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11/29/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.281
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NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS
1 List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: Standardized
2 [toeslist] Take a minute to say "No Nukes."
3 Russian regional company cuts power supply to major nuclear
4 BNFL break-up paves way for part privatisation of nuclear group
5 Ex-Utah Nuclear Regulator Sentenced
6 BNFL liabilities transferred to aid part-privatisation
7 Terror Suspect Visited Nuclear Plant
8 Nuclear sell-off back on agenda
9 Forum to be held on Yucca
10 JAPAN PREPARES SECRET NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT; GREENPEACE WARNS
11 Editorial: Finding the courage to end a relationship
12 Editorial: Appalling giveaway to an industry
13 Study: Let free market handle nuclear waste
14 Letter: Anti-Yucca efforts working
15 IEER Report: Securing the Energy Future of the United States
16 Perma-Fix Nuclear Hazardous Waste Treatment Seminar Expected
17 BNFL says money 'sunk' in MOX is irrelevant to case
18 IAEA Daily Press Review Date 2001-11-29 Number 228
19 Senate Democrats delay energy action
20 Sellafield 'Eggs' To Be Put in One Basket
21 No More Nirex Secrets
22 France-bound German nuclear waste found contaminated
23 Statement by Congresswoman Shelley Berkley opposing H.R.2983
24 Statement by Congressman Earl Blumenauer on H.R.2983
25 Green groups attack SA Govt's Honeymoon mine approval
26 British Nuclear Fuels reshuffle
27 Yggdrasil Institute - Uranium Enrichment Newsletter - November 2001
28 A VIABLE DOMESTIC URANIUM INDUSTRY?
29 BNFL liabilities transferred to aid part-privatisation
30 Nuclear shake-up strips BNFL of most of its assets
NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS
1 Ban nuclear weapons in space
2 Scheduled work to be carried out at unit of Russia's Balakovo
3 Russian naval spokesman "angrily dismisses" newspaper's Kursk
4 House OKs $20 billion anti-terror package
5 Experts say there is enough material and know-how out there for
6 Lab Reports Uranium Levels Higher Since Fire
7 Energy Secretary: Russian Energy Role Expanding
8 Enemy of My Enemy
9 Nuclear gap in resume no deterrent for StratCom chief
10 NATIONAL NEWS: MoD rejects submarine plan NEWS DIGEST
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NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES
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1 List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: Standardized
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 14:36:46 -0500 (EST)
http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/
======================================================
[Federal Register: November 29, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 230)]
[Rules and Regulations]
[Page 59531-59534]
>From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr29no01-1]
========================================================================
Rules and Regulations
Federal Register
________________________________________________________________________
This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER contains regulatory documents
having general applicability and legal effect, most of which are keyed
to and codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, which is published
under 50 titles pursuant to 44 U.S.C. 1510.
The Code of Federal Regulations is sold by the Superintendent of Documents.
Prices of new books are listed in the first FEDERAL REGISTER issue of each
week.
========================================================================
[[Page 59531]]
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
10 CFR Part 72
RIN 3150-AG 88
List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks: Standardized
NUHOMS-24P, -52B, and -61BT Revision
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Direct final rule.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its
regulations revising the Transnuclear West, Inc. Standardized
NUHOMS-24P, -52B, and -61BT cask system listing within the
``List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks'' to include Amendment No.
4 to Certificate of Compliance (CoC) No. 1004. Amendment No. 4 will
allow the storage of low burn-up spent fuel in the NUHOMS-24P
canister. In addition, the Technical Specifications (TS) will be
revised to correct administrative errors regarding the width dimension
of the spent fuel. Specific changes will be made to TS 1.2.1 and
1.2.15, Tables 1-1a, 1-1b, 1-1c, 1-1d, 1-2a, and 1-2c, and Figure 1-1.
The CoC will be revised to change the certificate holder from
Transnuclear West, Inc. to Transnuclear Inc. Minor editorial changes
will also be made to the CoC.
DATES: The final rule is effective February 12, 2002, unless
significant adverse comments are received by December 31, 2001. A
significant adverse comment is a comment where the commenter explains
why the rule would be inappropriate, including challenges to the rule's
underlying premise or approach, or would be ineffective or unacceptable
without a change. If the rule is withdrawn, timely notice will be
published in the Federal Register.
ADDRESSES: Submit comments to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attn: Rulemakings and
Adjudications Staff. Deliver comments to 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, MD, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. on Federal workdays.
Certain documents related to this rulemaking, as well as all public
comments received on this rulemaking, may be viewed and downloaded
electronically via the NRC's rulemaking website at http://
ruleforum.llnl.gov. You may also provide comments via this website by
uploading comments as files (any format) if your web browser supports
that function. For information about the interactive rulemaking site,
contact Ms. Carol Gallagher, (301) 415-5905; e-mail CAG@nrc.gov.
Certain documents related to this rule, including comments received
by the NRC, may be examined at the NRC Public Document Room, 11555
Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD. For more information, contact the NRC
Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-
4737 or by email to pdr@nrc.gov.
Documents created or received at the NRC after November 1, 1999,
are also available electronically at the NRC's Public Electronic
Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/
index.html. From this site, the public can gain entry into the NRC's
Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), which
provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. An electronic
copy of the proposed CoC and preliminary safety evaluation report (SER)
can be found under ADAMS Accession No. ML012620237. If you do not have
access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents
located in ADAMS, contact the NRC PDR Reference staff at 1-800-397-
4209, 301-415-4737or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov.
CoC No. 1004, the revised Technical Specifications, the underlying
Safety Evaluation Report for Amendment No. 4, and the Environmental
Assessment, are available for inspection at the NRC Public Document
Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD. Single copies of these
documents may be obtained from Merri Horn, Office of Nuclear Material
Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington,
DC 20555-0001, telephone (301) 415-8126, email mlh1@nrc.gov.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Merri Horn, telephone (301) 415-8126,
e-mail mlh1@nrc.gov, of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and
Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-
0001.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background
Section 218(a) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended
(NWPA), requires that ``[t]he Secretary [of the Department of Energy
(DOE)]
shall establish a demonstration program, in cooperation with the
private sector, for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel at civilian
nuclear power reactor sites, with the objective of establishing one or
more technologies that the [Nuclear Regulatory]
Commission may, by
rule, approve for use at the sites of civilian nuclear power reactors
without, to the maximum extent practicable, the need for additional
site-specific approvals by the Commission.'' Section 133 of the NWPA
states, in part, that ``[t]he Commission shall, by rule, establish
procedures for the licensing of any technology approved by the
Commission under section 218(a) for use at the site of any civilian
nuclear power reactor.''
To implement this mandate, the NRC approved dry storage of spent
nuclear fuel in NRC-approved casks under a general license by
publishing a final rule in 10 CFR part 72 entitled, ``General License
for Storage of Spent Fuel at Power Reactor Sites'' (55 FR 29181; July
18, 1990). This rule also established a new subpart L within 10 CFR
part 72, entitled ``Approval of Spent Fuel Storage Casks'' containing
procedures and criteria for obtaining NRC approval of spent fuel
storage cask designs. The NRC subsequently issued a final rule on
December 22, 1994 (59 FR 65920), that approved the Standardized
NUHOMSTM-24P and -52B cask design and added it to the list
of NRC-approved cask designs in Sec. 72.214 as Certificate of
Compliance Number (CoC No.) 1004. Amendment No. 3 added the -61BT dry
storage canister to the system.
Discussion
On February 23, 2001, and as supplemented on June 8, and October 4,
2001, the certificate holder (Transnuclear West, Inc.) submitted an
[[Page 59532]]
application to the NRC to amend CoC No. 1004 to permit a part 72
licensee to allow the storage of low burn-up spent fuel in the
NUHOMS-24P canister. In addition, the Technical
Specifications (TS) will be revised to correct administrative errors
regarding the width dimension of the spent fuel. Specific changes will
be made to TS 1.2.1 and 1.2.15, Tables 1-1a, 1-1b, 1-1c, 1-1d, 1-2a,
and 1-2c, and Figure 1-1. The Certificate of Compliance will be revised
to change the certificate holder from Transnuclear West, Inc. to
Transnuclear Inc. Minor editorial changes will also be made to the CoC.
No other changes to the Standardized NUHOMS-24P, -52B, and -
61BT cask system design were requested in this application. The NRC
staff performed a detailed safety evaluation of the proposed CoC
amendment request and found that an acceptable safety margin is
maintained. In addition, the NRC staff has determined that there is
still reasonable assurance that public health and safety and the
environment will be adequately protected.
This direct final rule revises the Standardized NUHOMS-
24P, -52B, and -61BT cask design listing in Sec. 72.214 by adding
Amendment No. 4 to CoC No. 1004. This amendment will allow the storage
of low burn-up spent fuel in the NUHOMS-24P canister. In
addition, the TS will be revised to correct administrative errors
regarding the width dimension of the spent fuel. Specific changes will
be made to TS 1.2.1 and 1.2.15, Tables 1-1a, 1-1b, 1-1c, 1-1d, 1-2a,
and 1-2c, and Figure 1-1. The CoC will be revised to change the
certificate holder from Transnuclear West, Inc. to Transnuclear Inc.
Minor editorial changes will also be made to the CoC.
The amended Standardized NUHOMS-24P, -52B, and -61BT cask
system, when used in accordance with the conditions specified in the
CoC, the Technical Specifications, and NRC regulations, will meet the
requirements of part 72; thus, adequate protection of public health and
safety and environment will continue to be ensured.
Discussion of Amendments by Section
Section 72.214 List of Approved Spent Fuel Storage Casks
Certificate No.1004 is revised by adding the effective date of
Amendment No. 4 and changing the applicant name from Transnuclear West,
Inc. to Transnuclear Inc.
Procedural Background
This rule is limited to the changes contained in Amendment 4 to CoC
No. 1004 and does not include other aspects of the Standardized
NUHOMS-24P, -52B, and -61BT cask system design. The NRC is
using the ``direct final rule procedure'' to issue this amendment
because it represents a limited and routine change to an existing CoC
that is expected to be noncontroversial. Adequate protection of public
health and safety continues to be ensured. The amendment to the rule
will become effective on February 12, 2002. However, if the NRC
receives significant adverse comments by December 31, 2001, then the
NRC will publish a document that withdraws this action and will address
the comments received in response to the proposed amendments published
elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register. A significant adverse
comment is a comment where the commenter explains why the rule would be
inappropriate, including challenges to the rule's underlying premise or
approach, or would be ineffective or unacceptable without a change. A
comment is adverse and significant if:
(1) The comment opposes the rule and provides a reason sufficient
to require a substantive response in a notice-and-comment process. For
example, in a substantive response:
(a) The comment causes the NRC staff to reevaluate (or reconsider)
its position or conduct additional analysis;
(b) The comment raises an issue serious enough to warrant a
substantive response to clarify or complete the record; or
(c) The comment raises a relevant issue that was not previously
addressed or considered by the NRC staff.
(2) The comment proposes a change or an addition to the rule, and
it is apparent that the rule would be ineffective or unacceptable
without incorporation of the change or addition.
(3) The comment causes the NRC staff to make a change to the CoC or
TS.
These comments will be addressed in a subsequent final rule. The
NRC will not initiate a second comment period on this action. However,
if the NRC receives significant adverse comments by December 31, 2001,
then the NRC will publish a document that withdraws this action and
will address the comments received in response to the proposed
amendments published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register.
Agreement State Compatibility
Under the ``Policy Statement on Adequacy and Compatibility of
Agreement State Programs'' approved by the Commission on June 30, 1997,
and published in the Federal Register on September 3, 1997 (62 FR
46517), this rule is classified as compatibility Category ``NRC.''
Compatibility is not required for Category ``NRC'' regulations. The NRC
program elements in this category are those that relate directly to
areas of regulation reserved to the NRC by the Atomic Energy Act of
1954, as amended (AEA) or the provisions of the Title 10 of the Code of
Federal Regulations. Although an Agreement State may not adopt program
elements reserved to NRC, it may wish to inform its licensees of
certain requirements via a mechanism that is consistent with the
particular State's administrative procedure laws, but does not confer
regulatory authority on the State.
Plain Language
The Presidential Memorandum dated June 1, 1998, entitled, ``Plain
Language in Government Writing'' directed that the Government's writing
be in plain language. The NRC requests comments on this direct final
rule specifically with respect to the clarity and effectiveness of the
language used. Comments should be sent to the address listed under the
heading ADDRESSES above.
Voluntary Consensus Standards
The National Technology Transfer Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-113)
requires that Federal agencies use technical standards that are
developed or adopted by voluntary consensus standards bodies unless the
use of such a standard is inconsistent with applicable law or otherwise
impractical. In this direct final rule, the NRC would revise the
Standardized NUHOMS-24P, -52B, and -61BT cask system design
listed in Sec. 72.214 (List of NRC-approved spent fuel storage cask
designs). This action does not constitute the establishment of a
standard that establishes generally applicable requirements.
Finding of No Significant Environmental Impact: Availability
Under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended,
and the NRC regulations in subpart A of 10 CFR part 51, the NRC has
determined that this rule, if adopted, would not be a major Federal
action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment
and, therefore, an environmental impact statement is not required. The
rule would amend the CoC for the Standardized NUHOMS-24P, -
52B, and -61BT cask system within the list of approved spent fuel
storage casks that power reactor
[[Page 59533]]
licensees can use to store spent fuel at reactor sites under a general
license. This amendment will allow the storage of low burn-up spent
fuel in the NUHOMS-24P canister. In addition, the TS will be
revised to correct administrative errors regarding the width dimension
of the spent fuel. Specific changes will be made to TS 1.2.1 and 1.2.15
and Tables 1-1a, 1-1b, 1-1c, 1-1d, 1-2a, and 1-2c, and Figure 1-1. The
CoC will be revised to change the certificate holder from Transnuclear
West, Inc. to Transnuclear Inc. Minor editorial changes will also be
made to the CoC. The environmental assessment and finding of no
significant impact on which this determination is based are available
for inspection at the NRC Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike,
Rockville, MD. Single copies of the environmental assessment and
finding of no significant impact are available from Merri Horn, Office
of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone (301) 415-8126, email
mlh1@nrc.gov.
Paperwork Reduction Act Statement
This direct final rule does not contain a new or amended
information collection requirement subject to the Paperwork Reduction
Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.). Existing requirements were
approved by the Office of Management and Budget, Approval Number 3150-
0132.
Public Protection Notification
If a means used to impose an information collection does not
display a currently valid OMB control number, the NRC may not conduct
or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, the information
collection.
