved the technology would work and developed a 
prototype of the needed machine, said Lee MacLean, who led the 
program as deputy director for fissile materials disposition. 

The lab had just begun to prepare for full-scale plutonium tests 
when the program was "suspended." It went from a $24 million 
budget this year to a $3 million budget next year for final 
research and cleanup.

 "From a national perspective, I think you want to get it right," 
said MacLean, who has since retired. 

The idea was always to choose one strategy, but critics of the 
shutdown say the move happened before either MOX or 
immobilization was fully developed. Both need more research, and 
both are expensive

 "I don't have any clear feel for how this chaos is going to 
clear, and there is fear amongst the people who support" 
immobilization that it is dead, said Tom Clements of the watchdog 
group Nuclear Control Institute, which favors immobilization 
because the plutonium is permanently removed from the waste 
stream. 

In an Aug. 21 letter to Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, Gen. John 
Gordon said the immobilization plan hasn't been permanently 
abandoned and neither has the dual-track strategy to get rid of 
plutonium. A DOE representative did not return calls.

 "Our commitment to Russia to dispose of surplus plutonium using 
the MOX approach, combined with our limited resources, mean MOX 
must take precedence in the near term," wrote Gordon, head of the 
National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the 
country's nuclear labs. "We have had to make some changes to the 
size and schedule of our original plan."

 But in the same letter, Gordon said Lawrence Livermore's 
immobilization research plant will be completely dismantled and 
put into storage indefinitely. The lab has said it will take two 
or three years to restart the program, whose 50 researchers have 
already moved to other jobs. No other sites are designing 
immobilization equipment, and there are no plans to restart the 
program.

 MOX has its own problems. A DOE review says that since 1998 the 
cost of the project has nearly tripled, to an estimated $6.6 
billion. A recent National Security Council review of 
nonproliferation programs criticized those rising costs, 
according to congressional staffers who have been briefed on the 
review. It recommends examining new alternatives, such as 
building different kinds of nuclear reactors. The formal review 
has yet to be released.

 "There are no other options where the technology is available," 
said Thomas Pigford, an emeritus professor of nuclear engineering 
at UC Berkeley who has written about the issue. "If it is a 
matter of money, I don't know of any option that makes sense 
besides immobilization and MOX."

 The only other fiscally feasible choice is long-term storage of 
the plutonium behind tall gates, which would work well in the 
United States but is still a touchy alternative in Russia, 
Pigford said. And long-term storage is just what South Carolina's 
governor and congressional delegation say they won't stand for -- 
at least not in their state. And it doesn't resolve the larger 
question of what to do with plutonium to keep it out of 
terrorists' hands.

 "They should find money and select one of the options and do 
it," Pigford said.

 Andrea Widener covers science and the area's national 
laboratories. Reach her at 925-847-2158 or awidener@cctimes.com.
 
headlines from ContraCostaTimes.com
*****************************************************************
 8    Russia hurries Kursk salvage to hide missile 

THE SUNDAY TIMES: WORLD NEWS 

August 26 2001    RUSSIA  

Mark Franchetti, Moscow 

THE Kremlin has ordered the Russian navy to step up its efforts 
to raise the Kursk, the nuclear submarine that sank last August, 
for fear that top-secret missiles on board could fall into the 
hands of western intelligence. 

The Kursk carried 22 Granit long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. 
The weapons, intended to sink Nato aircraft carriers, are the 
most modern and powerful on Russian nuclear submarines. 

Russian warships are guarding the site of the Kursk wreck around 
the clock to deter foreign vessels from getting too close. 

The Granits are in silos outside the pressure hull. They were not 
damaged when a powerful explosion in the torpedo compartment in 
the bow sank the vessel, killing all 118 crew. In theory they 
could be reached without even entering the submarine. 

Western military experts have gathered information about the 
Granit, which travels at supersonic speeds, but have never 
managed to take a close look. Unlike much of Russia's arsenal, 
the missile is not on display at international arms fairs. The 
photograph published here is the first to appear. 

"We know a lot about how the Granit works, but not everything. 
There is no doubt some people in Britain and America would love 
to get their hands on one," said Edward Hooton, editor of Jane's 
Naval Weapons Systems. 

