***************************************************************** 01/28/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.26 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 The Age: The hunt for red hot cargo 2 New energy minister 'must quit CND' 3 FPL shuts down reactor at Turkey Point 4 Email row hits Sellafield 5 Taiwan legislators debate nuclear plant scrapping - 6 Battle to restart on nuclear plant issue 7 Lawmakers Grill Regulators Over Waste Company's Request for NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 'DOWNWINDERS' HONORED: 2 URANIUM HYSTERIA SWEEPS EUROPE DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, 3 Radiation least of Kosovo's worries 4 Editorial: Better checks and balances needed 5 'Downwinders' mark date of the first blast 6 Saddam has made two atomic bombs, says Iraqi defector 7 Radiation Victims Honored 8 Utah 'downwinders' remember 9 THE TRAGEDY OF NUCLEAR TESTS IN NEVADA, 50 YEARS LATER JANUARY, 10 SRS benefits from technical training plan 11 AHighly Charged Issue 12 Risks From Uranium Limited, Experts Say ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 The Age: The hunt for red hot cargo By LARRY SCHWARTZ Sunday 28 January 2001 He is the son of a Port Albert shark fisherman. But Chris Robinson says as a child he wasn't allowed to accompany his father in the boat; his mother feared he might favor that kind of life. Still, he has spent much of his life on the sea in exploits that have gained him repute as among the most courageous of environmental activists. Mr Robinson, 48, returned home late last year from working in a whale sanctuary in the Mediterranean after being approached to join a flotilla protesting against the passage of two British-flagged ships ferrying plutonium fuel from France to Japan. He has been readying his 12-metre boat, Fand, at Hastings, on the Mornington Peninsula, and will set sail for Sydney in mid-February to join the Australian contingent meeting New Zealand activists expecting to front the two carriers between Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. Anti-nuclear campaigners are closely monitoring the progress of the vessels, which reportedly left France last weekend with enough plutonium in MOX (mixed oxygen plutonium) fuel for 30 atomic bombs. They are undecided on the precise action they will take when they encounter the nuclear fuel carriers, each with three 30mm cannons on board, more mindful of potential environmental disaster. A softly spoken and reluctant hero, Mr Robinson risked his life to search for others on the Greenpeace flagship, Rainbow Warrior, when it was sunk by two limpet mines in Auckland Harbor in July, 1985. The Warrior was to have joined a protest against French nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific. A decade later, Mr Robinson was one of three activists sought by French police on the atoll. He may have piloted inflatable Zodiacs in the path of whalers' harpoons and crawled across a deck to lift the anchor of a boat impounded by Spanish authorities during a protest against whaling, but he dismisses some reported escapades as "poetic licence". He would rather talk about the protest than himself. The Tasman Sea "can throw anything at you", says Mr Robinson's long- time friend, Dutch-born activist Henk Haazen, who is readying the 15-metre cutter Tiama in Cronulla, Sydney, to join the flotilla. Mr Haazen, who will sail with his New Zealand wife Bunny McDiarmid and their 12-year-old daughter, Ruby, plays down the risk to protesters from an encounter with the heavily armed ships, which will ferry the reprocessed plutonium fuel to be used at a nuclear power reactor in western Japan. But he makes no effort to conceal his concerns at the risk to the environment of a process that has seen nuclear waste shipped from one side of the world to be reprocessed and returned for further use. "We have the Barrier Reef and the beautiful Australian coastline and there is always a possibility when you are carrying around this sort of stuff that a ship can be sunk," says Mr Haazen, 46. Japanese nuclear power reactors have for some years sent their waste for reprocessing by a company called Cogema at the la Hague reprocessing site in Cherbourg, France. Plutonium is extracted from the waste and a new MOX fuel is packaged in pellets to be shipped back to Japan. The previous transportation of MOX fuel created a furore in late 1999 over quality control, which saw the Japanese Government reject a load shipped on one of the two carriers of the UK Government-owned British Nuclear Fuels. "This is the fourth shipment to come through our waters that we know of," says Carolin Wenzel, media officer on nuclear issues for Greenpeace Australia. "There's going to be an intensification. The projection is there'll be at least 80 mixed oxygen plutonium shipments in the next 10 years." Skippers of at least seven boats, including Mr Haazen's Greenpeace- owned Tiama, have indicated they will take part in the independent protest against the passage of the two British ships. Setting out from Sydney with Tiama and Fand will be the 10-metre Sydney vessel Antarctic, skippered by Mark and Bec Jeremy. Mr Haazen says another three Australian skippers "are seriously trying to join the flotilla if they can get their boats together in time" and as many in New Zealand have expressed an interest. The two British vessels, the Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, left Cherbourg Harbor last weekend. Greenpeace says the ships appear to have chosen a "circuitous route" to minimise controversy after international condemnation, notably from New Zealand, though not Australia. "It's this tricky thing where on the one hand they say it's safe," says a Greenpeace officer, "but on the other they're avoiding being in too close contact with any ports on the way. And the freighters are armed to the teeth." Spotter planes off the South African and Tasmanian coastlines will be dispatched to help update protesters on the progress of the Pintail and Teal on the 30,000-kilometre voyage. "Otherwise we wouldn't have a hope in hell of finding them," says Mr Haazen, who was also a crew member on the Rainbow Warrior but was on shore when it sunk in Auckland Harbor in 1985. He, Mr Robinson and Greenpeace founder David McTaggart were in the news a decade later when sought by French police who thought they had infiltrated France's nuclear test site at Mururoa Atoll, in the South Pacific. They remained hidden on a nearby island, Vana Vana, during the search. Mr McTaggart had earlier told the media they might bury themselves in the sand on Mururoa using small plastic pipes to help them breathe. Mr Robinson decries the failure of the Australian Government to join international condemnation of the transport of 230 kilograms in weapons- usable MOX fuel. "I would expect total embarrassment because we are at the beginning of the chain by giving them uranium," he says. "So I don't expect we're going to hear much from the Australian Government in fact." Educated at Yarram High and Melbourne High, Mr Robinson became involved in Greenpeace while travelling in Europe in the late 1970s. He is still active as an environmentalist, independent of Greenpeace. Mr Robinson says the Australian public is too often kept in the dark on nuclear issues. "What we're trying to do is to point out what's going on." A spokesman for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, said late last week he had been notified about the shipments by authorities in France and the UK and had been assured there were adequate provisions for transportation and handling the materials on board. Greenpeace's Carolin Wenzel says Australia has remained silent despite protests by others, notably New Zealand's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Phil Goff. South Africa's Minister for the Environment and Tourism, Valli Moosa, reportedly said last week his government would monitor the passage of the ships and keep the public informed. He said South Africa would prefer the ship to stay out of the exclusive economic zone 300 kilometres off its coast. Elisabeth Mealey, Greenpeace International media officer working on the MOX shipments issue, says there has been opposition also from some Pacific Island countries and Portugal. Mr Robinson recalls the time French intelligence agents sunk the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. "The skipper and I were going through and making sure everyone wasn't on. We went out the back door when the water came in and we didn't know there was anyone down." He denies reports that he dived repeatedly to save his friend, 33- year-old photographer Fernando Pereira, who died when the ship went down. "I was on the boat when she hit the bottom. But I was not diving into the water. But if I had known that someone ..." Mr Haazen and Ms McDiarmid were visiting Ms McDiarmid's parents in Auckland when the Rainbow Warrior was sunk. "The first bomb went off right underneath our cabin. It was about 11 o'clock in the evening and the likelihood that we would have been there would have been pretty high," says Mr Haazen. He is expecting a peaceful protest next month. "We won't interfere with the safe operation of the vessels," he says. "We just want to be out there and be very loud about it and raise our flags and banners and talk to them on the radio and say we don't want you in our back yards." Copyright © The Age Company Ltd 2001. Any unauthorised use, ***************************************************************** 2 New energy minister 'must quit CND' BBC News | UK POLITICS | Thursday, 25 January, 2001, 20:25 GMT [I] CND anti-nuclear protestors - minister told to cut his links or face conflict of interest The Conservatives have demanded that the new Energy Minister Peter Hain should resign from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or be stripped of any responsibility for nuclear power. Mr Hain, often tipped as a Labour high-flyer, was appointed to his new post in the Department of Trade and Industry as part of the mini- reshuffle following the dramatic resignation of Peter Mandelson from the government. [I] " I will not be dictated to" - Peter Hain But the shadow trade secretary David Heathcoat-Amory has launched a strong attack on the appointment and he questioned whether Mr Hain can ever be objective over nuclear power, given his previous views. The minister has rejected the attack, saying he will not be dictated to by "Tory nonentities". CONCERN AT RECORD The Tory trade spokesman has written to Mr Hain's new boss, Stephen Byers, to express concerns about the former foreign office minister's record of opposition to nuclear weapons. Ido not believe he can carry out his duties in an objective way[I] David Heathcoat-Amory Mr Heathcoat-Amory says that CND campaigns against the nuclear industry as well as against nuclear weapons, and points out that in 1986 Mr Hain called for Labour to oppose the nuclear energy programme. 