Regulatory Analysis
On July 18, 1990 (55 FR 29181), the NRC issued an amendment to 10
CFR part 72 to provide for the storage of spent nuclear fuel under a
general license in cask designs approved by the NRC. Any nuclear power
reactor licensee can use NRC-approved cask designs to store spent
nuclear fuel if it notifies the NRC in advance, spent fuel is stored
under the conditions specified in the cask's CoC, and the conditions of
the general license are met. A list of NRC-approved cask designs is
contained in Sec. 72.214. On December 22, 1994 (59 FR 65920), the NRC
issued an amendment to part 72 that approved the Standardized
NUHOMS-24P and -52B cask design by adding it to the list of
NRC-approved cask designs in Sec. 72.214. Amendment No. 3 added the -
61BT cask design. On February 23, 2001, and as supplemented on June 8,
and October 4, 2001, the certificate holder Transnuclear West, Inc.),
submitted an application to the NRC to amend CoC No. 1004 to permit a
part 72 licensee to store low burn-up spent fuel in the
NUHOMS-24P canister. In addition, the TS will be revised to
correct administrative errors regarding the width dimension of the
spent fuel. Specific changes will be made to TS 1.2.1 and 1.2.15 and
Tables 1-1a, 1-1b, 1-1c, 1-1d, 1-2a, and 1-2c, and Figure 1-1. The CoC
will be revised to change the certificate holder from Transnuclear
West, Inc. to Transnuclear Inc. Minor editorial changes will also be
made to the CoC.
The alternative to this action is to withhold approval of this
amended cask system design and issue an exemption to each general
license. This alternative would cost both the NRC and the utilities
more time and money because each utility would have to pursue an
exemption.
Approval of the direct final rule will eliminate this problem and
is consistent with previous NRC actions. Further, the direct final rule
will have no adverse effect on public health and safety. This direct
final rule has no significant identifiable impact or benefit on other
Government agencies. Based on this discussion of the benefits and
impacts of the alternatives, the NRC concludes that the requirements of
the direct final rule are commensurate with the NRC's responsibilities
for public health and safety and the environment and the common defense
and security. No other available alternative is believed to be as
satisfactory, and thus, this action is recommended.
Regulatory Flexibility Certification
In accordance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980 (5 U.S.C.
605(b)), the NRC certifies that this rule will not, if issued, have a
significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.
This direct final rule affects only the licensing and operation of
nuclear power plants, independent spent fuel storage facilities, and
Transnuclear West, Inc. The companies that own these plants do not fall
within the scope of the definition of ``small entities'' set forth in
the Regulatory Flexibility Act or the Small Business Size Standards set
out in regulations issued by the Small Business Administration at 13
CFR part 121.
Backfit Analysis
The NRC has determined that the backfit rule (10 CFR 50.109 or 10
CFR 72.62) does not apply to this direct final rule because this
amendment does not involve any provisions that would impose backfits as
defined. Therefore, a backfit analysis is not required.
Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act
In accordance with the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement
Fairness Act of 1996, the NRC has determined that this action is not a
major rule and has verified this determination with the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget.
List of Subjects In 10 CFR Part 72
Administrative practice and procedure, Criminal penalties, Manpower
training programs, Nuclear materials, Occupational safety and health,
Penalties, Radiation protection, Reporting and recordkeeping
requirements, Security measures, Spent fuel, Whistleblowing.
For the reasons set out in the preamble and under the authority of
the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended; the Energy Reorganization
Act of 1974, as amended; and 5 U.S.C. 552 and 553; the NRC is adopting
the following amendments to 10 CFR part 72.
PART 72--LICENSING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE INDEPENDENT STORAGE OF
SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL AND HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE
1. The authority citation for part 72 continues to read as follows:
Authority: Secs. 51, 53, 57, 62, 63, 65, 69, 81, 161, 182, 183,
184, 186, 187, 189, 68 Stat. 929, 930, 932, 933, 934, 935, 948, 953,
954, 955, as amended, sec. 234, 83 Stat. 444, as amended (42 U.S.C.
2071, 2073, 2077, 2092, 2093, 2095, 2099, 2111, 2201, 2232, 2233,
2234, 2236, 2237, 2238, 2282); sec. 274, Pub. L. 86-373, 73 Stat.
688, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2021); sec. 201, as amended, 202, 206, 88
Stat. 1242, as amended, 1244, 1246 (42 U.S.C. 5841, 5842, 5846);
Pub. L. 95-601, sec. 10, 92 Stat. 2951 as amended by Pub. L. 102-
486, sec. 7902, 106 Stat. 3123 (42 U.S.C. 5851); sec. 102, Pub. L.
91-190, 83 Stat. 853 (42 U.S.C. 4332); secs. 131, 132, 133, 135,
137, 141, Pub. L. 97-425, 96 Stat. 2229, 2230, 2232, 2241, sec. 148,
Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-235 (42 U.S.C. 10151, 10152, 10153,
10155, 10157, 10161, 10168).
Section 72.44(g) also issued under secs. 142(b) and 148(c), (d),
Pub. L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-232, 1330-236 (42 U.S.C. 10162(b),
10168(c),(d)). Section 72.46 also issued under sec. 189, 68 Stat.
955 (42 U.S.C. 2239); sec. 134, Pub. L. 97-425, 96 Stat. 2230 (42
U.S.C. 10154). Section 72.96(d) also issued under sec. 145(g), Pub.
L. 100-203, 101 Stat. 1330-235 (42 U.S.C. 10165(g)). Subpart J also
issued under secs. 2(2), 2(15), 2(19), 117(a), 141(h), Pub. L. 97-
425, 96 Stat. 2202, 2203, 2204, 2222, 2244, (42 U.S.C. 10101,
10137(a), 10161(h)). Subparts K and L
[[Page 59534]]
are also issued under sec. 133, 98 Stat. 2230 (42 U.S.C. 10153) and
sec. 218(a), 96 Stat. 2252 (42 U.S.C. 10198).
2. In Sec. 72.214, Certificate of Compliance 1004 is revised to
read as follows:
Sec. 72.214 List of approved spent fuel storage casks.
* * * * *
Certificate Number: 1004.
Initial Certificate Effective Date: January 23, 1995.
Amendment Number 1 Effective Date: April 27, 2000.
Amendment Number 2 Effective Date: September 5, 2000.
Amendment Number 3 Effective Date: September 12, 2001.
Amendment Number 4 Effective Date: February 12, 2002.
SAR Submitted by: Transnuclear Inc.
SAR Title: Final Safety Analysis Report for the Standardized
NUHOMS Horizontal Modular Storage System for Irradiated
Nuclear Fuel.
Docket Number: 72-1004.
Certificate Expiration Date: January 23, 2015.
Model Number: Standardized NUHOMS-24P, NUHOMS-
52B, and NUHOMS-61BT.
* * * * *
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of November, 2001.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
William D. Travers,
Executive Director for Operations.
[FR Doc. 01-29443 Filed 11-28-01; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
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2 [toeslist] Take a minute to say "No Nukes."
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 23:15:38 -0600 (CST)
Repeal the Price-Anderson Act
Congress is pondering ways to shore up security and safety at the
nation's nuclear power plants, from stockpiling medicines for
radiation poisioning to expanding emergency evacuation plans. But
the dark horse coming up fast is something else: an industry-favored
piece of legislation that, in the unfortunate event of a nuclear
catastrophe, makes damn sure that someone else foots the cost.
The Price-Anderson Act, originally enacted by Congress in 1957,
limits the liability of the nuclear industry in the event of a
nuclear accident in the United States. The Act covers large and
small power, research and test reactors, fuel reprocessing plants
and enrichment facilities. It covers incidents that occur through
operation of nuclear plants as well as transportation and storage
of nuclear fuel and radioactive wastes.
Price-Anderson was last ammended in 1988 and is scheduled to be
renewed by August 1, 2002. But, as many critics charge, the Act
has discouraged the development of safer, less costly sources of
energy than nuclear power, while functioning essentially as a
massive subsidy without which the nuclear power industry could not
likely exist.
For the full story read Matt Bivens's new exclusive web report.
Available currently at:
And join your voice to those calling for Congress to repeal Price-
Anderson by signing this online citizens' petition today. Debate
starts tomorrow in the House so time is short to express your
opposition. The petition is available at:
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To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
*****************************************************************
3 Russian regional company cuts power supply to major nuclear
facility
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 29, 2001
Krasnoyarsk's local power supplier Krasenergo is taking steps to
force its customers to pay their outstanding bills, the
commercial Afontovo TV company reported.
Krasenergo cut the electricity supply to one of two reserved
power lines to the Zheleznogorsk Mining and Chemical Plant,
dealing with storing and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, for
several hours, in an attempt to make the enterprise pay R16m in
arrears.
Pavel Morozov, the head of the public information bureau of the
Mining and Chemical Plant, said on the telephone that all the
emergency services had been informed and that power supply had
been restricted in the closed town.
Source: Afontovo 9 TV, Krasnoyarsk, in Russian 1300 gmt 28 Nov 01
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to
*****************************************************************
4 BNFL break-up paves way for part privatisation of nuclear group
© 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
By Michael Harrison, Business Editor
29 November 2001
The Government signalled the break-up of British Nuclear Fuels
last night as it announced the creation of an agency to take
responsibility for Britain's £40bn in civil nuclear liabilities.
The move paves the way for the part-privatisation of BNFL, shorn
of its Sellafield reprocessing complex in Cumbria and the
controversial mixed oxide fuel (Mox) plant. But environmental
campaigners said the announcement amounted to a U-turn over the
future of BNFL, which needed billions of taxpayers' money to bail
it out.
Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry,
told the Commons that all BNFL's nuclear liabilities, estimated
at some £24bn, would be transferred to a Liabilities Management
Agency along with the Thorp and Mox facilities at Sellafield, its
11 Magnox nuclear reactors and a uranium enrichment facility at
Capenhurst, near Chester. The move to free BNFL of Sellafield
followed a review of the company's liabilities that calculated
they had risen by £1.9bn, giving BNFL a net asset deficit of
£1.7bn and rendering it technically bankrupt.
Ms Hewitt said the move marked a "new approach" to the clean-up
of the legacy left behind by early military and civil nuclear
programmes.
She added that the agency would also assume responsibility for
the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's nuclear liabilities,
which amount to £8.7bn on an undiscounted basis. She said that it
remained the Government's objective to turn BNFL into a Public
Private Partnership but this would not be reconsidered until
2004-05. The Government had intended to part-privatise BNFL in
the previous Parliament but was forced to abandon its plans after
a scandal over the falsification of safety records at Sellafield.
Mark Johnston, energy campaigner for Greenpeace, claimed the
announcement meant that the planned sell-off of the whole company
had now, in effect, been abandoned. "Only fragments of BNFL will
now be sold and the lions' share is effectively being written off
and run down. There is now no case for Sellafield continuing to
operate as, by doing so, liabilities will continue to increase,"
he said.
Friends of the Earth's energy campaigner, Roger Higman, said the
Government had demonstrated that nuclear power was "an expensive
and highly dangerous liability, and that no new nuclear power
plants should be built".
BNFL said its 10,000 staff at Sellafield would would continue to
operate the plant. Norman Askew, the chief executive, said many
of BNFL's historic liabilities predated the creation of the
business and the Government's move would help management to focus
on the running of the business.
Anti-nuclear campaigners said the only bits of BNFL likely to be
sold off now were its UK fuel fabrication business and its
Westinghouse division in the US. But a spokeswoman said it was
too early to say what would be included in the sell-off.
*****************************************************************
5 Ex-Utah Nuclear Regulator Sentenced
Las Vegas SUN
November 28, 2001
SALT LAKE CITY- The state's former nuclear regulator was
sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison Wednesday for not
declaring as income payments he received from a waste storage
company.
Larry F. Anderson, former director of the Utah Bureau of
Radiation Control, had been convicted on four tax violations in
September. He was acquitted of extortion and mail fraud.
Prosecutors alleged Anderson used his job to wrest $600,000 in
cash, gold coins and property from Envirocare of Utah, a company
that stores low-level radioactive waste. At the time, it had
permits pending with Anderson's department.
Anderson didn't think he'd done anything illegal, his attorney
Jerry Mooney said. He abandoned a plea agreement in June that
would have brought a one-year sentence.
Prosecutor Richard Lambert said the judge clearly thought
Anderson's dealings were suspect. "The court specifically found
that his money was criminally obtained," Lambert said.
Anderson, 65, must report to prison by Jan. 2.
Envirocare boss Khosrow Semnani earlier pleaded guilty to aiding
and abetting a false tax return. He paid a $100,000 fine.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
6 BNFL liabilities transferred to aid part-privatisation
Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Guardian Thursday
November 29, 2001
More than £35bn of British Nuclear Fuels' past liabilities are to
be transferred to a new government company, in a bid to refocus
nuclear waste clean-up efforts and improve the chances of partial
privatisation of some of the company, the industry secretary,
Patricia Hewitt, announced yesterday. A new liabilities
management authority will take charge of the liabilities, the
bulk of which were created during the civil and military nuclear
programme in the 50s and 60s. The historic liabilities will
include the Sellafield and Magnox sites.
Ms Hewitt also announced that any plans to part-privatise BNFL
have been deferred by two years to 2004 at the earliest.
Ms Hewitt said: "BNFL's management and workforce have made
considerable progress in their efforts to turn the company
around, but there is still more to do."
The new authority will focus on nuclear decommissioning and
clean-up. Ms Hewitt told MPs: "This task requires the same focus,
intensity and technological innovation as the original nuclear
development programme". The new structure, she said, "strengthens
the emphasis on converting legacy facilities and wastes to forms
that will keep them safe for decades to come, pending their
disposal".
Ms Hewitt said it did not alter overall government liabilities,
since the liabilities were just being transferred from one part
of government to another. The bulk of the liabilities consist of
redundant radioactively contaminated facilities, equipment and
materials which need to be dismantled and disposed of. It is
estimated that the cost of handling the waste will be around £1bn
a year for the next 10 to fifteen years.
Ms Hewitt said the transfer of the liabilities to a separate
authority would increase transparency and accountability. The
move was welcomed by unions representing workers in the nuclear
industry, which said it gave BNFL an opportunity to operate as a
normal commercial company.
Greenpeace said the announcement marked the beginning of the end
of nuclear fuel reprocessing, and predicted that only two BNFL
firms - the US-based Westinghouse and the fuels division in
Springfield, Lancashire - could be sold. Friends of the Earth
said the announcement proved that BNFL was effectively bankrupt.
