*****************************************************************
07/29/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.184
*****************************************************************
RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE
*****************************************************************
NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
1 Carolina Power &Light Stores Nuclear Rods at Wake County, N.C., Plant
2 Law firm for government lobbied for nuclear industry
3 DOE hubris unjustified
4 At Yucca Mountain, Nevada resists becoming the nation's atomic burial ground
5 Fort St. Vrain's troublesome legacy
6 Dam buster
7 Mothballed plutonium plant faces £250m loss
8 Australia signs nuclear agreement with Czechs
9 Sellafield report cheers BNFL
10 Hazardous loads many, but disasters few
11 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMANSHIP: Reid boosts nuclear power control
12 Nuclear waste piling up as MoD banned from dumping
13 N.K. silence to dialogue offers is tactical: experts
14 Lawmaker named to Energy Northwest executive board
15 'Radioactive thieves' caught at Chernobyl
16 CPS puts savings from nuclear power at $192M -
17 -France says nuclear shipments from Germany safe
18 Baltimore accident highlights the dangers of trains carrying
19 Generating Station to shut down for 6 days
20 EDITORIAL A Safer Shoreham?
21 First Nuclear Plant To Close in 2003
22 Anger at backing for nuclear waste plant
23 Imagine that fire burning nuclear waste
24 Several S.C. towns finding radioactive pollutants
25 the radioactive waste management advisory committee
26 Law Firm Lobbied for Nuclear Industry While Advising Government
27 Crash Highlights Train Hazards
28 Germany Plans for Nuclear Phase-Out
29 State to fine DOE
NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
1 Vieques Votes in Bombing Referendum
2 Vieques Residents Vote to End Bombing
3 To Russia with love and $15bn
4 Nuclear deterrence, Bush and Asia
5 Group sues Navy over Trident missiles
6 Activists gather for nuclear protest
7 Russia not ready to sign SA Nuclear Treaty
8 Nuclear Veterans Extend Campaign for Compensation
9 Sick workers’ families seeing relief
10 The Emerging Nuclear Posture
11 Beryllium Disease, 'A Disaster Waiting To Happen,'
12 Russia, China Stands for Nuclear-free Zone in Southeast Asia
13 Explosion in Torpedo Compartment Sinks "Kursk": Russian Duma Chairman
14 Retirees' pensions in pinch at USEC -
15 Opinion: Farris: Bombing issue hits too close to home
16 Columbia River steward plans epic swim
17 Forest Fire Threatens Russian Nuclear Sites
18 Russian Navy: Sunken Kursk Tough Nut to Crack
19 The Case of the Missing H-Bomb
20 Report: Workers Not Warned
****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
1 Carolina Power &Light Stores Nuclear Rods at Wake County, N.C., Plant
Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report
James Eli Shiffer , The News &Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Knight Ridder/Tribune ( July 27, 2001 )
Jul. 26--Carolina Power &Light has placed used uranium fuel rods
in a third storage pool at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant,
following through on its plan to expand the storage of nuclear
waste in Wake County after more than two years of legal
wrangling.
In early July, a freight train carrying spent fuel from CP's two
other nuclear plants in the Carolinas rolled into the Harris
plant. Workers unloaded the highly radioactive fuel assemblies
from transport casks and moved them one by one into a
water-filled cooling basin.
The operation, conducted under government-ordered secrecy, went
without a hitch. But Orange County commissioners are continuing
their federal lawsuit to stop the project, which they say poses
an unacceptable risk of a catastrophic accident. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission is still weeks away from completing an
internal investigation to find out whether the agency improperly
ignored opponents' safety concerns about the project.
Nevertheless, both an NRC nuclear safety panel and the NRC's
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation gave CP permission to double
its storage capacity for spent reactor fuel at the Harris plant.
The Raleigh-based utility was running out of room to store the
used-but-still-dangerous fuel assemblies from its three plants
because of the federal government's delay in opening a national
nuclear burial site.
In 1998, CP asked the NRC for permission to start using the
Harris plant's two mothballed storage pools, which were identical
to two pools the company already was using to cool the used fuel.
Working hand in hand with environmental activists, Orange County
commissioners fought unsuccessfully for a public hearing on the
project that would pit their nuclear consultant against CP and
NRC engineers. The more expensive practice of storing the waste
in dry casks, rather than pools, would be safer, the project's
opponents argued. CP maintains the technologies are equally safe.
To date, the county has spent about $250,000 in its legal battle,
county engineer Paul Thames said Wednesday. Despite the refusal
of federal judges to block CP's plan, the county is still
pursuing its case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington
D.C., circuit, Thames said.
While lawyers in Washington draw up motions, the flowing water in
Pool C in the Harris plant's cavernous fuel-handling building
signifies the availability of 10 to 15 years of additional
storage space for CP's nuclear refuse.
"Everything's been very smooth," company spokesman Keith Poston
said Wednesday. "The team at the Harris plant are a really
outstanding group. ... They're very proud to have moved forward.
It was important for the plant, the company, and ultimately for
our customers to be able to provide reliable power."
Poston said the fourth and final pool will only be used if the
federal government still hasn't opened a repository by the time
the third pool fills up.
To see more of The News &Observer, or to subscribe to the
newspaper, go to http://www.news-observer.com
(c) 2001, The News &Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Distributed by
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
www.powermarketers.com
*****************************************************************
2 Law firm for government lobbied for nuclear industry
July 28, 2001
LAS VEGAS (AP) - The law firm hired to advise the Energy
Department on how to open a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain
was simultaneously taking money from the nuclear power industry
to assure that the site was approved.
Critics call it a conflict and say it casts doubt on years of
legal and technical work at Yucca Mountain, where the government
has spent $4.5 billion to determine whether the site is suitable
to store high-level nuclear waste.
The law firm, Winston &Strawn, was being paid by the Energy
Department and one of its contractors to help determine if the
site was suitable, while lobbying Congress and the administration
on behalf of the nuclear power industry.
"You could make a case that every piece of data since 1992 is
tainted," said Robert R. Loux, head of the Nevada Nuclear
Projects Office, a state agency created to oppose the repository
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Energy Department should have
known better. "Of course it's a conflict. What would happen if,
when I was practicing law, somebody came to me and had a problem
and I took money from them, and somebody else gave me money to
sue them?"
But a spokeswoman at the department said the DOE has not found a
conflict of interest. "We found them eminently qualified," Jill
Schroeder said.
Schroeder described the firm's role as helping the department
decide whether or not Yucca Mountain could be licensed. The
department has not made a decision on opening the site, but
anticipates doing so by the end of the year. It is then to make a
recommendation to the president.
The nuclear power industry is eager to find a permanent disposal
site for its waste and is pushing the government to open Yucca
Mountain. Under a 1982 law, the department was supposed to begin
accepting waste from the utilities in 1998.
The dual role by Winston &Strawn seems likely to add more
uncertainty to the project, which is already 12 years behind
schedule and faces more technical and legal challenges.
The firm filed a disclosure form with Congress saying it stopped
the lobbying on July 11, but no one at the firm returned phone
calls seeking comment. Winston &Strawn has offices in several
cities, including Washington, D.C.
The disclosure forms for the early years list several bills on
which it lobbied. The bills would have required the department to
accept waste for temporary storage in anticipation of opening the
site. In later years, the firm listed the subject of its lobbying
as "nuclear issues."
The firm was "very conservative" about avoiding the appearance of
a conflict," said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy
Institute, the industry's trade association, which hired the law
firm as its lobbyist.
"Why the relationship was ended, the only thing I can think is
because they're doing all this work for the Department of Energy,
and they felt it would be a conflict if they were continuing to
do work" (for the institute).
Winston &Strawn picked up its first major role at Yucca Mountain
in 1992, when it was hired as a subcontractor to the TRW
Corporation, then the Energy Department's main contractor for
examining the mountain. The firm's job was to advise TRW on
preparing an application for a license, which the department was
supposed to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In 1999, the department hired the firm to review the application
before submitting it to the regulatory agency. A protest was
filed by a competing law firm, New York-based LeBoeuf, Lamb,
Greene &MacRae, which complained that the government was paying
Winston &Strawn to review its own work. That case is pending in
federal court in Washington, D.C.
While working for TRW and the Energy Department, the firm also
lobbied the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on an issue crucial to
Yucca Mountain: establishing the maximum radiation dose people
living near the site should be exposed to.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
3 DOE hubris unjustified
Denver Post.com
--> Sunday, July 29, 2001 -
If Congress approves Yucca Mountain as the dump for America's
most dangerous nuclear wastes, the decision should be based on
credible science and not the salesmanship that higher-ups in the
Department of Energy engage in today.
Whether a person supports or opposes nuclear power, the reality
is that our generation bears a moral responsibility to deal with
the wastes. If America doesn't build another nuclear power plant,
we still have existing wastes. If our country increasingly uses
atomic energy to curb global warming - which it may have to do -
the waste question will loom even larger.
Solutions present problems
The bugaboo with nuclear energy has always been that the wastes
remain dangerously radioactive for thousands, even millions, of
years. Every country that relies even partly on atomic energy
struggles with this dilemma, yet every solution presents
problems. For example, France has breeder reactors that re-use
spent fuel, but the process creates plutonium, which, if it fell
into the hands of terrorists or renegade regimes, could be used
to build bombs. Even France believes it eventually will have to
put the wastes in a geological repository.
Other options, such as shooting wastes into space or injecting
them under seabeds, are technically unfeasible or environmentally
unacceptable.
One other intriguing possibility is currently not possible.
Called transmutation, the process would bombard the wastes with
subatomic particles, speeding up the decay process. Instead of
being dangerous for up to 2 million years, the materials would
become less hazardous in a few centuries, so be easier to dispose
safely. But even its fans say that practical use of transmutation
is a half century, and billions of dollars of research
investment, into the future.
For now, stable and safe
Meantime, the urgency that once surrounded the push to open Yucca
Mountain has, to some extent, abated. Private industry has
employed innovative techniques for squeezing more energy out of
the same fuel, thus reducing the volume of wastes it creates.
Rather than leave wastes in water pools, the nuclear utility
companies now move them, after a seven-year cooling period, into
above ground, dry cask storage units at the reactor sites. For
now, and for the next 20 years, the wastes are stable and safe.
Indeed, in 1982 DOE and the industry listed all the reactors that
would have to shut down by 1986 because they would run out of
waste storage space. All those reactors are still operating
today.
Leaving the wastes in dry-cask storage, however, means our
generation would dodge its moral responsibility to take care of
them the best we can.
But the federal government's reassurances about the Yucca
Mountain site ring hollow, when Nevada's objections are studied.
The state's opposition to the repository stems partly from the
not-in-my-backyard-syndrome. NIMBYism aside, however, Nevada has
legitimate worries that Congress is not getting full and
objective information about the project.
Indeed, DOE's track record on such matters is rather miserable.
In Washington state, DOE's estimates about how long it would take
radioactive pollution to reach the Columbia River's aquifers were
overly optimistic - and off by nine centuries.
In South Carolina, DOE wanted to mix excess plutonium from
defense facilities, including Rocky Flats, with other substances,
making the plutonium unuseable - and thus less likely to be
stolen by terrorists. Experts warned DOE that the process it had
chosen would produce an explosive gas, benzene, as a byproduct.
After spending billions of tax dollars building the system, DOE
admitted early this year that the darn thing does in fact produce
benzene gas, so is unworkable.
EIS challenged
It's thus understandable that Nevada challenged DOE's draft
Environmental Impact Statement, which said Yucca Mountain is
suitable as a permanent repository for spent fuel rods from
commercial reactors and wastes from federal defense facilities.
DOE's scientific reports do reflect an appropriate level of
uncertainity and, where needed, note that conclusions are based
on experts' consensus and not hard, objective field data.
But as the information moves up the chain of command, it gets
diluted and warped. For example, the department flatly says
"there have been no show-stoppers" for the project, even though
critical experiments aren't completed.
Moreover, DOE's researchers acknowledge that the now-dormant
volcanic activity that created Yucca Mountain could reawaken in a
few thousand years. But DOE says the volcanoes would be cinder
cones, similar to the slow types in Hawaii, and not large
explosive ones like Mount St. Helens. Nevada's fear, that even
small cinder cones could damage the repository, have been glossed
over in the information DOE gives elected leaders. In short, DOE
has all but declared Yucca Mountain feasible, even as its own
researchers admit there are still unanswered questions. That's a
dangerous way to make public policy - especially because future
generations will be stuck with our decision for thousands of
years.
By early 2002 President Bush may ask Congress to approve Yucca
Mountain as a permanent repository. Congress should not act,
however, until it has complete, objective information.
DOE should continue studying the site, but must radically tone
down the salesmanship. Hubris is unjustified.
Editorials alone express The Denver Post's opinion. The members
of The Post editorial board are William Dean Singleton, chairman
and publisher; Glenn Guzzo, editor; Sue O'Brien, editorial page
editor; Bob Ewegen, deputy editorial page editor; Peter G.
Chronis, Angela Cortez, Al Knight, Penelope Purdy and Billie
Stanton, editorial writers; Mike Keefe, cartoonist; and Barbara
Ellis and Peggy McKay, news editors.
All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright
*****************************************************************
4 At Yucca Mountain, Nevada resists becoming the nation's atomic burial ground
Denver Post.com
Penelope Purdy
Denver Post Staff Writer
July 29, 2001 -
The federal government bored an exploratory tunnel at Yucca
Mountain, providing access to the research areas inside the
proposed atomic waste repository in western Nevada's desert. No
nuclear wastes are stored at the site currently.
JACKASS FLATS, Nev. — After two decades of debate, the plan to
bury nuclear wastes under the Nevada desert is approaching a
critical juncture. By year's end, the U.S. Department of Energy
should finish its Final Environmental Impact Study, which almost
certainly will say the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent disposal
site is safe.
Based on that conclusion, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
is expected to recommend to President Bush that the federal
government fully develop an underground repository for the
wastes, at the only location Uncle Sam has researched in depth.
Yet key scientific studies necessary to truly determine whether
Yucca Mountain really is suitable won't be completed for several
years. Thus the federal government could commit to a $58 billion
undertaking before it can credibly claim that the project won't
affect human health in a few centuries or thousands of years from
now.
The $58 billion would be spent over several generations, as the
government builds, operates and eventually closes the site.
DOE says it has thoroughly researched the project. Although the
decision falls to Bush, other presidents dating to the Reagan era
also backed the idea of a geological resting place for nuclear
wastes.
Yet there has been a subtle shift in how the government describes
the project. For years, the feds said Yucca Mountain would be a
geologic repository — that is, a place where the rock itself
would protect the environment. But DOE's latest documents show
that the repository's safety will rely heavily on human
engineering, especially the corrosion-resistant canisters that
will encase the wastes. Nevada officials say the shift implicitly
acknowledges that the site itself isn't suitable.
Whatever the outcome, the decision will profoundly affect the
entire West, including Colorado. Ironically, to claim that Yucca
Mountain is suitable, the Bush administration must embrace
scientific opinion about what Nevada's, and the world's, climate
will be like 10,000 to 1 million years hence. Yet earlier this
year the Bush White House rejected the Kyoto global warming
treaty, partly because Bush advisers think it's impossible to
predict climate change over even a few decades.
The climate question is important because it will affect how much
water the Yucca Mountain area will receive, whether the water
will flow through the underground tunnels holding the radioactive
wastes, and how many years it will take before contaminated water
reaches groundwater that could be used for drinking water. DOE
says that contamination isn't likely for about 500 years; Nevada
says it could happen in just 300 years or less. To put that time
frame in perspective, the Spanish moved into Mexico about 500
years ago, while Harvard University is well over 300 years old.
Moreover, if President Bush asks Congress to approve the Yucca
Mountain site, the country must decide where and how to ship the
wastes. Most commercial reactors are east of the Rockies, so the
shipments would travel through Western states — most of which,
like Colorado and Nevada, don't have nuclear power plants. In
Colorado, potential routes could go through metro Denver and the
mountains. The issue already has divided the state's two GOP U.S.
senators, Wayne Allard and Ben Nighthorse Campbell (see the
article "Fort St. Vrain's troublesome legacy," in today's
Opinion).
The industry and government have safely shipped thousands of
truckloads of nuclear fuel and wastes around the country for a
half-century. Among them have been the recent shipments of
plutonium and low-level nuclear wastes from Rocky Flats, DOE's
mothballed atomic bomb factory north of Golden. But in a few
years, all the Rocky Flats wastes will have been shipped. By
contrast, the material headed to Nevada could continue to roll
cross-country far into the future, because opening Yucca Mountain
as a permanent repository will enable the commercial reactors to
keep operating for decades. Indeed, that's a primary reason the
nuclear industry wants a permanent repository.
Heat and Water Brew Dispute
The effect of water remains a key controversy about the proposed
Yucca Mountain repository for spent commercial nuclear reactor
fuel and federal atomic wastes. The U.S. Department of Energy
says rainfall would seep into the unsaturated rock below the
repository, preventing radioactive material from leaking into
groundwater used for drinking. Further protection would be
provided by waste containers made from a corrosion resistant
allow and metal shielding in the tunnels.
Nevada plans to alert the 50 million people in the 43 states
through which the wastes will travel about what shipping the
wastes to Yucca Mountain might mean for them, said Jack Finn,
spokesman for Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican who strongly
opposes the repository. Nevada's powerful gambling industry may
put up $10 million to $15 million for the effort, to supplement
the $4 million the Nevada Legislature approved this spring to
fight the Yucca Mountain plan. Opinion polls consistently show 70
percent to 80 percent of Nevadans oppose the Yucca Mountain
repository.
If the DOE plan proceeds, Yucca Mountain will become the
permanent home to many of the nation's most dangerous nuclear
wastes. About 90 percent of the wastes will be spent fuel rods
from commercial reactors, with 10 percent coming from federal
defense and military facilities. The different materials have
different characteristics. Some are lethal with even very short
exposures; others are dangerous only with longterm exposures.
Some cause health problems only if inhaled or swallowed; others
are hazardous if a person merely stands next to them. And while
some wastes will be dangerous for only about a century, others
will remain radioactive for more than 1 million years. Federal
rules, however, require that the repository not release
radioactive particles, or radionuclides, for only 10,000 years.
But where the wastes are now stored can't even meet that
standard. The DOE wastes, including some of the most hazardous
nuclear materials, are scattered at temporary storage facilities
from South Carolina to Washington state. Meantime, spent fuel
rods are being kept at commercial reactors in pools of water or
in aboveground, concrete structures called dry casks. While the
casks are safe for now, none was ever intended as a long-term
repository, and several are near populated areas, said Rod
McCullum, project manager for used nuclear fuel at the Nuclear
Energy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based industry group. While
future technologies may offer new solutions, people today can't
shirk responsibility for the waste, McCullum added. "Waiting
around for some future generation to find the answers is not
acceptable." Moreover, the federal government promised in 1982
that it would take the wastes by 1998 — a deadline the feds
clearly missed, McCullum said. Over the past two decades, though,
the reactors and their customers have paid into a special fund to
build a permanent repository. Thus the utilities have paid twice
to care for the same wastes, first for the dry casks and second
for the permanent repository.
Of the $17 billion the utilities have paid into the fund, $7
billion has been spent. Combined with another $1 billion-plus of
taxpayer money, the Yucca Mountain project already has cost more
than $8 billion. This year, the Bush administration wants another
$400 million for the federal portion of the project. In all,
Yucca Mountain could cost at least $58 billion.
"Just think what we could do for solar energy or wind power with
that kind of money," said Robert Loux, executive director of
Nevada's Agency of Nuclear Projects, which is part of the
governor's office. Long-standing policy
Federal support for the waste project continues a long-standing
policy, in which the government nurtured and even subsidized the
industry, said Stephen Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists and executive director of the Educational
Foundation for Nuclear Science. In fact, even today commercial
reactors legally don't own the fuel they burn; it still
technically belongs to the government. And, under this
philosophy, so does the waste.
"Nuclear power is the most subsidized of all the energy
industries," Schwartz said.
Until recent years, the commercial nuclear industry claimed Yucca
Mountain was necessary or its reactors would have to shut down
because they were running out of space for spent fuel. But the
new dry casks have for now relieved the immediate storage room
crunch, Schwartz added.
Instead, Nevada's Loux claimed, the utilities want to shed their
financial and legal liabilities for caring for the wastes, so are
pressuring Congress into designating Yucca Mountain as the final
repository.
In 1987, Congress stopped studies of other potential repositories
and said only Yucca Mountain would be researched as a possible
permanent storage site. But Congress also said the location
should be proved to be safe and suitable.
Having made a political decision, Congress and DOE now are trying
to justify it with science, Loux asserted. What DOE is doing
isn't objective, he said, "it's advocacy science."
NEI's McCullum disagrees. Thousands of scientists, including
experts who don't work for DOE, have studied Yucca Mountain. The
researchers, he explained, can't afford to skew their results or
they would ruin their careers. "They pay their mortgages on their
credibility."
But every time DOE finds evidence that shows the site isn't safe,
Loux contends, the feds just change the rules. For example, in
1992 DOE got Congress to throw out regulations on the radioactive
material carbon 14 - even though both the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and the National Academies of Science had said
the carbon 14 rules were valid.
The original rule wasn't applicable to Yucca Mountain, said Abe
Van Luik, DOE's senior policy adviser at the project. The
regulation was designed to protect human health globally, but,
because Yucca Mountain sits in an enclosed basin, the rule only
needed to account for local impacts.
Every time someone has raised a credible concern, DOE has studied
the problem, Van Luik said.
Monitor water levels
DOE also is supposed to monitor how fast water from the surface
reaches the approximately 35 miles of tunnels, or cross-drifts,
where the waste canisters would be placed. DOE claims it will
take centuries. But traces of elements that could have come only
from atom bomb tests in the Pacific 50 years ago were found at
the level the containers would be placed, Loux said. That finding
shows water moves far faster through cracks in the surrounding
rock than the feds admit.
Instead of acknowledging the potential risk, DOE proposes to
eliminate the groundwater travel time as a consideration in
deciding if the site is safe, Loux said. DOE's predictions about
groundwater contamination have never been right, he added.
Schwartz, from the atomic bulletin, noted that in the 1980s, at
Hanford, Wash., DOE claimed radionuclides from that defense
facility wouldn't reach the Columbia River's aquifers for
hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Instead, the Hanford waste
took only 10 years to enter the aquifer. Since the early 1990s,
the plume of radioactive wastes has been moving through the
groundwater toward one of the West's largest rivers, and no one
knows yet knows how to stop it.
DOE's Van Luik acknowledges the past mistakes, but says the
estimates were based on incomplete information, such as the
previously undetected existence of gravel beds near the Hanford
site. Since the Clinton administration's last term, DOE
scientists have been revising their approach to the groundwater
problem.
Nevadans also fear Yucca Mountain will become an open-ended
project. The 1982 federal law that called for a permanent
repository said the site could legally accept only 70,000 metric
tons of nuclear material. But DOE's draft environmental impact
statement last year said Yucca Mountain could take 128,000 metric
tons. Van Luik acknowledges that some experts think the site
could handle 140,000 tons.