'CLEARLY-PROFESSED VIEWS' The letter from the shadow trade secretary says: "Mr Hain will be responsible for policy regarding the nuclear energy industry. "I do not believe he can carry out his duties in that role in an objective way when he has clearly-professed views and positions against the industry as a whole." [I] 'Minister must leave CND' - David Heathcoat-Amory He adds that the electricity industry will need to know that the appointment of Mr Hain will not lead to any change of policy over nuclear power so, if the minister is to retain responsibility for the nuclear industry, he must resign his membership of CND and make a clear and public statement confirming this. 'UNACCEPTABLE' Mr Heathcoat-Amory told journalists it was unacceptable to have as minister in charge of nuclear power a man who was openly and clearly opposed not only to nuclear weapons but also to civil nuclear energy. "He will inspire absolutely no confidence in the electricity industry." Mr Hain retorted that he had no intention of resigning from CND saying he would not be dictated to. He stressed he was "100% behind" the government's energy policy which "contained a nuclear energy element" and that government policy was obviously at odds with CND's position. His membership of the anti-nuclear group would in no way determine his direction as energy minister, he stressed. TORIES 'DESPERATE' "I pay £9 a year to Wales CND. That is my contribution and I am not going to have Tory nonentities determine who I pay that to any more than I would let them dictate my membership of my local rugby club. "I am 100% behind the government's policy which is not that of CND." Mr Hain said the speech he made opposing nuclear power in 1986 had been "a very long time ago". He thought the Tories had to be desperate to drag it up again now. The minister said he was excited by his move to take responsibility for energy policy and was looking forward to getting back into "bread and butter" politics. ***************************************************************** 3 FPL shuts down reactor at Turkey Point Web-posted: 10:14 p.m. Jan. 26, 2001 One of the nuclear reactors at Florida Power & Light Co.'s Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant has been shut down, but customers' power shouldn't be affected. The No. 4 reactor was shut down completely Friday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after the reactor was partially shut down because of equipment errors after a routine inspection, said Carol Clawson, an FPL spokeswoman. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires routine inspections of the plant, she said. Company officials are still unsure when the reactor will be restarted. Turkey Point is in the midst of trying to extend its original 40-year operating license another 20 years. The No. 4 reactor's license doesn't expire until 2013. Approval is expected sometime in 2003. Thursday, two control rods that are supposed to drop into the nuclear core during an automatic shutdown malfunctioned. One dropped into the nuclear core during a test of the system. And then a second dropped while officials were trying to determine what went wrong with the first one, Clawson said. NRC rules require that the reactor be shut down to determine what caused the malfunction, Clawson said. Officials did that around 8 p.m. Thursday. While the reactor wasn't producing power, the water and water pressure were still kept at operational levels, she added. Clawson said FPL has had similar problems with the rods in the past--about a half-dozen times in the past 10 years. Roger Hannah, an NRC spokesman, said incidents like this aren't rare, but aren't common, either. "It has happened from time to time. (But) it's also not a weekly occurrence," he said. Since the reactor was down, officials decided to do an inspection of the reactor and general maintenance. During the inspection, they found an accumulation of boric acid on a different piece of equipment. Clawson said the amount was "extremely small" and on a piece of equipment that is no longer used in the reactor. "It's not usual. It happens. It's not part of normal operations, but it does happen," she said. The reactor then went through what is known as a cold shutdown, where the water is cooled and pressure released. Although the plant is down, the power supply won't be affected, company officials and state regulators said. Joe Jenkins, director of electric safety and reliability for the state Public Service Commission, said the investor-owned utilities are operating at an 18.7 percent reserve margin at all times. "We have good reserves for this winter," he said. "Of course, all bets are off if we get a super-severe freeze, but I don't expect that. We haven't had one for 10 years now." Weather throughout the weekend is expected to be in the 70s during the day, dipping into the upper 50s and low 60s at night. In other FPL news, the Miami-based company sent a letter to the state PSC Friday stating that it underestimated fuel costs for 2001 by more than 10 percent, said Bill Swank, a company spokesman. Fuel costs are passed directly through to consumers. Swank had no further details. FPL will file the fuel adjustment with the PSC soon. Consumers are already feeling the pinch of higher fuel costs. The first part of a two-year increase hit bills this month. The company underestimated fuel costs in 2000 by $518 million. And FPL President Paul Evanson said Monday that the company spent between $70 million and $80 million on fuel between September and the end of the year. Nicole Ostrow can be reached at nostrow@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4667. Copyright 2000, Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive, ***************************************************************** 4 Email row hits Sellafield Observer | UK News | OLIVER MORGAN SUNDAY JANUARY 28, 2001 The controversy over bosses prying on employees' private emails took a new twist last night with the disclosure that workers at the Sellafield atomic energy complex have been suspended for sending 'offensive' material. The 'sexually explicit' messages were discovered by British Nuclear Fuels management last week and traced to the staff, who now face disciplinary action. The offending emails are thought to be ones involving TV cartoon character Bart Simpson and a donkey, which resulted in the sacking of 10 insurance workers and the suspension of a further 90 at Royal Sun Alliance in Liverpool earlier this month. Four lawyers at the City of London firm Norton Rose were suspended last month for circulating an email about oral sex. This later found its way to millions of computer screens around the world. BNFL has suspended three of its staff and six agency and contract workers for sending and opening the messages. However, unions claim the company has overreacted, threatening the already sour relations between managers and workers. Sellafield has had serious morale and industrial relations problems since three workers were sacked for falsifying data about fuel rods to be shipped to Japan. In March last year police were called in after a saboteur - believed to be a worker at the complex - damaged a robot and forced a plant treating nuclear waste to be shut down. There have been a series of other incidents involving safety at the plant which have led to disciplinary action against workers. A source in the GMB union, which represents three of the suspended workers, confirmed the action taken against them. 'There have been serious attempts to get industrial relations back on track at Sellafield, but BNFL is threatening to undermine all progress by doing this,' the source said. 'It will seriously damage relations at the plant, which we find concerning. 'We would never condone sending offensive material or internet porn, but these are emails involving cartoon characters, and we think this does not merit suspension.' A BNFL spokesman confirmed that the emails had been traced and the workers suspended. However, he was not prepared to discuss the contents of the message. 'I have not seen it, and I have no wish to,' he said. However, he added: 'We categorise this as offensive material, not pornographic. It is not something you would find acceptable being pinned up on the office wall. We found it unacceptable, and so the workers have been suspended.' The GMB said it would represent its members at any disciplinary hearing. Guardian Unlimited c Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 5 Taiwan legislators debate nuclear plant scrapping - January 28, 2001 CNN.com - The President's Democratic Progressive Party said it would lobby against the plant TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)--Taiwan lawmakers on Sunday geared up for a showdown on the island's partially built nuclear power plant. The issue could result in the government's second major shake-up in its eight months in power. Legislators will meet Monday on whether to resume construction of the $5.4 billion power plant which is one-third complete. The project was scrapped by Premier Chang Chun-hsiung last October. The special meeting of legislators will pave the way for a legislative session midweek when Chang is expected to defend his decision. Taiwan's Council of Grand Justices, the island's final arbiter on constitutional and legal issues, said in a ruling in mid-January that Chang had mistakenly sidestepped the law in scrapping the plant without consulting lawmakers. The high court said Chang will have to present his case to the legislature before the plant can be scuttled altogether. The opposition, which controls the legislature, approved the project before Chang's appointment last year. "The most important thing is abiding by the legislature's final decision, which was ordered by the high court," Diane Lee, a lawmaker of the opposition New Party, said in an interview with TVBS cable news network. The high court did not specify whether Chang should order that the nuclear plant's construction resume before he presents his report. The opposition has insisted that Chang reinstate the project before he addresses lawmakers. Hong Yu-chi, policy planning chief of the opposition Nationalist Party, said that support for the plant's construction among Nationalist Party lawmakers was "very clear" and that the plant's cancellation would raise serious economic concerns. "If the plant is canceled there will be no way to restore people's confidence," Hong told TVBS news. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of President Chen Shui-bian has said it would lobby against the plant. The DPP has argued that Taiwan was not capable of storing nuclear waste and that alternative energy sources such as solar or geothermal energy were more viable. Environmental activists have scheduled a protest against the plant Monday while lawmakers square off during the special meeting. Under the constitution, President Chen, who appointed Chang, will have to mediate with the opposition. If Chen fails to break the gridlock, lawmakers will be forced to push for a cabinet reshuffle or even a resignation of Chang, the island's No. 3 ranking leader. A political shake-up would be the second for Chen's eight-month old government. Premier Tang Fei resigned last year after four months amid controversy over the project. Tang supported the plant's construction. Taiwan share prices lost more than 40 percent of their value last year, and analysts have pointed to the political bickering and economic uncertainty surrounding the nuclear plant as major factors in the decline. ***************************************************************** 6 Battle to restart on nuclear plant issue The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-28 SUNDAY, JANUARY 28TH, 2001 POLITICAL STANDOFF: The DPP has reaffirmed that it will abide by the decision to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, as lawmakers get ready to debate the plan STAFF WRITER The struggle between the ruling DPP and the opposition alliance over the fate of the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¥|) will resume immediately after the Lunar New Year holidays. Tomorrow, the Legislative Yuan is to hold a discussion meeting, which will be followed on Tuesday and Wednesday by a special legislative session at which Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (±i«T¶¯) will deliver a report to the legislature on the Executive Yuan's decision to scrap the plant. Unlike previous years, in which legislators have gradually returned to the fray after the Lantern Festival (¤¸®d¸`), both the ruling and opposition parties have issued urgent mobilization orders, calling on their representatives to attend these special sessions. Meanwhile, leader of the KMT caucus Hong Yuh-chin (¬x¥É´Ü), and the newly elected secretary-general of the KMT, Cheng Yung-chin (¾G¥Ãª÷), spent the New Year holiday criss-crossing the country in an effort to garner support among legislators and increase turnout for the special sessions. Cheng has stated that the opposition alliance has completed preparations for the sessions and reached a consensus on their position. For their part, DPP leaders have also been busy over the holiday. Premier Chang has remained in close contact with Vice Premier Lai In-jaw (¿à­^·Ó) and Secretary-General of the Executive Yuan Chiou I-jen (¥C¸q¤¯). The three have discussed the contents of Chang's report, even going so far as to use a trip south to visit the family members of General Sun Li-jen (®]¥ß¤H) as an opportunity to trade ideas about the report. It is widely expected that the opposition alliance will pass a resolution to continue building the plant. However, the Executive Yuan will maintain its opposition to the plant. At that point, in accord with the ROC Constitution, President Chen Shui-bian (³¯¤ô«ó) will try to coordinate between the Cabinet and the legislature. The DPP is united in its determination to fight to the end on the nuclear plant issue. Therefore, if the president fails to obtain concessions from the opposition alliance in his role as mediator, the legislature will be forced to push for a reshuffle of the Cabinet and reschedule the date of legislative elections to allow the electorate to decide the fate of the plant. Meanwhile, beginning at noon tomorrow, activists plan to congregate in front of the Legislative Yuan for 30 hours to show their determination to make Taiwan a nuclear-free country. In related news, the office of the DPP's New Era Institute faction (·s¥@¬ö°ê·|¿ì¤½«Ç) announced yesterday plans to seek compensation from General Electric, the US company supplying equipment to the plant. They called the company's contracts for the building of the nuclear plant "unequal treaties" and declared them invalid. They also requested that the US Securities and Futures Commission investigate whether General Electric violated statutes regarding the use of bribery to win contracts abroad. This story has been viewed 418 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 7 Lawmakers Grill Regulators Over Waste Company's Request for Permit The Salt Lake Tribune-- SATURDAY, January 27, 2001 BY JUDY FAHYS Lawmakers seemed to suggest Friday that state regulators sabotaged a radioactive waste company's efforts to expand its business. In a tense hearing on the state Department of Environmental Quality budget, several lawmakers pressed regulators on why they didn't speed up Envirocare of Utah's request for a permit to dispose "hotter" radioactive waste at its Tooele County waste landfill. But DEQ Director Dianne Nielson and Bill Sinclair, director of the Division of Radiation Control, insisted they had worked apace with the company on its permit. The regulators also pointed out the company had missed some of its deadlines on the permit. "There was not deliberate attempt or un-deliberate attempt to delay the process," Nielson told the lawmakers. The Legislature's accountants are suggesting $41.4 million for DEQ, the agency charged with making sure the state's land, air and water are healthful. The agency has 424 employees. In an unusual move, the budget committee Friday put Envirocare's President Charles Judd at the top of its agenda. Typically, the committees do not ask for interest-group comments until a state agency has explained its funding request. Envirocare needs approval first from DEQ, then the Legislature and the governor before it can accept the new kinds of radioactive waste, typically called class B and class C waste. The B and C wastes are hundreds and sometimes thousands of times more radioactive than the class A wastes that Envirocare has been disposing for more than a decade at its 640-acre facility about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. Envirocare had hoped to get all the paperwork, regulatory approvals and public input completed in time for the 2001 Legislature but said earlier this month it would be unable to get all that done soon enough. Tens of millions of dollars are at stake, for the company and perhaps for the state budget. "Our plan was, clear up until December, that we would be coming to before Legislature" this year, said Judd, whose company made campaign donations last year of nearly $63,000. Nielson said regulators must make sure the required paperwork and reviews are in good order so that a final permit is not vulnerable to a legal attack. She also pointed out that the company all along accepted the DEQ's logic behind giving the public 60 days to comment on the permit, since the controversial request is likely to trigger lengthier review and possibly an appeal. She estimated the permit would not be ready for a legislative vote until spring or summer, under the state and federal laws for permitting such facilities. Committee Co-chairman Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, said after the presentation that there were "allegations" that DEQ had been "foot-dragging." "It looks to me there's blame on both sides," he said. c Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 'DOWNWINDERS' HONORED: Utah adopts resolution Sunday, January 28, 2001 Copyright c Las Vegas Review-Journal THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SALT LAKE CITY--It's been 50 years since the Army first tested nuclear weapons in Southern Nevada, and the fallout is still lingering. Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and his state's Legislature adopted a resolution Friday commemorating the anniversary of the first open-air atomic bomb test and the "downwinders" who paid the price. Rep. Neal Hendrickson, D-West Valley City, said his parents and his sister died from cancer related to the fallout that drifted east from Nevada and blanketed parts of southern Utah. "I happened to stand on the Black Ridge of St. George and watch those clouds come up and the dust blow over and fall on the citizens," said Rep. Jack Seitz, R-Vernal. Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the first test. They went on for 37 years, with the government insisting all along they posed no threat. "This is government at its absolute worst and if we don't remember it with a resolution like this we are going to repeat it," said Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George. The resolution also notes that miners in Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico and the Navajo Nation who gathered uranium for the nuclear weapons program later contracted diseases caused by the radiation. "I think we'll never know how much suffering went unrecognized," said Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan. His father had a sheep ranch near Payson, and said that after tests the fields were covered with white ash. The resolution sets Jan. 27 as a Day of Remembrance "to recognize the legacy of the Cold War and express hope for peace, justice, healing, reconciliation, and the fervent desire and commitment to assure that such a legacy will never be repeated." A group of downwinders gathered at the Capitol on Saturday to commemorate the anniversary. Last July, President Clinton signed a bill paying up to $100,000 to people sickened by Cold War-era uranium mining and nuclear tests, expanding on a 1990 law. Copyright c Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2001 ***************************************************************** 2 URANIUM HYSTERIA SWEEPS EUROPE DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, EUROPE'S MEDIA BLAME NATO AMMUNITION FOR CANCER IN SOLDIERS. THE SERBS, MEANWHILE, ARE HAPPY TO CAPITALIZE ON THE ANTI-U.S. SENTIMENT. Chicago Tribune Traditional Version - Nation/World BY TOM HUNDLEY Tribune Foreign Correspondent JANUARY 28, 2001 PRISTINA, Yugoslavia It began with a series of articles in a far- left Italian newspaper and blossomed into media frenzy that has sent European governments into a panic over depleted uranium. Il Manifesto, a feisty journal with roots in the Italian Communist Party, was the first to connect the leukemia deaths of three Italian soldiers with their service in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In a series of reports last autumn, the paper suggested a link between the fatal blood disease and depleted uranium shells used by NATO in 1995. As the story unfolded, two more Italian veterans from Bosnia died, and then two more. By January, as many as 30 Balkan veterans from Italy had been diagnosed with various illnesses, and the Italian news media was in a full-throated howl, demanding that Italian troops be withdrawn from the Balkans until their safety could be guaranteed. The British press soon caught the fever. A reporter for the normally sober Independent described the "cancerous gray snow" he saw in Bosnia, and blamed depleted uranium for the deaths of 300 Bosnian Serb civilians. No one could produce any scientific evidence to support a linkage between leukemia and depleted uranium. Indeed, physicists and medical experts who have looked into the matter have long insisted that it is biologically impossible to contract leukemia from depleted uranium. Other health authorities suggested that the badly polluted environment of Bosnia was a far more likely cause of the soldiers' illnesses. But it hardly mattered. The finger pointing had started and all fingers were pointing at the United States. The Pentagon owned up to the fact that some 10,800 rounds of ammunition tipped with depleted uranium were fired at Serb targets in