[UP]
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
7 Terror Suspect Visited Nuclear Plant
Las Vegas SUN
Today: November 29, 2001 at 9:50:32 PST
BERLIN (AP) - A Moroccan man arrested in connection with the
Sept. 11 hijackers visited a nuclear power plant near Hamburg in
May, an official at the school where he studied said Thursday.
Mounir El Motassadeq, 27, an electrical engineering student at
Hamburg's Technical University - the same school attended by
suspected Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta - visited the plant in
Stade, about 30 miles north of Hamburg, on May 15 as part of a
school trip to the town, said Ruediger Bendlin, a school
spokesman.
Bendlin said the professor who led the trip said El Motassadeq
did not take any notes and had to be cajoled into taking the trip
with the rest of the students in his research group.
"(The professor) said it would be good for the group if he
joined, so that the group would do something together," Bendlin
said. "When he was first invited he refused, he said he had to
focus his concentration on his duties for his exams."
The visit, which came at the end of the sightseeing tour of
Stade, did not include any access to secure areas, Bendlin said.
"He never asked any questions, that's what the leading professor
of the group told us, and he did not take any further interest,"
Bendlin said.
Since the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, authorities have raised fears that terrorists might
choose to target a nuclear facility and have stepped up security
at nuclear sites around the world El Motassadeq was arrested at
his Hamburg apartment Wednesday on charges he controlled an
account used to bankroll several of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
German authorities said he had "intensive contacts" with the
terrorist cell in Hamburg. He was the first person arrested in
Germany with a direct link to the group accused of the attacks on
Washington and New York.
He had power of attorney over hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi's bank
account in the north German city, according to the Federal
Prosecutor's Office.
The account was used to finance Al-Shehhi and other members of
the terrorist group, including Atta and hijacker Ziad Jarrah, the
prosecutor's office said. The money also allegedly financed
Al-Shehhi during his stay in the United States and was used to
pay for his flight training at a school in Florida.
El Motassadeq has been a student at the university since 1995,
where Al-Shehhi also studied.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
8 Nuclear sell-off back on agenda
BBC News | UK POLITICS |
28 November, 2001, 17:32 GMT
Nuclear sell-off back on agenda
[BNFL has come under pressure to close Sellafield]
BNFL has come under pressure to close Sellafield
The government has laid the groundwork for part-privatisation of
the UK's nuclear industry by separating off responsibility for
cleaning up the legacy of waste to a new body.
A Liabilities Management Authority is being set up to take charge
of decommissioning and cleaning up old nuclear facilities - a job
that will cost more than £40bn.
We have to face up to our responsibilities and not leave them to
future generations
Patricia Hewitt Trade Secretary
Announcing the plans to MPs, Trade and Industry Secretary
Patricia Hewitt said the move marked a new approach to the issue
of nuclear waste. The target for British Nuclear Fuels Limited
(BNFL) remained partial privatisation, said Ms Hewitt, and the
scope for that would be reviewed in 2004-5.
Last year those public-private partnership plans were put on hold
until at least 2002 by the government.
Ms Hewitt said the new arrangements would allow BNFL staff to
build on progress already made in turning around the company.
Liabilities legacy
The trade secretary said the clean-up costs were expected to
total £1bn a year over the next 10 to 15 years, but said the
plans would not affect public finances.
Instead BNFL assets already earmarked for clean-up will be
transferred to the new authority.
Two thirds of the liabilities for the new authority lie at the
Sellafield plant in Cumbria.
The legacy of waste and old facilties came mostly from the early
years of British nuclear work in the 1940s and 1950s, said Ms
Hewitt. "We have to face up to our responsibilities and not leave
them to future generations," she continued.
[Patricia Hewitt] Ms Hewitt made her announcement in the Commons
As well as taking BNFL's £35bn liablities, the LMA will be
responsible for another £7bn currently held by the UK Atomic
Energy Authority. The move is expected to mean that, shorn of
most its liabilities, BNFL can concentrate on its business
operations: nuclear fuel manufacture, fuel reprocessing, clean-up
and Magnox generation. The news follows recent criticism of the
company's safety record, amid calls for the closure of its
Sellafield plant.
The company's safety record had raised doubts over whether it
should run the Aldermaston atomic weapons factory, as previously
agreed. But on Wednesday, the Ministry of Defence gave a BNFL-led
consortium the go-ahead to run Aldermaston.
Safety scares
In recent months, BNFL has been hit by a series of safety scares.
Last year, it admitted that staff at its Sellafield plant faked
safety records. The false records were discovered when a shipment
of BNFL's reprocessed fuel reached Japan last October.
The company has also come under fire from Ireland and Denmark to
close its Sellafield plant.
The government had hoped to raise up to £1.5bn by selling off up
to 49% of the company next year.
But industry minister Helen Liddell stressed that it was
important that BNFL respond "positively to the HSE's (Health and
Safety Executive) reports on the Sellafield site".
Safety progress
On Wednesday, Ms Hewitt said BNFL had met all the recommendations
of two of the three HSE reports, as well as making "solid
progress on the third". BNFL is one of the world's biggest
suppliers of nuclear services and has an annual turnover of about
£2bn.
Nearly half of this comes from fuel manufacture and reactor
servicing, which have emerged unscathed from the safety
expectations. About one quarter of the company's work involves
the operation of Magnox nuclear power stations in the UK.
*****************************************************************
9 Forum to be held on Yucca
[Las Vegas Review-Journal]
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Clark County officials will release a study this week on impacts
from the federal government's plans to haul 77,000 tons of highly
radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain for disposal.
County Commissioner Myrna Williams, who is also a member of the
state Commission on Nuclear Projects, said the document will be
available before Saturday's public forum to discuss the Yucca
Mountain Project.
"I think some people will be surprised," she said Wednesday,
about what she described as "socioeconomic impacts and serious
other impacts that would occur."
The forum, which includes a panel discussion moderated by former
Sen. Richard Bryan, will be from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at
the County Government Center.
"We're hoping to give Nevada residents what might be their last
opportunity to get their voices heard," she said.
The mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site
the Department of Energy is studying to entomb the nation's
high-level radioactive waste.
The Energy Department will hold three hearings in December on the
Yucca Mountain Project, Dec. 5, 8 and 12 at Cashman Center, but
in Williams' opinion, "the people's voices are never heard" based
on her observations of past federal hearings.
This story is located at:
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Nov-29-Thu-2001/news/17552912.html
*****************************************************************
10 JAPAN PREPARES SECRET NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENT; GREENPEACE WARNS
THAT TRANSPORT IS "FLOATING CHERNOBYL"
29 November 2001
Paris - Greenpeace today condemned the nuclear industry of
France, Japan and UK for proceeding with a planned shipment of
highly radioactive nuclear waste from France to Japan, which is
expected to depart Cherbourg in Normandy next week.
Despite a major ongoing security alert world-wide around nuclear
facilities - involving anti-aircraft missile, army personnel and
the implementation of no-fly zones – the planned Japanese
high-level nuclear waste shipment will be transported by an
unarmed British flagged cargo ship.
"It is insane and unjustifiable to plan dozens of shipments of
weapons usable plutonium around the globe," said Greenpeace
International spokeperson Damon Moglen. "In its desperation to
continue its business, the plutonium industry is making itself a
global threat to the environment, to public health, and to the
cause of nuclear non-proliferation."
The imminent high-level waste shipment as been labelled a
‘floating Chernobyl’ because it will contain more radioactivity —
an estimated 76,000,000 curies - as was released from the entire
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. In total some 152
canisters of glassified (vitrified) high-level waste will be
transported on board a freighter owned by British Nuclear Fuels
Ltd. The nuclear transport — expected to be made by either the
"Pacific Sandpiper" or "Pacific Swan" — will be one of the
largest ever made. The nuclear waste is to be transported to
Japan for temporary storage at the Rokkasho-mura nuclear facility
in Northern Japan.
The vitrified high-level waste is a by-product of the plutonium
separation from Japanese irradiated nuclear fuel at the French
state-controlled COGEMA La Hague nuclear reprocessing plant on
the Normandy coast.
Transport state officials are remaining silent about what route
the dangerous nuclear waste shipment will follow. However, past
shipments have gone via: the Caribbean/Panama; Cape Horn; and the
Cape of Good Hope/Tasman Sea/South Pacific. At the beginning of
this year, the last Japanese high-level waste shipment was sent
via Latin America and Cape Horn and was met with vociferous
protests in Chile, Argentina and throughout the region.
"The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have called for
an end to these shipments through their waters," said Moglen. "It
is clear that Japan, France and Britain have decided to meet this
legitimate opposition with disdain and even greater efforts to
make these dangerous shipments in secret The transport states are
not complying with their legal responsibilities and that is why
the transit states are now taking their own political and legal
actions to ban the shipments."
The latest Japanese nuclear shipment will sail directly into
swelling international opposition to the plutonium industry.
Following on from regional declarations against the shipments at
the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), the Rio Group of
Foreign Ministers of Latin America, and the Central American
Parliament, opposition to the nuclear transports has also been
placed on the agenda of a meeting taking place today and tomorrow
of the Latin America and Caribbean nations at the OPANAL Summit
in Panama. OPANAL - the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean -oversees the nuclear
free zone that encompasses all of the Caribbean and Latin
America.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Damon Moglen mobile phone: +507 621 7898 and the land-line:
Hotel Ejectivo: +507 265 8011, room 1108, Yannick Rousselet -
mobile (France) +33 685806559
*****************************************************************
11 Editorial: Finding the courage to end a relationship
Las Vegas SUN
Today: November 29, 2001 at 8:46:29 PST
Two weeks ago, when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced its
support for the Yucca Mountain Project, Las Vegas Chamber of
Commerce President Pat Shalmy moved quickly to sever the local
group's ties to the national organization. Shalmy demonstrated
the same level-headed decision making that marked his earlier
tenure as county manager for the Clark County Commission.
Opposing the construction of a nuclear waste dump isn't only
about protecting the health and safety of local residents. If a
dump is built just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it also would
pose an economic nightmare for the Las Vegas Valley, potentially
scaring away tourists and business investment.
Next week the Henderson Chamber of Commerce will determine if it
should follow the lead of Shalmy and the Las Vegas chamber. The
Henderson chamber, and others throughout the state, should step
up and let the national organization know that Nevada won't be a
dumping ground for high-level nuclear waste.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
12 Editorial: Appalling giveaway to an industry
Las Vegas SUN
Today: November 29, 2001 at 8:46:29 PST
On Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation
to extend a law that limits the financial liability for nuclear
power plants hit by a catastrophic accident or terrorist attack.
Under the plan, the owners of the 103 nuclear power plants in the
United States pool together their insurance coverage, and their
total liability is limited to $9.5 billion. If a Chernobyl-like
accident were to happen, though, and the costs exceeded $9.5
billion, then U.S. taxpayers would have to foot the rest of the
bill.
Nuclear power plant operators say that the government-backed
guarantee is necessary if the moribund industry is to have a
revival, but this is a government subsidy of the worst kind. Rep.
Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who opposed the legislation, aptly
described it as "highway robbery." The nuclear power industry has
been in financial trouble for years because it's a polluting,
high-cost source of energy. For thousands of years the waste that
nuclear power leaves behind will be deadly, and it is 77,000 tons
of this waste that the nuclear power industry wants to
permanently bury in Nevada. A case could be made for providing a
modest government investment into clean, renewable power sources
-- solar, wind and geothermal are some examples -- but it is a
travesty to provide taxpayer-backed insurance coverage for the
nuclear power industry, which jeopardizes the env ironment.
One reason for the success of the nuclear power liability
legislation is that several other measures were tacked on to the
bill to make it palatable to members of Congress who had
reservations about the continued government giveaway. The
legislation's sweeteners were provisions to improve security at
nuclear power plants, requirements that are unassailable on their
own. If the provisions linked to the aftermath of Sept. 11 had
been stripped from the legislation and had been considered
separately -- which they should have been -- then support for the
insurance subsidy would have eroded.
The nuclear power liability legislation is symptomatic of a
disturbing pattern in Congress: Goodies for big businesses, and
legislative responses to the events of Sept. 11, have been mixed
together in legislation. For instance, the airport security bill
signed into law by President Bush contained unrelated language
sponsored by the House that shielded jet makers, airlines and the
owner of the World Trade Center from huge damage awards connected
to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. And the economic stimulus
package passed by the House, ostensibly intended to jump-start
the economy following the terrorist attacks, also included
needless billion-dollar giveaways to major corporations through
the repeal of the minimum tax that is imposed on corporations.
Although the House has passed an extension of the nuclear power
insurance subsidy, the Senate has yet to act on extending the
law, which is set to expire in August. The Senate should show
better sense than the House and defeat the legislation that would
prop up an ailing, polluting industry.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
13 Study: Let free market handle nuclear waste
Las Vegas SUN
Today: November 29, 2001 at 8:46:29 PST
Nevada think tank says government can't solve issue
By Mary Manning
A Nevada think tank is urging a free market solution to dispose
of the nation's nuclear waste.
The Nevada Policy Research Institute, based in Las Vegas, has
offered an alternative to burying spent reactor fuel 1,000 feet
beneath Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, NPRI
editorial Director Steven Miller said.
"Some call us conservative, some call us Libertarian, but
basically we finally rolled up our sleeves and looked at an
alternative," Miller said.
The 15-page study notes that although utilities worldwide are
privatizing and deregulating, Washington's "monolithic,
bureaucrat-run and failure-ridden" Yucca Mountain Project plods
along.
"Two decades of experience have shown that the federal
government is completely incapable of solving the
used-nuclear-fuel problem," the study says.
As an alternative to transporting spent fuel rods to Yucca
Mountain, the study's authors urge utilities to store the
existing 44,000 tons of waste on the respective sites until the
toxicity can be reduced and the remainder recycled.
"Two decades ago the federal government decided that the best
way to deal with used nuclear fuel is to shove it beneath a
mountain in Southern Nevada," NPRI Chairman Ranson Webster said.
"We believe that was a fundamentally flawed decision, one that
fails to recognize the value such material has in the growing --
and global -- nuclear industry."
The institute's study urges policymakers, the nuclear power
industry and the public to stop seeing spent fuel as "waste,"
study author D. Dowd Moska said.
"The Yucca Mountain repository is an attempt to fix, through the
political process, what is essentially an economic problem,"
Moska said. "That kind of approach almost never works, and it's
failing spectacularly in the Southern Nevada desert."
The DOE has studied Yucca Mountain for almost 20 years, but the
site has not been approved by the president, Congress or the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A repository is expected to open
by 2010 at the earliest. The NRC has approved dry-cask storage of
the spent fuel at reactor sites for as long as 100 years.
Under current law, the free market approach suggested by the
study is impossible, said Joe Strolin, socio-economic
administrator for the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.