DOE's final environmental impact statement calls for the
repository's design to keep evolving. That makes it difficult for
the public to know what the federal government is really
proposing, said Nevada's Loux. The DOE's vague plans undercut its
claims that the project is safe, he added.
But NEI's McCullum said it's wise to have a flexible design that
can incorporate new technologies. "You never want to cut yourself
off from the opportunity to take advantage of the latest
science."
All space taken
The day Yucca Mountain opens, all its space will be spoken for,
said Schwartz. The government either will have to expand the
site, or open another repository elsewhere. The latter option is
unlikely, given the bitter fight over Yucca Mountain.
Whether that political reality will run roughshod over on-going
technical studies is what worries Nevadans.
For example, while the original concept was that geology alone
would protect the environment from escaping radionuclides, DOE
now says the waste containers will provide the crucial
protection. The canisters will be made of a highly
corrosion-resistant material, Alloy 22, which has been tested for
more than a decade and whose counterparts have been used for
years by industry, said DOE's Van Luik.
Loux said DOE tested the canisters for only a short period, then
extrapolated the limited results to decide that the containers
could last 10,000 years. But Nevada's consultants tested the
canisters using trace elements naturally found at Yucca Mountain,
such as lead and arsenic, and found that the containers will
deteriorate rapidly, Loux said.
Van Luik says Nevada's experiments were unrealistic. Acid levels
in the system were so high, in fact, "it made us wonder what kind
of vessel they were using to do the test."
Inside the
exploratory tunnel, a researcher monitors the status of a study
on how heat from future nuclear waste storage might affect the
rock walls and groundwater surrounding the proposed repository.
How much water could reach the canisters remains a critical
concern. DOE long has touted the site because it's in a desert
and above the water table. But both DOE and Nevada's researchers
agree that the current period is the driest that the Yucca
Mountain area has ever seen. The area now gets about 6 inches of
moisture a year, so has no natural trees or standing bodies of
water. In the future, though, the site could easily get 12 inches
of moisture a year. That's roughly similar to the climate in
Denver, where the natural ecosystem would include creeks, ponds,
native trees and prairie grasses. At the outside, DOE says Yucca
Mountain could receive about 28 inches of moisture, or
approximately the moisture that now falls on the often-muggy St.
Louis.
DOE and NEI label Yucca Mountain unpopulated, because no one
lives at the site. But the highway turnoff for the Yucca Mountain
project is just a few minutes drive north of the town of Amargosa
Valley. And the site is 90 miles north of Las Vegas, one of
America's fastest-growing cities.
Human population
Anthropologists know American Indians' ancestors have lived in
the area for thousands of years. In the past, the Yucca Mountain
area supported herds of very large mammals, including woolly
mammoths, and later sprouted pine forests, said Steve Frishman, a
geologist who works closely with climate scientists for the state
of Nevada. If the area gets more rainfall in the future, the
local human population is apt to increase. Thus, the question
whether the wastes will contaminate the local water supplies
looms large.
One wild card in predicting the area's future climate is global
warming, which could change how much and how soon water reaches
the canisters. The NEI's McCullum says global warming may reduce
the amount of rain at Yucca Mountain. But Nevada's Frishman says
global warming will speed up the time that the area gets wetter,
so more water will reach the canisters far sooner than DOE
claims.
Rainfall eventually reaches groundwater, so there are crucial
questions about the interplay of increased moisture, fractures in
the rock and heat from the radioactive wastes. (Some government
wastes will produce enough heat to boil the water that's
naturally trapped in the surrounding rock.) After the wastes cool
in about a century, the water in the rock may condense. If it
condenses on the canisters, or picks up acidic elements from the
surrounding geology, the containers might corrode more quickly
than DOE predicts. Water also could expand fractures in the rock,
making groundwater move more rapidly than DOE expects, Frishman
said.
In the mid-1990s, DOE heated an experimental tunnel, or
cross-drift, to test the interplay of heat from the wastes and
water movements. "They had to shut down the study because so much
water was getting into the cross-drift," said Loux.
Now DOE is running a second test. The cross-drift, canister and
surrounding rock will be heated enough to boil the water inside
the rocks. Then the heat will be turned off, the rock cooled and
the water condensation studied.
The test is critical to proving that safety systems will function
as intended, that the canisters won't corrode unexpectedly, and
that the rock won't change in ways that let radioactive wastes
reach the groundwater or surface. This key study won't be
finished for three to five years. Meantime, Bush likely will ask
Congress to approve Yucca Mountain as the repository.
"I don't think the degree of uncertainty about the site is
reaching the people at the top levels," said Frishman.
Just 40 percent of DOE's claims about Yucca Mountain are based
are actual data, the rest are expert guesses, he added.
In April, a DOE inspector general's inquiry found no evidence of
bias in the Yucca Mountain scientific studies.
But, said Schwartz: "If we really screw up, this thing (the
repository) could go bad in a matter of decades - in which case
we will look like the most foolish, short-sighted people ever. We
will have created an even bigger mess and will have to dig
ourselves out of it."
Penelope Purdy's e-mail addres is ppurdy@denverpost.com.
*****************************************************************
5 Fort St. Vrain's troublesome legacy
Denver Post.com
By
Denver Post Staff Writer
--> Sunday, July 29, 2001 - Colorado faces a perplexing problem
about its own spent nuclear reactor fuel. The state currently
doesn't generate any electricity from nuclear power, instead
producing most of its energy from coal, natural gas and a
smattering of wind, biomass and solar. But previously, it
sporadically got some electricity from the Fort St. Vrain nuclear
power plant near Platteville, which operated off and on from 1979
to 1989.
Actually, it was more off than on, with the plant functioning
only about 15 percent of the time, according to Xcel, the
successor to Public Service Co. of Colorado that previously ran
the Fort St. Vrain plant. Finances, not environmental woes,
forced the company to mothball the reactor and convert the plant
to burning natural gas.
Today, the plant's atomic parts have been dismantled, and the
low-level wastes - such as the concrete that encased the reactor
- have been sent to the federal facility at Hanford, Wash.
But the 1,464 spent fuel rods - enough to fill a railroad box car
- are still on site. The temporary facility is an above-ground
unit, similar to ones being used at reactors elsewhere in the
country. Public Service built the facility in 1991, for about $26
million. However, the U.S. Department of Energy since has taken
over its operation, because Fort St. Vrain was supposed to be a
federal demonstration project. Although the project demonstrated
that the particular technology - a helium-cooled reactor - didn't
work very well, Public Service argued that the feds were still
responsible for caring for the spent fuel.
However, the original plan was to send the spent fuel rods to
another federal facility, the Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, near Idaho Falls. About 750 of the
original 2,214 spent fuel rods, or roughly a third of the Fort
St. Vrain wastes, were shipped to the Idaho site. But in the
early 1990s, then-Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus barred any more nuclear
wastes from being shipped to the state, so the remaining spent
fuel rods never left Colorado.
Now the question is if the fuel rods will eventually wind up at
Yucca Mountain in Nevada. DOE's plans call for its own high-level
nuclear wastes as well as spent reactor fuel to be shipped to a
geologic repository, and the only site DOE is studying for such a
repository is Yucca Mountain. So while it's uncertain just where
the Fort St. Vrain spent fuel will eventually go, its final
resting place may be Yucca Mountain.
In any case, DOE signed an agreement with the state of Colorado
that it would remove all the spent fuel from Platteville by 2035.
When that transfer occurs, the wastes may move from near
Platteville, a relatively rural location, through the heart of
metro Denver and over the mountains, including either Interstate
70 through the Eisenhower Tunnel or along railroad tracks that
lead into Glenwood Canyon. The nuclear industry's safety record
in shipping fuel, atom bomb parts and dangerous defense wastes
has been excellent. Nevertheless, more Colorado communities would
have worry about the wastes if they were moved than if the
material remained at Platteville - albeit in a storage unit never
intended for long-term use.
Colorado's two Republican U.S. senators split over the issue
during a February 2000 vote regarding the Yucca Mountain project.
Sen. Wayne Allard, who hails from northeast Colorado, voted for
the project, saying that Colorado needed to remove the wastes
near Platteville's residential neighborhoods. But Sen. Ben
Nighthorse Campbell, whose roots are on the Western Slope, voted
"no," saying that the proposal was "terrifically dangerous" to
metro Denver and the mountain communities.
The proposal to ship the nuclear waste elsewhere, Campbell told
The Denver Post at the time, was like "building a nice home and
putting a septic tank on your neighbor's land. You get the nice
home, and guess what your neighbor gets?"
- Penelope Purdy
All contents Copyright 2001 The Denver Post or other copyright
*****************************************************************
6 Dam buster
Guardian |
Dam buster
Arundhati Roy achieved worldwide success as a Booker
Prize-winning novelist. But she has given up the glory trail to
become India's most prominent activist, campaigning against
nuclear tests and the dams that threaten the homes and
livelihoods of millions. She tells Madeleine Bunting why she now
risks jail
Madeleine Bunting
Saturday July 28, 2001
The Guardian
Arundhati Roy burst on to the Indian national stage from nowhere
in 1997. A drop-out architecture student and one-time aerobics
instructor, she had turned her hand to writing a novel. It was
The God Of Small Things, and it earned her one of India's biggest
ever advances before going on to win the Booker Prize and sell
six million copies. The rebellious outsider - southern and female
- had trumped the coterie of men who dominate India's literary
world, and the reward was an insatiable international
fascination. She found herself cast in the role of Indian
national mascot, adored and feted for her global success.
Four years later, there have been no more novels, and the now
39-year-old darling of India's middle class has become a painful
thorn in its side, writing a series of savage critiques of
India's development - its nuclear tests, its huge
dam-construction projects and its cringing obeisance to western
corporate power. These are home truths that powerful interests in
India do not want to hear, and Roy has made herself many enemies.
Irritated by her criticisms and the publicity they invariably
attract in the west, the Indian establishment has set about
trying to cut this awkward rebel down to size. This week, Roy
faces a contempt of court charge before the Indian Supreme Court
- her first appearance in the drawn-out case was four months ago.
Her alleged crime is to have attended a demonstration against the
court's decision last autumn to give the go-ahead to the
country's most controversial dam project, the Sardar Sarovar in
the Narmada valley, central India. Roy is accused of inciting
violence and attacking a court official. Ludicrous though many
aspects of the case appear to be, the lawyers Roy consulted
advised her to plead guilty and apologise. When she refused, none
would risk his career to represent her. Undeterred, she wrote her
own affidavit and defiantly had it published in a
mass-circulation magazine on the day of her first court
appearance, much to the fury of the court, which has threatened
further proceedings. Roy risks a six-month jail sentence.
How did the writer of an intensely lyrical novel become a
committed activist with an analytical prose worthy of a
barrister? What induced her to swap her status as Delhi's
most-favoured dinner party guest for night marches and sit-ins at
the dam sites, and even, possibly, jail? Why did the whimsical
chronicler of "small things" - the beetles and creeping, lush
greenery of Kerala - turn to fighting big things such as nuclear
bombs, dams, the Indian state and globalisation?
Roy comes down four flights of stairs to open the door to her
apartment block. Here, where she writes and spends most of her
day, she has none of the small army of servants considered
necessary by middle-class Delhi. Her flat is surrounded by the
contradictions of Indian development, which she analyses in her
essays: a comfortable suburb of New Delhi, where cows rummage in
the rubbish piled up in the open gutters, and where a man has set
up shop in the shade of a tree, ironing the neighbourhood's
washing, probably earning in a day just enough to buy one cafe
latte in the new, empty, air- conditioned coffee shop.
We sit in a crepuscular gloom, the fierce Delhi summer requiring
that all the blinds be drawn, and the air-conditioning is on in
Roy's small apartment of strong primary colours, books, a big
television and computer. She talks in a low, gentle voice. It's a
sharp contrast to the vehemence and coruscating wit of her
writing. "I like the fact that my rage goes into bigger things,
not into small, petty things with people around me," she says. "I
am surrounded by people I love, and what I crave is gentleness."
Friends come and go, and the telephone rings frequently.
We get off to a bad start, because Roy hates the
"writer-activist" label with which she is saddled - it reminds
her of "sofa-bed". She writes what she sees, she says, and she
sees no great distinction between fiction and non-fiction; all
she does is keep her "aching eyes open". She refers me to an
address on writing that she gave earlier this year in the US: "In
the midst of putative peace, a writer can, like I did, be
unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is
that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen
it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as
speaking out."
She stumbled on a silent war in 1998, after a giddy year of
international celebrity which, she admits, she enjoyed
"immensely" (all those hotel towels, she enthuses in one essay),
but she knew, in the end, that the "good manners and hygiene"
would kill her. What anchored her as she spun around the globe
was home, and she resisted the temptations of emigration. "I'm
not the sort of person who can buy a life." She came to see fame
much like a tin can trailing noisily behind her wherever she
went: eventually, it would drop off and she would then write some
"worstsellers" and eat mangoes in the moonlight.
But the prospect of such leisure vanished as she returned home to
look at her country with new eyes: India was jubilant at its
first nuclear test, and Roy penned The End Of Imagination, a
furious attack on this symbol of national pride. The title was
misplaced, however, because what then captured her imagination,
and has done ever since, was that the biggest mass non-violent
movement since Indian independence - the campaign against the
Narmada valley dams - was then on the brink of victory. She set
aside the novels she had been planning to read and threw herself
into the detail of technical subjects such as irrigation and
drainage. Since then, her voracious curiosity has ranged from
export credit guarantees to electricity distribution rates and
resettlement programmes for those displaced by the dams.
Roy has spent much time reflecting on the direction her life has
taken. She describes, with a romanticism akin to Tolstoy's, how
the marches she attends in the Narmada valley have given her a
pride in her people and her land, and also a philosophy. The
struggle has rooted her, intellectually and emotionally, after
the upheaval of celebrity. It also helped assuage the guilt over
her sudden wealth, which she once described as making her feel
she had "perforated the huge pipeline that circulates the world's
wealth... and it is spewing money at me, bruising me with its
speed and strength. I began to feel as though every emotion,
every little strand of feeling in The God Of Small Things, had
been traded in for a silver coin." Her interest in the dam is
less personal, she says. Like any writer, she wants to understand
and tell stories, and dams sum up, like nothing else, the story
of modern India: its greed, its wanton violence and its
centralisation of power.
Surprisingly, in all these reflections, Roy steadfastly omits any
reference to the deep emotional attachment to the rivers of her
Kerala childhood, which is so evident in the novel. In one vivid
passage, she describes the humiliation of the river after a
saltwater barrage has been built: "A thin ribbon of thick water
that lapped wearily at the mud banks on either side, sequinned
with the occasional silver slant of a dead fish. It was choked
with a succulent weed, whose furred brown roots waved like thin
tentacles under water... Once it had had the power to evoke fear.
To change lives. But now its teeth were drawn, its spirit spent.
It was just a slow, sludging green ribbon lawn that ferried fetid
garbage to the sea." Almost every page of The God Of Small Things
reverberates with the fragile vulnerability of the small -
children, for starters, and an intense awareness of millions of
tiny living things, and the preciousness of small quotidian
events. This reflects a fierce protectiveness towards the small
and the powerless that predates her literary fame; her student
thesis, she says, was on the housing of the marginalised urban
poor. Bombs and dams are the corollary of India's slums: the
bombs have diverted the taxes, and the dams have deprived
millions of their lands and their rivers. Despite the legal
cases, and the veiled threats and savage attacks in the media,
even by erstwhile allies, Roy is standing her ground. Her
political writings have evolved from passionate polemic into
something more dangerous: a considered and witty analysis of
globalisation and its impact on India. She asks questions that
are particularly awkward for the nationalist middle classes who
are prospering on neoliberalism. Is globalisation "a process of
barbaric dispossession which has few parallels in history? Is it
a mutant variety of colonialism, remote-controlled and
digitally-operated?" Roy has a wonderful sense of her own pace -
she will not be hurried, or hurry herself - but she is slowly
putting together what she calls a "politics of opposition".
She already senses her place on the intellectual map of
anti-globalisation; she's been reading Noam Chomsky, John Berger
and tomes on the history of the third world; she is keen to meet
the Mexican Zapatista hero, Subcommandante Marcos; and she wants
to attend the next meeting of the World Trade Organisation. But
she is aware that this is not just a matter of acquiring the
right intellectual baggage. Her politics flow seamlessly from her
public life into her private; her analysis of power is not just
applied to Indian democracy, but also to how she relates to her
family and friends, and how she deals with her celebrity and
wealth.
Roy's political essays, powerful though they are, have not so far
achieved their objectives. The End Of Imagination in 1998 won her
many admirers in the west, but in India it failed to dent the
extraordinary consensus behind the nuclear bomb. The Greater
Common Good in 1999, on India's preoccupation with dam-building
in the 50 years since independence, pointed out that the dams had
woefully failed to meet targets for either power generation or
irrigation, while at the same time displacing at least 33 million
people. Roy argued that the bulk of those displaced were
untouchables or tribal peoples, and that this amounted to a form
of genocide. The essay won her more admirers in the west and lent
weight to the international campaigns against dams.
The worldwide publicity that Roy has attracted by campaigning
against the dams has succeeded in scaring off several western
contractors of the huge Narmada project - it involves building
3,200 dams, including 30 major ones. But despite all her
eloquence, and despite the mass protest movement, the Supreme
Court ruled last October that work on the huge Sardar Sarovar dam
could resume. It was a bitter setback to a movement that had
believed it was on the brink of victory after a series of
stunning successes, including the withdrawal from the project of
the World Bank. The defeat means that now, as Roy faces her court
hearing in Delhi, hundreds of miles away in Narmada the arrival
of the monsoon season has set the waters rising again behind the
dam. Over the next few weeks, police will have to drag people
from their homes to prevent suicide protests by drowning: "While
the judges are discussing our contempt of court case, people will
stand chest-deep in water for days. Forget the Narmada, where
hundreds of thousands of cases [of compensation for lost land]
are pending in the courts; a three-judge bench will spend days
discussing my case. But losing their dignity is much more
important to the judges."
The Sardar Sarovar dam alone will displace 400,000 people, and
the state worst affected, Madya Pradesh, has officially declared
that it has no land on which to resettle the people whose whole
way of life for thousands of years has been bound up with the
Narmada, one of the great rivers of India. What has embittered
the battle is that most of the thousands of poor farmers and
fishermen displaced in the past decade have yet to be resettled.
In reality, many of those who lose their lands or livelihoods are
likely to receive nothing more than paltry financial
compensation. They end up either as cheap agricultural labour or
swell the shanty towns. Both options are close to destitution.
Meanwhile, promises that the dams will help irrigate dry regions
of Gujarat ring hollow, not least because none of the necessary
canals has been budgeted for. In reality, the dams will provide
electricity and water for the prospering urban industrial
interests of the state - which is why the Supreme Court judgment
was greeted with jubilation in Gujarat's cities. The dam presents
a stark conflict between the interests of urban and rural,
between industrial and subsistence economies; and it crystallises
Roy's own questions about progress - that the poorest are crushed
in the pursuit of development. "I can imagine in the 50s what a
fantastic feat of engineering a dam appeared to be, but now, when
what we know about nature is little enough, how can you continue
to think this is a wonderful thing to do? To intervene in such a
massive way in such a complex process - it's like putting a
jackboot into a spider's web. What kind of civilisation is it
when you teach men in college to look at a river and imagine
pouring concrete into it?" she demands.
The one hope of forestalling the next big Narmada dam scheduled,
the Maheshwar, is that it will fail to find the necessary
financing within India, now that the project has become too
controversial for any western contractor.
Emboldened by this success, in her two most recent essays Roy has
broadened the scope of her attacks to include the western
corporations involved in the privatisation of Indian state
electricity companies, in particular the US company Enron. Enron
was accused of smoothing the path of its massive contract to
build a power plant near Bombay with $20m to "educate"
politicians and bureaucrats; now the electricity Enron produces
is more expensive than any of its competitors', yet Maharastra
state is locked into contractual payments of $220m a year.
Such "business arrangements between these huge multinationals in
the west and the third world elite", says Roy, promote a
consensus that their model of globalisation - liberalisation and
privatisation - represents progress: "It's a form of
fundamentalism to believe that this is the only measure of
progress - how much electricity is consumed, how much more rice
is produced, whether it is eaten or goes to waste in warehouses.
Even the tools the economists have developed to measure progress
are flawed," she says, adding, "I think of globalisation like a
light which shines brighter and brighter on a few people and the
rest are in darkness, wiped out. They simply can't be seen. The
lobotomy in the west is that you stop seeing something and then,
slowly, it's not possible to see it. It never existed and there
is no possibility of an alternative."
But the alternative still exists in India, she believes - the
country is too old and clever to be lobotomised into believing in
the one single idea, "that life is profit".
Defying the tyranny of this idea is a constant thread running
through Roy's politics and her private life. It lies behind plans
to set up with friends an Indian-based Corporate Watch to monitor
corporate power. It informs how she is mapping out a politics
that demands accountability, whatever the regime. "The only way
to keep power on a tight leash is to oppose it, never to seek to
own it or have it," she says. "Opposition is permanent." But
these big political ideas also have deeply personal implications,
she adds: "Personal politics and what you do from day to day is
just as important as globalisation, and opposition to power has
to be matched by a reluctance to use power in your own
relationships. You oppose by the way you live as much as by what
you say and do - and that is painful and joyful."
Joy features prominently in her description of the politics of
opposition - against all the odds, you defy your critics simply
by having too much fun. That's why they couldn't forgive her and
her mother when she was growing up in Kerala, she remembers -
they simply weren't as unhappy as a single mother and her "thin,
black, clever" daughter should have been. "The whole point of the
feminist fight was that there has to be fun at the end of the
tunnel. You don't want this image of beaten, oppressed, moaning
women. You think about things, engage with the world, and you're
aware of the terrible suffering that is happening around you, and
the way to be with all of that is to enjoy the process of what
you are doing and to speak joy in the saddest places. If you're
living in a world that is telling you that only if you have
hamburgers, buy diamonds and have a Rolls-Royce can you be happy,
then you're saying in the happiest possible way that that is
completely wrong." She adds, "It's a game of survival, and if you
allow yourself to become unhappy, you will lose everything. I
remember what my mother said to me: 'I've never known anyone who
guards their happiness so fiercely.' I think it's important to
patrol the borders of your happiness, to understand your sources
of joy and to protect them, and to know that, so often, it's only
when that happiness has gone that you know what it was. But you
can be cooking or listening to music and think, I don't need
anything else to happen or anyone else to be any other way in
order to be happy."
Happiness for her, she says, might be going to the market and
choosing glass beads after weeks of late nights drafting an
affidavit, or just lying on the floor all day with friends under
a ceiling fan in the Delhi summer. Even gossiping with friends
about relationships as the police move in to break up a
demonstration at a dam site. These are what Roy describes as the
"small delights" of her life, a source of the strength that has
seen her through the turbulence of her meteoric rise to global
fame and, now, the anxiety of the court cases. She describes her
friends as "extraordinary people" for dealing with her sudden
fame and money, and managing to maintain the "democratic nature
of our friendships". None of them had money before, now she gives
hers away, "and I know that it is as sophisticated an act to
receive as to give it". She has probably made enough from the one
novel to live on for the rest of her life; she eschewed more,
refusing to sell the film rights, arguing democratically that six
million readers had their own version of the film in their heads
and she didn't want a single film-maker to replace them all.