Bosnia in 1995 and that another 31,000 rounds were used during the 1999 Kosovo campaign. Most of the ammunition was fired at Serb tank positions by U.S. A- 10 "Warthog" jets. Because of its extreme density, a depleted uranium shell is an especially effective weapon for penetrating tank armor or reinforced concrete. Questions about the safety of depleted uranium munitions first arose after the Persian Gulf war when U.S. soldiers came down with a variety of mysterious illnesses. Depleted uranium was investigated as a possible cause. Particular attention was paid to 15 gulf war veterans who still have fragments of depleted uranium embedded in their bodies. So far, none has developed cancer and now, after a decade of study, virtually every expert on so-called gulf war syndrome has ruled out depleted uranium as a cause. But seven Italian soldiers are dead and no one knows why. France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal also are looking into cases of soldiers who served in the Balkans and later contracted leukemia. To calm European fears, the U.S. government has released reams of data indicating that the risks posed by depleted uranium are minuscule. For the most part, the European press chose to ignore or downplay evidence that got in the way of their story. And with NATO on the defensive and America portrayed as the nuclear polluter, it was an excellent story. "We had more reporters here last week then we had in the whole previous year," said Susan Manuel, spokeswoman for the UN Mission in Kosovo. "Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Turkey . . . " The story has become a propaganda windfall for Yugoslavia, ever eager to portray itself as the victim of NATO aggression. President Vojislav Kostunica, who succeeded Slobodan Milosevic last October, called NATO's use of depleted uranium shells "morally degenerate," and a government pamphlet distributed to the foreign media claims that depleted uranium had transformed vast tracts of Kosovo into "a radioactive desert." Earlier this month, a team of United Nations environmental inspectors tested the soil, water and vegetation at 11 of the 112 sites in Kosovo where depleted uranium shells were deployed. At eight of the sites, they found low levels of Beta radiation--not enough to present any significant health hazard, but enough to send European politicians into a frenzy of recrimination. Italy was the first to call for a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium munitions. Germany, Greece and Norway soon followed. Over one-quarter of the 1,400 Greek troops serving in Kosovo already have asked to go home because of the alleged health risks. German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping initially dismissed concerns about depleted uranium as "hysteria syndrome." But after German TV reported that depleted uranium sometimes contained microscopic traces of plutonium--a fact well-known in the scientific community--Scharping reversed himself and summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires in Berlin to "express the concerns that are triggered by the word plutonium." Almost every government with troops in the Balkans is now screening its soldiers for increased levels of uranium. The notable exception is the U.S. These days, when NATO peacekeepers approach a site where depleted uranium was used, they wear white space suits and masks. In marked contrast to the measures the soldiers take to protect themselves, virtually nothing has been done to protect the local civilian population. A week after the UN environmental inspectors held a press conference to complain that children were playing and cows were grazing in "contaminated" zones, UN administrators in Kosovo had yet to start marking off the areas with warning signs. "We haven't felt any sense of alarm among the local population," said Edward Poultney, spokesman for the World Health Organization in Kosovo. "They look at it in a relative way." This may be because the local population of Kosovo has come to realize that it was living in an environmental disaster area long before NATO came to visit. In Mitrovica, the ethnically divided city in northern Kosovo, lead levels in the city's water and air routinely reach up to 200 times higher than the maximum safe levels established by WHO. Researchers from New York's Columbia University first came here in the 1970s to study the poison's devastating effects on child development. Last August NATO shut down the area's Zvecan smelter when French soldiers stationed in the area began showing elevated lead levels in their blood. The soldiers have been warned not to make any babies for at least six months. Across the province, raw waste spills into village streets; abandoned factories leak toxic wastes; rivers and streams reek of sewage. On the outskirts of Pristina, an ancient coal-burning power plant belches tons of ash into the atmosphere every day. Most children in this city seem to have chronic runny noses and hacking coughs. In Gnjilane, a row of fast-food stalls has toilets that empty directly into a stream that flows past the base where American soldiers live. Despite the concerns about depleted uranium, Italian troops based in Djakovica are still camped in an abandoned car factory. They have been there 18 months. "They are living, eating and sleeping on the floor of a Zastava auto plant where you have lead and other heavy metals and God knows what else all over the place," said a Western diplomat. A team of WHO experts has started sifting through hospital records to see if there has been any increased incidence of leukemia or cancers among the local population living near the depleted uranium sites. Thus far, they have found nothing, although it would normally take more than two years for such cancers to start showing up. Kosovo's Albanian population has its own theory on the hazards of depleted uranium. "They think it's all Serb propaganda aimed at scaring NATO troops out of Kosovo and depriving them of their independence," said UNMIK's Manuel. "They accuse us of inflating the issue." U.S. soldiers in Kosovo have been instructed to direct all reporters' queries about depleted uranium to NATO headquarters in Brussels, but at Camp Bondsteel, the main American base in Kosovo, GI's scoffed at the concerns. "See those Abrams tanks over there?" asked one soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The armor is made from a depleted uranium composite, and you'll find less radiation inside one of those things than you would in most people's backyards." ***************************************************************** 3 Radiation least of Kosovo's worries charlotte.com - Published Sunday, January 28, 2001 FOCUS ON DEPLETED URANIUM MISGUIDED AMID AREA'S `ENVIRONMENTAL TRAGEDY' BY BRIAN MURPHY Associated Press LANDOVICA, YUGOSLAVIA --The boy wiggles through thick brambles and slides into the bomb crater. He comes often to this spot - a wooded hollow among rolling hills of vineyards - to explore the crumbled bunker or hunt for pieces of the Yugoslav tanks blasted in the NATO bombardment. Nexhat Gashi has never heard of depleted-uranium ammunition. He shrugs when asked about radioactivity. He has no clue his special hideout is part of a global uproar about possible health risks from the armor- busting shells used by U.S. forces during the 1999 airstrikes. But the 14-year-old is certain about one thing. "The whole environment of Kosovo is sick," he says while poking around the bomb site about 35 miles southwest of Pristina, the provincial capital. "Why isn't anyone trying to fix that first?" The question rings loudly across Kosovo. Worries about possible links between illnesses and depleted uranium have sent a chill through the highest political and military levels of NATO nations. But many ethnic Albanians wonder why obvious ecological calamities in Kosovo - with clear health consequences - aren't getting the same attention. It doesn't take a Geiger counter to measure Kosovo's ecological crisis. Winds carry lead dust. Untreated sewage spills onto village streets. Toxic metals leak from neglected factories. Raw waste pours into rivers, leaving some stretches totally lifeless. Such scenes are not uncommon in the Balkans, but Kosovo suffers particularly. The Yugoslav government made few ecology-minded investments in its province after the majority ethnic Albanians began setting up their own rival administration more than a decade ago. The 78-day NATO attack added to the problems by striking at industrial targets. "It's a catastrophe," said Bejtullah Bejtullahu, an environmental activist in Kosovska Mitrovica, considered one of the most polluted areas in Kosovo. Lead levels in the city's air and water have reached up to 200 times World Health Organization guidelines. NATO peacekeepers closed the giant Zvecan lead smelter in August, but lead residue is still carried by the breeze and works its way down to the water table and into the food chain. French soldiers in the city are routinely tested for lead levels and those with elevated readings are moved out and advised against conceiving a baby for several months, U.N. officials said. Another part of the idle industrial complex - which produced fertilizers, batteries and high-quality zinc - leaks dangerous substances such as cadmium, arsenic, nickel and sulfuric acid. A tank containing nearly 160,000gallons of sulfuric acid ruptured in September, leaking its contents into the Sitnica River and killing tens of thousands of fish. Near the Macedonian border, a cement plant churns out a fine white dust that sometimes comes down like snow flurries. Respiratory problems and tuberculosis are common. An adjacent facility making asbestos products, a known carcinogen, was only recently closed. Makeshift landfills and random dumping dot Kosovo, allowing tainted runoff to reach rivers and water supplies. More than 75 percent of rural homes draw water from unprotected, shallow wells, the World Health Organization says. High levels of fecal contamination have led to a sharp rise in diseases such as hepatitis A. With no real environmental enforcement, there are abuses. An old fuel storage tank leaked directly into a bog in the southwestern village of Suva Reka. A pile of dozens of old car batteries was tossed into a roadside ditch near the western city of Pec. Outside Pristina, coal-burning power plants have left a mountain of black ash visible for miles. Strong winds can push the grains into Kosovo's largest city, mixing with exhaust from the many diesel generators and cars with few pollution controls. "We call it the Pristina cough," said Daut Maloku, head of the environmentalist Green Party of Kosovo. "We are living in a toxic place," he added. "There are so many things here to make you ill: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. Why are we so worried about only depleted uranium when we have so many more pressing problems?" Yet each day brings more resources devoted to the uranium question. WHO plans to assign a special investigation team and help coordinate a voluntary testing program for citizens. NATO forces have