"The Russians are dead against the West inspecting one. The last 
thing they need is for us to find out what the Granit's 
weaknesses are. For instance, just by inspecting the type of fuel 
and its fuel capacity we would be able to establish its exact 
range." 

Russian military sources say that for more than a year the navy 
has postponed all big exercises and has not sent any warships on 
regular patrols in the Mediterranean because so many of its 
vessels have been deployed to guard the Kursk. The Granits, 
believed to have a range of up to 320 miles, cost £600,000 each. 

"The pressure is on to get the missiles back," said a Russian 
naval officer. "Losing the Kursk was the greatest embarrassment 
in the history of the Russian navy. We are also talking about 
several million dollars lying on the seabed. If we act now the 
Granits can be retrieved and put back into service." 

The Russians hope to raise the 20,000-ton submarine by September 
15. The £45m operation is being carried out by a Dutch company 
with the help of British divers. 

However, the Kremlin has ordered that the damaged bow should be 
cut off and left on the seabed. It is to be lifted only when 
foreign specialists have left. Western experts say that without 
retrieving the front section, where the explosion took place, it 
will be impossible to determine what caused the accident. 

  Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided 
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 9  DOE will postpone shipments to SRS 

Augusta Georgia: Technology:

Saturday, August 25, 2001
 
By Brandon Haddock
Staff Writer 

The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to delay plutonium 
shipments to South Carolina until it can reach an agreement with 
the state over the fate of the radioactive metal.
 
The measure was announced Friday after a late-afternoon meeting 
in Washington between Energy officials and several South Carolina 
Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Bob Peeler and House Speaker 
David Wilkins.

 ''We have decided to delay shipments of plutonium while we are 
working on a bipartisan strategy and a plan that will clearly 
show that we have an exit for any plutonium coming into the 
state,'' said Joe Davis, an Energy Department spokesman in 
Washington. ''We believe that's a good-faith effort.''

 Shipments were scheduled to begin arriving at Savannah River 
Site in October.

 Mr. Peeler said the meeting gave hope for an agreement.

 ''We had a good constructive meeting,'' he said. ''We had frank 
dialogue. We stated South Carolina's case, and we're convinced 
that the administration will deal in good faith with all of us 
from South Carolina.

 ''One thing we all need to do is tone down the rhetoric and work 
together in a bipartisan way, and I'm convinced we can do that 
over the next couple of weeks. We need to put our politics aside 
and work together on this.''

 Mr. Davis called for South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges - who has 
threatened to use state troopers to block trucks carrying 
plutonium to SRS - to call off a demonstration of the roadblocks 
scheduled for next week.

 ''A gesture of good faith on their part would be to cancel 
planned demonstrations of roadblocks,'' said Mr. Davis, who 
called the Democratic governor's plan ''a contributing factor in 
the negative environment that the governor had created.''

 Mr. Hodges' spokeswoman, Cortney Owings, did not return a page 
late Friday night.

 A meeting Thursday between a representative of Mr. Hodges and 
U.S. Energy Undersecretary Bob Card broke down, with the governor 
accusing the Energy Department of giving him the ''stiff-arm.''

 News of the delay drew praise from U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham, 
R-S.C., who also called for Mr. Hodges to cancel next week's 
exercise.

 ''The secretary has shown real leadership by making this 
decision,'' Mr. Graham said. ''I think his goal, like mine, is to 
allow cooler heads to prevail.

 ''Now it's time for Gov. Hodges to reciprocate. A good first 
step would be for him to call off the exercises to be conducted 
next week around the site so that we can begin a constructive 
dialogue.''

 Mr. Graham is trying to schedule another summit to try to 
resolve the issue, said his spokesman, Kevin Bishop. The 
congressmen hopes to bring together Mr. Hodges, the Energy 
Department, the White House, SRS officials and the state's 
congressional delegation, Mr. Bishop said.

 The debate stems from uncertainty over the Energy Department's 
plans for removing plutonium from the state after it is treated 
at SRS.

 The federal nuclear-weapons site is supposed to treat the 
plutonium before it is disposed of elsewhere. But work on one 
proposed SRS plutonium-treatment plant has been suspended, and 
rising cost estimates have placed the other in jeopardy.

 Those setbacks have South Carolina elected officials concerned 
that the plutonium to be shipped to the site is coming to stay.

 Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or 
bhaddock@augustachronicle.com.
 
All contents &copy;1996 - 2001 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights
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 10  Report says safety oversight lacking for Hanford tanks

story was published 8/25/2001 <P>By John Stang</P>

Herald staff writer</P>

The Department of Energy's Office of River Protection needs to 
improve its safety oversight of CH2M Hill Hanford Group at the 
site's tank farms, a federal report said.</P>

<P>The Office of River Protection's "oversight of (CH2M Hill) has 
not been rigorous or fully effective," said DOE's Environmental, 
Safety and Health section in Washington, D.C., in a report 
released this week.</P>

<P>That section reviewed the Office of River Protection's 
supervision of CH2M Hill's safety matters from April to July.</P>

<P>A 1996 inspection of DOE's Hanford office's oversight of tank 
farm safety mentioned concerns, the report said.</P>

<P>The report and Bill Smoot, the Office of River Protection's 
director of quality assurance, said the ORP and CH2M Hill already 
have identified most of the problems and are working on them. 
CH2M Hill referred questions to DOE.</P>

<P>A early draft of the report was one reason why the Office of 
River Protection told CH2M Hill in May to identify and fix 
problems that led to a series of mistakes and near-accidents at 
central Hanford underground radioactive waste tanks. That led 
CH2M Hill to stop construction work temporarily while it tackled 
safety measures.</P>

<P>The final recent DOE inspection report identified these safety 
problems at the tank farms:</P>

<P>n In several cases, hazards were not identified and analyzed 
before workers tackled specific jobs. These hazards related to 
noise levels, lifting and rigging, work on scaffolds and 
radiation protection.</P>

<P>n Some training deficiencies exist. The report zeroed in on 
training lapses for industrial hygiene technicians.</P>

<P>n Contradictory instructions exist on some written 
procedures.</P>

<P>n Fix-it measures didn't always address the underlying causes 
of some problems.</P>

<P>n A miscommunication between DOE and CH2M Hill led the 
contractor to believe it had approval to bypass an interlock. The 
interlock was designed to close the ventilation system of one 
tank farm's if a monitor detected radioactive particles escaping 
into the air. The Office of River Protection did not learn about 
the bypassed interlock for two months.</P>

<P>n Some engineering calculations should have been more 
conservative in setting up safety measures.</P>

<P>Smoot said measures already are under way to improve training, 
identify hazards, fix underlying causes of problems, make the 
engineering more rigorous and improve communications between CH2M 
Hill and the Office of River Protection.</P>

<P>Also, senior managers are getting more involved with safety 
matters in the field, he said.</P>

<P>Workers finding contradictory written instructions is not a 
common problem, Smoot said. However, when it does occur, the 
standard procedure is to stop work and let engineers sort out 
which instructions to follow, he said.</P>

<P>"We think it's safe to perform work (in the tank farms)," 
Smoot said.</P>

<P>After the report's concerns are addressed, both DOE and CH2M 
Hill said they plan to continue safety improvements.</P>

<P><STRONG>n Reporter John Stang can be reached at 582-1517 or 
via e-mail at jstang@tri-cityherald.com.</STRONG></P>

Tri-City Herald Online

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 11  Plutonium Shipments in S.C. Suspended
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
August 25, 2001 
 
COLUMBIA, S.C.- Federal officials have promised not to ship 
surplus plutonium to South Carolina until the state and the U.S. 
Energy Department could work out a plan for when the radioactive 
metal would leave the state. 

House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, and Lt. Gov. Bob 
Peeler said Friday that they had assurances from Energy 
Undersecretary Robert Card that no shipments would be made until 
the agency and the state had a written agreement for how long the 
plutonium would remain at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. 

The dispute is over 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium that is 
heading to the Savannah River Site. Under an agreement with the 
Clinton administration, that plutonium was to be turned into fuel 
for commercial nuclear power plants or processed into glass rods 
and buried in Nevada. 

But Gov. Jim Hodges says the Bush administration has been backing 
off those very expensive processing plans, raising the fear that 
the federal government wants to bury that plutonium in South 
Carolina permanently. 

All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
    
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this 
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who 
have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for 
non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more 
information go to: 
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> 
    
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