The fame has been burdensome, although she claims (somewhat
implausibly, since she had her hair cut, a symbol of rare
defiance in a culture that fetishises long hair) that she has
some anonymity in India (when asked if she is Arundhati Roy, she
says her standard reply is that she wishes she were). The causes
in need of her celebrity are endless, and she turns down most of
the requests that come in from all over the world: would she open
a lung hospital in Kerala? Attend a conference on water in the
Hague? Give a speech on being a writer at Amherst? Model for
Cartier? Make a BBC television documentary? Roy smiles
mischievously: "One woman phoned me and said, 'Oh, darling, that
essay on the Narmada was absolutely wonderful. I wonder if you
could do one for me on child abuse?' And I said, 'For or
against?'"
The most important thing, she says, is to keep in mind your own
insignificance; she can't speak about every issue and do them all
justice. She adds thoughtfully, "Sometimes it's hard, because
fate has conspired to make my voice heard, so you have the
illusion - or other people have - that you can do a lot."
Roy is wary of the fickleness of fame, and likens it to a wind
blowing through a house and all the shutters banging: "There were
moments when I was so unhappy that I wished I hadn't written the
book and I hadn't won the Booker."
The "huge public fairytale" had "another, equal, opposite version
in my private life - a terrible dark side". She refuses to
expand, preferring to answer questions with general reflections
on the nature of relationships between men and women - which
perhaps supports rumours in Delhi that her marriage has broken
down. In any case, the upheaval in her life has now been
resolved. She lambasts the pact of mediocrity to which the vast
majority of people subscribe in their marriages, and confesses
herself bewildered as to why so many women have children. She has
none herself by her marriage to a film-maker 10 years her senior,
and has no plans to have any: "Until recently, I was never secure
financially or sure enough about my life to think of having
children. I'm so scared of the vulnerability of children. I
suppose, in some deep way, I have not been able to cope with my
own childhood. I wouldn't know how to protect the child's magic.
Now, I want to live my life backwards, I want to be free to
change my mind, to think my thoughts, and not to be responsible
for moulding somebody and for teaching them what is right."
Living backwards means that Roy is now looking forward to living
out her teenage years and growing old, becoming a "fit, old
witch"; a form of liberation that means being irresponsible,
keeping everybody she loves feeling loved (that's not a matter of
luck but hard work, she maintains) and depending on no one for
anything - dependence is a form of selfishness, she insists.
Roy admits there is a great struggle between political engagement
- the demos, the preparations for the court cases - and her
desire to concentrate on her writing. Her enthusiasm for the
latter is undiminished: "I think writing is such a beautiful
thing to play with all the time - having your hands in that
stuff. I use it to live my life in the most public and the most
private way, and I love all different kinds of writing: a novel,
an affidavit, a letter.
Writing leads me through my life, and I trust my writing so much
more than anything else about myself." In the immediate aftermath
of the Booker Prize, she said she would never write another novel
- she objected to the way people treated her like "a factory".
Now, she says, she will know instinctively when it is time to
write and will be ruthless about applying herself to it.
It is Roy's passion for writing that stiffened her resolve not to
take the lawyers' advice and apologise to the Supreme Court, and
she describes a poignantly revealing dream she had before the
last hearing: "I had been sentenced to prison, but that was not
the fear. The only way I could live out the sentence and be
released was to learn not to form an opinion about anything.
There was a sort of big playground with a dazzling dance
performance, and I was unable to watch it because I was
struggling not to have an opinion about it."
She is more afraid of not being able to speak her mind than she
is of prison, but she is also well aware that is a ghastly
choice, one that she would much prefer not to be facing. For now,
she feels a judge's hammer hangs over her every word. "It's never
what it appears to be. It's much more a slow grinding down - of a
writer in one way, of a lawyer or an activist in another. It's
not about whether you go to jail, but how you have to adjust
yourself to survive, and that's the issue - the fatigue, the
complete fatigue in the end." This is the Indian state's version
of the country's tradition of non-violence, she adds with wry
resignation.
But she also well knows that the same establishment can be
vicious and violent. It is dark when we finish talking, and the
apartment block is silent.
She offers me a lift back to my guesthouse and as we leave, the
back alley is deserted and Roy seems all of a sudden terrifyingly
vulnerable. She is nonchalant, however. We get hopelessly lost in
a suburb of New Delhi, going around in circles while she
entertains me with anecdotes of being a judge at the Cannes film
festival last year. I ask if she sees herself becoming a
standard-bearer in the anti-globalisation movement? "Only if I
can say something simple, something complicated and something
magical," she says, her eyes gleaming with mischief
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
7 Mothballed plutonium plant faces £250m loss
Guardian
Paul Brown Environment correspondent
Saturday July 28, 2001
The Guardian
The controversial plutonium fuel plant built at Sellafield by
British Nuclear Fuels but mothballed for four years while the
government decides whether to grant it a licence will cost the
taxpaper £250m even if it is allowed to open, according to
independent analysts.
Yesterday the government released the report of consultants
Arthur D Little, showing that their best estimate is that the
plant would do around £216m worth of business in 10 years,
compared with a construction cost of more than £460m. The
government agreed to publish the report after facing a high court
challenge by Friends of the Earth.
The plant turns plutonium and uranium which has been through the
reprocessing works in Sellafield back into reactor fuel.
The government told the consultants to disregard the fact it has
cost £460m to build and to evaluate only whether the profit it
made would exceed operating costs.
On this basis Arthur D Little consider the plant would make
around £216m "profit" but opponents of the plant believe this is
"voodoo economics". BNFL, on the other hand, claims it proves the
plant is viable.
The plant's operating licence has been withheld so far because of
a significant lack of orders. This was compounded by a scandal
and diplomatic row involving falsified data for plutonium fuel
sent to Japan from a demonstration plant designed to show how the
fuel would work.
Eventually BNFL, at the government's insistence, agreed to pay
for the fuel to be brought back to the UK. The company hoped that
the Japanese would subsequently order more plutonium fuel but
this now seems unlikely. However, the company has had more
interest from Europe and claims firm orders from Sweden and
Germany.
Mark Johnston, nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth,
claimed the report "confirms the plutonium plant will lose
hundreds of millions of pounds.
"We consider it would be unlawful for the government to give the
plant the go-ahead, and it is a scandal it was ever built in the
first place.
"Ministers must dismiss BNFL's application or risk further legal
challenge. There needs to be an independent inquiry into why the
government's supervision of BNFL has failed so badly.
"There must also be a full debate about how to manage the legacy
of long-lived radioactive wastes and in particular plutonium."
Mr Johnston said it would be premature for the government to
authorise "a dangerous and expensive process for plutonium waste
management when other safer and less expensive options have not
been explored".
BNFL argued the report concluded that there was "a robust
economic case" for proceeding with the plant and that it would
make make a net contribution of £216m.
"This clear, independent evidence supports what we have been
saying for some time, that the plant has a strong economic
justification, there is customer commitment and it is vitally
important to both employment and the economy in west Cumbria. The
environment agency has already said that the environmental impact
of the plant is 'negligible'."
The company claims the plant has 40% of the firm orders it needs
for the first 10 years of operation.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
8 Australia signs nuclear agreement with Czechs
news.com.au -
28 July 2001
From AAP
AUSTRALIA and the Czech Republic had signed a bilateral agreement
on cooperation in peaceful use of nuclear energy and the transfer
of nuclear material, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer
said today.
Mr Downer said the safeguards agreement was signed in Prague by
Australia's Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Margaret Adamson,
and the Czech Minister for Industry and Trade Miroslav Gregr.
He said it would contribute to developing Australia's relations
with the Czech Republic and demonstrated the shared commitment to
non-proliferation.
"The Agreement stipulates strict safeguards, verification and
physical protection measures over Australian uranium that might
be supplied to the Czech Republic for nuclear power generation,"
he said in a statement.
"All of Australia's uranium is exported for exclusively peaceful
purposes and only to countries and parties with which Australia
has a bilateral safeguards Agreement.
"This ensures that Australia's nuclear exports remain in
exclusively peaceful use and may only be retransferred to a party
with a bilateral safeguards Agreement with Australia."
Mr Downer said like Australia, the Czech Republic, was a
signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (NPT) and was a member of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA).
He said the Czech Republic had signed an additional protocol to
its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, allowing the IAEA to
implement strengthened safeguards measures.
Mr Downer said the agreement was a treaty-level document and it
was anticipated it would be tabled in Parliament this year.
He said it would come into force once each country completed its
domestic and constitutional requirements.
*****************************************************************
9 Sellafield report cheers BNFL
The Times
JULY 28 2001
BY CARL MORTISHED
A NUCLEAR fuel plant at Sellafield has been valued by
government consultants at £254 million less than the cost of
building the factory.
The report, by Arthur D Little, the consultants, concludes that
the net present value to the taxpayer of operating the Sellafield
Mox plant is £216 million. The controversial facility, which
manufactures new fuel from recycled uranium and plutonium, is
costed in the books of BNFL, the state-owned nuclear company, at
£470 million.
BNFL hailed the report as a vindication of its view that there is
a strong economic justification for going ahead with the Mox
plant, which has been mothballed since a data falsification
scandal in 1999.
The incident, involving falsification of quality data on fuel
rods shipped to Japan, led the Government to order a second
review of the economic viability of the plant. A final decision
on whether the Mox plant should go ahead will be made by Margaret
Beckett, Secretary of State for the Environment, after a
four-week consultation period.
The valuation of the Mox plant at just £216 million could lead to
a massive writedown in BNFL’s balance sheet. Accounting rules on
the impairment of assets require the company to make a writedown
“if events or changes in circumstances indicate that the carrying
amount may not be recoverable”.
A partner in a leading accounting firm said yesterday: “I cannot
imagine that the question of impairment would not come up.”
The Arthur D Little report considers whether operating the Mox
plant would “yield a net economic benefit for UK plc” over its
estimated life — in other words whether Britain is better off
running Mox than shutting it down, which the report calculates
would cost taxpayers £58 million.
BNFL said that it had contracts for fuel representing 40 per cent
of the plant’s capacity, sufficient to “break even”. Norman
Askew, BNFL chairman, said: “This report shows our economic case
stands up to rigorous scrutiny.” Friends of the Earth said that
the plant would lose hundreds of millions of pounds: “We consider
it would be unlawful to give the plant the go-ahead.”
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided
*****************************************************************
10 Hazardous loads many, but disasters few
DesMoinesRegister.com | News
Strict rules, training and safety equipment help prevent accidents.
By
Register Staff Writer
07/29/2001
Iowa motorists share the interstate highways with a dangerous
mix of explosives, flammable fuels and radioactive material.
Amazingly, disasters are rare.
Iowa's central location at the crossroads of Interstate Highways
35 and 80 means it is commonly on the route of trucks carrying
all kinds of hazardous products, including farm fertilizers,
pesticides, solvents, paint, propane, toxic gases, fireworks and
nuclear waste.
Recent news about a shipment of spent nuclear fuel across Iowa
and the controversy surrounding the derailment of a train
carrying hazardous chemicals through Baltimore, Md., brought
fresh attention to the hauling of dangerous products.
Tom Sever, who supervises the Iowa Department of Transportation's
hazardous materials experts, said Iowans should worry more about
the hundreds of daily shipments of gasoline, diesel fuel and
other flammable liquids than nuclear wastes that come through
sporadically. The relatively few drivers who haul dangerous loads
without meeting safety requirements are a concern, too.
Iowa environmental and transportation workers say there are few
accidents in which hazardous shipments cause a serious injury or
major pollution.
Debra Cooper of the Iowa Department of Public Health said most
injuries in such cases have nothing to do with the cargo; they
are typical of any traffic accident.
"Considering the amount of traffic that goes through the state,
the number of incidents is low and the transportation of
hazardous materials in Iowa is safe," Cooper said.
Sever said there are surprisingly few chemical releases even in
the few cases when a fuel truck tips over. Special tank covers
and the fact that tanks have several separate compartments help
prevent trouble.
State records show that the number of spills or other releases
involving trucks with hazardous loads has ranged from 250 to 300
per year. Most often, releases involve petroleum products such as
gasoline or fuel oil.
Other types of releases typically involve few injuries or public
health threats, state officials say. Some are more serious, such
as the toxic chemical leaks that caused evacuations in Newton and
West Des Moines in recent years.
In the year that ended Sept. 30, 2000, the state checked 4,662
vehicles carrying hazardous materials. The inspectors issued 726
citations with fines that totaled $55,365.
If the offense is serious enough, the truck is held off the road
until repairs are made. That happened in 802 cases last year.
There were a total of 2,167 violations of various rules, Sever
said.
Heavy regulation, driver training and safety equipment help
prevent disasters, Sever said. For example, all drivers hauling
dangerous products have to pass a special test every four years.
Scott Weiser of the Iowa Motor Truck Association, an industry
group, said trucking companies know they could face huge fines
and damage payments if they don't make sure drivers handle the
loads safely. They have to be responsible for labeling the loads
with the required placards. They also have to buy insurance
carrying five times the usual liability coverage, Weiser said.
Training is a must.
"The result is, if you look at the numbers, they look pretty
good," Weiser said.
Drivers who violate an elaborate set of requirements - ranging
from paperwork to ensuring that the tanks have been inspected on
time - face state and federal fines. The Iowa penalties are $100
per offense, plus $45 in court costs. Some speeding tickets cost
close to that.
Iowa's fines are at the low end in the Midwest: Illinois charges
$1,750 to $2,500 per offense; Minnesota $210 to $700; Nebraska
$100 to $500; and Missouri $100, sometimes more.
Sever said he would like lawmakers to raise Iowa's fines to, say,
$200 per offense. However, he said, federal regulators often pile
on stiff fines for Iowa's most severe cases.
Iowa has 17 specially trained squads that respond to
hazardous-material incidents, Cooper said.
The threat of a major disaster still concerns many. Some dread
the plan to haul more nuclear waste across Iowa should the
government open a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
In general, the hundreds of loads crossing Iowa every day are a
reminder of potential trouble, environmentalists say.
"It's definitely a concern," said Amber Hard of the Iowa Public
Interest Research Group, a nonprofit organization that follows
environmental issues. "Just look at what happened in Baltimore
recently."
A train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in a Baltimore tunnel
this month, setting off an underground fire that burned for days.
Hydrochloric acid complicated firefighters' work.
Hard said her group wants more public information on what
dangerous loads are traveling the state. "Probably the biggest
concern is the potential for injuries, especially for the
drivers," she said.
Sever's crews have found some appalling violations.
Just this month, a company that handles fireworks shows at the
minor league baseball stadiums in Des Moines and Omaha was cited
for violations in both cities. In Des Moines, the company was
cited for 10 violations that included failing to have a fire
extinguisher, improper labeling of the load and failing to tie
down the fireworks in a truck.
In another case in recent years, Iowa crews found workers sorting
through fireworks in the back of a moving truck.
Another crew got hit by 20 or so boxes of fireworks that fell
from a truck because they weren't tied down. Still another check
found cylinders of poisonous gas were rolling around the back of
a truck.
Last year, the state fire marshal's office discovered a load of
explosives parked next to a motel in Muscatine. The motel owner
hadn't been notified. The load should have been parked at least
300 feet away, Sever said.
Mark Lambert of the Iowa Environmental Council said he approaches
the issue like many other Iowans: "If I see a truck ahead that is
carrying gasoline, I try to get past it and keep my distance,
just to be safe."
Copyright © 2001, The Des Moines Register. Use of this site
*****************************************************************
11 SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMANSHIP: Reid boosts nuclear power control
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL: NEWS:
Saturday, July 28, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Move adds to Yucca Mountain oversight
By STEVE TETREAULT
DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid this week gained oversight of the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, adding to the Nevada Democrat's
ability to influence energy issues and the Yucca Mountain
project.
Republicans balked when Reid proposed adding the NRC to his plate
as subcommittee chairman within the Environment and Public Works
Committee. But, when the committee met Wednesday, Reid prevailed
on a 10-9 party-line vote by the Democrat-controlled panel.
Supporting the move was the environment committee's new chairman,
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt.
The move gives Reid the ability to review bills and hold hearings
affecting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency would
consider an application from the Department of Energy to
establish a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas.
Reid, the Senate's majority whip, adds the environment panel to a
portfolio that includes chairmanship of the Appropriations
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. From that seat, he
has proposed deep budget cuts for the Energy Department's
assessment of the repository site at Yucca Mountain.
"I want to make sure the NRC lives up to its mission statement,
and that is to ensure adequate protection of public health and
safety," along with nuclear security, environmental protection
and safe transport and storage of nuclear materials, Reid said.
He said possible hearings could include examinations of nuclear
waste transportation and the agency's role in licensing a Nevada
repository. Aides said other hearings could include the study of
dry cask storage, a technology Reid favors as an alternative to
nuclear waste burial in Nevada.
Reid's panel was renamed the Subcommittee on Transportation,
Infrastructure and Nuclear Safety. It is expected to play a part
in rewriting the highway reauthorization bill, which sends
billions of dollars to states.
Jeffords spokesman Erik Smulson said adding the NRC to Reid's
subcommittee made sense, because "so many nuclear issues involve
transportation," Smulson said.
Smulson said Republicans had contemplated a similar change when
they ran the committee earlier this year.
Reid said Jeffords' support of the move was not part of their
conversations that led to Jeffords quitting the Republican Party
in May.
Reid offered then to step aside so Jeffords could lead the
Environment Committee in a Democrat-run Senate. Reid stayed on
the committee, becoming chairman of the transportation panel.
"I just decided that's what I'd like to do, and that's what we
did," Reid said of his claim to oversee the nuclear agency.
When Reid proposed adding nuclear licensing to his subcommittee,
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said he thought the panel already
had its hands full, according to staffers. It also was argued
that nuclear power is tied to clean air and, therefore, should
remain under the Clean Air, Wetlands and Private Property
Subcommittee.
"They said they thought I was too busy," Reid said Friday. "I
didn't say anything. You don't have to say anything when you have
the votes."
Nuclear energy industry officials reacted warily.
"We're expecting that bipartisan support for nuclear energy is
going to continue," said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the
Nuclear Energy Institute. "But let's face it, if Reid's recent
unfair treatment of the nuclear waste program is extended to
broader energy issues, it's going to be a cause of concern to
us."
Environmentalists already were putting together a wish list for
Reid, including hearings into the NRC's consideration of a
license for above-ground nuclear waste storage at the Skull
Valley Goshute reservation in Utah.
"We are certainly going to need somebody to look critically at
what that agency is doing, someone who the public can have
confidence in," said Lisa Gue of Public Citizen, a watchdog
group.
webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 -
*****************************************************************
12 Nuclear waste piling up as MoD banned from dumping
Sunday Herald
Investigation uncovers 30 year scandal of 'cock-up' that led to
disposal of toxic sludge
By Rob Edwards Environment Editor
The Ministry of Defence cannot be trusted to handle radioactive
wastes because it has seriously underestimated the contamination
of vast amounts of toxic rubbish from nuclear submarine bases in
Scotland -- and misled authorities about it for 30 years.
The credibility of the ministry has sunk so low that it has been
banned from disposing nuclear waste at Britain's official dump at
Drigg in Cumbria. As a result, radioactive debris is piling up at
Rosyth on the Firth of Forth and Faslane on the Firth of Clyde
naval bases.
The scandal has been uncovered by an independent group of 19
experts who advise ministers, known as the Radioactive Waste
Management Advisory Committee (RWMAC). 'It must raise serious
questions as to whether the MoD, currently at least, can be
regarded credibly as a waste consignor,' they concluded.
The committee has also revealed persistent problems over the
transport of highly radioactive spent fuel from submarine bases,
fiercely criticised plans to dismantle a nuclear submarine at
Rosyth and confirmed that the test firing range at Kirkcudbright
on the Solway Firth is contaminated with depleted uranium.
Nuclear bomb factories in England are also suspected of suffering
widespread radioactive pollution, RWMAC said.
Submarines powered by nuclear reactors first arrived at Faslane
and Rosyth in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War with the
former Soviet Union. Although scientists knew about the different
radioactive wastes the reactors produced, the MoD has never told
the whole truth about them.
For the last three decades ministry officials forgot to mention
that the toxic sludges and metals they were throwing away
contained a dangerous radioactive isotope known as carbon 14,
which keeps on emitting radiation for tens of thousands of years.
They only recorded the other two main types of radioactivity,
cobalt 60 and tritium, which decay in decades.
As a result, thousands of cubic metres of waste either being
stored at military bases or sent to the low-level radioactive
dump at Drigg was all misclassified. 'The mistake in waste
characterisation seems to be a case of communications breakdown
within the MoD's vast and complex organisation -- with failure to
appreciate the requirements of all the elements involved in a
long design and supply chain,' RWMAC suggested.
'The MoD must carefully scrutinise its assurance arrangements,
and consider the need to strengthen them to ensure the carbon 14
problem, or any other similar oversights in respect of the
characterisation of its radioactive wastes, cannot occur again.'
The error was first brought to the MoD's attention in 1998, after
scientists with AEA Technology in Winfrith, Dorset, asked about
carbon 14 contamination. The following year, British Nuclear
Fuels (BNFL), the state-owned company that runs the Drigg dump,
immediately slapped a ban on any waste from MoD sites because it
was worried that Drigg could breach its limit for carbon 14.
Two years on, the ban is still in force because the problem has
not yet been solved. 'We are still getting records in from the
MoD and updating our records. Until we have done this the embargo
will remain in place,' a spokeswoman for BNFL told the Sunday
Herald last week.
In the meantime, the waste has to be stored at Rosyth and
Faslane, as well as at the Devonport submarine base on the south
coast of England. The management problems have been 'significant'
and the sites will have to review their storage arrangements,
said Gregg Butler, the ex-BNFL executive who led RWMAC's MoD
investigation.
He did not think that the MoD had deliberately conspired to
mislead. 'This has been a cock-up,' he argued. 'There have been
improvements in openness and honesty but the MoD is on a learning
curve.'
Environmentalists described the MoD's mistake as 'completely
unacceptable' because it put both workers and the environment at
risk. 'Its failure to know the full make-up of its hazardous
waste streams has jeopardised the integrity of the country's only
system for keeping such materials out of the environment,' said
Kevin Dunion, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
RWMAC's report on the MoD, which has just been published, found
that there were persistent problems with the transport of
irradiated uranium fuel from Rosyth to Sellafield in Cumbria. The
naval base has apparently not been able to find enough flasks to
carry the fuel that were robust enough to meet the legal safety
criteria.
'The difficulties with off-site transport of spent submarine fuel
give every appearance of an issue that should never have been
allowed to arise in the first place,' remarked RWMAC.
The recent application to the MoD by Babcock Rosyth Dockyard to
begin dis mantling the defunct nuclear submarine HMS Renown at
Rosyth is strongly opposed by RWMAC. The committee argued that it
would 'destabilise and prejudice' the elaborate public
consultation exercise being conducted into how to dispose of all
seven nuclear submarines berthed at the dockyard.