The approach may work, however, if Congress changed the law,
Strolin said.
'It's kind of interesting," he said, noting that the state,
which opposes a Yucca Mountain repository, has for years urged
the DOE to look at alternatives. "Personally, this approach
certainly makes sense to me."
The current nuclear waste fund could pay for the free market
program if an $11 billion balance was turned over to nuclear
utilities to deal with the spent fuel, the study concludes. The
DOE has spent more than $7 billion studying Yucca Mountain since
1982.
Congress could appoint a commission to develop a process for
disbursing the nuclear waste fund, the study says. If more money
is needed, it can be raised by auctioning off the DOE's
nonweapons research facilities. That way, the burden is shifted
away from the American taxpayers, the study says.
Not all nuclear experts support the institute's alternative,
however.
The Nuclear Control Institute in Washington favors burying the
spent fuel.
"We do not favor leaving all waste-disposal decisions up to
utilities because we oppose reprocessing and plutonium
recycling," said Steven Dolley, NCI research director. "These
options should be completely foreclosed."
NCI physicist Edwin Lyman said the study's focus on costs has to
be considered in any solution, but it will be social and
political factors that decide whether Yucca Mountain will become
the nation's nuclear waste repository.
The DOE's estimates of building and operating a repository
jumped from $30 billion in the mid 1990s to $56 billion last
year. Those costs could increase if the DOE has to tighten
security at Yucca Mountain. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is
reviewing its security regulations at licensed facilities, such
as reactors. If Yucca Mountain is approved as a repository, it
would be regulated by the NRC.
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
14 Letter: Anti-Yucca efforts working
Las Vegas SUN
Today: November 29, 2001 at 8:46:29 PST
Some Nevadans think that there is no chance that Yucca Mountain
will be rejected as a nuclear dump. They are wrong, and the
proposed Dec. 5, 8 and 12 Department of Energy meetings, at
Cashman Field, are the proof.
The DOE is now doing what Gov. Kenny Guinn requested two months
ago.
Nevadans' activism at previous meetings are the main reason that
the DOE was forced to hold these meetings and extend the public
comment period to Dec. 14. Also, make certain you attend the
forum to be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Clark
County Commission Chambers. This meeting will give you an overall
view so that our activism on Dec. 5, 8, and 12 will be more
effective.
After the tragedy of Sept. 11, it is irresponsible and will
present thousands of attractive terrorist targets for decades, to
transport nuclear waste through 41 states to Yucca Mountain! You
can be certain that the nuclear lobby institute and nuclear power
producers have little concern for ours or future generations.
Their paid spokesmen know better, but they will read from the
script and smile.
Corporate greed, vested interest and corporate conscience are
not good reasons to approve Yucca Mountain. Sound science says
that geologic disposal will not protect the environment.
Therefore, the nuclear waste should be left at the sites, in dry
cask storage, where it has been safely stored for 44 years. A
scientific study says it can safely remain there for 100 years.
FRANK PERNA
All contents copyright 2001 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
15 IEER Report: Securing the Energy Future of the United States
for use after 10:00am Wednesday, November 28, 2001 National Press
Club News Conference
[http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/bush-adv.html] For further
information contact: Arjun Makhijani [ ieer@ieer.org] ,
301-270-5500 Bob Schaeffer: 941-395-6773 Mark Helm, Friends of
the Earth, 202-783-7400, x 102
PRESS RELEASE
BUSH ENERGY PLAN WILL WORSEN U.S. OIL, NUCLEAR, ELECTRICITY
VULNERABILITIES
Comprehensive Alternative Calls for 100-MPG Cars by 2020;
Nuclear Power Phase Out, Advanced Electricity Grid System; Report
Concludes Administration Proposals for New Nuclear Reactors,
Plutonium Fuel Increase Risk
Washington, D.C., November 28, 2001: The Bush Administration's
energy plan, conceived before the September 11 terrorist attack,
will aggravate U.S. energy vulnerabilities, according to a new
report released today by the Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research (IEER). Securing the Energy Future of
the United States: Oil, Nuclear, and Electricity Vulnerabilities
and a post-September 11, 2001 Roadmap for Action
[http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/bushtoc.html] , presents
a comprehensive alternative approach that its author says will
accomplish the same economic goals, but with far fewer serious
risks.
"It is stunning that the Bush administration did not review its
energy plan in light of the gaping vulnerabilities revealed by
the September 11 attacks," said IEER President Dr. Arjun
Makhijani and author of the report. "If the United States sticks
to the course the Bush plan endorses, oil imports will double
over the next forty years. That is an invitation to major
problems, given the tensions and instabilities in the Middle
East." Based in Takoma Park, Maryland, IEER has published many
studies on nuclear technologies and other energy issues.
Securing the Energy Future of the United States sets forth
vulnerability criteria to evaluate energy proposals. Among the
major risks it cites in the Bush plan:
+ sudden disruptions of world oil markets and U.S. imports, for
instance through terrorism or upheavals in the governments of
major petroleum exporting countries;
+ attacks on nuclear reactors or spent fuel pools which could
create economic, health and environmental damage on the scale of
the Chernobyl disaster;
+ diversion of plutonium from commercial facilities; and
+ damage to centralized electricity grids causing breakdowns in
power distribution over wide regions
The report specifically condemns a new nuclear plant design,
called the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, which the Bush plan
endorses. According to IEER, this reactor is proposed to be built
without the concrete "secondary containment" that shields most
current reactors from all but the most massive attacks. While
immune to melt-down accidents, the Pebble Bed Modular reactor
could still catch fire and spread radioactivity if it were
attacked in a variety of ways.
Also targeted for criticism is the administration's continued
pursuit of the idea of using surplus military plutonium to
generate electricity in commercial reactors. "The use of
plutonium in reactors was already a bad idea before September
11," said Dr. Makhijani. "It is simply appalling now. The risks
of transporting plutonium fuel and the consequences of an attack
on reactors that use it are far too grave to tolerate."
"One drunk with a rifle disabled the Trans Alaska Pipeline a few
weeks ago," said Friends of the Earth President, Dr. Brent
Blackwelder. "It is high time that our leaders begin to
aggressively explore energy sources that are safe, resilient, and
don't have a bull's-eye painted on them for terrorists."
The alternative energy plan drafted by IEER calls for federal
regulations requiring new cars to achieve an average fuel
efficiency of 100 miles per gallon by the year 2020. "In the
1950s, it used to said that 'What's good for General Motors is
good for the country,'" said Dr. Blackwelder, "It's time to
reverse that formula to read, 'What's good for the country ought
to be good for GM.'"
The IEER report also calls for substituting vigorous procurement
policies in place of tax credits for renewable energy purchases.
"Tax breaks tend to keep the cost of technology high and retard
progress," said Dr. Makhijani. "Targeted purchases of energy
efficient products and renewable energy over the next ten to
twenty years can provide a strong stimulus to private research
and development, help create a manufacturing base, make some
cutting-edge technologies commercial, and rapidly reduce costs."
IEER recommends a $20 billion per year program, half spent on
federal purchases of products such as fuel-efficient vehicles,
fuel cells, and solar cells and half awarded as grants to state
and local government for similar procurement programs.
In addition to 100 mile per gallon cars by 2020, the IEER
energy plan contains the following principal features,
+ A phase out of nuclear power by the year 2030 and storage of
spent fuel packed in casks and surplus plutonium sealed in glass
logs in subsurface silos;
+ A reduction of coal use by 55 percent by 2030 and by 90
percent by 2040;
+ Large-scale use of wind power fed into regional electricity
grids;
+ Creation of distributed grids in which highly efficient local
power generation sources are combined with central station power
plants;
+ Widespread use of high efficiency space heating and cooling
technologies such as geothermal heat pumps in combination with
local generation; and
+ Progressively more stringent carbon emissions standards for
electricity generation.
"IEER's plan is highly innovative in that it shows how we can
achieve security and environmental goals simultaneously," said
Dr. Blackwelder. "Friends of the Earth will do all we can to help
change the country's energy path to the direction of this seminal
work." -30-
Securing the Energy Future of the United States is available online
[http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/bushtoc.html] and also in hard copy
[http://www.ieer.org/pubs/puborder.html#bush] .
Also on this site:
+ Statement of the Author, Arjun Makhijani
[http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/busharj.html]
+ Full report: Securing the Energy Future of the United States
[http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/bushtoc.html]
+ Order the report [http://www.ieer.org/pubs/puborder.html#bush]
+ Link to Friends of the Earth letter to Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge:
Energy legislation raises serious terrorist concerns
[http://www.foe.org/act/ridgepr.html] (November 20, 2001)
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to Outreach
Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org [ieer@ieer.org]
Takoma Park, Maryland, USA
November 28, 2001
*****************************************************************
16 Perma-Fix Nuclear Hazardous Waste Treatment Seminar Expected
To Draw 100 Experts To Nashville
PR Newswire - USA; Nov 28, 2001
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Perma-Fix
Environmental Services, Inc. (Nasdaq: PESI) (Boston: PES)
(Germany: PES.BE) today announced that approximately 100
experts from the nation's nuclear industry which includes the
Departments of Energy and Defense, nuclear utilities,
pharmaceutical companies, and research institutions are
scheduled to meet here next week for an intensive seminar on
nuclear hazardous (mixed) waste treatment. The event is
sponsored by Perma- Fix Environmental Services, Inc.; one of
the leaders in mixed waste treatment with three fully licensed
and permitted facilities located in Tennessee and Florida.
The forum is a three-day seminar at Nashville's Opryland Hotel
that will showcase Perma-Fix's capabilities to help the
nuclear industry safely and efficiently treat and dispose of
mixed waste.
Perma-Fix has recently increased its capabilities to treat
mixed wastes by expanding the services offered at existing
facilities as well acquiring and building a new facility in
Oak Ridge, Tenn. The newest facility is located on the
Department of Energy's K-25 plant in Oak Ridge. The Department
of Energy's K-25 plant was one of the key facilities involved
with constructing nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project.
Perma-Fix's new 150,000-sq.-ft. facility was designed and
constructed specifically to treat the large volumes of wastes
generated by the Department of Energy since the 1940's.
Dr. Louis F. Centofanti, president and chief executive
officer, commented: "For the first time, using Perma-Fix's
technologies, there is a way to safely treat this waste. This
represents a significant step forward in solving the problem
of how to handle millions of pounds of legacy, remedial and
process mixed waste that exist at nuclear facilities."
Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc., headquartered in
Gainesville, Fla., is a national environmental services
company, providing unique mixed waste and industrial waste
management services. The industrial services segment provides
hazardous and non-hazardous waste treatment services for a
diverse group of customers including Fortune 500 companies,
numerous federal, state and local agencies and thousands of
smaller clients. The nuclear services segment provides
radioactive and mixed waste treatment services to hospitals,
research laboratories and institutions, numerous federal
agencies including the Departments of Energy and Defense and
nuclear utilities. The company operates 11 major waste
treatment facilities across the country.
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" which
are based largely on the company's expectations and are
subject to various business risks and uncertainties, certain
of which are beyond the company's control. Forward-looking
statements include, but are not limited to, the information
concerning Perma-Fix's capabilities to treat and dispose of
mixed waste, the safe treatment of waste, solving the problem
of how to handle mixed waste and Perma-Fix being one of the
leaders in mixed waste treatment. These forward- looking
statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbors from
liability established by the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. While the company believes the
expectations reflected in this news release are reasonable, it
can give no assurance such expectations will prove to be
correct. There are a variety of factors which could cause
future outcomes to differ materially from those described in
this release, including without limitation, future economic
conditions, industry conditions, competitive pressures, the
ability of the company to apply and market its technologies,
or the Department of Energy's failure to deliver waste as
anticipated. The company makes no commitment to disclose any
revisions to forward-looking statements, or any facts, events
or circumstances after the date hereof that bear upon
forward-looking statements. Please visit us on the World Wide
Web at http://www.perma-fix.com. MAKE YOUR OPINION COUNT -
http://tbutton.prnewswire.com/prn/11690X14351660
/CONTACT: Dr. Louis F. Centofanti, President, Perma-Fix
Environmental Services, Inc., +1-404-847-9990; or Stan
Altschuler, Investor Relations, Strategic Growth
International, Inc., +1-516-829-7111, or sgi@netmonger.net; or
Stephanie Stern, sstern@sternco.com, or Stan Froelich,
sfroelich@sternco.com, both for Perma-Fix Environmental
Services, Inc., +1-212-888-0044/ 16:19 EST
World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright
*****************************************************************
17 BNFL says money 'sunk' in MOX is irrelevant to case
ireland.com - The Irish Times - IRELAND
Thursday, November 29, 2001
From Rachel Donnelly, in London
It would have been "economic madness" to refuse authority for the
Sellafield MOX plant knowing it would deprive Britain and BNFL of
substantial economic benefit, the Court of Appeal heard
yesterday.
On the final day of a legal challenge by Friends of the Earth
and Greenpeace to overturn a High Court ruling that the British
government was justified in approving the plant, Mr David
Pannick, QC, for BNFL, argued ministers adopted "basic economic
principles" when assessing the economic benefits of MOX.
That meant sunk costs of £470 million (sterling) - to build and
prepare the plant for production before the case for MOX was
considered by the British government - should be ignored because
they could not be recovered even if the plant did not go ahead.
In addressing the economic benefits of MOX, Mr Pannick said, the
Environment Secretary and the Health Secretary were entitled to
conclude that the assessment should be carried out in accordance
with well-established principles of economic rationality. "To
take account of costs already expended would be to have regard to
an economically irrelevant factor. One of the fundamental
principles of economic rationality is that sunk costs are sunk -
that bygones are bygones and have no part to play in assessing
the economic advantages of a course of action," Mr Pannick said.
The challenge by the environmentalists, Mr Pannick said, was
about the "proper construction" of Article 6 of an EU Basic
Safety Standards Directive. It says member states must justify
any practice resulting in exposure to ionizing radiation "by
their economic, social or other benefits in relation to the
health detriment they may cause." Mr Pannick said there was
nothing in the Directive or International Commission on
Radiological Protection recommendations requiring "a reversal of
the laws of economics". Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth
argued earlier that in disregarding the £470 million sterling
costs, the British government erred in law and the case for MOX
was economically unjustified.
For the environmentalists, Lord Lester QC said capital costs
were the costs of the new practice resulting in exposure to
ionizing radiation and as such were relevant in an economic
assessment of MOX that must produce a net positive economic
benefit. The capital costs, Lord Lester argued, "do not cease to
be relevant because they have already been incurred" since the
proper construction of Article 6 and the ICRP recommendations was
concerned with all costs and benefits relating to a new practice.