started placing warning signs at 112 known areas hit by uranium shells, which can punch through thick armor at supersonic speed and ignite in a deadly fireball. Experts note there haven't been any in-depth studies of depleted uranium. "A lump of (depleted uranium) sitting on the ground is not especially a problem. The big worry is if any of this material is ingested," said Dave Phillips, an environmental toxin specialist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London. "There is just so much we don't know." Along the swatch of southwestern Kosovo where most of the 31,000 depleted uranium rounds fell, doctors have not reported any spike in cancer cases or other possible radiation-linked cases. "It's fine to look closely at this, but I think they should look at the whole picture. Kosovo is an environmental tragedy," said Dr. Bashkim Meqa, director of the Isa Grezda Hospital in Djakovica. "If we don't have clean water and clean air, what is the point in worrying about something that may or may not make you sick?" But the environment is a low priority for U.N. overseers struggling with huge security and administrative matters. Just $1 million of the U.N.'s $250 million Kosovo budget is marked for environmental projects. More money may be sought from donor nations at a February conference in Brussels, Belgium. "It's similar to any developing country where you have to pace the various issues to improve incrementally," said Gerald Fischer, one of the top U.N. civil administrators. "I think the emphasis is on incremental." IN THE NEWS ÿJAN. 16: A Swiss laboratory announces it found traces of a uranium ÿisotope that suggest radioactive contamination in American-made ÿmunitions that were collected on the battlefields of Kosovo. ÿJAN. 12: Scientists studying the health risks of depleted uranium ÿfor the German government recommend Kosovo be cleaned of traces ÿof the metal left by NATO weapons. DAUT MALOKU head of the environmentalist Green Party of Kosovo ***************************************************************** 4 Editorial: Better checks and balances needed The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-27 SATURDAY, JANUARY 27TH, 2001 After reading the Council of Grand Justices' ruling on the halt to the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®Ö¥|), one question leaps to mind: Is this the ruling that Bao Ching-tien (¥]«C¤Ñ) - - the most famous judge in Chinese history--would have made? The answer is a resounding "no," because the ruling demonstrates political, rather than judicial, wisdom. However, the council did its best against a backdrop of over-encroaching legislative and executive powers, and deserves a round of applause. The language of the ruling was highly refined and well-rounded, accomplishing the impossible task of sketching a silhouette of the underlying opinion without uttering the magic words "unconstitutional" or "constitutional." The message from the justices is loud and clear --"here are the rules of the game, you clean up your own mess ... we want hands off." This is not the role expected of our judiciary. The judiciary is comparable to referee or umpire of a ball game. Would a Wimbledon umpire tell two arguing tennis players, "you decide whether the ball was out?" The US Supreme Court appears more willing to play the bad guy. Remember the battle between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court in which the court repeatedly ruled emergency executive actions implementing the New Deal were "unconstitutional?" Remember how Roosevelt angrily called the justices "those nine old men" and then tried to add more justices to the court? Certainly, Bao who had bravely slew members of the royal family with his "Shang-fang sword" (¤W¤èÄ_¼C) would have done otherwise. What is keeping the council from taking sides? It is the compression of judicial power by executive and legislative power. Plainly put, the council was not in a position to annoy either the executive or legislative branch, because it is less powerful than they are. Taiwan has a history of executive domination, from the marital law era right through the days when the KMT controlled both the executive and the legislature. The change of ruling party has weakened the executive's power, as is evident by the battle over the nuclear power plant with the legislature, because the ruling party is the minority in the Legislative Yuan. However, the executive continues to wield leverage over the judiciary for many reasons. The fact that the justices are appointed by the president and do not enjoy life tenure is one reason. The opposition has used its legislative majority to increase its power by attempting to expanding the prerogatives of the legislature, in a situation where these are far more unchecked than among most of its foreign counterparts. For example, members of the US House of Representatives enjoy immunity of speech only in their performance of legislative duties, while Taiwan's legislators enjoy immunity for all speech made in the legislature, even if it is unrelated to official activities. Therefore, many legislators in Taiwan use the legislature to make groundless personal attacks. Legislators in Taiwan also enjoy an absolute immunity from arrest and detention during legislative sessions, provided the legislature does not consent to their arrest or detention, something their US counterparts do not have. Members of the US Congress only have the power to make investigations related to legislative activities. In Taiwan, our legislators frequently meddle with criminal investigations unrelated to their legislative activities. It is time for us to ask: Is this the government structure and power distribution we want? Unlike the US system, under which the three branches of government are linked by a system of checks and balances, our system overwhelmingly favors the legislative and executive powers. As a strong judicial power is essential for an effective checks and balances system, it is imperative for us to think about how to improve the power of the judiciary. This story has been viewed 409 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 5 'Downwinders' mark date of the first blast StandardNETR Sunday, January 28, 2001 By PAUL FOY The Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY--Fifty years after the federal government began testing nuclear weapons in the southern Nevada desert, Jay Truman, 49, is still haunted by a passage in his dog-eared copy of a government booklet handed out at the time. "You people who live near the Nevada Test Site are in a very real sense active participants in the nation's atomic test program," reads the booklet. He joined a small group of Navajo Indians, uranium workers and other "downwinders" Utah Capitol on Saturday to mark the 50th anniversary of the first test blast, from a 1-kiloton atomic bomb over Frenchman's Flat. On Friday, state lawmakers declared Jan. 27 an official day of remembrance. Many of the downwinders suffer from thyroid cancer, the most common reminder of the 928 open-air atomic blasts conducted in Nevada from 1951 to 1962. One visitor unbuttoned his shirt to show a throat scarred from surgery. Much of the radioactive fallout drifted eastward, blanketing parts of southern Utah with a snow-like ash. Last July, President Clinton signed a bill paying up to $150,000 to people sickened by the nuclear tests and Cold War- era uranium mining. But downwinders were bitter when they found Clinton's promise empty. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R- Utah, has vowed to find the money this year. ***************************************************************** 6 Saddam has made two atomic bombs, says Iraqi defector ISSUE 2074 Sunday 28 JANUARY 2001 BY JESSICA BERRY SADDAM HUSSEIN has two fully operational nuclear bombs and is working to construct others, an Iraqi defector has told The Telegraph. The defector, a military engineer who fled Iraq a year after United Nations arms inspectors left the country, says that he helped to oversee the completion of the weapons programme. He is currently in hiding in Europe. International nuclear officials are investigating his evidence, which contradicts recent reports that the Iraqi dictator's plans were still at a preparatory stage. Saddam's efforts to build atomic weapons were delayed by the UN Special 1998, but scientists resumed the work immediately after their departure. According to the defector, who cannot be named for security reasons, bombs are being built in Hemrin in north-eastern Iraq, near the Iranian border. Last week, the defector said: "There are at least two nuclear bombs which are ready for use. Before the UN inspectors came, there were 47 factories involved in the project. Now there are 64." The information has alarmed security experts, who were aware only that the area around Hemrin was well-guarded. The defector said: "The area is restricted to the Special Security Organisation. Some of it is under the control of the military industrialisation ministry which is in charge of building up Saddam's weapons arsenal, but one area is entirely under the control of the nuclear energy organisation. They are digging shelters there." The nuclear programme is shrouded in secrecy. The chain of command leads directly to the presidential palace and Saddam's closest aide, Abed Hmoud, a Baath Party stalwart who runs the Iraqi dictator's private office. According to the defector, General Raad Ismail, the head of the Committee for the Use of Nuclear Weapons, answers directly to a Dr Khaled, the director-general of the al-Athir factory, who oversees the final stages of construction of weapons. States in 1998, but has since been rebuilt. Also involved is Awad al-Benck, who is responsible for procurement in the presidential office. Involvement of such senior men means that the programme is top secret. The defector says that apart from the scientists, only four or five people know what is happening. One security expert said: "This is vital information. The fact that General Ismail is involved can only mean that the programme is complete." Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the UN-founded International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said that the IAEA was unable to confirm that the Iraqi dictator was complying with Unscom resolutions. Mrs Fleming said: "I will bring this to the attention of the members of the agency immediately. We want to investigate this as soon as possible." The fresh evidence comes only a week after President George W Bush weapons of mass destruction, without mentioning Iraq. Under Anglo- US policy, any attempt by Saddam to build nuclear or biological weapons could lead to military action. Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State and a Gulf war veteran, and Vice-President Dick Cheney are both known to favour a radical approach in dealing with Iraq. General Powell said of Saddam last week: "His only tool, the only thing he can scare us with are those weapons of mass destruction, and we have to hold him to account." The new White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said: "The President expects Saddam Hussein to live up to the agreements he's made with the UN, especially regarding the elimination of weapons of mass destruction." ***************************************************************** 7 Radiation Victims Honored The Salt Lake Tribune-- SUNDAY, January 28, 2001 BY LINDA FANTIN As far as golden anniversaries go, Saturday was about as solemn as it gets. At 5:05 a.m. on Jan. 27, 1951, an atomic bomb lighted up the desert sky, the Nevada Test Site became operational and before long, lethal uranium deposits throughout the West were mined to build America's nuclear weapons arsenal. Fifty years later, Ed Brickey is still losing friends to the fallout, friends like Carol Dewey of Dove Creek, Colo. Dewey grew up around the uranium mines owned and operated by her late father. As president of the Colorado Plateau Uranium Workers, she lobbied tirelessly so that victims of radiation exposure, like her father, would be compensated by the U.S. government. She died Thursday, her neck swollen with a rare form of cancer, and unexpectedly became one of the victims she intended to honor at Saturday's anniversary rally in the rotunda of the Utah Capitol. "That's what we've come to expect when you grow up around a mill," said Brickey as he flipped through old photographs of Uravan, a Utah mining town outside Moab where he was raised. "We never had a choice. That's what's so sad about it." Duped by the government about the dangers of atomic radiation, Brickey not only followed his father into uranium mining, he also worked at the Nevada Test Site. On Friday, he joined a small group of uranium miners, Navajos and "downwinders" to commemorate the somber anniversary and to use the occasion to blast Washington, D.C., lawmakers for not doing enough to compensate victims of radiation exposure. Led by Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch, Congress passed the 1990 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) guaranteeing up to $100,000 to downwinders and miners--then didn't fund it for two years. Now the program is broke and the government is handing out IOUs. In July, President Clinton signed an amendment to the 1990 law extending the compensation to millers and transporters of radioactive uranium ore. Again, the money is slow to follow and the government has yet to release the criteria so victims can apply for the funds. "It didn't take near this long to compensate the Japanese for their suffering during World War II," said Mary Brickey. Life is especially grim for the Navajos, who not only worked in the mines but lived downwind of the Nevada nuclear blasts. Goats and sheep ate grass contaminated by clouds of radioactive dust tainting the milk and meat that feed the clans. Even the rocks that were used to construct their houses are hot. Elsie Mae Begay's hogan--a traditional Navajo dwelling where Begay and her family had lived for years in Monument Valley--has a floor made from such stones. Earlier this summer, the Environmental Protection Agency found that radiation levels were 80 times acceptable levels. On Nov. 14, the EPA wrote to Begay promising to remove the hogan and replace it with a wooden structure by December. "We're still waiting," Begay said Saturday. Navajos often have a tougher time qualifying for federal aid because medical records, birth certificates and other official documents the government demands do not exist for many tribe members stricken with radiation-related diseases. Others, like Dave Timothy, are excluded from the narrowly-written legislation. Timothy lived in northern Utah in 1962 when winds plastered the area with radioactive fallout from above ground tests conducted at the Nevada site. Timothy, whose neck bares the scar from thyroid surgery, said he remembers the milk was so contaminated it had to be dumped down the sink. But RECA only allows for downwinders in southern Utah to apply for compensation. He called the legislation "a scam," saying it was designed to limit the government's risk, not to adequately compensate victims. J. Truman agrees. The director of Downwinders says by restricting the categories of victims, Congress has prevented victims from "getting enough numbers to kick some butt in Washington." He and others hope that will change. "A lot of work must be done before justice is done," he said. c Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All ***************************************************************** 8 Utah 'downwinders' remember Sunday, January 28, 2001 Deseret News staff writer Fifty years later, Billy Whitehorse remembers the strange glows that would flash off the scenic red buttes of the Navajo Reservation in southern Utah. "The Navajo people were mostly uneducated," he said. "They didn't know about the nuclear testing in Nevada." Navajo Billy Whitehorse remembers the strange glows that would flash off the scenic red buttes in southern Utah during Nevada's testing 50 years ago. Rudy Zamora, Deseret News Whitehorse was among the Navajos, the uranium miners and the downwinders gathered at the Capitol Saturday for what the governor and lawmakers have proclaimed "A Day of Remembrance" to recognize the thousands of people sickened by radiation in America's race to win the Cold War. "Today is very important," thundered J. Preston Truman, director of Downwinders. On Jan. 27, 1951, the nuclear-weapons- testing program began, he added, setting off one of the most dramatic and deadly decades in U.S. history. The fallout was felt around the world, most severely in Utah. Then began the struggle with the federal government. "The reason why this anniversary is important to us is the U.S. government admitted the truth," Truman said. "Sort of." Growing up in southern Utah, Truman was exposed not only to radiation but to the government propaganda. "People who live near the Nevada Test Site are active participants who contributed greatly to the defense," he read from a little green book he received in grade school. "Some of you have been inconvenienced. Nevertheless, you have accepted it without fuss and alarm. No one outside the boundaries has been hurt by the six years of testing," the book read. It wasn't until 1980 when Congress admitted it "misinformed" the public about the affects of the atomic blasts, Truman said. "We went from being active participants to the forgotten guinea pigs." Downwinders called on Congress to live up to its promise and compensate those sick and dying of radiation poison, including many of the miners who dug uranium from the earth that went into nuclear warheads. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990 to help uranium miners and others who became ill due to radioactive fallout from the federal government's nuclear weapons program. The law provides $100,000 to each underground uranium miner who had one of six lung diseases linked to radiation exposure. The law was amended in 2000 to expand the list of cancers eligible for compensation and expanded the geographic areas not covered under the original act. But Ed Brickey and others haven't seen a penny. "We have a law passed and signed by the president with no funds," said Brickey, a former miner who represents Colorado uranium workers. "They're ill, and their days are limited," he added. Melton Martinez, who works to help sick Navajos apply for compensation, said the $20 million provided by the government isn't nearly enough to pay for the 260 people who received IOUs. Soon it will be too late, he fears. "We're still losing friends and families to radiation exposure," he said. E-mail: [*]donna@desnews.com [I] [I] [I] [I] c 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 9 THE TRAGEDY OF NUCLEAR TESTS IN NEVADA, 50 YEARS LATER JANUARY, 27, 1951, THE NEVADA TEST SITE WENT INTO OPERATION BY EXPLODING AN ATOMIC BOMB. Pravda.RU:Main Jan, 27 2001 Made in Pravda.ru Pravda.ru comes forward with working out conceptions and creating new corporative representative sites, as well as with promotion 12:25 2001-01-27 As golden anniversaries go, it's a somber occasion. In a forlorn expanse of desert scarcely an hour's drive northwest of Las Vegas, on Jan. 27, 1951, the Nevada Test Site went into operation by exploding an atomic bomb. During more than a decade, mushroom clouds often rose toward the sky. Winds routinely carried radioactive fallout to communities in Utah, Nevada and northern Arizona. Meanwhile, news media dutifully conveyed U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announcements to downwind residents: "There is no danger". In the region, journalists followed the national media spin and threw in some extra bravado. "'Baby' A-Blast May Provide Facts on Defense Against Atomic Attack," said a headline in the Las Vegas Sun on March 13, 1955. That week brought the unveiling of a taller detonation tower - 500 feet instead of the previous 300-foot height. The Las Vegas Review- Journal informed readers that the change would make them even more secure: "Use of taller towers from which atomic devices are detonated at the Nevada Test Site introduces an added angle of safety to residents living outside the confines of the Atomic Energy Commission's continental testing ground, nuclear scientists believe." Eleven days later, when the "added angle of safety" did not prevent a hot storm of radioactive particles from blanketing the city, the Review-Journal reported that the day's events were benign. "Fallout on Las Vegas and vicinity following this morning's detonation was very low and without any effects on health," the newspaper explained. Pundits of the day were eagerly patrolling ideological frontiers for the benefit of all Americans. The Los Angeles Examiner published a column by International News Service writer Jack Lotto under the headline "On Your Guard: Reds Launch 'Scare Drive' Against U.S. Atomic Tests." The article warned: "A big Communist 'fear' campaign to force Washington to stop all American atomic hydrogen bomb tests erupted this past week." It was a popular theme among prominent commentators like syndicated columnist David Lawrence, whose wisdom appeared in the Washington Post and other leading newspapers. "The truth is," he wrote in spring 1955, "there isn't the slightest proof of any kind that the 'fallout' as a result of tests in Nevada has ever affected any human being anywhere outside the testing ground itself." By then, children and others living in downwind areas were beginning to develop leukemia. As time passed, people in affected areas suffered extraordinarily high rates of cancer and thyroid ills. Functioning in tandem, the news media and the federal government continued to deny that nuclear testing was a health hazard. In August 1980, nearly three decades after the Nevada site opened for nuclear business, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations concluded: "All evidence suggesting that radiation was having harmful effects, be it on the sheep or the people, was not only disregarded but actually suppressed." That assessment was no surprise to thousands of downwind residents like Jay Truman, who grew up in southwestern Utah under the