RWMAC's report also confirmed that depleted uranium had
contaminated parts of the Dundrennan firing range near
Kirkcudbright, as revealed in the Sunday Herald in February. And
better understanding of the extent of radioactive contamination
at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire
was an 'urgent task'.
RWMAC urged the MoD to accept more regulation, to review its
internal management structures and to produce an overall strategy
for all its radioactive waste. The MoD is said to be 'carefully
considering' the recommendations.
Ministers had already given approval for the preparation of a
waste management plan and RWMAC accepted that the MoD's handling
of radioactive rubbish was comparable to that of the civilian
industry, said an MoD spokeswoman. But she pointed out that the
ministry could not accept further civilian regulation 'until
issues of national security and operational effectiveness had
been resolved'.
©2001 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights
*****************************************************************
13 N.K. silence to dialogue offers is tactical: experts
http://www.koreaherald.com
North Korea, which suspended high-level talks with South Korea
early this year, continue to shun the opportunity for dialogue
with both South Korea and the United States.
The North's protracted silence is casting doubts on an early
resumption of the stalled peace process on the Korean Peninsula
and an improvement of its relations with the United States.
Last month, U.S. President George W. Bush proposed to reopen
security talks with North Korea that have been suspended for more
than half a year, an apparent retreat from his earlier tough
stance toward the Pyongyang regime. The South Korean government,
too, helped the Hyundai Group rescue the troubled Mt. Geumgang
tourism project, a business widely seen here as a major income
source for the cash-strapped North.
These developments led South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and
government officials to vent optimistic views about the
possibility of North Korea returning to a dialogue table this
month.
But now embarrassment and disappointment appear to be replacing
the initial anticipation with the North showing no reaction to
those conciliatory gestures.
"We have no choice but to wait for (the North's reply)," said an
official at the presidential office.
Moreover, the North refused to send its foreign minister to a
regional security forum in Asia and Pacific, which ended
Wednesday in Vietnam, dashing hopes for high-level sideline talks
involving the two Koreas and the United States.
Officials and analysts in Seoul speculate that Pyongyang is
remaining silent on Washington's suggestion of holding dialogue
in order to strengthen its negotiating position in future
negotiations with the United States.
"The North's silence is a typical dialogue tactic to jockey for
position in negotiations," said another presidential official
Wednesday.
"They seem to be consuming time to find out what the United
States' real intention is behind its proposal to resume talks,"
the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In future talks with North Korea, the United States wants to talk
about military affairs such as the North's nuclear, missile and
even conventional weapons.
But this is in stark contrast with Pyongyang's stance that the
top priority on the agenda for talks should be Washington's
compensation for delayed work on building new nuclear reactors in
the energy-starved state.
"North Korea may believe that it is better for them to maintain
the current position (of keeping silent) for the time being in
order to make progress (on their demands) in talks," said a
senior Unification Ministry official in a background briefing.
North Korea watchers agreed on this theory, saying the tug of war
between the North and the United States to gain an upper hand
ahead of resuming talks stems from mutual distrust.
"Because of the lack of confidence, the two sides stick to their
conditions for talks," said Cho Myung-chul, a former professor at
North Korea's Kim Il-sung University who defected to the South in
1994.
It is against this backdrop that the North has repeatedly
emphasized that the United States should express no willingness
to take a hostile attitude toward the Pyongyang regime, Cho said.
Prof. Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University in Seoul said, "The North
seems to be soul-searching to in trying to ascertain whether the
Bush Administration's intention to improve relations with them is
genuine."
The analysts said an early reopening of talks between South and
North Korea is also unclear as relations between the North and
the United States show no signs of immediate improvement.
"The North judges that its dialogue with South Korea is
meaningless as the United States changed its attitude toward them
following the inauguration of the Bush administration," Cho said.
Prof. Koh said North Korea seems to be reluctant to resume
dialogue with South Korea out of displeasure with the Seoul
government's failure to overpower opponents to the "sunshine"
policy on the North.
North Korea has cut off various planned government-level talks
with South Korea because of tensions in relations between
Pyongyang and Washington over Bush's hard-line stance on the
Pyongyang regime.
(shinyb@korearald.co.kr)
By Shin Yong-bae Staff reporter
(C) Copyright 2000 Digital Korea Herald. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
14 Lawmaker named to Energy Northwest executive board
This story was published Thu, Jul 26, 2001
By Chris Mulick Herald staff writer
Energy Northwest welcomed two new member utilities Wednesday
while naming former state transportation chief and Yakima Valley
lawmaker Sid Morrison to its executive board.
Morrison, who ended an eight-year stint as the secretary of
Washington's Department of Transportation less than a month ago,
replaces the retiring Lou Winnard.
The executive board governs the day-to-day operations of the
consortium of public utilities.
Morrison, 68, said he was eager to get back into the energy
business after spending so much time on transportation issues. He
served as chair of the Joint Committee on Nuclear Energy during
part of his tenure in the state Legislature from 1967 to 1980.
During the dozen years that followed as a U.S. congressman,
Morrison served on the Energy Subcommittee of the House Science
and Technology Committee.
"Energy really has been an interest," Morrison said.
He sees public power playing a key role in meeting growing energy
needs.
"I'm a private enterpriser by background, but there are things
you can do collectively that a private investor group isn't going
to do," said Morrison, who envisions using part of the Hanford
site as an energy park.
Morrison said he expects a steep learning curve as he gets
acquainted with the various changes in the industry since he left
Congress.
Also considered for the post were former state Sen. Valoria
Loveland of Pasco and Jack Larsen, a former Weyerhaeuser manager
from Gig Harbor.
Morrison got right to work Wednesday, sitting in on Energy
Northwest's regular board and committee meetings in Richland.
"We're absolutely delighted to have a person of his stature and
experience," said John Cockburn, chairman of the executive board.
Also Wednesday, Mason County public utility districts Nos. 1 and
3 joined the 13 other member utilities of the consortium.
As for the new utility members, Cockburn said the consortium is
eager to make the organization more statewide.
The two Mason County utilities each will name a commissioner to
serve on the Energy Northwest board of directors.
Mason No. 1 is best known for being the first public utility
district in Washington to provide electrical service in 1935.
Mason No. 3 is a former member of the consortium that left in
1984, after then-Washington Public Power Supply System's
cancellation of four nuclear plants it had started to build.
"They're a different organization," said Pat McGary, assistant
manager for Mason No. 3.
The utility was drawn back, in part, by Energy Northwest's
efforts to diversify its operations, including its testing of
fuel cells, the construction of a wind farm near Finley and its
partnership to build gas-fired power plants at the Satsop site
west of Olympia.
"We'd be interested in having a say about that," McGary said.
Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
15 'Radioactive thieves' caught at Chernobyl
Sunday, July 29, 2001
KIEV: Ukrainian police have arrested two local men accused of
trying to smuggle 10 tonnes of radioactive metal from a safety
zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Ukrainian
press reported on Friday.
The men were trying to escape with two truck loads of metal that
had been used during the decontamination operation after an
explosion in one of the plant's nuclear reactors spewed
radioactive waste around the surrounding area in 1986.
The illicit cargo registered twice the permitted levels of
radioactivity, the Fakti newspaper reported.
The two Ukrainians were arrested at a routine radioactivity
control checkpoint nearby and were thought to have stolen the
iron-based compound from a store.--Reuters
© 1995-2001 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No
10894-D) Managed by I.STAR Sdn Bhd (Co No 422871-T).
*****************************************************************
16 CPS puts savings from nuclear power at $192M -
2001-07-25 - San Antonio Business Journal
James Aldridge
City Public Service (CPS) reported today that it reduced the cost
of generating electricity by $192 million in 2000 over the
previous year by relying more heavily on nuclear power.
One-quarter of the electricity CPS generated came from the South
Texas Project, a 2,500 megawatt nuclear power plant located near
Bay City, according to the utility.
CPS, Central Power and Light, Austin Energy and Reliant Energy in
Houston jointly own the plant.
"Nuclear fuel has remained significantly less expensive than coal
and natural gas and is a major factor in keeping CPS bills stable
in San Antonio," says Mark Werner, director of CPS' Fuels
Division.
The balance of CPS power came from generation from coal and
natural gas, and purchases on the wholesale market.
Utility officials declined to provide the exact amount it spent
overall on fuel in 1999 and 2000, citing competitive factors.
However, the cost of fuel and power purchased wholesale accounted
for 41.2 percent of CPS' operating expenditures during its latest
fiscal cycle.
Betty Williams, a spokeswoman for CPS, says the utility was able
to hold the line on generating costs through its fuel
diversification program.
Depending on the price of fuel, CPS fired up different power
generating units to produce the lowest-cost power. Spiraling
natural gas prices over the past year led CPS to rely more
heavily on cheaper nuclear power, according to utility officials.
Industry-wide, uranium cost a half-cent per kilowatt hour; coal,
1.45 cents; and natural gas, 2.84 cents in 1999, the latest year
for which data was available.
Meanwhile, the South Texas Project was rated the lowest-cost
provider of power among U.S. nuclear power plants, according to
information CPS culled from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
reports.
2001 American City Business Journals Inc. Click for permission to
reprint (PRC# 1.1661.461650)
*****************************************************************
17 -France says nuclear shipments from Germany safe
Welcome to The PMA OnLine Power Report
Reuters ( July 27, 2001 )
PARIS, July 27 (Reuters) - French state railways SNCF said on
Friday that trains delivering nuclear waste from Germany were
safe after a railway workers' union published a letter in which
the French asked the shippers about security guarantees.
An SNCF spokesman, contacted after the Sud Rail union published
the letter dated July 19, said the railway had been assured the
controversial shipments were safe.
Germany resumed shipping nuclear waste to France's La Hague
reprocessing plant early this year after a two-year break sparked
off by concerns about safety during the transport.
The shipments, which are due to continue until 2005, regularly
bring out anti-nuclear protesters along the tracks on either side
of the French-German border.
Declaring the shipments safe, the SNCF spokesman said the railway
had been reassured of the precautions taken before the trains
carrying the waste leave Germany.
``France and Germany follow the same international norms,'' he
said.
In the letter released to the media on Friday by Sud Rail, which
had obtained a copy of the correspondence, the SNCF asked the
French shipper Transnucleaire to assure them that proper
precautions were being taken in Germany.
``Please provide a written response as soon as possible so we can
respond to concerns raised by trade unions,'' said the letter,
which SNCF did not contest.
Until now, SNCF had always publicly stated safety measures for
the shipments were sufficient.
`This episode shows once again how much transparency is lacking
in the traffic in nuclear material,'' Sud Rail said in a
statement.
The latest shipment, which was the third since the nuclear waste
transport resumed, reached La Hague in northern France several
hours late after several protests along its route slowed the
train down.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
18 Baltimore accident highlights the dangers of trains carrying
hazardous materials -
Saturday, July 28, 2001
Gail Burton / Associated Press
By John Biemer / Associated Press
BALTIMORE -- The iron horse that rumbled through America's cities
in the early 1800s carried grain, cows and coal. Today, it's
carrying acids, corrosives and combustibles.
Freight trains like the one that derailed last week in a
106-year-old downtown Baltimore tunnel and spilled hazardous
materials run through densely populated areas all the time.
Unbeknownst to most people, they carry chlorine for water
treatment plants and ammonia for plastics and pesticides.
Sometimes, they carry nuclear waste.
"I would say people are pretty much clueless," said Steven Moss,
a consultant for Railwatch, a railroad watchdog group. "I think
they tend to have a charming, antiquated view of farming products
at best and coal at worst."
The CSX derailment in Baltimore sparked a fire that raged for
five days beneath a major intersection, burning so hot at times
that metal on the rail cars glowed. But it wasn't the flames that
prompted officials to halt traffic into the city for hours and
postpone three Baltimore Orioles games.
It was the cargo, which included hydrochloric acid, 5,000 gallons
of which spilled before workers began pumping it out. The train
also carried tripropylene, a combustible lubricant similar to
paint thinner, and hydrofluoric acid, a corrosive used in making
gasoline.
The derailment was unusual. The shipment was not.
CSX said 26 freight trains run through Baltimore on an average
day. Some days, all of them carry hazardous materials.
"This is basically, believe it or not, considered routine
transport," said John Verrico, spokesman for the state Department
of the Environment.
And not just in Baltimore. Trainloads of hazardous materials cut
through metropolitan Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Many
cities, after all, grew up around the railroads.
"Rail tracks almost by definition run through densely populated
areas," Moss said. "Probably every major city has a train running
10 to 20 miles from it with hazardous materials."
The Federal Railway Administration says there are no federal
regulations telling the rail industry which kinds of hazardous
materials can be transported where.
Federal officials say 2 million tanker loads of hazardous
materials were shipped last year, with 35 accidents releasing
dangerous chemicals.
"It's the safest way of moving hazardous material in this
country," said Chuck Dettmann, executive vice president of safety
and operations at the Association of American Railroads trade
group.
The Coast Guard's National Response Center keeps a database on
railroad oil and chemical spills, from minor gas leaks to major
chemical runoffs. Since 1990, there have been 64 such incidents
in Baltimore. There were 196 in both Chicago and New York and 110
in Los Angeles.
No one was seriously injured in Baltimore. But three factory
workers were killed, nine injured and hundreds evacuated July 14
when a rail car filled with methyl mercaptan exploded at a
chemical plant in Riverview, Mich.
Baltimore's derailment also caught the attention of Sen. Harry
Reid, D-Nev., who opposes an Energy Department plan to bury
70,000 tons of nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las
Vegas.
A proposed train route would take the nuclear waste from 77 sites
in 35 states, snaking through Washington, Chicago and Los
Angeles. Rail cars have been designed with a protective cask to
contain the radioactive material after a 30-foot free-fall or a
1,500-degree fire.
"I hope everyone recognizes the tremendous tragedy that was just
barely averted in Baltimore," Reid said. "People think
hydrochloric acid is bad, which it is, but not as bad as nuclear
waste. A speck the size of a pinpoint would kill a person."
After the wreck in Baltimore, the Coast Guard tested water in the
Inner Harbor, which briefly registered an acidic level. And
environmental officials monitored the air for days, declaring it
safe each time.
However, the city's 440-page emergency plan had no provisions for
accidents involving chemicals in transit.
Paul Orum, director of the national Working Group on Community
Right-to-Know, said Baltimore dodged a bullet. "There's some
important questions to ask about the best means of routing these
chemicals or rerouting them," he said.
Wherever possible, he said, companies should avoid transporting
hazardous materials by generating chemicals on site or by
considering using safer substances.
Gov. Parris Glendening acknowledged the dilemma when he toured
the derailment site last week: "The problem is, in modern
industrial society, you've got to move some of this stuff around.
Hopefully, we'll learn something from this."
On the Net: Federal Railroad Administration:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/site/index.htm
Association of American Railroads: http://www.aar.org/
*****************************************************************
19 Generating Station to shut down for 6 days
This story was published Thu, Jul 26, 2001
By the Herald staff
The Columbia Generating Station nuclear power plant will be shut
down today to repair a leaky seal on a recirculation pump.
The outage is expected to last at least six days. The Bonneville
Power Administration already has bought power to replace the
1,157 average megawatts produced by the plant north of Richland.
The market purchases will cost ratepayers about $300,000 a day,
said Bonneville spokesman Mike Hansen.
The outage will not affect the two-week fish spill operations at
The Dalles and Bonneville dams announced this week, Hansen said.
The plant could continue running without the pump but only at 65
percent of capacity.
Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All rights
*****************************************************************
20 EDITORIAL A Safer Shoreham?
Newsday.com - Saturday -
by Katia Hetter
Staff Writer
REGO PARK RESIDENT Margaret Pickens usually videotapes
EDITORIAL
A Safer Shoreham?
When such friends of the environment as Sen. Joseph Lieberman
(D-Conn.) and former Clinton administration Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbitt speak positively of the potential of nuclear power
for meeting the nation's energy needs, Americans have to listen.
Nuclear plants - such as the one at Shoreham that was finally
abandoned in the face of intense opposition from Long Islanders -
don't burn coal or oil and don't emit greenhouse gases, which
many scientists fear contribute to global warming.
Babbitt argues that newer designs are inherently safer than the
Shoreham model and may, on balance, be better for the environment
than conventional power plants (although disposing of nuclear
waste remains a problem). Mainline environmental groups are
horrified by such openmindedness. Still, when people with such
pro-environment credentials recommend having another look at
nuclear power, it would be unwise to ignore them.
Just don't look on Long Island.
Copyright © Newsday, Inc. Produced by Newsday Electronic
*****************************************************************
21 First Nuclear Plant To Close in 2003
F.A.Z. - English Version
[Frankfurter Allgemeine]
BERLIN. Germany will begin phasing out nuclear power in 2003,
when the first of 19 plants to be closed according to an
agreement between the government and utilities will go off-line.
The E.ON utility on Friday said it filed a plan with the
Environment Ministry in Lower Saxony to close down the Stade
plant west of Hamburg in the second half of 2003 -- about a year
earlier than scheduled. E.ON said the early shutdown was merely
for economic reasons. The plant will then be dismantled in 10 to
12 years. The move follows last month's agreement between
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and top power company executives to
gradually shut down Germany's nuclear plants. The deal sets a
standard lifespan of 32 years for existing plants, which means
Germany's newest nuclear plant would shut down in 2021.
Nuclear plants provide almost one- third of Germany's
electricity. The government says the phased shutdown will allow
time to build up other sources, including renewable energy. (AP
)Jul. 27, 2001
© Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2000 All
*****************************************************************
22 Anger at backing for nuclear waste plant
© 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
30 July 2001 06:23 GMT+1 Home > News > UK > Environment
By Steve Connnor Science Editor
28 July 2001
Environmental groups have condemned a report that concludes there
is a "robust" economic case for opening a nuclear-waste plant at
Sellafield in Cumbria.
The public version of the report by accountants Arthur D Little
Limited, published yesterday, says there are strong reasons to
suggest the opening of the Sellafield mixed oxide plant (SMP)
would be in the national economic interest.
The accountants, who were asked to do the review by Government
ministers before the general election, calculated there was a 97
per cent chance of the SMP earning £216m during the lifetime of
the project.
Friends of the Earth is challenging the basis of the
calculations, claiming accountants did not take into
consideration the estimated £460m that was spent on building the
SMP. If they did then the project would lose about £250m.
British Nuclear Fuels, which runs the Sellafield site, built the
SMP four years ago to reprocess the spent plutonium fuel of
overseas customers, mainly in Japan but also in Germany.
The company had been waiting for the Government to issue an
operating licence when in August 1999 it was hit by the scandal
over the falsification of safety data within the smaller mixed
oxide (Mox) demonstration facility, first revealed by The
Independent.
Mox fuel rods made in the demonstration plant and already
delivered to Japan have had to be returned to Sellafield, with
the result that BNFL's Japanese customers lost confidence in the
company.
BNFL needed Japanese orders to justify a licence to operate its
new SMP. Meanwhile Japan wanted the company to have a licence
before it went ahead with orders.
Norman Askew, BNFL's chief executive, said: "This report shows
our economic case stands up to rigorous scrutiny and clearly
demonstrates that the plant is in the national interest."
Mark Johnston, of Friends of the Earth, said the Arthur D Little
report confirmed the plutonium plant will lose hundreds of
millions of pounds. "We consider it would be unlawful for the
Government to give the plant the go-ahead, and it is a scandal it
was ever built in the first place. Ministers must dismiss BNFL's
application or risk further legal challenge," Mr Johnston said.
Also from the Environment section Whale population devastated by
warming Balance of power swings back to the whalers New
Manchester airport runway halted by newts British ports cry fowl
on wildlife plan Weedkillers quell romantic call of the turtle
dove
*****************************************************************
23 Imagine that fire burning nuclear waste
[charlotte.com]
Published Saturday, July 28, 2001
Rules governing transport of radioactive waste are overdue for updating
By KEVIN KAMPS
Knight Ridder/Tribune
BALTIMORE -- Here's a scary thought: What if the train that
burned in a recent Baltimore rail tunnel fire had been carrying
nuclear waste?
It's not that far-fetched. According to Energy Department maps
that trace national rail routes for transporting nuclear waste to
a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., a train carrying
spent fuel rods from a nuclear power plant near Maryland's
Chesapeake Bay could pass through the same tunnel.
If a train carrying atomic waste were to catch fire, the only
thing standing between people and deadly radiation would be the
nuclear waste transport casks, which could leak in a severe
accident, releasing radiation. Spent nuclear fuel, even decades
after removal from the reactor, delivers a lethal dose of
radiation in just a few minutes.
The July 18 inferno in Baltimore's Howard Street train tunnel
reached temperatures as high as 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit,
according to local authorities. The blaze, apparently fed by
flammable chemicals in the train cargo, burned out of control all
day long, overnight and well into the next day.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls for high-level
nuclear waste containers to be able to withstand a 1,475-degree
fire for 30 minutes. Clearly, this real-life accident in
Baltimore burned longer and hotter than anything the NRC
envisioned.
These outdated criteria date to 1947 and haven't been updated
since, despite combustibles on the roads and rails today that
burn at much higher temperatures. That needs to change.
By any reckoning, the damage from a tunnel fire involving
nuclear waste could be enormous. According to experts such as
Marvin Resnikoff, a nuclear physicist with Radioactive Waste
Management Associates in New York City, a severe high-level
radioactive waste transport accident releasing radiation in an
urban area could cause scores of latent cancer fatalities and
cost tens of billions of dollars to clean up. Resnikoff used the
Energy Department's own computer models to arrive at those
figures.
The Baltimore Sun quoted a firefighter as saying all he could
see inside the tunnel was the glowing metal of train tanker cars.
He described it as "a deep orange, like a horseshoe just pulled
out of the oven."
The big question is, could high-level atomic waste containers
survive such severe accident conditions? If not, we could be
looking at our own Chernobyl catastrophe - on wheels.
Kevin Kamps is nuclear waste specialist with the Nuclear
Information and Resource Service in Washington. Write him at
Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette St., Suite 554, New York, NY
10003.
*****************************************************************
24 Several S.C. towns finding radioactive pollutants
Two towns in Aiken County have found radium in water
By SAMMY FRETWELL and JOEY HOLLEMAN Staff Writers
Wells in parts of central South Carolina are threatened by
radioactive pollutants like those found in the Upstate's
groundwater.
Earlier this year, state regulators discovered elevated levels
of radium in wells that supply the towns of Jackson and Perry in
Aiken County. All told, the towns' water systems serve nearly
5,000 people, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental
Control says.
DHEC also has included parts of Richland, Lexington, Newberry,
Fairfield and Kershaw counties on a list of 22 counties
vulnerable to uranium contamination in groundwater.
Uranium can damage people's kidneys. Radium, formed as uranium
breaks down over time, can cause bone cancer. It would take years
of exposure to create health problems for most people, but
federal and state health regulators say the potential is nothing
to dismiss.
Joe Rucker, an assistant water bureau chief at DHEC, said
anybody drilling a private well in northwestern Richland, Kershaw
and Lexington counties, as well as all of Fairfield and Newberry,
should have the water checked for uranium and radium. The area's
geology, which is similar to that of the Upstate, makes it
susceptible to uranium pollution, experts say.
Radioactive pollution of drinking water is a hot issue these
days in the Upstate. There, about 90 people with polluted wells
showed elevated levels of uranium, according to urine tests
conducted earlier this year.