Lord Justice Simon Brown, sitting with Lord Justice Waller and
Lord Justice Dyson, reserved judgement.
*****************************************************************
18 IAEA Daily Press Review Date 2001-11-29 Number 228
1. Non-proliferation
DPRK rejects US call for weapons inspections. Kazakh Parliament
ratifies CTBT.
Media Resources: (BBC, NYT - 28/11) CTBT; Dem. P.R. of Korea;
Kazakhstan; United States of America
2. Terrorism
IAEA activities against nuclear terrorism could cost $32-
million annually: US expected to announce contribution to new
IAEA international fund to combat nuclear terrorism. Scientists
working in new discipline called threat assessment find
themselves in world full of uncertainty. NRC considering buying
millions of doses of potassium iodide, which protects against
thyroid cancer that might result from radiation exposure. Lahore
High Court adjourns nuclear scientists' case.
Media Resources: (DAW; NW; NYT - 29/11) IAEA; Pakistan; United
States of America
3. Nuclear power
Numerous reports on Temelin NPP: Czech Government approves
preliminary deal on future of plant; electricity generation to be
renewed on 30 November; Electricité de France considered favorite
enterprise for acquiring CEZ. Russian Novovoronezh NPP
re-launches its unit No. 3 after technical upgrade.
Media Resources: (INT; K; R; S - 28; 29/11) Austria; Czech
Republic; France; Russian Federation
4. Nuclear safety
As officials at Shizuoka Prefecture NPP scour plant for cracks
after recent rupture of a section, which caused radioactive
coolant to leak, they discover that weak alloy was used in
construction of pressure vessel.
Media Resources: (MAI - 28/11) Japan
5. Chernobyl
Designing of new sarcophagus for Chernobyl-4 NPP to start early
in December.
Media Resources: (INT - 28/11) Chernobyl; Ukraine
6. Radiation, health
Ten containers with Caesium-137 discovered on premises of
factory in Southern Kazakhstan region.
Media Resources: (INT - 28/11) Kazakhstan
7. Radwaste, fuel
Britain's two largest nuclear companies, British Energy (BE) and
BNFL, publish their submissions to new Government policy
review, which is expected to pave way for formulation of
long-term national radwaste management policy.
Media Resources: (G; NUC - 28/11) United Kingdom
8. Nuclear technology
US Postal Service wants at least $3 billion to sanitize nation's
mail: radiation devices could kill potentially lethal
bacteria and bacterial spores by attacking the DNA of the
microbes.
Media Resources: (R - 28/11) United States of America
9. Energy, environment
US Energy Secretary says after attending inauguration of Caspian
pipeline that Russia has emerged as significant global
energy player outside OPEC and leaves for Vienna to meet IAEA
officials on Friday.
Media Resources: (R - 28/11) Austria; IAEA; Russian Federation
10. UN
Various reports on UN sanctions on Iraq: UNSC members debate
US/Russian compromise that would delay plans for overhaul
of sanctions but pledge to revise embargos in six months.
Media Resources: (NYT - 28/11) Iraq; Russian Federation; UN;
United States of America
11. Miscellaneous
Middle Eastern countries, Germany and France voice concern over
US hints that Iraq might be next military target of its war
on terrorism.
Media Resources: (BBC; IHT - 29/11) France; Germany; Iraq; United
States of America
*****************************************************************
19 Senate Democrats delay energy action
[http://www.sfgate.com]
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
Washington -- Senate Democratic leaders announced they are
postponing action on new energy legislation until next year,
delivering a major blow to one of President Bush's top domestic
initiatives.
Their decision yesterday diminishes the prospects for several
provisions of Bush's plan, including opening Alaska's Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil companies and providing the oil,
coal, gas and nuclear industries with about $30 billion in tax
breaks and subsidies. At the same time, it extends the issue into
an election year, giving Democrats less incentive to reach
compromise and more incentive to use the debate to highlight
differences between Democratic and Republican approaches to
energy policy.
Senate Democrats are pushing for a bill that, unlike Bush's,
tilts more toward conservation than energy production, does not
permit drilling in the Arctic refuge and calls for higher
miles-per-gallon standards for sport utility vehicles.
In August, the House passed an energy bill that closely resembled
Bush's vision. Reconciling the House and Senate plans may now
prove difficult. GOP lawmakers were furious yesterday about the
delay, contending that energy policy was an issue of national
security, made more imperative by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
and the recent rise in tensions between the United States and
Iraq.
"Next year is not soon enough for energy," argued Sen. Frank
Murkowski, R- Alaska, perhaps the Senate's most dogged advocate
for drilling in the Arctic refuge.
But a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.,
said the Republican energy proposal has nothing to do with
national security. "Everyone knows we won't get a drop of oil out
of Alaska for 10 years and it won't last more than a few days,"
added Doug Hattaway, former spokesman for Al Gore's presidential
campaign.
Prospects for the president's energy plan are eroding because
California's energy crisis, fresh in lawmakers' minds when the
House adopted its bill, has passed, and a nationwide energy
crisis never materialized.
"Barring another crisis, it's going to be very difficult for the
administration to revive the issue and overcome the environmental
obstacles," said Marshall Wittmann, a political scholar at the
conservative Hudson Institute.
*****************************************************************
20 Sellafield 'Eggs' To Be Put in One Basket
THE WHITEHAVEN NEWS
Thursday, November 29, 2001
The Environment Agency proposes to introduce a single certificate
of authorisation for regulating Sellafield's discharges to air,
land and sea.
The aim is to secure an improvement in environmental quality but
Copeland Council wants to ensure that local social and economic
factors are also taken into account in future management
decisions concerning Sellafield.
It has been asked to make a formal response as part of the
consultation process for new proposals for the future regulation
of BNFL activities at Sellafield and is saying that overall the
council welcomes the principles set out in the Environment Agency
proposals, provided that the new regime does not inhibit the
priority of dealing with legacy waste on site.
The council wants a mechanism for it to be included alongside the
company and its regulator in decision-making on broad issues of
public safety and community interest, in addition to the
statutory planning system.
Discharges from Sellafield are regulated by the Environment
Agency via a complex regime of consents and authorisations.
Radiation dose received by workers is regulated by the Nuclear
Installation Inspectorate (NII) within the Health and Safety
Executive. A review of the six existing authorisations for BNFL
operations at Sellafield began in April last year. Proposed
alterations regarding discharges of technetium-99 were 'fast
tracked' and are currently before Ministers.
Coun John Henney (Lab) at Tuesday's meeting of the Executive said
the council welcomed any reduction in discharges to the sea and
air but more information was needed to aid discussion on the
subject.
Coun Robin Simpson (Lab), Leader, said: "This is a major step
forward, it has been needed for a long time, we must support
it.''
The Environment Agency said its proposals would bring benefits:
reducing the radioactive discharges and thus the site's potential
radiological and environmental impact; provide a more transparent
approach to site regulation; impose stricter regulation; require
waste minimisation at source and would not affect BNFL's ability
to meet the target closure date of 2012 for Magnox reprocessing,
or its processing of backlog wastes into safer forms or its
decommissioning programmes for redundant plants.
n Copeland is to keep a tally on how much of the council's
resources is spent on the consideration of nuclear issues. "We
are picking this up on behalf of the whole nation and should keep
a close check,'' said Coun Robin Simpson, leader. "It should be
costed out and a bill presented to the Environment Agency at the
end of the year,'' said George Usher, deputy leader.
*****************************************************************
21 No More Nirex Secrets
THE WHITEHAVEN NEWS
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Copeland Council leader Robin Simpson is not aware of any more
Cumbrian sites being on a "secret" list of possible nuclear waste
repository locations.
Longlands, at Gosforth, near Sellafield, which holds most of
Britain's nuclear waste was the favoured location until Nirex
lost its battle to build an underground rock laboratory needed to
test the safety of the site.
Now a group of MPs on the House of Commons environment select
committee is demanding to know whether any other possible
Cumbrian sites are on the Nirex list drawn up in the 1980s.
Yesterday Robin Simpson, who was involved in many discussions
with Nirex and BNFL over the Longlands plans, said: "I would be
very surprised if there was another."
Asked whether he had heard any other location mentioned during
the discussions, Coun Simpson declared: "Never."
Millions of pounds was spent preparing a case for an underground
repository at Longlands, which was also BNFL's preferred option,
but after losing out on the rock laboratory Nirex pulled out of
the area.
The Government is currently carrying out fresh consultations
which could lead to new proposals for burying nuclear waste
underground following advice from RWMAC, its Radioactive Waste
Management Committee, that this is still the best option.
Longlands has not been ruled out of consideration in the future
but Robin Simpson called for Nirex to be scrapped.
"Nirex should be closed down. The whole organisation is tainted.
They made such a mess of the last public consultation exercise in
Cumbria, so much so that it could be years before anything else
happens."
Ministers have been urged to set up a new waste management
commission to draw up a list of up to 20 possible underground
sites.
RWMAC has said that choosing any future site has to be seen as
open and fair with possible community compensation.
Professor Charles Curtis, then acting chairman, said: "There is a
need to avoid a repeat of the Nirex experience - not least
because of the public expenditure involved for so little return."
Concerns about safety and amenity had to be properly addressed
and "possibly that compensation commensurate with solving a
national problem follows," Prof Curtis pointed out.
Any company charged with the design, construction and operation
of an underground repository would first have to win the public's
confidence.
Robin Simpson said: "Whether it is some new body succeeding Nirex
or the nuclear industry itself we will have to wait and see. If
plans do resurface, there has to be compensation. We have to deal
with the nuclear industry at Sellafield for 50 years and we have
had precious little financial help from the government - hardly a
halfpenny."
Most of the UK's radioactive waste is generated at Sellafield and
stored in a series of on-surface plants. Simpson thought moving
it to dispose of in another area would be a problem.
n Only 30 per cent of the country is said to be geologically
suitable for an underground repository.
n Copeland MP, Jack Cunningham, said: "I have never heard it
suggested that any other Cumbrian location has been earmarked for
a nuclear waste repository. I am in close touch with ministers
about all sorts of nuclear issues and it has not even been talked
about."
*****************************************************************
22 France-bound German nuclear waste found contaminated
November 26, 2001
Reuters news service
FRANKFURT - German authorities said late last week they had
discovered contamination emanating from a nuclear waste transport
container at the Stade nuclear plant. But an environment ministry
official last week said this was an isolated case discovered
thanks to stricter safety regulations put in place since last
year on lifting of a ban on nuclear waste transport, which had
been imposed in 1998.
"The container, which was one of several destined for French
reprocessing site La Hague, was screened and radiation levels
significantly above the allowed maximum were found," the official
in the Berlin ministry's department for nuclear transport told
Reuters.
"The shippers of the container are now required to deal with the
problem so that they can be given approval to carry out the
transport," he added. The transport, originally planned for
December, had been temporarily put on hold, the ministry's
statement had said.
"The environment ministry will ensure that the shipment of the
container....can only be carried out if there is total proof that
it is free of contamination," it said. The official said the
finding showed that strict rules on the necessary screening
methods were being applied and working. Once satisfied that the
container had been cleaned, the shipment could be given
clearance.
Nuclear transports from German nuclear reactor sites were banned
in 1998 after a safety scare over radiation leaks from containers
during transport.
It was lifted last year amid commitments by the nuclear industry
to gradually phase out atomic energy by the mid-2020s and because
stricter safety regulations were agreed. Germany's 19 nuclear
plants have no reprocessing facilities of their own, and must get
rid of containers full of spent fuel elements, which they were
forced to store on-site during the ban.
Anti-nuclear protestors, citing safety risks, keep disrupting
waste transports in order to achieve an earlier withdrawal.
The maximum permissible radition level is four bequerel per
square centimetre. Utility E.ON, operator of the 640 megawatt
(MW) Stade plant in the northern
German Lower Saxony state, was not immediately available to
comment.
*****************************************************************
23 Statement by Congresswoman Shelley Berkley opposing H.R.2983
Price-Anderson Reauthorization Act of 2001
PRICE-ANDERSON REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2001
(House of Representatives - November 27, 2001)
Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2983. This
legislation is nothing more than a giant government subsidy to
keep the nuclear industry afloat.
Opposition to Price-Anderson runs the political gamut.
Environmental groups like Public Citizen oppose Price-Anderson
because it hurts our environment. Rather than investing resources
in renewable energy, this bill would further our reliance on
nuclear energy, thus exacerbating our problems with nuclear
waste.
On the right, even the conservative Cato Institute states that if
nuclear power is a better investment than gas or coal-fired
power, then no amount of government help is necessary. If it is
not, then no amount of government help will make it so.
This legislation mandates that it is the American taxpayer who
will pay the financial costs of cleaning up a nuclear accident.
It has been estimated that a worst-case scenario accident could
cost more than $300 billion to clean up. The total insurance
coverage provided under this act is $9.4 billion. It is the
American taxpayer who will make up the difference.
Madam Speaker, both Liberals and Conservatives oppose
Price-Anderson because it artificially supports an industry that
is not trusted by the American public, and not supported by the
American investor. Nuclear energy is dangerous, and it is this
danger that prevents investors from being interested in nuclear
power.
Price-Anderson not only subsidizes the production of nuclear
energy, it also subsidizes the production of nuclear waste.
Although the nuclear industry has lobbied for years to dump its
garbage at Yucca Mountain, located just outside my
rapidly-growing hometown of Las Vegas, it is not a safe place to
permanently store nuclear waste. The geology of Yucca Mountain is
unsound. Nuclear waste risks contaminating the ground water
throughout southern Nevada and California.
Even if this administration is successful in its efforts to ram a
nuclear dump down our throats, it will take more than 50 years
before 77,000 tons of nuclear waste is moved from its current
locations across the United States and relocated to Yucca
Mountain.
At the same time, Price-Anderson subsidies keep the nuclear
industry afloat, creating more and more waste, so even as the
waste is shipped, more waste is being created and stored at the
reactors. Any central repository represents only a temporary
solution. Waste will continue to be stored at taxpayer-subsidized
reactors, posing both security and environmental hazards.
I have heard representatives of the nuclear interests argue that
the events of September 11 emphasize the need for a central
repository. This is not just an erroneous statement, but the most
blatant political misuse of those tragic events. A central
repository would do nothing to diminish the threat at active
reactor sites and would offer only one more attractive target.
When we include each individual nuclear waste transport, there
would be thousands more inviting targets for potential terrorist
attacks.
Madam Speaker, I oppose the reauthorization of Price-Anderson
because it makes our country a more dangerous place to live.
Nuclear energy cannot survive on its own, and I think it is
nothing short of highway robbery that we ask the American
taxpayer to subsidize a product that endangers their very health
and safety.