shadow of the test site. After watching many friends die, he had no interest in pretending that the U.S. government did not kill his schoolmates. When I met Truman in 1980, he was already an expert on nuclear testing. Today, as director of the Downwinders organization (www.downwinders.org), he's still fighting the good fight. From the Rockies to remote Russian sites, nuclear industries have taken an enormous toll. Victims include Native American uranium miners, nuclear-plant workers and far-flung residents, soldiers exposed to atomic bomb tests at close range, Pacific islanders, and people whose lives were forever changed during a few split seconds in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Nuclear testing made the Cold War possible," Truman said a few days ago. "Without it, humanity could never have developed and deployed the weapons that still stand ever-ready to wipe our species off this planet." Unable to admit the inevitable health effects of nuclear tests, "all governments of all testing nations learned how to--and perfected being able to - lie to their own citizens." Fifty years after the first mushroom cloud overshadowed the Nevada desert, military contractors and their allies are eager to spread the news about the latest technologies offering "an added angle of safety." In 2001, Star Wars is back on the media horizon. It's never too late to make a killing. BY NORMAN SOLOMON ***************************************************************** 10 SRS benefits from technical training plan Augusta Chronicle. Web posted Sunday, January 28, 2001 Staff Writer Good nuclear-production workers aren't easy to find, but Savannah River Site officials think they have found a steady supply. After more than a year, the federal nuclear-weapons site is seeing results from a job-training program it holds in concert with three local technical schools, SRS officials said. The site has hired all 14 workers who have graduated from the program so far, and executives expect to hire more employees from a batch of graduates this spring, said Mickie Seitter, a spokeswoman for Westinghouse Savannah River Co. Westinghouse operates SRS for the U.S. Department of Energy. SRS officials hope the program soon will provide the bulk of the 50 to 100 new workers needed each year in four highly specialized fields. Jocelyn Grimes is in training for a position at Savannah River Site, and she graduated from a certificate program at Augusta Technical College. JENNIFER FULLER/STAFF ``It's a win-win,'' Ms. Seitter said. ``The schools can say that they have a program that can train you to be hired at SRS. It's good for us, because we feel that if they come here with that certificate, then they will be successful at completing the rest of the training at the site.'' A college administrator expressed similar sentiments. ``It's something where students can get immediate results from their education,'' said Bonnie Mills, an administrator for the program at Augusta Technical College. ``After taking just the certificate course, they are able to take the test and go to work and do a good job, and really make a decent salary.'' The program, offered by Augusta Technical College, Aiken Technical College and Denmark Technical College, allows students to take specific courses that prepare them for one of four positions at SRS: production operator, laboratory technician, radiation-control inspector and industrial-hygiene specialist. Each school has developed a regimen of courses, in fields such as statistics, physics and algebra, to teach the basic knowledge needed in those jobs, Ms. Seitter said. After earning a certificate from one of the colleges, a student can apply for positions at SRS. Although a job is not guaranteed, the site has not yet rejected anyone who went through the program, Ms. Seitter said. Once hired, the students continue the program with several months of on-the-job training - and become eligible for tuition reimbursement that they can use toward a two- or four-year degree. ``The courses are about 25 percent of their associate degree,'' Dr. Mills said. ``Right off the bat, that's one of the benefits.'' Jocelyn Grimes is one former student who intends to pursue an advanced degree. Ms. Grimes, who finished the certificate program at Augusta Technical College in December 1999, is training at SRS to become an industrial-hygiene specialist. ``This was a good opportunity to come in and learn the program from the beginning up,'' said Ms. Grimes, who also serves as a medical technician in the Navy Reserves. ``This was a good starting point for me. ``It's an excellent opportunity to get in out here.'' For more information about the program, contact Aiken Technical College at (803) 593-9231, Augusta Technical College at (706) 771-4020 or Denmark Technical College at (803) 793-5176. ***************************************************************** 11 AHighly Charged Issue TheDay.com: Local and National News Published on 1/28/2001 Inspectors and plant workers inside the control room of Unit II at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford. The station, located at the mouth of the Niantic River in Waterford, is being bought by Dominion Resources, Inc. for $1.3 billion. WATERFORD--The ownership of the Millstone Nuclear Power Station, New England's largest single supplier of electricity, will soon change hands, but in the near term, at least, consumers will see no corresponding change in their electric bills. That is not to say that consumers do not have a stake in the momentous decisions that were made by the state Department of Public Utility Control this past week in approving the Millstone sale. When the long-anticipated move to a competitive electric market really gets in gear in 2004, the biggest player in that market will be in the hands of an out-of-state company looking to recoup the $1.3 billion it paid for Millstone. And looking far into the future there could be a billion-dollar pot of gold at the end of the Millstone rainbow for the new owner, Dominion Resources Inc., in the form of trust funds collected from consumers for the eventual cleanup and decommissioning of the nuclear station. Dominion, which successfully and profitably operates four nuclear plants in Virginia, saw in Millstone an opportunity to get a big piece of the large and growing Northeast energy market at the dawn of competition. That is why it paid a price that far exceeded expectations. The DPUC, which oversaw the auction, had set a minimum bid price of $232 million. If it can also submit the winning offer for Seabrook Nuclear Power Station in New Hampshire, which goes on the block this year, Dominion can parlay its Millstone investment into unparalleled market power in New England. All these changes are the result of the decisions by legislatures across the Northeast to introduce competition to the electric market. The logic is that competition means lower prices. To open the market, the old monopolies, such as Northeast Utilities, were forced to sell off their power generation plants. NU's subsidiary, Connecticut Light & Power, remains responsible for billing and delivering power to customers. The strategy blew up in the face of lawmakers in California, where deregulation has led to electric shortages and blackouts. Proponents of deregulation say the Northeast is different, that there is a greater power supply and that competition is being introduced more gradually and with greater safeguards. Time will tell. Competition is supposed to work like this: Generation plants are no longer subject to regulation and can sell electricity at whatever price the market demands. The cost of distributing that electricity over the CL&P power grid is regulated by the DPUC, so there is a level playing field for all competitors. Finally there are the providers, trying to buy power at the best price from the generators and sell it to you at a profit. RATE CEILING FOR MANY One reason Connecticut customers have seen little change despite megasales like the Millstone purchase is that the DPUC has set what is called a “standard offer,” the rate ceiling that most residential customers pay (the exception being customers served by the municipally- owned utilities in Groton, Norwich and Jewett City). Unless a customer chooses to buy their power from someone else, they get electricity at the standard offer price supplied by CL&P. The key to becoming competitive is beating the standard offer price. The standard offer was set at 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour and remains in place through 2003. Given recent increases in oil and gas, the primary source of electric power generation, providers have been unable to buy power cheap enough to better the standard offer price. The result has been very little competition, though the market has officially been open more than a year. Michael G. Morris, chairman, president and chief executive officer of NU, has recently been suggesting that the standard offer was set unrealistically low and should be increased. As long as it is in place, electric companies will be prevented from making enough money to compete in Connecticut, he said. While in the short term boosting the standard offer would mean increases in electric bills, in the long run it would get competition percolating. Otherwise, when the rate cap is lifted in 2004, Connecticut customers could experience a large spike in electric costs, Morris warns. Outside of the utility industry, there appears to be no support for the idea. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal rejects the idea out of hand, saying it would be a disservice to customers to raise rates after promising the restructuring of the industry would do the opposite. Things obviously change in 2004. If gas and oil prices continue to move upward, Dominion is betting it can produce nuclear power cheaper. If the market is indeed set higher than Millstone's generation costs it could mean big profits for Dominion. The key is keeping the two reactors at Millstone operating efficiently. Serious problems and a prolonged shut down such as Millstone experienced in the mid-1990s would be devastating in a competitive environment. Richard Zuercher, a company spokesman, said Dominion would not have invested so heavily in Millstone if it were not convinced that it could keep the plants operating smoothly. In Connecticut it will operate as Dominion Nuclear Connecticut. Another part of your electric bill is tied to the cost of transferring from a regulated to competitive market. Millstone was strapped with heavy debts from the cost of constructing nuclear plants and had been forced by regulators into some unprofitable power purchase contracts. These obligations were labeled “stranded costs,” debts the utility could not be expected to pay off in a competitive market. The DPUC set the stranded costs at $3.5 billion and passed it along to consumers, costing the average family of four about $4.40 on their monthly bill. But because the sale of the NU power plants, including Millstone, attracted higher prices than expected, the stranded costs have been reduced by about half. The DPUC has not decided whether to use the savings to reduce the stranded cost surcharge or end it sooner. Also in play for Dominion are the huge trust funds that have been set aside to cleanup and decommission the nuclear reactors when Millstone finally closes. Though the operating license for the newest of the plants, Millstone 3, expires in 2025, Dominion expects with license extensions it can keep Millstone operating and forestall decommissioning until 2050. When Dominion officially closes on the deal April 1, there is expected to be about $770 million in the trust funds, collected from consumers and set aside for the explicit purpose of decommissioning. If the plants had to be shut down and cleaned up today, the money would not be nearly enough. The cost of cleaning up and decommissioning the Millstone nuclear plants has been placed at $1.7 billion. But over the next 50 years, the funds, through investments and continuing consumer fees, could grow exponentially. No one has ventured a guess as to how much money will be in the trust funds by the time the plants are decommissioned. Likewise no one can say that, whatever the amount, it will be enough to cover the cost of cleaning up the site after decades of radiation contamination. In its decision this past week, the DPUC washed its hands of the issue. If the trust funds are not enough to eventually cleanup and decommission the plants, then Dominion (or some other future owner) will have to make up the difference. If there is money left over, however, then Dominion can pocket it. “The department believes that, since any risk of decommissioning funding is being assumed by Dominion, Dominion should be entitled to any excess as well,” states the decision. Guy Mazza, the state consumer counsel, unsuccessfully opposed the provision calling it a potentially undeserved windfall for the company. If there are excess funds, some portion of that money should be returned to consumers, he said. There is no guarantee, said Mazza, that if the trust funds are insufficient that the utility won't turn to consumers to make up the difference. HIGH COST OF DECOMMISSIONING Richard Myers, director of business policy for the Nuclear Energy Institute, said all the talk of windfalls is unfounded. History has shown decommissioning a nuclear plant costs more than initial projections. “I'm not sure I buy the concept that there is going to be money left over,” Myers said. In managing the Millstone sale, Connecticut did better than most in its handling of the trust funds, Myers said. Most nuclear plant sales have demanded that the decommissioning trust funds be “topped off” to reflect the projected cost of the eventual cleanup. For example, when AmerGen purchased Three Mile Island 1 in Pennsylvania in December 1999 it paid only $28 million, but received $118 million from the seller, GPU, to top off the decommissioning fund at $320 million. And when AmerGen bought the Clinton plant from Illinois power for $20 million that same month it received $121 million to top off the trust fund. By avoiding these top-off payments and getting a high price for Millstone, consumers have received benefits that outweigh any projected windfalls that Dominion might receive a half-century from now, said Donald W. Downes, chairman of the DPUC. [I] ***************************************************************** 12 Risks From Uranium Limited, Experts Say (washingtonpost.com) Health Issue Is Raised After Cancer Deaths of Italians Who Served in Balkans By David Brown Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 28, 2001; Page A20 A furor in Europe over possible health hazards from depleted uranium ammunition that U.S. warplanes fired in the Balkans has no foundation in medical research, according to numerous studies and radiation specialists. Long-term exposure to natural uranium, which is more radioactive than depleted uranium (DU), doesn't increase a person's risk for leukemia, lung cancer or other serious diseases, many studies have concluded. Chronic exposure to uranium can slightly alter kidney function, although not enough to affect health. Depleted uranium has been studied far less than natural uranium, but researchers say nothing suggests it poses health risks. The best evidence is the experience of about 60 people heavily exposed to DU during the Persian Gulf War. Some still harbor DU shell fragments in their bodies, but they've developed no cancers or other serious illnesses. "It is just not reasonable to assume that there is a causal connection between depleted uranium and reports of illness in this Kosovo or Bosnia situation," said John D. Boice Jr., former chief of radiation epidemiology at the National Cancer Institute. This view was echoed by Naomi H. Harley, a researcher at New York University's department of environmental medicine, who helped write a report last year on depleted uranium for Rand Worldwide, a consulting firm. "It's virtually impossible for DU to cause any of the health effects that are perceived. It is impossible for DU to cause leukemia, " she said. Reports that eight Italian peacekeepers who served in Kosovo or Bosnia have died of cancer (reportedly most from leukemia) touched off deep concern among many Europeans. Thousands of rounds of DU munitions were fired in the Balkans, and some officials believe exposure to the remnants may be causing disease. They note that when European troops went into Kosovo in 1999, a NATO directive warned soldiers to be careful around targets hit by DU projectiles. Numerous European political leaders in recent weeks have demanded that NATO remove DU munitions from its arsenals. The leaders aren't claiming they have evidence that DU is hazardous. Instead, they're not convinced by the evidence (most of it generated by U.S. and British researchers) that it's safe. NATO is refusing to abandon the weapons but promises to investigate the reports. The military uses depleted uranium because of its extreme density, about 1.7 times that of lead. It is put in some anti-tank projectiles to increase their striking power, and in tank armor as reinforcement. In civilian life, DU is used in the counterweights of flaps and rudders in airplanes, in boat keels and--despite the current uproar-- as X-ray shielding in some hospitals. Natural uranium is a mixture of three isotopes, or atomic strains, of the element. In depleted uranium, the two more radioactive ones (U-235 and U-234) have been largely removed for use in nuclear weapons or reactor fuel, leaving metal that consists primarily of the least radioactive isotope, U-238. The form of radiation uranium emits is the alpha particle--two protons and two neutrons. As subatomic particles go, alpha particles are extremely bulky and have very little penetrating power. Paper and skin stop them. The three isotopes decay into other radioactive elements over thousands or millions of years, some of which emit the more penetrating beta and gamma forms of radiation. Nevertheless, virtually all the radiation in samples of DU is alpha. Because of that, external exposure to DU poses no hazard, not even to the skin, researchers say. The only possible risk arises when the exposure is internal, which can occur because DU shells can burn or vaporize when striking their targets. Since 1940, research groups have followed the health of people exposed to uranium in the workplace. Nearly a dozen studies of about 78,000 uranium mill and processing-plant workers have found no increase in illness or cancer from exposures far higher than what could occur in the Balkans. Specifically, there's no increase in cancer mortality overall among the uranium workers, nor in mortality from cancers of specific organs, such as lungs, the lymphatic system or bones. Uranium miners did show an increase in lung cancer, but that almost certainly arose from underground exposure to radon gas rather than uranium, researchers concluded. Trace quantities of the element are in food, water and air. Most inhaled uranium is immediately exhaled, with only about 1 percent retained in the lungs. Similarly, ingested uranium is rapidly excreted, with little absorbed into the bloodstream. Nevertheless, studies from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, England, India, Japan, Nepal, Nigeria, Russia, the United States and Yugoslavia reveal that nearly everyone has minute amounts of uranium in their bones. Leukemia--the disease that reportedly claimed the Italian soldiers -- arises from cells in the bone marrow. People with alpha-emitting isotopes in their bones have no increase in leukemia. The best evidence is the experience of women exposed to the radioactive element radium in the 1920s while putting luminescent paint on watch dials in factories in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. "They ingested enormous amounts of radium, and they developed huge numbers of bone cancers," Boice said. "But they had no excess leukemia. That's because radium is an alpha-particle emitter like uranium, and the alpha particle can't get through the bone into the marrow to cause leukemia." Bone cancer hasn't been linked to uranium, however, because the element emits so few alpha particles and so little is deposited in the bone, even with chronic exposure. Most toxicologists believe uranium's potentially more serious hazard arises from its status as a heavy metal. Some uranium mill workers who ingested large amounts of uranium dust showed temporary abnormalities in kidney function, such as increased excretion of certain kinds of protein. That abnormality didn't cause symptoms, and the workers didn't have higher rates of renal failure or kidney disease. Since 1993, physicians at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center have periodically examined about 60 soldiers who were exposed to DU dust in armored vehicles hit by "friendly fire" during the Gulf War. About 15 still have DU fragments in their bodies and elevated amounts of uranium in the urine, but no kidney disease. There have been no cancers in the entire group, said Melissa McDiarmid, the physician who heads the monitoring team. She added that the cohort--all men--has fathered 38 children since the war, with no birth defects. Some Europeans have also expressed alarm that trace amounts of plutonium, a radioactive element produced by nuclear reactors, was detected in Balkan DU samples. This isn't surprising, researchers say, as some recycled reactor fuel is used in the enrichment process that separates the uranium isotopes. In a commentary published yesterday in the medical journal the Lancet, N.D. Priest, a scientist at Middlesex University in Britain, says the contaminants occur in "inconsequential concentrations." That view is shared by NYU's Harley, who said that only "a few" of the thousands of alpha particles emitted per minute by a gram of DU would be from plutonium. "The plutonium issue is really a nonissue," she said. Special correspondent Sarah Delaney in Rome contributed to this report. c 2001 The Washington Post Company '); document.write('[*]'); ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************