Radiation-tinged water in the Upstate and the Midlands is
believed to be naturally occurring, a product of groundwater's
rushing over rocks that contain radioactive elements. Scientists
don't suspect man-made pollution as a source in most cases.
Geologists say uranium is more likely to be a widespread problem
in the Piedmont, or Upstate, because the area contains more
granite and metamorphic rocks, where radioactive materials would
be concentrated.
Still, in the Columbia and Aiken areas, some groundwater is
tainted because natural radioactive elements filtered down from
the Upstate over millions of years, say geologists at DHEC and
the University of South Carolina.
"We know these rocks in the Piedmont can have (radioactive
material) in them," said Brent Allen, DHEC's district geologist
in Aiken. "The material has just weathered into places like Aiken
County over the years." Near Columbia, those most affected by
potentially tainted groundwater are those who use private wells.
People have installed more than 6,600 wells in Richland and
Lexington counties since the state began regulating them in 1985,
the agency reports.
Much of the rest of the area is served by public water systems
that draw from rivers or Lake Murray, which are surface-water
bodies.
Statewide, about 40 percent of South Carolina relies on wells
for drinking water, DHEC reports.
In the early 1980s, tests identified high levels of
radioactivity in some wells used by the town of Leesville, west
of Columbia, Rucker said.
Elevated levels of radioactive contaminants forced Leesville to
abandon its well system and begin buying water from nearby
Batesburg. The towns have since merged.
Also in the 1980s, high levels of radioactive pollution showed
up in the Oak Grove area of Lexington County, Rucker said. Wells
there were deep, dug into the bedrock. The area's water company
had to use more shallow wells to avoid the problem and now buys
water from municipal providers.
These days, Aiken County has the most notable problem with
radioactive pollutants in central South Carolina.
But state officials say it's not because of contamination from
the nearby Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex.
Myra Reece, DHEC's district director in Aiken, said the agency
found no evidence in test wells that radiation-tinged groundwater
was flowing from SRS to Jackson or Perry. Wells placed between
the site and Jackson showed the groundwater between them was not
tainted, she said.
"We feel it is naturally occurring, as it is in other parts of
the state," she said.
Regardless of the source, both towns have a problem they must
resolve.
"Once we get to the point where we know what remedy to use,
we'll use it," Reece said. "The hard part is trying to come up
with the best remedy." The wells in Jackson and Perry are still
being used for drinking water because the concern with radium is
long-term exposure, she said. Someone who drinks from these water
systems for a relatively short period of time isn't likely to get
sick, DHEC officials say.
Jackson exceeded the federal radium limit of 5 pica-curies per
liter of water when it registered levels ranging from 6.2 to 6.58
in the past year. Jackson has 3,942 customers.
Within the last year, samples from Perry registered levels
ranging from 6.63 to 8.5 pica-curies per liter of water. Perry
has 875 customers.
For now, the towns are exploring the possibility of drilling new
wells or treating the water to cleanse it of radium. One
treatment process would involve softening the water to filter out
radium.
"We're going to do whatever it takes to bring our water back to
within federal standards," said Bill Dennis, a Jackson councilman
who oversees the water system.
© Copyright 2001 The State-Record Company
*****************************************************************
25 the radioactive waste management advisory committee
Press release
24 July 2001
WATCHDOG RECOMMENDS CLOSER MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
FOCUS ON ITS RADIOACTIVE WASTES
A major report by the independent Radioactive Waste Management
Advisory Committee (RWMAC) into the Ministry of Defence’s
management of its radioactive wastes (known as "defence wastes")
was published today.
Most of these wastes are produced by defence contractor work on
the maintenance of the UK’s nuclear-powered submarines and the
development and decommissioning of nuclear weapons. Other defence
wastes arise from MoD’s own activities, including the use of a
wide variety of equipment, often small in scale, at a range of
armed forces bases.
Professor Charles Curtis, the Chairman of RWMAC, said :
"We found that defence wastes are managed to standards comparable
with those in the civil nuclear industry, although we recommend
that improvements are necessary in certain areas.
The key messages of our report are two-fold. MoD needs to
finalise, and publicise, a management strategy for defence wastes
in order to explain the basis for its individual waste
practices. It also needs to put in place better overview
arrangements for all defence wastes since its ownership
responsibilities, no matter how the wastes are managed, are
inescapable. We believe that many areas of best practice are
already in place, but an overall system is needed."
Professor Curtis explained that defence wastes produced by
private sector contractors are regulated in the same way as in
civil industry – by the environment agencies and the Nuclear
Installations Inspectorate. This has delivered important
benefits, and should increase public confidence. The Committee’s
view is that there should be a presumption of the application of
civil provisions to MoD activities. Some exceptions can be
justified, notably the operation of submarine reactors, but the
reasons for doing so need to be clearly set down.
Wastes produced by MoD itself are regulated in a number of,
mainly non-statutory, ways. While these generally work well,
MoDneeds to be able to assure itself that in cases where defence
wastes are not subject to civil provisions, its commitment to
controls that are, as far as reasonably practicable, "at least as
good", is being achieved in practice.*
RWMAC’s report endorses the formation of MoD’s Naval Nuclear
Regulatory Panel which takes an overview of nuclear submarine
work and is in a position to provide the Ministry with
"assurance" in relation to the resulting wastes. It recommends
that arrangements should be made to deliver the same function
across the whole range of defence wastes, including the Atomic
Weapons Programme, where no such arrangements exist at present.
The report makes 38 individual recommendations, not only on
regulatory and assurance mechanisms for defence wastes, but
alsorelating to a wide range of specific practices at the larger
waste producing sites, such as the privatised naval dockyard at
Devonport, and the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) - to which
a new sector private management contractor was appointed in April
2000.
The recommendations include the need for semi-solid defence
wastes, such as those produced during the decontamination of
submarinereactor coolant circuits, to be immobilised, packaged
and transferred to purpose-built stores. Similarly, the AWE
contractor needs to continue to reducethe amount of unconditioned
semi-solid and liquid wastes held at the Aldermaston site.
Characterisation of radioactive contamination at the site is an
urgent task.
RWMAC has reason to believe that submission of data on defence
wastes to the UK Radioactive Waste Inventory may be
neithercomprehensive nor completely accurate and recommends that
responsibility for putting this right should be allocated clearly
within MoD. The Committee also criticised MoD’s failure to detect
the existence of carbon-14, a long-lived radioisotope, in
submarine wastes, which could pose serious problems for its waste
storage strategy. Although major aspects of the problem have
beenresolved, RWMAC believes that MoD now needs to re-establish
its credibility as a waste consignor.
Notes for editors
RWMAC is the independent body that gives advice to the UK
Government, including the devolved administrations for Scotland
and Wales, on policy and practices relating to the management of
radioactive wastes. Its formal terms of reference apply only the
management of civil wastes. This report was undertaken at the
request of MoD. A RWMAC report on MoD’s arrangements for dealing
with its radioactively contaminated landwas published in August
2000.
* From a statement by the Secretary of State for Defence,
Geoffrey Hoon MP, on 7 July 2000.
The text of the report can be found on the RWMAC website on
www.defra.gov.uk/rwmac/index.htm. Copies of the report can be
purchased from : DEFRA Publications, ADMAIL 6000, London SW1A 2XX
(08459 556000).
Press Enquiries : 0207 944 6260/6254 (RWMAC Secretariat – from
9.00 am on 23 July 2001).
*****************************************************************
26 Law Firm Lobbied for Nuclear Industry While Advising Government
July 28, 2001
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, July 27 — The law firm hired to advise the Energy
Department on how to open a nuclear- waste dump at Yucca
Mountain, near Las Vegas, was simultaneously lobbying Congress
and the administration on behalf of the nuclear power industry
about crucial decisions involving the project.
Critics call this a conflict and say it casts doubt on years of
legal and technical work at Yucca Mountain, where the government
has spent $4.5 billion so far to determine whether the site is
suitable to isolate wastes for millenniums to come.
The law firm, Winston & Strawn, was being paid by the Energy
Department and one of its contractors to help determine if the
site was suitable, while also taking money from the industry to
assure that the site was approved.
"You could make a case that every piece of data since 1992 is
tainted," said Robert R. Loux, the head of the Nevada Nuclear
Projects Office, a state agency created to oppose the repository.
Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said, "Of course it's a
conflict. What would happen if, when I was practicing law,
somebody came to me and had a problem and I took money from them,
and somebody else gave me money to sue them?"
Mr. Reid said the Energy Department should have known better. But
a spokeswoman at the department, Jill Schroeder, said, "We found
them eminently qualified. We have not found a conflict of
interest."
Referring to the Yucca site, Ms. Schroeder described the firm's
role as helping the department decide "whether or not it could be
licensed." The department has not made a decision on opening the
site, but anticipates doing so by the end of the year. It is then
to make a recommendation to the president. Congress picked Yucca
as the lead candidate for the nuclear disposal site in 1987.
The nuclear power industry is eager to find a permanent disposal
site for its waste and is pushing the government to open Yucca
Mountain. Under a 1982 law, the department was supposed to begin
accepting waste from the utilities in 1998.
The dual role by Winston & Strawn seems likely to add more
uncertainty to the project, which is already 12 years behind
schedule and faces more technical and legal challenges.
The firm filed a disclosure form with Congress saying it stopped
the lobbying on July 11, but no one at the firm would return
repeated phone calls seeking comment.
The disclosure forms for the early years list several bills on
which it lobbied. The bills would have required the department to
accept waste for temporary storage in anticipation of opening the
site; in later years, the firm listed the subject of its lobbying
as "nuclear issues."
At the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade
association, which hired Winston & Strawn as its lobbyist, Mitch
Singer, a spokesman, said, "Why the relationship was ended, the
only thing I can think is because they're doing all this work for
the Department of Energy, and they felt it would be a conflict if
they were continuing to do work" for the institute. He said the
firm was "very conservative" about avoiding the appearance of a
conflict.
Asked if the firm had compromised its work for the Energy
Department, Mr. Singer said, "I can't answer what went on in the
past."
Winston & Strawn picked up its first major role at Yucca Mountain
in 1992, when it was hired as a subcontractor to the TRW
Corporation, then the Energy Department's main contractor for
examining the mountain, a volcanic ridge 90 miles north of Las
Vegas. The firm's job was to advise TRW on preparing an
application for a license, which the department was supposed to
submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In 1999, the department hired the firm to review the application
before submitting it to the regulatory agency. A protest was
filed by a competing law firm, LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae,
which complained that this amounted to the government's paying
Winston & Strawn to review its own work. That case is pending in
Federal District Court.
While working for TRW and the Energy Department, the firm also
lobbied the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on an issue crucial to
Yucca Mountain: establishing the maximum radiation dose people
living near the site should be exposed to.
"That would have come up in discussion," said a member of the
five- person commission in the period.
This person said he was lobbied by James R. Curtiss, a partner
with Winston & Strawn who is listed as a lobbyist in the
disclosure forms. Mr. Curtiss himself served on the commission
from 1988 to 1993.
Mr. Curtiss and another partner at the firm listed as a lobbyist
for the industry, Beryl F. Anthony Jr., a former member of the
House of Representatives, did not return numerous phone calls.
Energy Department regulations on the contractors doing business
with it say conflicts of interest should be avoided "to ensure
that the contractor is not biased because of its financial,
contractual, organizational or other interest which relate to
work under the contract."
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
*****************************************************************
27 Crash Highlights Train Hazards
July 27, 2001
BALTIMORE- The iron horse that rumbled through America's cities
in the early 1800s carried grain, cows and coal. Today, it's
carrying acids, corrosives and combustibles.
Freight trains like the one that derailed last week in a
106-year-old downtown Baltimore tunnel and spilled hazardous
materials run through densely populated areas all the time.
Unbeknownst to most people, they carry chlorine for water
treatment plants and ammonia for plastics and pesticides.
Sometimes, they carry nuclear waste.
"I would say people are pretty much clueless," said Steven Moss,
a consultant for Railwatch, a railroad watchdog group. "I think
they tend to have a charming, antiquated view of farming products
at best and coal at worst."
The CSX derailment in Baltimore sparked a fire that raged for
five days beneath a major intersection, burning so hot at times
that metal on the rail cars glowed. But it wasn't the flames that
prompted officials to halt traffic into the city for hours and
postpone three Baltimore Orioles games.
It was the cargo, which included hydrochloric acid, 5,000 gallons
of which spilled before workers began pumping it out. The train
also carried tripropylene, a combustible lubricant similar to
paint thinner, and hydrofluoric acid, a corrosive used in making
gasoline.
The derailment was unusual. The shipment was not.
CSX said 26 freight trains run through Baltimore on an average
day. Some days, all of them carry hazardous materials.
"This is basically, believe it or not, considered routine
transport," said John Verrico, spokesman for the state Department
of the Environment.
And not just in Baltimore. Trainloads of hazardous materials cut
through metropolitan Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Many
cities, after all, grew up around the railroads.
"Rail tracks almost by definition run through densely populated
areas," Moss said. "Probably every major city has a train running
10 to 20 miles from it with hazardous materials."
The Federal Railway Administration says there are no federal
regulations telling the rail industry which kinds of hazardous
materials can be transported where.
Federal officials say 2 million tanker loads of hazardous
materials were shipped last year, with 35 accidents releasing
dangerous chemicals.
"It's the safest way of moving hazardous material in this
country," said Chuck Dettmann, executive vice president of safety
and operations at the Association of American Railroads trade
group.
The Coast Guard's National Response Center keeps a database on
railroad oil and chemical spills, from minor gas leaks to major
chemical runoffs. Since 1990, there have been 64 such incidents
in Baltimore. There were 196 in both Chicago and New York and 110
in Los Angeles.
No one was seriously injured in Baltimore. But three factory
workers were killed, nine injured and hundreds evacuated July 14
when a rail car filled with methyl mercaptan exploded at a
chemical plant in Riverview, Mich.
Baltimore's derailment also caught the attention of Sen. Harry
Reid, D-Nev., who opposes an Energy Department plan to bury
70,000 tons of nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las
Vegas.
A proposed train route would take the nuclear waste from 77 sites
in 35 states, snaking through Washington, Chicago and Los
Angeles. Rail cars have been designed with a protective cask to
contain the radioactive material after a 30-foot free-fall or a
1,500-degree fire.
"I hope everyone recognizes the tremendous tragedy that was just
barely averted in Baltimore," Reid said. "People think
hydrochloric acid is bad, which it is, but not as bad as nuclear
waste. A speck the size of a pinpoint would kill a person."
After the wreck in Baltimore, the Coast Guard tested water in the
Inner Harbor, which briefly registered an acidic level. And
environmental officials monitored the air for days, declaring it
safe each time.
However, the city's 440-page emergency plan had no provisions for
accidents involving chemicals in transit.
Paul Orum, director of the national Working Group on Community
Right-to-Know, said Baltimore dodged a bullet. "There's some
important questions to ask about the best means of routing these
chemicals or rerouting them," he said.
Wherever possible, he said, companies should avoid transporting
hazardous materials by generating chemicals on site or by
considering using safer substances.
Gov. Parris Glendening acknowledged the dilemma when he toured
the derailment site last week: "The problem is, in modern
industrial society, you've got to move some of this stuff around.
Hopefully, we'll learn something from this."
--- On the Net:
\Federal Railroad Administration:
http://www.fra.dot.gov/site/index.htm Association of American
Railroads: http://www.aar.org/ -- All contents copyright 2001 Las
Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
28 Germany Plans for Nuclear Phase-Out
July 27, 2001
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's phase-out of nuclear power will begin in
2003, when the first of 19 plants to be closed under an accord
between the government and utilities will go off-line, a state
official said Friday.
The E.ON utility has filed a plan to close down the Stade plant
west of Hamburg - Germany's oldest - in the second half of 2003,
then dismantle it over 10 to 12 years, Lower Saxony state
Environment Minister Wolfgang Juettner said.
The move follows an agreement by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and
top power company executives last month to gradually shut down
Germany's nuclear plants, a cause championed by the center-left
government since it came to power in 1998.
The deal sets a standard life span of 32 years for existing
plants, which means Germany's newest nuclear plant would shut
down in 2021. Stade, in operation since 1972, will close about a
year earlier than foreseen under the agreement, Juettner said.
Some 100,000 tons of steel and concrete and up to 3,000 tons of
slightly radioactive material will have to be dismantled, he
said. The highly radioactive spent fuel rods will be sent to
France for reprocessing.
Nuclear plants provide almost a third of Germany's electricity.
The government says the phased shutdown will allow time to build
up other sources, including renewable energy.
Schroeder took office promising to negotiate an end to nuclear
power, a goal championed by the environmentalist Greens party,
his junior coalition partner. However, many anti-nuclear
activists would like to see a quicker shutdown.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
29 State to fine DOE
This story was published Fri, Jul 27, 2001
By John Stang Herald staff writer
Washington plans to start fining the Department of Energy after
it misses next week's deadline to start construction of Hanford's
tank waste glassification plant, state officials said Thursday.
DOE will be fined $5,000 for the first week after the missed
deadline, then another $10,000 each week until the state is
satisfied the much-delayed project is solidly back on schedule,
according to the state.
That means providing a plan that the state believes will lead to
the first glassified wastes by 2007, plus getting guarantees from
the Bush administration that glassification efforts will be fully
funded next year, said Tom Fitzsimmons, director of Washington's
Department of Ecology.
If the federal government doesn't meet those goals by Oct. 1, the
state will likely lead to Washington following through on its
threat to file a lawsuit against DOE to force it to keep
Hanford's glassification project on schedule, he said.
"We're not after the actual dollars. The money is not important.
What is important is the signal we send by taking this action,"
Fitzsimmons said.
If DOE doesn't meet the state's conditions until Oct. 1, the fine
would total $85,000, taken from Hanford's cleanup coffers.
Fitzsimmons said if the state eventually is satisfied with DOE's
efforts, it would consider rolling the fines back into Hanford's
cleanup.
Todd Martin, chairman of the Hanford Advisory Board, said he
lauded the move.
"The state has always been willing to bark (about enforcing
Hanford's cleanup deadlines), and now it has reached the end of
its rope, and is willing to bite. ... This certainly signals that
the intentions of the Tri-Party Agreement are alive and well," he
said.
DOE has not decided if it will appeal the fine, said Harry
Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection. The agency
has 30 days to file an appeal.
"We understand the Department of Ecology's urgency and its desire
to hold the Department of Energy accountable," Boston said.
Tuesday's deadline has been a considered a lost cause by all
parties for at least a year. DOE's latest estimate is that
construction won't begin until December 2002, Boston said.
However, Boston believes DOE will meet the new conditions
outlined by the state by this fall.
He said DOE already has a plan ready to convert the first wastes
into glass by 2007 and is getting ready to show it to the state.
And Boston believes Bush will sign off on congressional
appropriations to fully fund the project for 2002.
Actually, the Bush administration planned to underfund the
glassification project by $190 million next year, but the U.S.
House and Senate restored the money to meet the project's full
$690 million for 2002.
It's not clear whether Bush will approve the additional money. On
May 10, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told a Senate committee
that DOE didn't want it.
The glassification project is Hanford's top priority. And it has
stalled at least four times in the past decade. "It has a history
of many delays and many broken promises," Fitzsimmons said.
Hanford has 53 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes in
177 underground tanks. Sixty-seven tanks are suspected of leaking
more than 1 million gallons into the ground, where it's seeping
toward the Columbia River at an unknown pace.
Hanford's master plan is to build plants to convert the tank
wastes into glass for safer permanent storage.
The glassification concept floundered through much of the 1990s.
Then in 1997, BNFL Inc. began putting together a partial design
for the project.
Meanwhile, DOE and the state nailed down four enforceable
deadlines in the Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing
Hanford's cleanup:
-- Start of construction Tuesday.
-- The first glass created in 2007.
-- Full-speed glassification by 2009.
-- Glassification of 10 percent of the most radioactive wastes by
2018.
In addition to problems with meeting deadlines, BNFL calculated
last year that the project would cost $15.2 billion -- not the
expected $6.9 billion that DOE counted on.
DOE fired BNFL, changed the glassification contract's conditions
so the price tag is now supposed to be about $4 billion, and
hired Bechtel National as lead contractor last December.
After firing BNFL, DOE asked the state to change the deadline for
starting construction, but the state refused.
However, if DOE appears on track to meet the 2007 and 2018
production deadlines, Fitzsimmons said the state might not
contest DOE's plan to delay the full-speed glassification
deadline from 2009 to 2011.
Copyright 2001 Tri-City Herald. All
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
1 Vieques Votes in Bombing Referendum
Today: July 29, 2001 at 12:15:32 PDT
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico- In what they called a "vote for peace,"
residents cast ballots Sunday in a referendum the Puerto Rican
government hopes will help end U.S. Navy exercises on the
outlying island of Vieques.
"From the time I was old enough to know what they were doing to
my island I wanted them to leave," said Candido L. Felix, a
carpenter, handyman and mechanic born the year the Navy came to
Vieques and appropriated two-thirds of the 18-mile-long island in
1940.
Felix claims the Navy exercises have hurt the island's fishing
and tourism industries, and split up families whose young members
go to the mainland to find work.
Supporters of the Navy exercises here warn that an anti-Navy vote
could imperil already troubled relations between Washington and
this U.S. territory, especially some $14 billion in annual
federal aid.
Dozens of people lined up outside polling stations that opened at
8 a.m. and 75 percent of the 5,900 registered voters had cast
ballots within four hours, the electoral commission said. Polls
were closing at 3 p.m. with initial results expected by 6 p.m.
Sunday's vote is not legally binding - the federal referendum is
scheduled for November - but carries symbolic weight as an
expression of islanders' desires for Vieques' future. Various
surveys have shown most islanders favor an immediate end to the
bombing.
Gov. Sila M. Calderon, who wants the Navy out, says the vote has
"moral force" that she hopes will influence the U.S. Congress.
Islanders can also choose from two other options: a Navy
withdrawal by 2003 with dummy bomb exercises continuing until
then, or letting the Navy stay and resume exercises with live
ammunition.
Decades of simmering resentment over the Navy's presence exploded
in anger and protests after civilian guard David Sanes was killed
in 1999 by two off-target bombs on the prized range.
On Sunday, the Sanes' family was divided in the vote.
"People are afraid to come out here," Maria Sanes, a cousin of
the victim, told the pro-Navy rally. "But many of them are going
to vote for (option) three," for the Navy to stay, she said.
The Navy says the Atlantic bombing range, which takes up
one-tenth of the island on the eastern tip and is 10 miles from
the biggest town, provides essential training that saves lives in
combat.
Efforts to find an alternative have produced proposals for a
patchwork of different sites for different types of training on
the mainland all with one big drawback: nobody wants bombs
dropping in their backyard.
Two weeks ago the Navy announced a program of compensation that
would pay fishermen $100 for each day that bombing exercises
prevent them working, and grants of up to $25,000 to start small
businesses.
Many say that's too little, too late.
Anti-Navy activists say the bombing has damaged the environment
and the health of islanders who say they have higher-than-normal
cancer and infant mortality rates. The Navy denies causing health
risks.