Nuclear energy creates Nuclear waste. There is no way of getting
around that. Long term options for disposing of nuclear waste,
such as transmutation, are emerging, but they have not yet been
fully developed. I would urge my colleagues to support research
into the decontamination, and safe disposal, of nuclear waste, so
we can solve this problem, once and for all. But in the meantime,
I urge all my colleagues to oppose this measure until the nation
finds a safe, realistic, and economically feasible method of
dealing with nuclear waste.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support research on
decontamination and safe disposal. I urge all of my colleagues to
oppose this measure until the Nation finds a safe, realistic, and
economically feasible method for dealing with nuclear waste.
*****************************************************************
24 Statement by Congressman Earl Blumenauer on H.R.2983
Price-Anderson Reauthorization Act of 2001
PRICE-ANDERSON REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2001 (House of
Representatives - November 27, 2001)
Madam Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman’s courtesy in yielding
me time to speak on this issue.
I appreciate the hard work of this committee, but I rise in
opposition to the bill.
First and foremost, it has no business on the suspension
calendar. It is not a simple, noncontroversial bill, and members
of this assembly should be given an opportunity to fully express
their concerns and fully debate the reauthorization. Madam
Speaker, it is not about changing rules for existing plans,
although many argue that the Price-Anderson Act has long been an
unwarranted subsidy enjoyed by the nuclear industry.
The question is, where are we going to go from here? The
gentlewoman from New Mexico was correct, there is a little bit of
coverage. Two hundred million dollars sounds like a lot, and $88
million in addition to the pool, but look at what happened in the
World Trade Center: just the collapse of an office tower, and we
see tens of billions of dollars that are being brought forward,
rocking the potential for the insurance industry.
There is big money that is going to be involved if we have a
serious nuclear accident; and I think it is very easy to document
by any impartial group that it will go far beyond $200 million,
far beyond $288 million, and will stretch, in a realistic form,
to something that deals with $9.5 billion, as she talks about.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. We are going to spend maybe $100
billion and not do an adequate job cleaning up the Hanford
Nuclear Plant, and that is something that has not been subjected
to a meltdown.
If smaller, safer plants make sense, so be it. Allow the smaller,
safer plants to go forward like any other industry would, and be
able to cover their own liability. If they make sense, the
private sector will provide coverage.
I would strongly suggest that if we have to continue subsidizing
the production of energy, that this body can find far more
productive, safer, economically viable alternatives in terms of
renewable energy. If we are going to throw hundreds of billions
of dollars, let us do something that is going to stabilize our
energy future, something that has been long ignored, rather than
taking a path for an industry that, after 50 years, should be
mature enough to stand on its own legs with this new generation.
b 1600
I strongly urge a no vote. We need to deal with Price-Anderson in
a broader context. It ought not to be on the suspension
suspension calendar. This assembly needs to look at alternative
ways of subsidizing energy production. I would suggest continuing
a subsidy for the nuclear power energy is not the alternative to
follow.
*****************************************************************
25 Green groups attack SA Govt's Honeymoon mine approval
ABC News -
Posted : Thur, 29 Nov 2001 11:04 ACDT
The Australian Greens have branded South Australian Government
approval for the Honeymoon Uranium mine, in the state's far
north-east, as a backwards step for the state.
The Government yesterday announced its approval for the project,
a day after the Federal Government approved an export permit for
the mine.
The decision has angered environmental groups, with the Greens'
South Australian candidate for the Legislative Council, Brian
Noone, saying the State Government should be focusing on more
environmentally friendly industries.
"It's a backwards step. We would hope South Australia would be
going forwards with sustainable and clean energy, all these wind
power generators and solar energy, but we're going backwards and
using all this uranium," he said.
"Most European countries are giving up uranium, so for us it's a
backwards step for South Australia."
The Australian Conservation Foundation has warned it will
continue lobbying against the project, vowing to put pressure on
potential investors in the controversial project.
The foundation's national anti-nuclear campaigner, Dave Sweeney,
says they will protest today outside the offices of Sedimentary
Holdings, which owns one third of the Honeymoon deposit.
"They may have received their approvals, but they have also
received and will receive the focused attention of Australian
anti-nuclear groups and many members of the broader Australian
community who are concerned about uranium mining, who are
concerned about radioactive waste and who are concerned about the
future of our scant groundwater reserves," he said.
Southern Cross Resources
However, the chief executive of Southern Cross Resources, Martin
Ackland, remains confident the company will be able to raise the
necessary capital.
He says the market has already responded positively to Federal
Government approval for the project.
"Since our environmental approval has been through, the share
price is firm, currently trading at $1.25 Canadian, which is I
guess is a reflection of our investors and our confidence that we
can complete this project," he said.
© 2001 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
*****************************************************************
26 British Nuclear Fuels reshuffle
us [news@channel4.com] I Snowmail
Broadcast: November 28, 2001
Reporters: Andrew Veitch
The Government has announced the dismemberment of British Nuclear
Fuels - it's to lose its flagship Thorp reprocessing plant, and
its controversial new Mox nuclear fuel facility.
They will be transferred to a new Liabilities Management
Authority along with all the ageing Magnox reactors, nuclear
waste dumps and other civilian nuclear liabilities.
Plans for a partial privatisation have been put back to 2005 at
the earliest.
Science correspondent Andrew Veitch reports on whether this is
the end of BNFL as we've known and loved it?
Andrew Veitch: I think it is, and I think it's what a lot of
senior people in BNFL have privately wanted for years. The
company will concentrate on cleaning up much of the world's
nuclear legacy, the rest, including reprocessing nuclear fuel
which was supposed to be its core activity, will simply go.
It'll effectively lose the Sellafield site. The brutal fact is
that the cost of BNFL's liabilities now exceed its assets by £1.7
billion. It's only keeping going because it's got cash in the
bank.
It's told the government it needs another £1.9 billion to cope
with its liabilities - mainly decommissioning the old Magnox
power plants which are all coming to the end of their lives.
So the company has at last been overtaken by economic reality. Or
at least this is how the Trade and Industry Secretary put it when
she unveiled the plan in the Commons this afternoon.
Jon Snow: So the reborn BNFL keeps the potentially profitable
bits of the business, and the tax payers pick up the bill for
cleaning up the mess?
Andrew Veitch: Obviously the government certainly doesn't see it
that way, and it may not be such a bad deal.
The new Liabilities Management Authority will get about £42
billion pounds worth of liabilities but they were always
taxpayers' liabilities, it's really shifting the burden from one
public purse to another:
If the new-born BNFL does make a profit, that'll be profit for
the government until and if the proposed public private
partnership is revived in four years' time - there may even be a
windfall for the Treasury.
At the moment even the government's most stern critics are rather
pleased with the plan. Because BNFL has bought the US nuclear
company Westinghouse - and that'll be the biggest employer in
whatever the new firm is called. Maybe they'll simply relocate to
the US.
Jon Snow: This all smacks of another Railtrack, company in deep
trouble so the government bails it out?
Andrew Veitch: The Conservatives made that point in the Commons
this afternoon, and not surprisingly, it was hotly denied
*****************************************************************
27 Yggdrasil Institute - Uranium Enrichment Newsletter - November 2001
The Uranium Enrichment Project publishes a monthly online
newsletter summarizing events within the US uranium enrichment
establishment. The newsletter is edited by Mary Byrd Davis, who
can be contacted at
[francenuc@francenuc.org] . A grant from The John Merck Fund
makes the newsletter possible.
1. Oak Ridge
2. Paducah
3. Portsmouth
4. US Department of Energy
5. Us Enrichment Corporation
6. ALTERNATIVE technology
7. Depleted uranium
I. OAK RIDGE
Funding for state oversight
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has agreed to give at least
$3.1 million to the state of Tennessee for monitoring
environmental cleanup at Oak Ridge during fiscal year (FY) 2002.
The funding will be shared by the Tennessee Department of
Environment and Conservation's DOE Oversight Division, the Oak
Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, and the Tennessee
Emergency Management Agency. The FY 2002 money represents roughly
what these entities spent in FY 2001, but is less than the $4.7
million that the state requested. Tennessee has received federal
money annually since 1991 to monitor pollution problems at Oak
Ridge. (Oak Ridger, 9/14/01; Frank Munger, 10/1/01)
Depleted uranium contract
Manufacturing Sciences Corp. has signed an eight-year agreement
to manufacture tubes of depleted uranium for British Nuclear
Fuels' Sellafield reprocessing plant. The agreement is worth $3
million a year. Manufacturing Sciences is a subsidiary of BNFL
Inc., which in turn is the American subsidiary of British Nuclear
Fuels. For the tubes, Manufacturing Sciences will draw on its
inventory of depleted uranium, which it obtained earlier from the
US uranium enrichment plants. The company has manufactured
depleted uranium tubes for Sellafield previously. In 2000
Manufacturing Sciences closed its radioactive materials recycling
center. It now concentrates on manufacturing projects. (Frank
Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, 10/26/01)
Worker contamination at ETTP
Six employees of R&R Electric charge that they were exposed to
asbestos and probably also to PCBs when they worked for several
months in 2000 cutting up old electrical condensers from the K-25
plant, now the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). They were
not given protective clothing ,and claim that they were told that
the condensers were not hazardous. R&R is a subsidiary of
American Technologies Inc., which bought the equipment from BNFL.
R&R worked in space at Oak Ridge subleased from Southern Freight
Logistics, which leases space at ETTP as part of DOE's
reindustrialization program. Journalist Frank Munger notes that
the alleged contamination raises the question of whether work
rules and regulations strictly adhered to by DOE and its prime
contractors are "loosely followed-or ignored altogether--at
private operations taking place on the federal site." (Frank
Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 10/7/01)
II. PADUCAH
October 17 DOE held a teleconference from Paducah Community
College on the possible recycling of radioactively contaminated
scrap metal. Participants in Paducah were linked via satellite
with officials in Washington, DC and Oak Ridge. DOE plans to hold
a public hearing at Paducah before issuing a draft environmental
impact statement in on the disposition of scrap metal in March.
(See the August UEN.) The agency expects to generate a million
tons of scrap metal in the complex as a whole within the next
twenty years. At the present time Paducah stores 54,000 tons of
contaminated scrap metal, more than any other facility in the DOE
complex (Joe Walker, Paducah Sun,10/18/01; Tuss Taylor, Kentucky
Environmental Oversight News, 10/01)
Western Kentucky Research Consortium
The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority announced
September 27 that it would grant $400,000 towards creation of a
Western Kentucky Energy/Environmental Research Consortium.
Supporters of the consortium, including representatives of three
state universities and Paducah Community College, planned to meet
privately October 11 to discuss use of the grant. Bill Brundage,
Kentucky's commissioner of the New Economy, says that the state
money will be matched with $400,000 from other sources. The funds
will be used to hire staff, organize the consortium, and seek
grants and contracts for research. Consortium supporters would
like to turn the Paducah Information Age Park into an
energy/environmental research facility. (Joe Walker and Bill
Bartleman, Paducah Sun, 10/1/01)
Neptunium exposure
Richard C. Baker, now retired but head of radiation protection at
the Paducah plant for most of thirty-five years, testified in a
deposition in September that urine tests of twenty-one workers
carried out in 1961 showed that their bodies were contaminated
with neptunium. However, he believed, he said, that the neptunium
was the result of recent exposure to allowable levels of
neptunium dust at the plant and therefore was not cause for
alarm. He was not required by law to calculate the level of
radiation to which workers were exposed, he explained. Baker was
deposed in September by Louisville attorney William McMurry who
is representing current and former plant workers and their
families in a $10 billion suit against the Paducah plant's former
operators and suppliers of uranium. According to McMurry,
calculations based on accepted health physics practices indicate
that the workers were exposed to much higher levels of neptunium
dust than were permissible. (James R. Carroll, The
Courier-Journal, 10/29/01)
DOE vs. the State of Kentucky on radioactive waste regulation
The State of Kentucky in 1996 granted a permit to DOE to operate
a landfill at the Paducah site, but imposed the conditions that
the landfill take no radioactive waste and only a limited amount
of solid waste contaminated by radioactivity. DOE filed an
administrative challenge against the conditions on the basis that
only the federal government can regulate nuclear material at the
facility. DOE lost the challenge, but was subsequently supported
by a district court and the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The
State appealed to the Supreme Court, but, in mid-October, the
Supreme Court, without comment, declined to hear the State's
case. (Associated Press, 10/15/01)
Cercla cell
Cleanup of the Paducah site will create at least 1.6 million
cubic yards of contaminated waste. According to an article in
Kentucky Division of Waste Management's Kentucky Environmental
Oversight News, the Kentucky Division of Waste Management, US
Environmental Protection Agency and DOE-Paducah have discussed at
length options for managing these wastes. After considering the
possibilities, regulators have agreed to permit DOE "to evaluate
and demonstrate the viability of an on-site waste disposal
facility" or Cercla cell, the article states. The cell would be
"an engineered landfill," capable of containing 3.1 million cubic
yards of waste and covering about 110 acres. The regulators have
imposed two conditions. The first condition is that DOE must
commit to excavating various burial grounds by stipulated
deadlines before the division approves a feasibility study for
construction of the cell. The burial grounds are sites that would
not otherwise be excavated and in which the majority of
radionuclides tend to move slowly through the ground. The second
condition is that DOE adequately characterize the CERCLA cell to
assess its viability. The assessment is to include a seismic
investigation, including two fault studies, one on regional fault
characteristics and the other on characteristics of DOE's
preferred location for the cell, just east of the main entrance
(Hobbs Road). Mark Donham of the Site Specific Advisory Board has
complained in the past about the lack of information available to
the public on the planned Cercla cell. (Brian Baker and Tuss
Taylor, Kentucky Division of Waste Management, Kentucky
Environmental Oversight News, 10/01; Mark Donham, Personal
Communication)
III. PORTSMOUTH
NIOSH report
The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
held a public meeting at the Vern Riffe Vocational School,
Piketon, October 4 to discuss its report "Mortality Patterns of
Uranium Enrichment Workers at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion
Plant." The epidemiologic study examined the causes of death
among all workers employed at the plant between September 1, 1954
and December 31, 1991. Researchers found significantly less
mortality among the workers than in the US population as a whole
from all causes and from all cancers. It also did not identify
any dose-response trends (i.e., significant relationships between
exposures and death) or any statistically significant excesses in
mortality from any specific cause. The report did note however
that the lower mortality among workers is consistent with what is
known as "the healthy worker effect"-only healthy people receive
jobs at a plant. It also noted that results of monitoring "for
chemicals and various forms of radiation were incomplete."