"They have no proof of the cancer," a man who refused to give his
name said. He said he was among 80 guards on the Navy base and
that none of them suffer from cancer.
Legislator Jorge De Castro Font on Saturday night urged about 200
pro-Navy supporters to vote for the Navy to stay indefinitely and
resume live bombing. Castro Font belongs to Calderon's Popular
Democratic Party.
Fears of repercussions in Washington have been borne out by
powerful Republicans like Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania who
say if Puerto Ricans want the benefits of the military brings, it
must endure the exercises.
Such pro-military legislators warn that allowing the island to
decide the fate of the Navy could endanger other training sites
where there is opposition, including a huge base in Okinawa,
Japan.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
2 Vieques Residents Vote to End Bombing
Today: July 29, 2001 at 16:50:30 PDT
VIEQUES, Puerto Rico- Residents of Vieques voted overwhelmingly
Sunday for the U.S. Navy to immediately stop bombing on this
Puerto Rican island. The referendum is nonbinding, but the Puerto
Rican government hopes it will influence Washington.
Sixty-eight percent of voters supported an end to the bombing and
the Navy's withdrawal from the island that is home to its prized
Atlantic range. About 30 percent voted for the Navy to stay and
resume using live munitions, according to the electoral
commission.
President Bush's plan to pull the Navy out of Vieques in 2003 and
allow training with inert bombs to continue in the interim
mustered less than 2 percent - 81 votes.
Islanders celebrated what they called "a victory for peace in
Vieques" with whoops of joy, blaring car horns, and the waving of
Puerto Rican and Vieques flags.
Puerto Rico Gov. Sila M. Calderon has said the results have no
legal standing but do carry "moral force" that she hopes will
influence the U.S. government. But after the results were
announced, the Navy said it would continue its training, due to
resume on Vieques on Wednesday, and keep looking for an
alternative for when it leaves the island in 2003.
"The outcome of this referendum, organized by Gov. Sila Calderon,
will have no impact on the Navy or our focus," said Lt. Cmdr.
Kate Mueller, a Washington-based Navy spokeswoman.
Dozens of people lined up outside polling stations that opened at
8 a.m. and 75 percent of the 5,900 registered voters had cast
ballots within four hours, the electoral commission said.
Calderon's referendum was called to give islanders the option of
asking for an immediate stop to the bombing that began six
decades ago. A federal referendum scheduled for November only
allows them to choose between the Bush plan and the Navy
remaining indefinitely and resuming live bombing.
"From the time I was old enough to know what they were doing to
my island I wanted them to leave," said Candido L. Felix, a
carpenter, handyman and mechanic born in 1940, the year the Navy
came to Vieques and appropriated two-thirds of the 18-mile-long
island.
Felix blamed the Navy exercises for his poverty, Vieques'
undeveloped fishing and tourism industries and the resulting
split in families whose young members go to the mainland to find
work.
"We want peace for Vieques and that means the Navy has to go,"
said Geraldo Vegerano, a construction worker who has to commute
to neighboring Culebra island to work.
Decades of simmering resentment over the Navy's presence exploded
in anger and protests after civilian guard David Sanes was killed
in 1999 by two off-target bombs on the prized range.
On Sunday, not all of the Sanes' family voted to stop the
bombing. "People are afraid to come out here," Maria Sanes, a
cousin of the victim, told the pro-Navy rally. "But many of them
are going to vote for" the Navy to stay, she said.
The Navy says the Atlantic bombing range, which takes up
one-tenth of the island on the eastern tip and is 10 miles from
the biggest town, provides essential training that saves lives in
combat.
Efforts to find an alternative have produced proposals for a
patchwork of different sites for different types of training on
the mainland all with one big drawback: nobody wants bombs
dropping in their backyard.
Two weeks ago the Navy announced a program of compensation that
would pay fishermen $100 for each day that bombing exercises
prevent them working, and grants of up to $25,000 to start small
businesses.
Many say that's too little, too late.
"If they gave me $100,000, I wouldn't take it," Felix said. "All
these years they never gave us anything but problems. Now they
want to give us money? It's like trying to buy us."
Anti-Navy activists say the bombing has damaged the environment
and the health of islanders who say they have higher-than-normal
cancer and infant mortality rates. The Navy denies causing health
problems.
Supporters of the bombing warn that an anti-Navy vote could
imperil relations with Washington and jeopardize $14 billion in
annual federal aid.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
3 To Russia with love and $15bn
Observer |
The US answer to worries about what Moscow might do with its
radioactive rubbish is simple - send it more
Gregory Palast
Sunday July 29, 2001
The Observer
Here's a hot idea: why don't we send 10,000 tonnes of high level
uranium waste to Russia? You'd rather not? Not until you buy your
lead suit? OK, we send 10,000 tons of radioactive garbage to
Russia and throw in $15 billion for Vladimir Putin. For this,
Putin solemnly promises to store the potential bomb-making
material safely and keep it out of the hands of Iranians and the
IRA.
Just when I thought the Bush administration had adopted every
crack-brained idea that could threaten Mother Earth, along comes
another. The send-uranium-to-Russia scheme is the creation of
something called the Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT) a Washington
group that grew out of 'extensive dialogue with the arms control
and environmental communities'.
If by 'arms control community' you're thinking Greenpeace, you're
wide of the mark. The chairman of NPT is Admiral Daniel Murphy,
once deputy director of the CIA and Bush Senior's chief of staff.
The other seven executives include the former director of the
CIA, two nuclear industry executives, a former Nixon
administration insider, a general who commanded the US Marines, a
top Masonic official and one certified greenie tree-hugger.
It may not be your typical save-the-world line-up, but their idea
is worth a hearing. Russia has a huge 'hot' pile of 'fissile
material' - bomb fixings and old nuclear plant rods - in polluted
Siberian towns whose very names, like Chilyabinsk-14, sound
radioactive. NPT's idea is that if we send Russia even more
radioactive garbage, plus some cash, Russia will have the means
and obligation to store theirs, and ours, safely.
This month the scheme got a big boost when the Duma, pressured by
Putin, abolished a Russian law barring the nation from importing
most foreign nuclear waste.
NPT's assemblage of ex-spooks and militarists (and their lone
green) control the operation through three non-profit trusts. But
non-profit doesn't mean no gain.
This self-described charity will pay a British-American
dealmaker, Alex Copson, some unidentified percentage of the deal.
NPT has been reluctant to give details of Copson's potential gain
from the success of NPT - it took several calls and pointed
questions - possibly because the polo-and-sports-car aficionado
with the posh accent lacks the diplomatic gloss appropriate to
this sensitive enterprise. Copson notoriously described the
natives of the Marshall Islands 'fat, lazy, fucks' when they
nixed one of his nuke dump schemes.
Copson is kept well away from NPT's Russian operations.
Contractors will share a few billion, including a German power
consortium, Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Behalter (GNB). Dr Klaus
Janberg of GNB is director of NPT International.
But the real winner, should NPT succeed, would be the moribund
nuclear industry. Bush may want to bring nuclear power back from
the crypt, but there is one huge obstacle: waste.
Used fuel disposal can cost more than the reactor itself - and no
one wants it in their back yard. At $15bn, dumping in Russia is a
bargain. And since Russia is already a nuclear toilet, who would
notice a little more hot crud?
Russia's environmentalists noticed, and didn't like it. But
objections from Russia's Ecological Union are smothered by the
endorsement by the nuclear issues director of America's richest
environment group, the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC's
Thomas Cochrane, sits on the board of NPT's MinAtom Trust,
painting the project a deep shade of green.
What on Mother Earth drove the NRDC to promote NPT? The
Washington-based Non-Profit Accountability Project has a theory.
Director Bernardo Issel has sent me a copy of NPT's May 1999
draft, 'Long-term Fissile Materials Safeguards and Security
Project'. On page 18, one finds arrangements for a $200m Russian
'environmental reclamation fund' to be administered by the NRDC
for a fee of up to 10 per cent of expenditures, a cool $20m.
Cochrane insists that NRDC would never accept such a role. An NPT
spokesman says this clause has been removed from the new
contract. It would be wrong to see this as another case of greens
selling out for greenbacks. NRDC's Cochrane is as straight a
shooter as you'll ever meet.
The problem here is not payola but philosophy. NRDC represents
the new wave of environmental organisations enchanted with market
mechanisms, mesmerised by can-do entrepreneurs, and sold on the
pleasant, if naive, idea that the profit motive can be bent to
the public good.
NRDC and other pro-market environmentalists are always on the
hunt for what their god in human form, Amory Lovins, calls
'win-win' cases, in which corporate interests and the environment
both gain.
The NPT scheme is the quintessential public-private partnership
that business greens find irresistible. For Cochrane, the
attraction of the dumping scheme is NPT's promise to provide
billions to clean up radioactive hell-holes such as Lake
Karachay. It has also promised $50m for the Russian Orphans Fund.
Environmental clean-up, non-proliferation and orphans. How could
Russia's green activists turn away? The answer, says Vladimir
Slivyak of Russia's Social Ecological Union, is MinAtom, Russia's
ministry of atomic industries.
This is, of course, the agency that created the nuclear mess in
the first place. Can MinAtom be trusted to safely handle the
nuclear fuel and faithfully use the billions for environmental
clean-up - not to mention orphans?
As soon as I heard the name 'MinAtom', I ran to my notes of The
Observer's interview earlier this year with Joseph Stiglitz,
one-time chief of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.
During a tea break, the economist told me about an incident at
the White House that disturbs him to this day.
In 1995, the Clinton administration privatised the US Enrichment
Corporation, Usec. This turned out to be not very efficient at
enriching uranium, but exceptionally efficient at enriching
several of Clinton's associates. The law firm that defended
Clinton in the Gennifer Flowers lawsuit picked up $15m for work
leading to Usec's flotation.
Clinton's buddies at Usec promised their corporation would
purchase and bring to the US all the enriched uranium that
MinAtom could send. As with NPT, the sales pitch was that private
industry, by taking over the government's enrichment processing
plants, could reduce the amount of potential bomb-making material
in Russia's hands - at no cost to the US treasury. Another
public-private win-win.
But Stiglitz smelt a rat. As a hard-nosed economist, he couldn't
fathom how a profit-making corporation could agree to take in
unlimited amounts of uranium stock when the price of the finished
product had few buyers.
The answer was it couldn't. In 1996, Stiglitz arrived at the
White House to find an interesting document dropped on his desk:
a memo indicating that MinAtom had demanded Usec take double the
amount of uranium originally projected. Usec quietly arranged a
payment to MinAtom of $50m to delay the costly deliveries.
Stiglitz calls it 'hush money' - which forever soured him on
public-private schemes. Usec says it was a legitimate pre-payment
for the hot crud. However one describes it, MinAtom was more than
happy to play along, for a price.
Yet NPT tells us MinAtom and US private enterprise can now form a
trustworthy partnership to safeguard nuclear material for the
next few millennia. At first, this puzzled me: NPT's board is led
by the CIA and military men who pushed Star Warson the premise
that Russia has probably let slip nuclear material to unnamed
'rogue states'.
But I think I've solved this puzzling conundrum. What we have
here is the ultimate, green recycling programme: NPT ships
America's uranium to the Russians, who lose track of it and some
is slipped to Fanatistan or wherever, which returns it to the US
perched atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, which is shot
down by the trillion-dollar Star Wars system. Win-win for
everyone.
gregory.palast@observer.co.uk Guardian Unlimited © Guardian
Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
4 Nuclear deterrence, Bush and Asia
The Taipei Times Online: 2001-07-28
July 28th, 2001
By Ehsan Ahrari
President George W. Bush's labeling of the concept of nuclear
deterrence as a tired and stale strategy, and a relic of the Cold
War era has initiated a new debate in the US on the relevance of
nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War years. Since American
strategic thinkers -- such as Henry Kissinger, Thomas Schil-ling,
Kenneth Boulding, Herman Kahn and the father of this theory,
Bernard Brodie -- played such a pioneering and pivotal role in
the evolution of nuclear strategic theory, which, in turn,
largely guided the US' nuclear buildup throughout the Cold War
years, students of this strategy all over the world are closely
following the debate.
It is not likely, however, that nations of Southern Asia will be
in a hurry to accept the highly contentious proposition of the
Bush administration regarding the staleness or irrelevance of
nuclear deterrence. Neither, for that matter, would Israel, whose
possession of a nuclear arsenal is one the worst kept secrets
anywhere.
While Bush's downgrading of deterrence strategy remains highly
questionable among the declared nuclear powers, a recently
declassified paper of the US Strategic Command amplifies for them
the hollowness of the administration's position on this issue. A
very important point in this paper states that the best way to
deter the post-Cold War aggressors from using nuclear weapons is
by the US having "a capability to create a fear of national
extinction ... without having to inflict massive civilian
casualties." That fear, the paper states, should be "extinction
of either the adversary's leaders themselves or their national
independence, or both." It goes on to note that this "essential
sense of fear is the working force of deterrence."
For all nuclear powers, this last statement is not only very
crucial, but it is also a rationale for continuing the
modernization of their respective nuclear forces. Applying this
reality to Southern Asia, one can understand why the nuclear race
is not likely to decelerate any time soon.
Since the initiation of the Bush presidency, China has perceived
no reason to let up on its own nuclear research, development and
force modernization. Viewed from Beijing, the US is not only bent
upon developing national missile defense (NMD) and theater
missile defense (TMD) op-tions, but it is also likely to in-clude
Taiwan in the latter proposed system, along with Japan and South
Korea. Even without the potential inclusion of Taiwan, the TMD
appears ominous to China, for it is perceived as a major step in
the seeming resurgence of militarism in Japan. The possible
inclusion of Taiwan in the proposed TMD system, from the Chinese
point of view, will push reunification with that island into the
distant future.
Such a scenario is highly un-acceptable to the PRC. On top of
it, Bush has threatened to take "whatever action is necessary,"
if China invades Taiwan. Moving on to the subcontinent, the
nuclear arms race there is also alive and well. Viewed from New
Delhi, China's force buildup, if not ominous, is certainly seen
as a good reason for continuing India's nuclear modernization.
Moreover, India has also to worry about the continuing Pakistani
nuclear program. Pakistan is a country that has categorically
rejected India's offer of "no first use" of nuclear weapons.
Pakistan has also kept alive the potential military solution --
albeit unrealistically, given India's tremendous advantage in
conventional forces -- of the Kashmir dispute, and has
intensified the religious aspect of this conflict, to keep India
off balance.
From the Pakistani perspec-tive, nuclear deterrence is viewed as
a guarantee against a potential Indian aggression aimed at
dismantling it. For Islamabad, this proposition is bereft of
paranoia. After all, argue Pakistani strategists, India was
largely responsible for dismantling its eastern wing in 1971.
In the final analysis, the supposed irrelevance of nuclear
deterrence strategy that Bush advocates may only be true for the
US, for its power potentials -- conventional as well as nuc-lear
-- are awesome indeed. No other nuclear power, but especially
those of Southern Asia, either concurs with it, or is going to
take measures to decelerate the continued reliance on nuclear
deterrence.
Perhaps a better option for the sole superpower is to retake its
moral lead in nuclear nonproliferation by ratifying the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, articulating an advocacy for the
urgent conclusion of the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty,
insisting that both India and Pakistan join these arrangements
and, most important, reexamining the relevance of the NMD and TMD
to the overall prospects of eventual global nuclear disarmament.
China would respond positively if meaningful steps were taken on
the last point.
Ehsan Ahrari is professor of national security and strategy at
the Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Virginia. The views
expressed in this article are his own.
This story has been viewed 183 times.
URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2001/07/28/story/0000096077]
Copyright © 1999-2001 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
5 Group sues Navy over Trident missiles
HeraldNet -
Published: Wednesday, June 27, 2001
Associated Press
SEATTLE -- A citizens coalition is suing Naval Submarine Base
Bangor over its plan to bring more powerful nuclear missiles to
Hood Canal, saying the Navy didn't consider potential threats to
the environment in planning the upgrade. The groups contend the
Navy underestimated the Trident II D-5's risk of accidental
detonation, pointing to a 1990 review by a U.S. Armed Services
panel on nuclear weapons safety.
The Trident II D-5 has the explosive power of roughly 3.7 million
pounds of TNT, nearly twice as powerful as the Trident I C-4
missiles currently in Bangor subs, says the lawsuit filed in U.S.
District Court here.
Bangor spokesman Lt. Kevin Stephens said the complaint is
"completely without merit."
The Navy has 60 days to respond to the lawsuit filed Friday.
Though Navy lawyers declined to comment on the case Tuesday,
Stephens said the Navy "is fully compliant with any and all
applicable environmental regulations."
The lawsuit contends the Navy hasn't prepared an environmental
assessment of the Trident D-5 since a 1989 review of a missile
upgrade program, which plaintiffs say didn't address potential
problems with loading and unloading the missiles.
"It's out of date," said Dave Marr, the Seattle attorney who
filed the lawsuit for a coalition of environmental groups, peace
organizations and individuals. "There's a lot of new information
since then."
But plans to upgrade Bangor's submarine fleet with Trident D-5
missiles have been in place for decades, Stephens said.
Last year, the Navy announced plans to transfer two Trident
submarines carrying the Trident II D-5 missiles from Kings Bay,
Ga., where they are now based, to Washington state in October
2002.
The proposed move is part of the Navy's efforts to shuffle and
shrink its ballistic missile sub fleet, officials said.
Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not Copyright © 2001 The Daily Herald Co., Everett,
*****************************************************************
6 Activists gather for nuclear protest
BBC News | SCOTLAND |
Friday, 27 July, 2001, 18:14 GMT 19:14 UK
[Protestor removed by police]
Police arrested demonstrators at last year's protests
Anti-nuclear campaigners have been gathering at a peace camp
close to Scotland's Trident submarine base at the beginning of
two weeks of protest.
Activists from several countries have been arriving at the camp
near the naval bases of Coulport and Faslane on the Clyde.
Last year, the summer protest saw more than 130 campaigners keep
up a campaign of disruption and protest outside the bases as they
called for an end to nuclear weapons.
Police detained 76 demonstrators who tried to block the entrance
of the Faslane naval base, home to four British Trident nuclear
submarines.
Protesters erected scaffolding last year
Trident Ploughshares, organisers of the annual summer event, has
asked members to pledge non-violent opposition to nuclear
weapons. The campaign group, formed in 1998, said it has had
several victories in its short history.
At previous summer camps, it said activists have breached base
security, swum close to the Trident submarines and have conducted
effective blockades of the base entrances.
In its three years of action, the group said it has damaged
testing equipment, sabotaged a research barge and disarmed a
nuclear warhead convoy truck.
Appalling weapons
The group's actions have sparked 1,300 arrests and activists have
spent about 1,250 days in prison.
Spokesman David Mackenzie said campaigners were arriving from all
over the UK, the US, Belgium and Finland to set up camp at Peaton
Glen Wood, Loch Long.
He said: "Every day we get another indication that those in power
are critically complacent about the threats to our planet,
including the threat from appalling weapons like Trident.
"In that setting, peaceful and non-violent intervention by
ordinary, responsible people is not merely legitimate, it is
vital.
"We are delighted that more and more people are acting on this
conviction."
*****************************************************************
7 Russia not ready to sign SA Nuclear Treaty
South Nexus
The Early Word on Karnataka www.southnexus.com
30th July, 2001
Thailand's Foreign Minister Surakiat Sathirathai, and India's
Head of Planning Commission K C Pant leave after a joint press
conference in Hanoi on Friday.
HANOI, Jul 28: Russia has said that it is not yet ready to join a
Chinese-backed treaty making Southeast Asia a nuclear-free zone
due to several unresolved "technical" issues. "We support in
principle the treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free
Zone," Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in Hanoi on Friday.
But there were still some "technical issues" being discussed with
Southeast Asia, he told a joint news conference at the end of
annual security talks involving the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations and its partners.
"We will be able to find a solution to the issues being
discussed," Ivanov said, without explaining the problems
involved. India however said, in May it would honour the pact.
The 1995 treaty binds the ASEAN members not to develop
manufacture, acquire, possess or have control over nuclear
weapons, nor to station or transport nuclear weapons by any
means.
The ASEAN members - Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia,
Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - are also
banned from testing nuclear weapons.
ASEAN wants similar undertakings from the five recognised nuclear
powers, including a promise not to send atomic material through
the region by any means including nuclear submarine.
The United States, China, Russia, Britain and France have so far
agreed not to unleash their nuclear weapons against any of the 10
ASEAN nations.
India proposes trade Ministerial talks with Southeast Asia Trade
Ministers from India and Southeast Asia should hold a special
meeting to boost unimpressive levels of economic co-operation
between the regions, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission K C
Pant said.
The meeting could be held in conjunction with an international
trade fair in New Delhi in November, Pant told Foreign Ministers
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) during
annual talks in Hanoi.
"The time has now come to elevate ASEAN-India cooperation to a
higher level," said Pant, deputising for External Affairs
Minister Jaswant Singh.
He said, the proposed meeting was part of India's bid "to join
hands with ASEAN to work for a better future for all of us."
"There is much that is common between India's goals for economic
development and those of ASEAN. The possibilities for functional
co-operation between us are limitless," Pant said.
India became a full dialogue partner with ASEAN in 1996 joining
the United States, Russia, the European Union, China, Japan,
South Korea, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Copyright (c) 2000 www.southnexus.com
*****************************************************************
8 Nuclear Veterans Extend Campaign for Compensation
Update
Forty-four years after the last of 12 British nuclear weapons
trials were conducted on Australian territory, the Federal
government has released a “preliminary nominal roll” of
Australian participants some 16 years after it was recommended.
Compiling this basic list was a key proposal in the 1985 report
of the Royal Commission on British Nuclear Tests, chaired by
former Labor minister and Senator, “Diamond Jim” McClelland (AS,
July 2001, pp.37-41).
Bruce Scott, the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, said that the
roll lists 3235 Royal Australian Navy, 1658 Australian Army and
3223 RAAF personnel (8116 troops in all) and 8907 civilians, a
total of 17,023. This figure is at the mid-point of the
16,000-18,000 that the Australian Atomic Ex-Servicemen’s
Association has been claiming.
With British contingents numbering 22,000, New Zealanders 538 and
Fijians about 300, the grand total of all participants in bomb
trials both in Australia and British Pacific islands is nearly
40,000.
Scott also foreshadowed that another Royal Commission
recommendation would now be implemented: “Two scientific studies,
one to examine the causes of death and the other to investigate
the incidence of cancer amongst this group of Australians”. He
said “a consultative forum representing the interests of veterans
and other participants in the testing program” would be formed,
and “a leading researcher”, to be announced this month, will
chair an “independent scientific advisory committee to oversee
the conduct of the studies”.
Scott appears to have a fight to gain the veterans’ confidence.
Their association has been fighting for comprehensive medical
surveys and for compensation for claimed illness and premature
deaths among its members, and dismissed the announcements by
Scott, a member of the Queensland National Party.
In the Association’s newsletter, Secretary Terry Toon described
the studies as coming from “the dishonest and unprincipled
misfits of the National Party… [who] do their utmost to conceal
and disguise any publicity or information… regarding the cancer
deaths of thousands of Australian military personnel from
exposure to dangerous radiation and fallout”.
Meanwhile, planning for the DNA testing of 50 New Zealand
veterans (AS, July 2001, p.38) has been boosted by an additional
NZ$40,000 from the NZ government to Dr Al Rowland’s group at
Massey University for a closely related study.
The New Zealanders are now well ahead of the Australians and even
more so than the British in investigating the health status of
veterans. Further, Chairman Roy Sefton says half of the
government’s grant of NZ$200,000 to the NZ Nuclear Test Veterans’
Association is being devoted to preparing a legal challenge in
England (the other half is supporting Rowland’s study). The case
against the British government will be for neglect of their duty
of care on behalf of 220 surviving veterans, 50 widows and around
750 of the veterans’ children.
Previous legal claims by individuals against the UK and
Australian governments have been unsuccessful or settled out of
court, but with no admission of fault by the two governments. If
the NZ case is brought it will be the first time a class action
has been filed on this matter.
The campaign by Australian, British and NZ nuclear veterans has
now extended to the French, whose government conducted nuclear
trials from 1960-96 in the Sahara Desert of Algeria and, most
controversially, at Muroroa Atoll in Tahiti. Last month an
association of French Tahitian nuclear veterans was formed in the
presence, and with the advice, of Sue Rabbitt Roff of the
University of Dundee, who has been campaigning to get British
government support for DNA blood tests of British veterans,
similar to those under way in New Zealand (the Australian studies
will not involve blood tests).
Convenor John Taroanui Doom says 5000-6000 Polynesians were
involved in the trials and 20,000-30,000 personnel came from
France. The Tahitian Association has invited Bruno Barrillot,
Director of the Centre of Documentation and Research into Peace
and Conflict in Lyons, France, to study the effects of the
nuclear blasts on health and the environment.
Roff later visited New Zealand and Australia to coordinate campaigns
by nuclear veterans.
Peter Pockley
© Control Publications 2001
*****************************************************************
9 Sick workers’ families seeing relief
Evansville Courier & Press Saturday, July 28, 2001
By The Associated Press
Where to get information
+ Labor Department’s toll-free call center is: 866-888-3322.
Customer service representatives will answer questions and
arrange to have claim forms sent to callers.
+ People can go to resource centers operated by the Labor and
Energy departments in the following cities to receive information
and help filling out claim forms: The cities are North Augusta,
S.C.; Espanola, N.M.; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Las Vegas; Oak Ridge,
Tenn.; Paducah, Ky.; Portsmouth, Ohio; Kennewick, Wash.;
Anchorage, Alaska; and Westminster, Colo.
+ Labor Department district offices in the following cities will
adjudicate claims and provide information about the program:
Jacksonville, Fla.; Cleveland; Denver; Seattle. Source: Labor
Department
WASHINGTON — Martha Alls thought she’d never see the day when the
government would pay for what it did to her father — a former
worker at the uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Ky.
But Alls’ mother, Clara Harding, will receive a check for
$150,000 — possibly as early as Tuesday — as part of a federal
entitlement plan aimed at compensating sick nuclear weapons
workers or their survivors. The Labor Department is running the
new program, which officially begins Tuesday. Labor Secretary
Elaine Chao calls it “an absolute priority.” But the government
hasn’t always had that attitude.
Before he died of cancer in 1980, Joe Harding’s bones were found
to contain up to 34,000 times the expected concentration of
uranium. Yet while he lived, Harding was denied compensation
because official records showed he was only exposed to small
levels of radiation.
The Energy Department has identified 317 sites that employed more
than 650,000 people nationwide for nuclear weapons-related work
during the Cold War. The agency initially thought 3,000 to 4,000
might receive compensation, but the accuracy of that estimate is
unclear, in part because of poor record keeping.
Harding was among those who pressed the Energy Department to
acknowledge workers were getting sick from bomb-making
components, and his widow and daughter took up the fight after he
died.
The government fought back, fearing that improving conditions at
plants would be too costly and could derail the nation’s nuclear
program.
“It had gone on so many years,” said Alls. “It was like the
government just would never admit it.”
The government finally did concede two years ago that many
workers who built America’s nuclear weapons likely became ill
because of on-the-job exposure. Congress approved the
compensation program last year.
The law provides medical care and $150,000 to sick workers
exposed to radiation, which can cause cancer, and silica or
beryllium, which can cause lung diseases.
For certain workers at sites that kept poor records, the
government will presume particular cancers linked to radiation
were work-related. Included are workers exposed at the uranium
enrichment plants in Piketon, Ohio; Paducah, Ky.; and Oak Ridge,
Tenn.; and workers exposed to radiation during tests on Alaska’s
Amchitka Island.
For sick workers elsewhere, the Department of Health and Human
Services is creating guidelines to determine who is eligible for
compensation.
*****************************************************************
10 The Emerging Nuclear Posture
(washingtonpost.com)
_____About the Author_____
• William M. Arkin, a former Army intelligence analyst and
consultant, has written extensively about military affairs,
including several books on the topic. In 1994, his "The U.S.
Military Online: A Directory for Internet Access to the
Department of Defense" was published. It's now in its second
edition. His launched in November 1998, appears every other
Monday on washingtonpost.com. E-mail Arkin at .
By William M. Arkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 30, 2001; 12:00 AM
The political tide on missile defenses is turning. With the
agreement by Presidents Bush and Putin to develop a new strategic
framework and lower nuclear arsenals, the Russian government is
softening its opposition, and even Democrats on Capitol Hill are
grudgingly donning anti-ballistic missile uniforms.
It is not coincidental, I would argue, that the one international
issue that not two weeks ago seemed capable of upsetting
stability between the nuclear powers is now the one that is
yielding success for the Bush camp. Given how lost the new team
is on defense and foreign policy (the White House was required by
legislation to submit a "national security strategy" document to
Congress by June 19 and has still not produced one), it makes
sense that they can be convincing on the one issue they care
deeply about.
The real secret of success is that the Bush team is giving Russia
a huge hand just where it needs it. The emerging outlines of the
administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) proposes unilateral
and deep reductions in offensive nuclear forces, with a package
of measures to assure Russia, China and U.S. allies that missile
defenses are benign. The question is whether the Bush team can
truly reform U.S.-Russian relations and be believable as neither
threatening nor pro-nuclear. Emerging Partnership
Everyone, including Moscow, is aware that Russia can't possibly
hope to compete - let alone keep up - with the United States any
more on nuclear forces. Within seven to eight years, analysts
say, Russia will not have more than 1,500 strategic warheads
deployed. Even if Russia decided to actively thwart the terms of
START II and keep multiple warheads on its land-based missiles,
it could still only deploy about 2,500-2,800 weapons, most of
which would be completely obsolete by the end of the decade. Only
one significant intercontinental system, the SS-27 missile, is in
production, to replace a deteriorating force that was never
designed for longevity. The Bush administration is doing an
enormous favor for Moscow by allowing an accelerated timetable of
reductions.
Last week in Moscow, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice,
offered Russia a schedule to begin discussing both a new nuclear
framework for defenses, and reductions. "We should be ready to
move to a system of security more in accordance with our new
emerging partnership with Russia," she said. As Rice sees it, "we
don't see the need for a treaty regime here .... We would really
rather do something that looks more like defense planning talks,
... not arms control negotiations, but consultations and
discussions." In a Nuclear Phase
The outlines of those talks are being set in the NPR, which is
starting to gel inside the Pentagon around a set of phased deep
reductions accompanied by a new articulation of U.S. deterrence
policy, and a package of confidence building measures intended to
assure Russia and China, and communicate U.S. resolve to the rest
of the world. The nuclear posture review has a three phase design
and time frame,according to a number of experts involved in the
process.
The first phase, essentially awaiting Rumsfeld approval this
week, according to Defense Department sources, ties together
piecemeal decisions already made and committed under the START
Treaties. This includes retirement of 50 Peacekeeper "MX"
missiles with 500 warheads, placement of single MX warheads on
Minuteman III missiles, and reducing the Trident submarine fleet
from 18 to 14 boats.
This first set, experts say, is "doable" without any change in
national guidance, that is, the Top Secret Presidential directive
to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Strategic Command which
specifies what U.S. nuclear forces must be prepared to do in
crisis and war. "Though maybe not as innovative as a lot of
people would like," one insider says, it is the whole package
that should be evaluated. He sees the phased concept as an
"orderly" approach to deep reductions: "go down, pause, keep
insurance and a hedge, constantly posture yourself to be able to
go down lower."
The second phase would be to unilaterally reduce further to some
2,000 warheads. This would be done through "downloading" the
number of warheads on submarines, and reducing the day-to-day
nuclear committed force, including potentially reducing the level
of alert. At this stage, a new national policy would kick in:
Sufficiency in strategic nuclear forces would be defined as a
"core deterrent," with a "robust adaptive capability" to quickly
plan for the use of nuclear weapons in response to virtually any
contingency, and an ability to build-up, including restarting
nuclear testing, were U.S. relations with Russia or China demand
it. A new capability would be developed in the form of new
"tailored" nuclear weapons to attack hardened and deeply buried
targets. A retired officer intimately involved with targeting
over the years says that there are somewhere on the order of 100
or more of these bunkers outside of Russia and China, bunkers
that planners worry provides a sanctuary for rogue nations,
thereby suggesting to them that they might be able to use
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons with impunity.
In the third phase, seen as possible by the end of the decade,
forces would decline to 1,000-1,500 warheads, with still lower
numbers of missile warheads, and bombers transformed into "dual
capable" airplanes like fighters, released from most of the
day-to-day requirement to prepare for nuclear war. Though the
cuts are anticipated to be unilateral, all along the way, the
United States would take Russia's pulse to gauge its response,
and it would undertake a number of new cooperative measures with
Moscow. "As we reduce our strategic forces to [these] lower
levels," commander of Strategic Command Admiral Richard Mies told
Congress on July 11, certain things become more important even
than numbers: "transparency, irreversibility, production
capacity, aggregate warhead inventories and verifiability."
Insiders stress that unlike the early Clinton administration,
when political appointees moved to eliminate land-based
intercontinental missiles (ICBMs) in the 1994 NPR, the Bush team
is completely committed to the U.S. missile force. "Do we want to
have a posture where with 13 weapons, Russia could decapitate
this country?" a former nuclear planner asks. The view in the NPR
is that ICBMs are stabilizing. "He has to hold all of those silos
at risk," the planner says. Needed for What?
Is this the "totally different approach" that insiders claim it
is? The central nuclear war plan, the SIOP, would not be
eliminated as some would like to see, but the current nuclear
warfighting requirement would be redefined as maintenance of a
far smaller survivable U.S. force tasked just to hold "core
targets" at risk, backed up by the "hedge."
"We need to escape from the inertia that has kept the concept of
mutually assured destruction as the centerpiece of our strategic
relationship with Russia," Under Secretary of State John Bolton
said on Capitol Hill earlier this month. Easier said than done.
When ICBMs are justified as sponges to soak up a Russian strike
of hundreds or thousands of warheads, it should be pretty clear
that despite the reasonableness of the Bush plan, throwing away
old nuclear weapons may be a lot easier than abandoning nuclear
war thinking.
It was Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney who said at the end of
the Cold War that "you don't throw away your winter coat on the
first warm day of spring." Many of the "hedges" and pro-nuclear
facets of the emerging posture – the ability to upload missiles
with more warheads when Russia's forces are deteriorating,
building new bunker busting warheads, moving to quietly develop a
new ICBM, and, of course, emerging national missile defenses that
could be seen as the final component of a U.S.first strike – are
likely to invoke coat wearers in Russia to wonder just what it is
we have on underneath. The reductions, hedges, and cooperative
measures may for all of the reasons Adm. Mies refers to about
transparency, require formal understandings for all of this to
work. This will be particularly difficult for the new team to
pull off convincingly, given that another thing the Bush
administration seems to believe is that treaties are bad.
© 2001 Washington Post Newsweek Interactive
*****************************************************************
11 Beryllium Disease, 'A Disaster Waiting To Happen,'
Chicago Tribune Investigation
Saturday July 28, 9:00 am Eastern Time
Press Release
CHICAGO, July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- A Chicago Tribune investigation
has found that thousands of Americans are at risk for developing
a chronic, potentially fatal lung disease because companies have
exposed them to the highly toxic metal beryllium without adequate
safeguards or warnings.
The story by reporter Sam Roe is published in the Sunday, July
29, Chicago Tribune.
The Tribune investigation, based on thousands of court, industry
and government documents and dozens of interviews with health
officials and business owners, found:
-- Many businesses are not taking basic precautions, such as
air monitoring. In a spot check of 30 businesses across the
country working with beryllium, the Tribune found that none were
following the safeguards recommended by the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA).
-- Warnings from beryllium manufacturers and distributors are
often inaccurate, misleading and incomplete. Of 10 warnings
reviewed by the Tribune, nine failed to abide by OSHA rules and
four failed to even mention beryllium disease.
-- OSHA rarely inspects companies that handle beryllium.
Several Chicago- area businesses working with the metal have not
been inspected in 10 years.
Workers in a variety of businesses, including the electronics,
recycling, machining and dental industries have been harmed by
the toxic dust of beryllium, which slowly damages victims' lungs.
Beryllium disease was once found primarily in the defense
industry because of the metal's use in nuclear bombs and other
weapons. Though still rare, the illness now is emerging in
private and consumer industries, where beryllium is valued for
its light weight and superior strength.
Roe's report documents the stories of individuals and businesses
and their experiences with beryllium and beryllium disease. It is
published in the Sunday, July 29, Chicago Tribune, which is
available in Chicago beginning Saturday morning. The story is
also available on chicagotribune.com .
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
*****************************************************************
12 Russia, China Stands for Nuclear-free Zone in Southeast Asia
Saturday, July 28, 2001, updated at 16:18(GMT+8)
Russia, China Stands for Nuclear-free Zone in Southeast Asia
China and Russia Friday expressed their support for the
establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone in Southeast Asia
after their representatives attended an annual meeting between
ASEAN and its dialogue partners.
Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said at a press conference at the
end of the ASEAN + Dialogue Partners meeting that China backs
ASEAN's efforts to establish a Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free
Zone.
He added that China supports ASEAN in taking all measures
conducive to regional peace and stability, and China is the first
country of the world five major nuclear powers to have reached
agreement with ASEAN on the issue.
Wang said China is willing to work with other countries to make
progress on the matter so that China can sign the Protocol of
Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone as soon as possible.
Russian Foreign Minister I.S. Ivanov also said at the press
conference that Moscow supports the establishment of a nuclear
weapon-free one in regions,especially in the Southeast Asian
region.
Russia stands for the purposes and principles of the treaty for a
nuclear weapon-free zone in Southeast Asia, Ivanov said.
He said Russia has held consultations with ASEAN countries on
related issues on the matter and hopes to achieve consensus on
the implementation of the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-free Zone
(SEANWFZ) Treaty.
China and Russia are among the 10 dialogue partners of ASEAN.
Both sides have conducted extensive discussion on a wide range of
issues including regional security this week in Hanoi.
China and Russia Friday expressed their support for the
establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone in Southeast Asia
after their representatives attended an annual meeting between
ASEAN and its dialogue partners.
Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved
*****************************************************************
13 Explosion in Torpedo Compartment Sinks "Kursk": Russian Duma Chairman
Saturday, July 28, 2001, updated at 11:19(GMT+8)
Explosion in Torpedo Compartment Sinks "Kursk": Russian Duma
Chairman An accidental explosion in the torpedo compartment led
to the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine "Kursk" last
August, Russian Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznyov told the press in
St. Petersburg on Friday.
The State Duma (lower house of the parliament) commission on
inquiry of the cause of the Kursk disaster has found what the
official report already said and raveled what caused the tragedy
on earth, Seleznyov said.
"All experts are convinced that negligence or an accident led to
an explosion in the Kursk's torpedo compartment and the sinking
of the submarine," he said.
"Nobody intentionally bombed anything, neither our own people nor
somebody else. There was no collision. Even those who used to
advance other explanations are saying so," Seleznyov said.
"Still, there might be some technical details that the Duma
commission may not have been let in on, or secrets that are
discussed separately," he said.
On the same day, the Kursk Foundation ruled out possibility of
incidents with the sub's reactors during the raising of it in
September.
Carel Prins, Vice Chairman of the Kursk Foundation, said that he
understands and shares the public concerns about the radiation
situation at the wreck site in Barents Sea. However, he assured
that "no incidents with the reactors will occur."
When the disaster took place, both reactors located in the sixth
compartment were shut down. "And, according to our conclusion,
they will not become active during the raising," he said.
But Vice Admiral Valery Dorogin, a member of the governmental
probe committee into the catastrophe, said Friday that the true
cause of the Kursk disaster will never be determined.
"We will never find out what killed the Kursk, just as we never
found out the causes of the sinking of the Admiral Nakhimov,
Inperatritsa Maria, and the ferry Estonia," which sank in the
Soviet times, Dorogin told a press conference.
Nonetheless, he suggested three main versions of the catastrophe
that occurred in the Barents Sea during a war game on August 12,
2000, all 118 crew on board the sub were killed.
The three possible causes include a collision, a blast, or an
explosion brought about by a collision with a mine, he said.
Technical failures have not been ruled out either, he added.
Print Discuss It
In This Section
+ Iran Says Ready to Negotiate with Azerbaijan on Caspian
Dispute + Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela to Coordinate Energy
Policies + Peru's Toledo to Assume Presidency Among
Expectations,Worries + News Analysis: Sino-ASEAN Partnership of
Mutual Trust Enters New Period + Nepali Government Condemns
Bombing in Sri Lanka + Indonesian Rupiah May Appreciate to Below
8,000: Central Bank + Vietnam Not to Punish Returning Minority
People: Spokeswoman
An accidental explosion in the torpedo compartment led to the
sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine "Kursk" last August,
Russian Duma Chairman Gennady Seleznyov told the press in St.
Petersburg on Friday.
Russian Experts Rule Out Radiation Leaks During Kursk
Operation Russian Navy Confirms Absolute Nuclear Safety for
Lifting Kursk
Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved |
*****************************************************************
14 Retirees' pensions in pinch at USEC -
The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Sunday, July 29, 2001
Pensions were split after privatization in 1992. Oak Ridge
retirees, under DOE, saw benefits rise up to 23 percent; USEC
retirees have seen none.
By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
Retired Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers say they feel
like orphans. Most of them worked for, and retired from, Union
Carbide Corp. or Martin Marietta and its successors, who operated
the plant for the federal government for more than 40 years.
However, the retirees are no longer included in the pension plan
that they paid into during their careers. Instead, they are in a
new pension plan managed by the U.S. Enrichment Corp., which
became the plant's private operator in 1992.
Former workers at U.S. Department of Energy facilities in Oak
Ridge are in the original plan now managed by a company named
BWXTY-12, which now operates the Oak Ridge facilities.
The pension plans were split under the congressional act that
privatized the enrichment industry. Retired workers in Paducah
and Portsmouth, Ohio, were placed under USEC, while retired Oak
Ridge workers remained under the original plan.
Retired Paducah workers said it isn't fair that they haven't
received a benefit increase since 1992, while the retired workers
in Oak Ridge received increases on July 1 ranging from 4 to 23
percent.
"We didn't work for them (USEC) or retire from them, so they
shouldn't be controlling our pension," said Art Edwards, chairman
of a committee of retired Paducah plant workers. "We want to be
put back into the same fund with the Oak Ridge retirees ... which
we paid into for 50 years."
When the funds were split, $545 million was placed in the USEC
fund, which was sufficient to cover the existing benefits for
about 1,000 workers. The rest of the money — more than $2 billion
— was kept in the original fund for the Oak Ridge workers. That
fund includes a surplus estimated to be at least $800 million
that was used to fund the recent increase for Oak Ridge retirees.
"Our argument is that we were in the fund that was well-managed
and was able to build up the surplus that allowed for the
increase," Edwards said. "We also should be able to benefit from
it."
Edwards says Paducah retirees face the same inflation and
increased cost as the Oak Ridge retirees. The inflation rate has
averaged 3.3 percent annually since the mid-1980s.
The committee appointed to lobby for higher benefits has
contacted USEC several times asking for an increase, Edwards
said.
"We haven't gotten an official response, but it seems their
position is that they have no liability for us because we didn't
retire from them," he said. "They have left us hanging out on a
limb."
Elizabeth Stuckle, spokeswoman for USEC, said USEC is assessing
the request and should know within 30 days if it can grant an
increase. The assessment includes a study of the assets and
liabilities of the fund to see if it has built up an excess.
Stuckle said the only contributions to the fund have been to pay
benefits for future retirees.
*****************************************************************
15 Opinion: Farris: Bombing issue hits too close to home
Amarillo Globe-News:
NIMBY is alive and well in Texas.
When Puerto Ricans claimed that the U.S. Navy's bombardment of
Vieques had serious repercussions, military proponents said
hogwash.
When the islanders and their sympathizers said the 60 years of
training maneuvers hurt them emotionally and damaged their land
ecologically, the Navy said that's bunk.
It added that Vieques is just too darn vital to defense
preparations and it needed to remain in the military mix.
The Navy said the island was important in preparing U.S. forces
for combined land, sea and air operations on the Atlantic Ocean
side of the world. It had called Vieques the "crown jewel" of its
Atlantic training sites.
The Navy loved it so because it could conduct training missions
without interference from civilian ships or airplanes.
Puerto Ricans said that's all well and good, but we're fed up
with the situation.
They had been saying that for years; the training missions have
been criticized since the 1960s. But what really perturbed the
locals was when a civilian security guard was killed two years
ago.
An all-out protest ensued. Demonstrators took up stations as
human shields on the island, and some even camped on the
beach.
In late 1999, former President Clinton told the military to stop
using Vieques as a live-bombing range unless the Puerto Rican
people wanted the practice to continue. Fat chance.
We said, wait a minute.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They should do their part to
help preserve the strength of Uncle Sam's military might. After
all, Panhandle residents have been saddled with Pantex for
years.
We agreed with former Defense Secretary William Cohen, who wrote
in a letter to Clinton at the time of the president's decision:
"I also firmly believe that all U.S. citizens, whether they live
in states or other jurisdictions, must make sacrifices in order
to support the strong national defense that preserves the
freedoms we all enjoy. There is not a single part of our country
that doesn't make some adjustments or accommodations to sustain
the presence of the military."
The protests continued.
Some U.S. lawmakers made it down. Al Sharpton stuck his nose
where it didn't belong. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior
senator from New York, pandered to her state's large Puerto Rican
population by showing support for the islanders' cause.
Then last month, President Bush relented and said the bombings
would stop by mid-2003.
You don't think the president was pulling a political stunt, do
you?
Republicans are desperately trying to shed their image as the
party of rich, white men. Wouldn't this get the Latinos off his
back? Wouldn't this help in New York, where Bush got whacked by
Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore? Wouldn't this help his
little brother in heavily Hispanic Florida retain his residence
in the governor's mansion?
About a week after Bush's announcement, word got out that South
Texas was being considered as the new Vieques. One plan put forth
was using 220,000 acres of sparsely populated Kenedy County for
bombing practice.
That's when NIMBY spoke up.
Not In My Back Yard, you don't.
Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander was the first statewide
politician to speak up. Her reasoning? Environmental concerns.