Workers questioned the report's conclusions. (
www.cdc.gov/niosh/2001-133.htm
[http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/2001-133.htm] )
Sale of lithium
DOE has completed the sale of millions of pounds of lithium
hydroxide monohydrate that had been stored at the Portsmouth
plant since the 1960s. The nonradioactive material was used to
make material for nuclear weapons in the 1950s and early 1960s.
About seventy percent of the compound has been sold to TOXCO in
California; the balance, to five other companies. The lithium
hydroxide will be put to such uses as batteries, pharmaceuticals,
and as an additive to concrete for the construction of roads.
(EarthVision Environmental News, 10/12/01)
IV. US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE)
Regulations to implement the Energy Employees Compensation
Program
October 5 the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
published in the Federal Register two rules under which the
department will provide scientific expertise to assist in
decision-making under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness
Compensation Program Act of 2000 (EEOICPA). "Methods for
Radiation Dose Reconstruction" was published as an interim final
rule; "Guidelines for Determining the Probability of Causation"
as a notice of proposed rulemaking. The interim rule specifies
the methods that HHS will use in developing information that it
will present to the Department of Labor (DOL) to help DOL
evaluate claims by workers who seek compensation for certain
cancers but are not requesting compensation under the "Special
Exposure Cohort" provisions of the Act. The proposed rulemaking
concerns the scientific guidelines that DOL will follow in using
the information from HHS, i.e., "in determining whether it is at
least as likely as not that an energy employee's cancer was
caused by occupational exposure." HHS is seeking comments on the
interim final rule within 30 days and on the proposed rulemaking
within 60 days. Comments should be sent to the CDC/NIOSH Docket
Officer at CDC/NIOSH Docket Office, Robert A. Taft Laboratories,
M/S C34, 4676 Columbia Parkway, Cincinnati, Ohio 45226 or
electronically to NIOCINDOCKET@CDC.GOV . The interim rule and
proposed rulemaking are available at www.cdc.gov/niosh
[http://www.cdc.gov/niosh] . (CDC/NIOSH Press Announcement,
10/5/01)
September 7 DOE published in the Federal Register proposed
procedures for implementation of Subtitle D of the Energy
Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act . Under
Subtitle D, DOE is to assist employees in filing claims, with the
relevant state workers' compensation system, based on the
consequences of exposure to a toxic substance. To do so DOE is to
set up independent physicians' panels to help determine the cause
of workers' illnesses. Written comments on the proposed
procedures were originally to be submitted by October 9, but the
date was extended to November 8 after a public meeting on the
proposal was postponed.
Two meetings on the physicians panels were held: October 10 at
DOE headquarters in Washington and October 25 near the Cincinnati
airport. At the Washington meeting, workers criticized the
proposal, in part because it indicates that claims will be
forwarded to medical panels for evaluation only if they meet
criteria established by the relevant state workers' compensation
laws, although the panels were supposedly to overcome obstacles
set up by state programs. Workers also protested the proposal's
stating that the panels are to determine whether it is "more
likely than not" (rather than "as likely as not") that a given
worker was made ill by his or her work. On the other hand, a
spokesperson for the American Insurance Association praised the
proposal for protecting the rights of states. At the Cincinnati
meeting, remarks by workers included questions as to why the
original legislation sidetracked chemical injury for workers at
gaseous diffusion plants, although exposure to uranium
hexafluoride and other toxic chemicals are major causes of
illness among workers at these plants. The text of the Guidelines
for Physicians Panel Determinations on Worker Requests for
Assistance in Filing for State Workers' Compensation Benefits"
can be found at tis.eh.doe.gov/advocacy/index.html
[http://tis.eh.doe.gov/advocacy/index.html] . (Nancy Zuckerbrod,
Associated Press, 10/12/01; Vina Colley, PRESS, Personal
Communication)
Defense Authorization Act
The Defense Authorization bill for FY 2002, which the Senate
passed in early October (S 1148), included improvements in the
Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, among
them allowing compensation for surviving children who were over
eighteen when their worker parent died and relaxing criteria for
a determination of benefits for silicosis. The House version of
the bill (HR 2586) did not address the compensation program. The
conference committee on the measure is scheduled to meet November
7.
Energy and Water Development Appropriations
The conference report on the Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Bill for FY 2002 (HR 2311) was approved by the
House and Senate November 1. It includes $7.4 billion for cleanup
under DOE's Environmental Management program. This sum is $803
million more than the administration requested and $167.7 million
more than the FY 2001 appropriation. (Energy Communities
Alliance, Bulletin, 10/01)
Utility suits on alleged overcharges
In October thirty-three domestic and foreign utilities sued the
federal government for damages for alleged overcharges for
enrichment services by DOE between FY 1985 and FY 1993. The
utilities claim that they were mistakenly charged for interest on
the gas centrifuge enrichment program after DOE had terminated
the project and written off the costs. They also claim that DOE
included high-assay uranium production costs in its prices after
the department was no longer responsible for the high-assay
program. Damages sought total more than $500 million. (Platt's
Nuclear News Flashes, 15/10/01 and 16/10/01)
Security
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) released in October
"U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex: Security at Risk." The report
presents the results of an eight-month investigation, which found
that DOE has disregarded proven threats to nuclear security,
thwarted efforts to improve this security, and carried out
security tests that are unrealistic. The report does not mention
the Paducah or the Portsmouth plants by name, but it does refer
several times to Oak Ridge, because Oak Ridge's Y-12 site stores
highly enriched uranium. The infrastructure is crumbling at Oak
Ridge, the report notes, and plans to build new storage
facilities for the uranium have become bogged down in
bureaucracy. The authors of the report suggest combining the
remaining functions of Oak Ridge and Savanna River at one site to
avoid replacing the infrastructure at both sites. They also
suggest storing fissile material for the entire complex at a
single site such as the secure underground weapons storage
facility at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico or the Device
Assembly Facility at the Nevada Test Site.
Frank Munger in a column for the Knoxville News-Sentinel
discusses the fact that the public is asking questions about
security at the Y-12 site because of the highly enriched uranium.
Munger notes that the facilities at Y-12 are "antiquated" with
much of the nuclear material "housed in wood-frame structures as
old as I am." Details of accident analyses have not been made
public, but he surmises that "much of the hazard would result
from the combination of fire and enriched uranium." (10/3/01)
At Oak Ridge's K-25 site and at Paducah and Portsmouth, cylinders
of depleted uranium hexafluoride are obvious hazards. If uranium
hexafluoride escapes into the atmosphere, it reacts with moisture
in the air to form hydrogen fluoride, a corrosive gas, and uranyl
fluoride, a soluble compound, toxic from both a chemical and a
radiological point of view. An airplane crash that causes a fire
is one of two possible initiators of releases from the cylinders
that DOE identified in an environmental assessment. Security
measures at Paducah and Portsmouth are undoubtedly designed to
protect the cylinders and the process buildings and their
contents. ("Refurbishment of Uranium Hexafluoride Cylinder
Storage Yards . . . at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant,
Paducah, Kentucky," July 1996)
The Oak Ridge, Paducah, and Portsmouth sites were included in the
Federal Aviation Administration's temporary ban on private planes
flying within eleven miles of operating nuclear power plants and
other specified nuclear sites. The ban, intended to avert
terrorist attacks, was announced October 30 and is to expire
November 7. (Associated Press, 10/30/01; www.faa.gov
[http://www.faa.gov] )
Withdrawal of information
As a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center, DOE has
removed information that it regards as sensitive from its various
Web sites and, in some cases, from its public reading rooms. The
Alliance for Nuclear Accountability has acquired an October 26
memo from Francis S. Blake, deputy secretary of Energy, to "all
department elements" asking them to "review the operational
information accessible to members of the public and remove or
restrict access, as appropriate, to information that may be used
to target the Department of Energy." A memo with more specific
directions, also obtained by the Alliance, went out from Kaye
Sylvester of the Office of Policy Planning and Budget in
Environmental Management to "All" on October 18. We checked the
site of the Oak Ridge Operations Office, www.oakridge.doe.gov
[http://www.oakridge.doe.gov] , for the results of these and
other memos, the morning of November 7, as we were about to put
this newsletter online. The page of the Freedom of Information
Act office is unavailable. The reason is not specified and could
possibly be a technical problem. This page normally provides
access to documents released under the act. Among other
unavailable information is the page of BWXT Y12 and the Web sites
of some listed contacts. On the Web site of Defense Programs is a
note, "The Defense Program (DP) Web site is unavailable until
further notice." The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as the
media has widely reported, has also removed information from its
Web site to protect the installations that it regulates, which
include the Paducah and Portsmouth plants.
V. United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC)
Lawsuit on initial prospectus
Senior US District Judge Alexander Harvey II has ruled for the
plaintiffs on several motions intended to move forward the
consolidated class action in a federal securities fraud lawsuit
against USEC. The plaintiffs charge that USEC gave an inaccurate
picture of its prospects in the prospectus for the July 1998
Initial Public Offering. USEC made a motion to dismiss class
claims, which the judge rejected. The judge approved the
selection of lead plaintiffs and of two law firms as lead
counsel. The suits were originally brought in federal court for
the Western District of Kentucky but have been transferred to
Maryland. (The Daily Record Online, 10/25/01)
Quarterly financial report
USEC has reported a loss for the first quarter of FY 2002 of $4.7
million or $0.06 per share, compared with a profit of $4.6
million or $.06 per share in the same period last year. Revenue
for the quarter, which ended September 30, totaled $300.5
million, compared with $226.8 million in the first quarter of FY
2001. "The increase reflects significantly higher SWU volumes
offset by lower average prices billed to customers, primarily due
to the timing and mix of customer orders." The quarterly results
have not caused the company to change its full-year guidance,
which anticipates a net income of $35 to $40 million for the
entire fiscal year. (USEC Press Release, 10/24/01)
Price Anderson Act
USEC is among the DOE contractors in the Energy Contractors
Price-Anderson Group, an entity that supports the extension of
the Price-Anderson Act. The Act, which was first passed in 1957,
limits the liability of owners and operators of commercial
nuclear power plants in case of an accident. It also protects DOE
contractors. When USEC was privatized, Congress extended
Price-Anderson coverage to the company, for its two operating
enrichment plants and for work on Avlis at Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory. The Price-Anderson Act expires in August of
2002. On October 31 of this year, the House Energy and Commerce
Committee marked up HR 2983, a reauthorization of the act, with
language that would take away liability protection from DOE
contractors who cause accidents through "intentional misconduct."
(Inside Energy/with Federal Lands, 6/4/01; Energy Communities
Alliance, Bulletin, 10/01)
See also USEC's strategy under Advanced Technology below.
VI. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
Urenco's strategy
Pat Upson of Urenco discussed the firm's strategy at the World
Nuclear Association's 2001 Symposium in September. The company
has developed six generations of centrifuges since the early
1970s. The most recent, TC21, has been operating for six months
in a lead assembly. Within the next eighteen months Urenco will
decide whether to begin using it in production plants. The TC21
has a separation factor more than fifty times that of the early
machines and an output double that of the TC12, presently in use,
but is "much more complicated, with more components, and
specifications which are more difficult to reach." Urenco will
concentrate on improving the TC21 in coming years rather than on
creating yet another new generation of machines, which would lead
to plants less flexible to operate. (
www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/upson.htm
[http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2001/upson.htm] )
USEC's strategy
October 2, at a seminar sponsored by the Nuclear Energy
Institute, Dennis Spurgeon executive vice president and chief
operating officer of USEC Inc. presented at some length USEC's
position in regard to Silex and centrifuges. USEC will continue
to invest in the development of Silex. The technology shows
"promising results," but "process efficiency is not yet proven."
On the other hand, with centrifugation, USEC "is not developing a
new centrifuge technology" but is "merely replicating that which
was demonstrated by DOE in 1985, but with improvements and at a
lower cost." DOE's advanced machines performed "at more than 300
SWU [separative work units] per machine per year, it's good
enough!" The USEC machine is "larger than competing technologies"
and "will cost about twice as much as the latest generation of
competing technology, [but] it will produce about four times as
many SWU." [Ed: It is not clear whether Spurgeon refers to
Urenco's TC12 or TC21 (see above).] Thus, Spurgeon says, capital
costs per SWU will be lower.
USEC is seeking a second year extension of a DOE-approved
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement or CRADA, under
which it has been working on centrifuges in cooperation with
UT-Battelle at the East Tennessee Technology Park at Oak Ridge.
It hopes to demonstrate centrifuge performance under an extension
of the CRADA and is ready to finance an extension, but needs DOE
support in the form of access to Oak Ridge facilities and
UT-Battelle personnel, plus approval for continued use of DOE
intellectual property. Following a successful demonstration, USEC
plans to license, construct, and operate a lead cascade "at a
gaseous diffusion plant." It will then seek financial partners to
construct a centrifuge plant, which it will expand incrementally.
(Platt Nuclear News Flashes, 10/2/01; speech available at
www.usec.com [http://www.usec.com] )
An additional US enrichment initiative
Officials of Exelon and Duke have sent a letter to President Bush
stating that a group of US utilities and additional partners are
"actively seeking to deploy proven and competitive enrichment
technology in the US." They asked the administration not to take
any steps that would give a special advantage in building a new
plant in the United States to USEC Inc. and also asked the
administration to consider appointing a group known as Nuclear &
Energy Security Partnerships as a second executive agent under
the US-Russian highly-enriched uranium agreement. (Platt's
Nuclear News Flashes, 10/30/01)
End to Avlis in Japan
The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has decided
to end research and development of laser uranium enrichment
technology. The decision reflects uncertainty about the
technology's applicability and economic feasibility. USEC stopped
work on Avlis (Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation) in 1999,
although it continues to invest in development of Silex
(Separation of Isotopes by Laser Excitation) , a molecular laser
isotope separation process. France has decided to end work on
Avlis in 2003. (Kyodo News Service, Japan Economic Newswire,
10/2/01)
VII. DEPLETED URANIUM
DOE postponed the meetings on depleted uranium conversion
scheduled for early November near the three gaseous diffusion
plants. (See October UEN.) It has moved the meeting at Oak Ridge
to December 4 (Pollard Auditorium, Oak Ridge Institute for
Science and Education), at Paducah to December 6 (Great Hall,
Information Age Park Resource Center), and in the Portsmouth area
to November 28 (Vern Riffe Vocational School, Piketon). The
department has also extended the period for written comments.