Isn't that rich?
Maybe the Puerto Ricans weren't so crazy after all.
Whether they actually have suffered emotionally or their land has
been hurt ecologically remains to be seen. But for Texas
politicians to now claim those very same reasons is
hypocritical.
Puerto Ricans have done their fair share. Although their claims
of harm are unproved, it stands to reason that 60 years of
bombings hasn't done them or their island any good.
One other interesting aspect to this story is the similarity of
the two business communities. Those who want the bombings to
remain in Puerto Rico say the Navy has been a boon for the
economy. Those chamber of commerce-types in South Texas are
saying much the same thing.
Bombings, schmombings; we need jobs, they contend. It never
ceases to amaze me how the allure of jobs - regardless of
physical costs to the worker - seems to override all other
considerations when talking about economics.
Yeah, I don't want the Navy to bomb Padre Island any more than
any other Texan. And I was happy to hear that the South Texas
option was taken off the table. But how can we say the residents
of Vieques should lie down and take it when we surely don't want
the Navy to bomb our back yard?
We can't.
Jeff Farris is an editorial writer for the Amarillo Globe-News,
P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, Texas 79166. His e-mail address is jfarris@amarillonet.com.
His column appears on Fridays.
*****************************************************************
16 Columbia River steward plans epic swim
- 7/27/2001 - ENN.com
Friday, July 27, 2001 By Chris Stetkiewicz, Reuters
PORTLAND, Ore. — The mighty Columbia River contains a wide array
of noxious substances like dioxin, heavy metals, and
cancer-causing PCBs and flows through the most radioactive
stretch of land in the Western Hemisphere. That's why Christopher
Swain wants to swim it — all 1,243 miles of it.
A full-time environmental watchdog patrolling the massive river
out of Portland, Ore., Swain plans to wade into its headwaters in
Canal Flats, British Columbia, next June and spend five months
chugging a dozen miles a day until he reaches the Pacific Ocean
on the Oregon-Washington border.
"So often in the environmental movement it's all abstract. We
send our money off to protect some distant stretch of land,"
Swain told Reuters by telephone.
"In order for people to take this issue seriously, somebody's got
to get in the water."
Swain is a riverkeeper, a member of a nonprofit group that
raises awareness of threats to rivers and advocates for their
protection. He hopes his swim will raise $1 million in donations
to endow the Columbia program for years to come.
Along the way Swain will brave human-made dangers, ranging from
random garbage, constant boat traffic, and submerged pilings to
old cars and fat industrial cables. He plans to get out and walk
around the 14 hydroelectric dams slung across the river.
"There are a lot of things that could be down there that could
slice you open or tangle you up," he said.
TOXINS GALORE
Each gulp of water could put toxins in his lungs and belly. But
perhaps the most harrowing stretch of the Columbia is the Hanford
Reach, the last truly wild stretch of river, which flows past the
Hanford nuclear dump. At that site federal contractors are
cleaning up nasty atomic waste, including material from the dawn
of the nuclear age and the U.S. Manhattan Project, which produced
the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II.
The natural hazards could be equally daunting. River rapids will
toss him across treacherous rocks; snakes and bears patrol the
inland shoreline, and sharks are found near the river's mouth.
"I don't worry about the sharks," Swain said. "If I'm going to
swim this thing and then get chowed by a shark, so be it."
The water will be as cold as 50 degrees Fahrenheit as it winds
northward from southeastern British Columbia, a rugged mountain
area bordered by Alberta and Montana, before flowing south to
Washington state. And by the time he gets to the Pacific next
November, Swain could even find snowflakes falling on the river.
"I'll be wearing a wet suit and then a dry suit in some Canadian
water. It's glacial fed so it gets really cold there," Swain
said.
Swain, 33, knows a few things about cold-water swims, having
grown up in New England, grandson of a sailor and a fisherman. He
once swam 210 miles of the Connecticut River in 17 days to
publicize a United Nations human rights declaration.
PRETZELS AND SPORTS BARS
His friends in a support boat will feed him pretzels and sports
bars or carbohydrate drinks every 20 minutes or so, though he
gets cravings for cheeseburgers and other stomach bombs on the
monotonous, murky swims.
He figures it will cost about $500 a day — up to $75,000 all
told — to staff the boat and pay for lodging plus administrative
odds and ends, which he hopes to raise through corporate
sponsorship, T-shirt sales and individual pledges.
He will also complete an insane training regimen, swimming up to
32,500 yards a day in a pool, lake swimming, weight lifting, and
hill running to gird him for the more arduous sections of the
Columbia.
"When you get behind those dams, you could have 150 miles of
slack water. That could be quite a slog for 12 to 14 days. That's
why you run the hills: to prepare mentally for that," Swain said.
Along the way he will lose at least 10 pounds of muscle from his
already lean 5'11", 175-pound frame, requiring him to bring along
extra wetsuits one size smaller than normal.
He will also have plenty of U.S. Coast Guard officers watching
him, ready to provide emergency services and steer him away from
shipping lanes and other hazards.
"There is no rule about whether or not you can swim in this
waterway, but I talked to the Coast Guard anyway," Swain said.
"They were very supportive, once they figured out I was for
real." Copyright 2001, Reuters All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2001 Environmental News Network Inc.
*****************************************************************
17 Forest Fire Threatens Russian Nuclear Sites
Saturday July 28 3:33 PM ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A raging forest fire on Saturday threatened a
radioactive waste storage facility and forced the temporary
shutdown of a nuclear reactor in southern Russia, local officials
said. Fire experts said the blaze began dangerously close to a
storage site for radioactive material in the southern Voronezh
region, and quickly took hold in the tinder-box conditions caused
by a current heat wave.
Scores of firefighters battled for several hours to extinguish
the blaze, which engulfed some 23 hectares (57 acres), as it
closed in on the Novovoronezhskaya power plant.
``There was no threat to the nuclear power plant, but there was a
threat to the storage facility of radioactive waste which is
located nearby,'' fire chief Vladimir Lozovsky told NTV
television.
Nuclear officials said the thick smoke and rise in temperature
caused by the forest fire had set off the power plant's safety
system. Reactor number five was shut down as a precaution.
Vladimir Rozin, the plant's deputy chief engineer, said that
there had been no increase in radioactivity during the incident.
The reactor later resumed power production but at reduced levels,
state-run ORT television quoted officials as saying.
Fire chiefs said the fire was probably started by careless
picnickers.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights
*****************************************************************
18 Russian Navy: Sunken Kursk Tough Nut to Crack
Friday July 27 12:57 PM ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian navy said on Friday a plan to
raise the Kursk (news - web sites) nuclear submarine from the
bottom of the Barents Sea hit a snag when deep-sea divers had
trouble cutting through the craft's hull.
Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, coordinating the recovery operation,
said on Russian television that an international team of divers
had run into problems while making holes in the craft to affix
cables and eventually haul the sub up.
``Everything looked fine on paper and when testing the equipment
on the surface. But under water everything turned out to be more
complex because the company did not have their equipment tuned
for the type of steel of our vessel.''
After a series of unexplained explosions, the Kursk sank last
August with the loss of all 118 people on board. President
Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) has vowed to raise the craft
and dispose of its nuclear reactors.
The Russian navy is conducting the project with Dutch heavy
transport firm Mammoet, salvage company Smit and Norwegian outfit
Norse Cutting and Abandonment. All three companies were
unavailable for comment on Friday. Russia cannot afford serious
delays to a salvage project it aims to complete by September 20,
before severe winter weather again engulfs the Arctic site of the
disaster.
Igor Spassky, the head of the contractor, Rubin, which designed
the Kursk, said on Friday that it would cost a total of about
$130 million to raise the ship, with Mammoet and its partners
receiving about $65 million.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
19 The Case of the Missing H-Bomb
In These Times 25/19 --
Things go missing. It's to be expected. Even at the Pentagon.
Last October, the Pentagon's inspector general reported that the
military's accountants had misplaced a destroyer, several tanks
and armored personnel carriers, hundreds of machine guns, rounds
of ammo, grenade launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In
all, nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL.
Those anomalies are bad enough. But what's truly chilling is the
fact that the Pentagon has lost track of the mother of all
weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The thermonuclear weapon, designed to
incinerate Moscow, has been sitting somewhere off the coast of
Savannah, Georgia for the past 40 years. The Air Force has gone
to greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the bomb
and secure it.
On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber carrying
a hydrogen bomb
RYAN INZANA
on a night training flight off the Georgia coast collided with an
F-86 Saberjet fighter at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the
fighter and severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of
its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot, Maj. Howard
Richardson, was instructed to jettison the H-bomb before
attempting a landing. Richardson dropped the bomb into the
shallow waters of Warsaw Sound, near the mouth of the Savannah
River, a few miles from the city of Tybee Island, where he
believed the bomb would be swiftly recovered.
The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo to the
chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The memo has been
partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft with a [word redacted]
nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86
aircraft near Sylvania, Georgia, on February 5, 1958. The B-47
aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the
weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off
the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."
Soon search and rescue teams were sent to the site. Warsaw Sound
was mysteriously cordoned off by Air Force troops. For six weeks,
the Air Force looked for the bomb without success. Underwater
divers scoured the depths, troops tromped through nearby salt
marshes, and a blimp hovered over the area attempting to spot a
hole or crater in the beach or swamp. Then just a month later,
the search was abruptly halted. The Air Force sent its forces to
Florence, South Carolina, where another H-bomb had been
accidentally dropped by a B-47. The bomb's 200 pounds of TNT
exploded on impact, sending radioactive debris across the
landscape. The explosion caused extensive property damage and
several injuries on the ground. Fortunately, the nuke itself
didn't detonate.
The search teams never returned to Tybee Island, and the affair
of the missing H-bomb was discreetly covered up. The end of the
search was noted in a partially declassified memo from the
Pentagon to the AEC, in which the Air Force politely requested a
new H-bomb to replace the one it had lost. "The search for this
weapon was discontinued on 4-16-58 and the weapon is considered
irretrievably lost. It is requested that one [phrase redacted]
weapon be made available for release to the DOD as a
replacement."
There was a big problem, of course, and the Pentagon knew it. In
the first three months of 1958 alone, the Air Force had four
major accidents involving H-bombs. (Since 1945, the United States
has lost 11 nuclear weapons.) The Tybee Island bomb remained a
threat, as the AEC acknowledged in a June 10, 1958 classified
memo to Congress: "There exists the possibility of accidental
discovery of the unrecovered weapon through dredging or
construction in the probable impact area. ... The Department of
Defense has been requested to monitor all dredging and
construction activities."
But the wizards of Armageddon saw it less as a security, safety
or ecological problem, than a potential public relations disaster
that could turn an already paranoid population against their
ambitious nuclear project. The Pentagon and the AEC tried to
squelch media interest in the issue by a doling out a morsel of
candor and a lot of misdirection. In a joint statement to the
press, the Defense Department and the AEC admitted that
radioactivity could be "scattered" by the detonation of the high
explosives in the H-bombs. But the letter downplayed possibility
of that ever happening: "The likelihood that a particular
accident would involve a nuclear weapon is extremely limited."
In fact, that scenario had already occurred and would occur
again.
That's where the matter stood for more than 42 years until a deep
sea salvage company, run by former Air Force personnel and a CIA
agent, disclosed the existence of the bomb and offered to locate
it for a million dollars. Along with recently declassified
documents, the disclosure prompted fear and outrage among coastal
residents and calls for a congressional investigation into the
incident itself and why the Pentagon had stopped looking for the
missing bomb. "We're horrified because some of that information
has been covered up for years," says Rep. Jack Kingston, a
Georgia Republican.
The cover-up continues. The Air Force, however, has told local
residents and the congressional delegation that there was nothing
to worry about. "We've looked into this particular issue from all
angles and we're very comfortable," says Major Gen. Franklin J.
"Judd" Blaisdell, deputy chief of staff for air and space
operations at Air Force headquarters in Washington. "Our biggest
concern is that of localized heavy metal contamination."
The Air Force even has suggested that the bomb itself was not
armed with a plutonium trigger. But this contention is disputed
by a number of factors. Howard Dixon, a former Air Force sergeant
who specialized in loading nuclear weapons onto planes, said that
in his 31 years of experience he never once remembered a bomb
being put on a plane that wasn't fully armed. Moreover, a newly
declassified 1966 congressional testimony of W.J. Howard, then
assistant secretary of defense, describes the Tybee Island bomb
as a "complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule." Howard
said that the Tybee Island bomb was one of two weapons lost up to
that time that contained a plutonium trigger.
This diagram shows the components of the missing bomb. The bad
news: Plutonium gets more dangerous as it ages.
Recently declassified documents show that the jettisoned bomb was
an "Mk-15, Mod O" hydrogen bomb, weighing four tons and packing
more than 100 times the explosive punch of the one that
incinerated Hiroshima. This was the first thermonuclear weapon
deployed by the Air Force and featured the relatively primitive
design created by that evil genius Edward Teller. The only
fail-safe for this weapon was the physical separation of the
plutonium capsule (or pit) from the weapon.
In addition to the primary nuclear capsule, the bomb also
harbored a secondary nuclear explosive, or sparkplug, designed to
make it go thermo. This is a hollow plug about an inch in
diameter made of either plutonium or highly enriched uranium (the
Pentagon has never said which) that is filled with fusion fuel,
most likely lithium-6 deuteride. Lithium is highly reactive in
water. The plutonium in the bomb was manufactured at the Hanford
Nuclear Site in Washington State and would be the oldest in the
United States. That's bad news: Plutonium gets more dangerous as
it ages.In addition, the bomb would contain other radioactive
materials, such as uranium and beryllium.
The bomb is also charged with 400 pounds of TNT, designed to
cause the plutonium trigger to implode and thus start the nuclear
explosion. As the years go by, those high explosives are becoming
flaky, brittle and sensitive. The bomb is most likely now buried
in 5 to 15 feet of sand and slowly leaking radioactivity into the
rich crabbing grounds of the Warsaw Sound. If the Pentagon can't
find the Tybee Island bomb, others might. That's the conclusion
of Bert Soleau, a former CIA officer who now works with ASSURE,
the salvage company. Soleau, a chemical engineer, says that it
wouldn't be hard for terrorists to locate the weapon and recover
the lithium, beryllium and enriched uranium, "the essential
building blocks of nuclear weapons." What to do? Coastal
residents want the weapon located and removed. "Plutonium is a
nightmare and their own people know it," says Pam O'Brien, an
anti-nuke organizer from Douglassville, Georgia. "It can get in
everything--your eyes, your bones, your gonads. You never get
over it. They need to get that thing out of there."
The situation is reminiscent of the Palomares incident. On
January 16, 1966, a B-52 bomber, carrying four hydrogen bombs,
crashed while attempting to refuel in mid-air above the Spanish
coast. Three of the H-bombs landed near the coastal farming
village of Palomares. One of the bombs landed in a dry creek bed
and was recovered, battered but relatively intact. But the TNT in
two of the bombs exploded, gouging 10-foot holes in the ground
and showering uranium and plutonium over a vast area. Over the
next three months, more than 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and
vegetation was scooped up, placed in barrels and, ironically
enough, shipped back to the Savannah River Nuclear Weapons Lab,
where it remains. The tomato fields near the craters were burned
and buried. But there's no question that due to strong winds and
other factors much of the contaminated soil was simply left in
the area. "The total extent of the spread will never be known,"
concluded a 1975 report by the Defense Nuclear Agency.
The cleanup was a joint operation between Air Force personnel and
members of the Spanish civil guard. The U.S. workers wore
protective clothing and were monitored for radiation exposure,
but similar precautions weren't taken for their Spanish
counterparts. "The Air Force was unprepared to provide adequate
detection and monitoring for personnel when an aircraft accident
occurred involving plutonium weapons in a remote area of a
foreign country," the Air Force commander in charge of the
cleanup later testified to Congress.
The fourth bomb landed eight miles offshore and was missing for
several months. It was eventually located by a mini-submarine in
2,850 feet of water, where it rests to this day.
Two years later, on January 21, 1968, a similar accident occurred
when a B-52 caught fire in flight above Greenland and crashed in
ice-covered North Star Bay near the Thule Air Base. The impact
detonated the explosives in all four of the plane's H-bombs,
which scattered uranium, tritium and plutonium over a 2,000-foot
radius. The intense fire melted a hole in the ice, which then
refroze, encapsulating much of the debris, including the
thermonuclear assembly from one of the bombs. The recovery
operation, conducted in near total darkness at temperatures that
plunged to minus-70 degrees, was known as Project Crested Ice.
But the work crews called it "Dr. Freezelove."
More than 10,000 tons of snow and ice were cut away, put into
barrels and transported to Savannah River and Oak Ridge for
disposal. Other radioactive debris was simply left on site, to
melt into the bay after the spring thaws. More than 3,000 workers
helped in the Thule recovery effort, many of them Danish
soldiers. As at Palomares, most of the American workers were
offered some protective gear, but not the Danes, who did much of
the most dangerous work, including filling the barrels with the
debris, often by hand. The decontamination procedures were
primitive to say the least. An Air Force report noted that they
were cleansed "by simply brushing the snow from garments and
vehicles."
Even though more than 38 Navy ships were called to assist in the
recovery operation, and it was an open secret that the bombs had
been lost, the Pentagon continued to lie about the situation. In
one contentious exchange with the press, a Pentagon spokesman
uttered this classic bit of military doublespeak: "I don't know
of any missing bomb, but we have not positively identified what I
think you are looking for."
When Danish workers at Thule began to get sick from a slate of
illnesses, ranging from rare cancers to blood disorders, the
Pentagon refused to help. Even after a 1987 epidemiological study
by a Danish medical institute showed that Thule workers were 50
percent more likely to develop cancers than other members of the
Danish military, the Pentagon still refused to cooperate. Later
that year, 200 of the workers sued the United States under the
Foreign Military Claims Act. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the
discovery process revealed thousands of pages of secret documents
about the incident, including the fact that Air Force workers at
the site, unlike the Danes, have not been subject to long-term
health monitoring. Even so, the Pentagon continues to keep most
of the material on the Thule incident secret, including any
information on the extent of the radioactive (and other toxic)
contamination.
These recovery efforts don't inspire much confidence. But the
Tybee Island bomb presents an even touchier situation. The
presence of the unstable lithium deuteride and the deteriorating
high explosives make retrieval of the bomb a very dangerous
proposition--so dangerous, in fact, that even some
environmentalists and anti-nuke activists argue that it might
present less of a risk to leave the bomb wherever it is.
In short, there aren't any easy answers. The problem is
exacerbated by the Pentagon's failure to conduct a comprehensive
analysis of the situation and reluctance to fully disclose what
it knows. "I believe the plutonium capsule is in the bomb, but
that a nuclear detonation is improbable because the neutron
generators used back then were polonium-beryllium, which has a
very short half-life," says Don Moniak, a nuclear weapons expert
with the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in Aiken, South
Carolina. "Without neutrons, weapons grade plutonium won't blow.
However, there could be a fission or criticality event if the
plutonium was somehow put in an incorrect configuration. There
could be a major inferno if the high explosives went off and the
lithium deuteride reacted as expected. Or there could just be an
explosion that scattered uranium and plutonium all over hell."
Oops, You May Be Glowing
It hasn't been an easy couple of years for the Department of
Energy: contaminated workers, nuclear fuel rods misplaced (or
lost), Hanford continuing to leak its immortal poison into the
Columbia River, the Wen Ho Lee debacle, embarrassing contempt
citations for the cover-up at Colorado's Rocky Flats, campaign
finance scandals, contractors screwing things up royally then
declaring bankruptcy and on and on. So for the past few months,
the agency, anxious to be at the center of the Bush nuclear
project, which runs the gamut from new nuclear power plants to
another round of underground nuclear weapons testing, has been in
full image-polishing mode.
As part of this new PR rehab program, the DOE is allowing the
public and the press into places that previously had been as
difficult to access as Area 51. But when the secretive Savannah
River nuclear site opened its gates for a public tour on July 9,
things didn't quite turn out as planned.
Savannah River, the big DOE waste dump/weapons complex in South
Carolina, has had its own share of problems, including a massive
spill of highly radioactive tritium into the Savannah River in
1991. Plant managers are trying to ease public anxiety enough so
that the DOE can go forward with a Clinton-era plan to build a
mixed-oxide fuel fabrication plant, a ludicrously dangerous
scheme that involves the reprocessing of 36 tons of weapons-grade
plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.
The 25-person tour of the site included reporters,
environmentalists and neighbors of the plant. The tour was
supposed to highlight the DOE's newly tightened operations. But
it turned out to reveal just how dangerously slipshod the agency
remains. After the tour group left the site's F-Area "tank farm,"
where the most highly radioactive waste is stored in underground
tanks, Savannah River workers failed to monitor the group for
radiation exposure. "This was an appalling breach of safety
standards," says Tom Clements, head of the Nuclear Control
Institute, who was on the tour.
Savannah River managers admit the mistake, but blame it on a
logistical screw-up. "We never intended for them to get off the
bus there," says Rick Ford, a spokesman for the DOE.
This is refreshingly candid, but far from reassuring. JSC
*****************************************************************
20 Report: Workers Not Warned
July 28, 2001
CHICAGO (AP) - Companies whose workers handle the toxic metal
beryllium often fail to warn workers about the hazards of
exposure to the metal, putting them at risk of a potentially
fatal lung disease, a newspaper reported.
Beryllium disease once was associated primarily with the defense
industry, where the metal was used in nuclear weapons, but it is
increasingly common among workers in private and consumer
industries, the Chicago Tribune reported Sunday.
The disease, caused when the metal's dust slowly damages the
lungs of people who have been exposed, is rare, incurable and
often fatal.
The number of beryllium disease cases among workers in private
industries has increased in the past few years, according to the
National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, a leading
respiratory disease hospital that diagnoses more beryllium
illness than any other health care facility.
Since 1985, the hospital has diagnosed about 100 cases of
beryllium poisoning among workers outside the defense industry
and major beryllium production plants, said Dr. Lee Newman, a
scientist at the hospital.
Newman called that figure the "tip of the iceberg," saying the
disease often goes undetected.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration
requires workplace warnings on beryllium and limits on exposure
to its dust.
But the newspaper, citing government, court and industry
documents, said companies often don't follow those rules and the
government doesn't adequately enforce the laws.
Experts say the rise in reported cases of beryllium disease could
be attributed to new tests to diagnose the disease and more
frequent use of the metal in industries that might not be fully
aware of its risks.
Beryllium is used in the electronics, recycling, machining and
dental industries because it is lightweight but extremely strong.
The Toledo Blade reported in 1999 that the government had for
decades risked the lives of weapons plant workers by allowing
them to be exposed to unsafe levels of beryllium.
The Tribune reported that many companies in other industries do
not take even basic precautions, such as air monitoring, to
protect workers. The newspaper said a check of 30 businesses with
beryllium found that none followed all of OSHA's recommended
safeguards.
It said thousands of firms use beryllium, but only a small
fraction have done blood tests to gauge workers' exposure. Health
officials recommend blood testing so the incurable illness can be
detected early, and treatment can attempt to limit lung damage.
-- All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
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:
*****************************************************************