They should now be postmarked by January 11, 2002. (DOE Program
Announcement, 10/31/01)
Return to: Yggdrasil Institute
[http://www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil/] Earth Island Institute
[http://www.earthisland.org/]
*****************************************************************
28 A VIABLE DOMESTIC URANIUM INDUSTRY?
Yggdrasil Institute: Uranium Enrichment Project
Yggdrasil Institute is a project of Earth Island Institute
[http://www.earthisland.org] P.O. Box 131, Georgetown, KY 40324
E-mail: marybdavis@earthlink.net [marybdavis@earthlink.net] ·
Tel.: (502) 868-9074
Mary Byrd Davis
Uranium Enrichment Project
The US nuclear industry has for years “used self-sufficiency in
uranium fuel as a major selling point.”[i] Now the Bush
administration is reviewing the status of “domestic nuclear
fuel, ‘in part to determine whether a domestic uranium enrichment
industry is economically feasible or necessary.’”[ii] Entities
urging the government to support the faltering enrichment
industry argue that for reasons of national security we need to
maintain a domestic supply of uranium fuel. An examination of
the US fuel chain, however, shows that, no matter how strong the
enrichment sector, the nation would not have a viable domestic
uranium industry without major changes elsewhere along the fuel
chain.
Key links in the chain: uranium mining and fuel
manufacture are dominated by foreign corporations. The
production of electricity is still for the most part the domain
of US-owned companies, but the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
supports legislation that would remove the current restriction on
foreign ownership of reactors. The industry is not able to
dispose safely of its waste; and the academic infrastructure that
trains nuclear engineers and scientists is fading away.
In this report, we examine the fuel chain segment by
segment with an eye to foreign influences and the ability of
various links in the chain to support the nuclear power sector.
We then look briefly at what it would take to revive the entire
industry, and draw conclusions. Basic information about
individual facilities is provided in the appendix.
I. DOES THE UNITED STATES NOW HAVE A VIABLE DOMESTIC INDUSTRY?
I.A. Mining
The mining of uranium ore in the United States is
dwindling. Furthermore, foreign companies own the only three
mines that are active as of November 2001.
The United States in 2000 produced by mining a total of only 3.1
million pounds of U3O8 (uranium oxide), 31% less than in 1999.
The 3.1 million pounds came from one underground mine and four in
situ leaching (ISL) operations. Some additional uranium was
recovered from waste mine-water and from restoration activities
at closed ISL sites.[iii] (In in situ leaching, the uranium ore
remains in the ground. A leaching liquid is injected into the
ground through wells; the liquid, now bearing uranium, is pumped
out through other wells.)
The underground mine is the Schwartzwalder Project in Colorado,
owned by the Cotter Corporation, which is 100% owned by the US
firm General Atomics.[iv]. The mine is no longer in operation.
The four in situ leaching operations are Crow Butte in Nebraska;
and Highland, Christensen Ranch, and Smith Ranch in Wyoming.
Crow Butte and Highland are owned by companies that are 100%
subsidiaries of Cameco, a Canadian corporation; Smith Ranch is
owned by a 100% subsidiary of Rio Algom Mining Corporation, which
is in turn 100% owned by the British company Billiton Plc.
Christensen Ranch, which closed before the end of 2000, is 71%
owned by the French company Cogéma through COMIN.
Hydro Resources, a subsidiary of the US company Uranium
Resources, Inc. is in the process of obtaining authorization to
construct and operate four ISL projects in the Eastern Navajo
Agency in northwestern New Mexico. The company has said that it
will not begin mining until the price of uranium reaches $15.00 a
pound. Currently uranium is selling at under $9.00 a pound.
Residents of the area, with the support of national
organizations, are fighting the planned mining, in particular
because of fears of water pollution.[v] Hydro Resources may have
been counting on a $30 million subsidy from the federal
government, as it would have been eligible for funding for in
situ mining contained in HR 4 and S 472 before the Senate.
However, opponents of the mines have convinced key legislators to
remove the subsidy from the bills.[vi]
Known uranium reserves in the United States that are
recoverable at a cost of $30 per pound of U3O8 total 271 million
pounds; those recoverable at $50 per pound, total 904 million
pounds (that is, the equivalent of five years or eighteen years
supply respectively for US reactors). Total expenditures for
uranium exploration and development in the United States in 2000
were $6.7 million, $5.6 million for surface drilling and $1.1
million for land acquisition. The total represents a reduction
of 25% from the previous year.
I.B. Concentration
Production of uranium concentrates in the form of U3O8 totaled
approximately 4.0 million pounds in 2000, a reduction of 14% from
the previous year. Only one conventional mill and four
unconventional plants operated during 2000.
The conventional mill is the Canon City Mill in Colorado which,
like the Schwartzwalder Project, is owned by the Cotter
Corporation, a subsidiary of General Atomics. As of the end of
June 2001, this mill was not operating.
The unconventional plants are the four in situ leach operations
listed above. (The operations may be termed “plants,” because the
uranium-bearing water is processed after it has been pumped up to
the ground.) As indicated above, Christensen Ranch is no longer
active.
Production of concentrate in 2001 is down from production in
2000. In the first two quarters of 2000, production totaled a
little more than 2.0 million pounds; in the first and second
quarters of 2001, production totaled just under 1.5 million
pounds, a decrease of roughly 28%. The Energy Information
Administration (EIA) predicts that production for 2001 as a whole
will be less than 3.0 million pounds.
Owners and operators of US civilian nuclear power reactors have
calculated that they will need for refueling purposes natural
uranium equivalent to a maximum of 518.4 million pounds of U3O8
during the ten-year period 2001-2010 or about 50 million pounds
of U3O8 per year. In 2000, uranium equivalent to 51.4 million
pounds of U3O8 was used by US utilities.[vii] Thus the domestic
industry is far from meeting the need.
I.C. Conversion
The United States has only one operating plant to convert U3O8
(uranium oxide), known as yellowcake,[viii] to UF6 (uranium
hexafluoride), the feed for plants that enrich uranium by the
gaseous diffusion or centrifugation method. The plant, Honeywell
Specialty Chemicals in Metropolis, Illinois, has a nominal
capacity of 12,700 metric tons[ix] of uranium per year. It is
owned by Honeywell International Corporation, based in
Minneapolis. ConverDyn, a joint venture of Honeywell and General
Atomics, markets the UF6 produced at the plant. A conversion
plant owned by Sequoyah Nuclear Fuels in Gore, Oklahoma, stopped
converting U3O8 to UF6 in 1992 and is now undergoing
decommissioning.
The Honeywell plant has suffered financially in the past few
years because of a decline in the price paid for conversion.
The cost of conversion on the spot market fell from $5.85 per
kilogram of uranium as UF6 early in June 1997 to $2.30 per
kilogram in August 2000.[x] ConverDyn reported in late 2000 that
the average cost of production at the Metropolis plant for 2001
through 2003 will be $4.56 per kilogram of uranium, and that, in
spite of diversification initiatives, the plant was in danger of
closing. ConverDyn blamed the drop in prices on sales by USEC of
natural and enriched uranium hexafluoride obtained from DOE and
from Russia.[xi] The conversion services in the Russian
high-enriched uranium that USEC imports in downblended form, as
executive for the US-Russian HEU accord, is, in fact, roughly the
equivalent of the production of the Metropolis plant in 2000,
9180 metric tons of uranium as UF6 from Russia and 9300 metric
tons from Metropolis. Prices are, however, rebounding. As of
June 2001, the price in the spot market was $5.00 per kilogram of
uranium as UF6.[xii]
The Metropolis plant does not have sufficient
capacity to meet the conversion needs of US reactors, which total
approximately 17,500 metric tons of natural uranium a year.[xiii]
However, even if it did, US utilities would be likely to buy from
a mix of domestic and foreign sources.
I.D. Enrichment
Only one US company enriches uranium, the United
States Enrichment Corporation (USEC). It is struggling to remain
profitable, but at the present time does not have the capacity to
meet the enrichment needs of US utilities.
USEC came into existence in July 1993 as a government-owned
corporation to take over enrichment operations, which had
formerly been run by DOE and its predecessors. In July 1998,
USEC, through an initial public stock offering, became a
privately owned company. USEC leases from DOE two enrichment
plants, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky and the
Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio. Until mid 2001,
Paducah enriched uranium hexafluoride only to 2.75% uranium 235.
The UF6 was then shipped to Portsmouth to be further enriched to
the level desired by customers, generally between 3.5% and 5%
uranium 235.
USEC, though a private company, is the US executive agent for the
US-Russian HEU accord. Through the accord, the United States
agreed to purchase over a twenty-year period, 500 metric tons of
highly-enriched uranium (HEU) taken from Russian weapons and
downblended in Russia to low-enriched uranium.[xiv] As of
September 2001, with implementation of the agreement in its
seventh year, USEC had imported 125 metric tons of HEU in
downblended form (22.4 million SWU).[xv] There is, however, an
inherent conflict between USEC’s role as a private company, which
must strive to make a profit for stockholders, and its role as an
instrument of US non-proliferation policy.
The enrichment plants that USEC leases are more than
forty years old and use a technology that is no longer
competitive, largely because it requires large amounts of
electricity. A gas centrifuge plant typically demands 2,500
kilowatt hours per Separative Work Unit (SWU--a means of
measuring the work of enrichment).[xvi] A centrifuge plant
requires only 50 to 400 kilowatt hours per SWU.[xvii] Two of
USEC’s competitors, Minatom in Russia and Urenco in Germany, the
Netherlands, and United Kingdom, use centrifuges. France is
planning to replace the Eurodif plant, another USEC competitor,
with centrifuges when that plant reaches the end of its useful
life.
USEC’s financial situation has deteriorated since
privatization, to such an extent that various stockholders are
suing for misrepresentation at the time of the Initial Public
Offering. Net income was $152.4 million for FY 1999; $35 million
for FY 2001. USEC has in the past been wont to blame its lack of
financial success on its role as executive agent for the
US-Russian HEU accord. In May 1999, USEC stated, “Cost of sales
has been, and will continue to be, affected by amounts paid to
purchase SWU under the Russian Contract at prices that are
substantially higher than marginal production cost at the plants.
As a result of Russian SWU purchases, USEC has operated the
plants at lower production levels resulting in higher unit
production costs.”[xviii] Nevertheless, in 2001 USEC is counting
on Russian uranium to enable it to stay afloat financially.
As a cost-cutting measure USEC decided to shut down
the Portsmouth plant. To do so, it had to upgrade the Paducah
plant to enable this plant to enrich uranium hexafluoride to up
to 5.5% uranium 235. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
certified the new enrichment level in March 2001. The Portsmouth
plant closed in May 2001 and, with the help of government
funding, is now on cold standby. Paducah sends enriched uranium
to Portsmouth for transfer and shipping, but no other procedures
are carried out at that location.
Since stopping enrichment at Portsmouth, USEC has been severely
limited in its production capability. In 1998, the Paducah
plant’s nominal capacity was 11.3 million SWU per year. However,
USEC’s 10K report to the SEC for FY 2001 states “USEC estimates
that the maximum capacity of the existing equipment at the
Paducah plant is about 8 million SWU per year.” The report
continues “USEC expects to utilize the production equipment to
produce about 5 million SWU in fiscal 2002.” Some observers
think that USEC will experience difficulty in producing more than
4.3-4.5 million SWU a year at Paducah, in part because the plant
reduces production in the summer to cut electricity costs.
Even at 8 million SWU, Paducah would not be able to
turn out enough SWU to meet the demands of US utilities if they
were to try to buy enrichment services only from USEC. In 2001
US utilities purchased 11.8 million SWU (5.2 million from USEC
and 6.6 million from foreign sources).[xix] Furthermore, USEC
cannot meet, with Paducah’s production, the demands of its
present foreign and domestic customers—approximately 11 million
SWU per year.
Whether Paducah can actually produce enriched uranium that will
meet the requirements of utilities is an open question.
According to an informed source, as of early November 2001,
Paducah had not been able to enrich uranium hexafluoride to 5%
uranium 235 and had not been able to provide laboratory samples
to verify commercial quality.
USEC is obviously dependent on obtaining at least part of the
enrichment service that it sells, from sources other than future
production at Paducah. At the close of FY 2001, the company had a
SWU inventory valued at $918.3 million, up from $596 million at
the close of FY 2001[xx]; and BWX Technologies is blending down
for USEC 50 metric tons of HEU, containing 3.4 million SWU, a
gift from DOE at the time of privatization. However, the main
source on which USEC has been planning is the Russian Federation.
During its 2001 fiscal year, USEC paid around $90 per SWU for
Russian enrichment service.[xxi] The contract under which USEC
buys SWU from Russia expires at the end of 2001. USEC and
Tenchsnabexport (Tenex), the Russian executive agent, negotiated
a tentative agreement in 2000 under which the SWU imported under
the HEU agreement would be market-priced, but USEC would buy
additional commercial SWU from Russia.
The Bush administration has not approved the tentative agreement,
and the Russian government may no longer be willing to accept it.
The administration, in fact, told USEC in October to negotiate a
price for and to order weapons-uranium SWU from Russia but not to
import commercial SWU for calendar year 2002. The final price
for 2002 could scarcely be lower than the price for 2001, since
under the terms of the existing contract between USEC and Tenex,
the 2001 price is in effect for 2002 if no new agreement is
reached.
The price of the Russian SWU is crucial to USEC’s balance sheet.
In USEC’s 1999 fiscal year, 31% of its produced plus purchased
supply of SWU came from the Russian federation. USEC intends to
obtain 60% from Russia in 2002. According to an informed source,
the cost to USEC for enriched product from Paducah, at less than
4% uranium 235, averages around $140 per SWU ($109 for production
costs at Paducah, about $5 for transfer and shipment at
Portsmouth, and about $25 for costs at headquarters (overhead and
debt). The market price for SWU in the United States under
long-term contracts was $102 per SWU on June 30, 2001.[xxii]
Apparently USEC had hoped to pay Russia around $75 per SWU in
2002 and also to import commercial SWU.[xxiii] Combining the
high-cost Paducah product with low-cost Russian SWU would enable
it to sell SWU at a competitive price.
Additional factors complicate the operation of the Paducah plant.
Paducah, like Portsmouth, uses Freon, an ozone destroying
chemical, as its primary coolant. The Freon has long leaked “from
pipe joints, sight glasses, valves, coolers and condensers.”
USEC states that it has enough Freon to supply the Paducah plant
“through at least fiscal 2003,”[xxiv] but production of Freon
ended in the United States in 1995. After USEC’s supply runs
out, price, if not availability, will likely pose
difficulties.[xxv] Another complicating factor is the inability
of Paducah to enrich uranium to the level that will be required
by at least one version of the proposed new Pebble Bed Modulated
Reactor-- 8.1% uranium 235.[xxvi]
According to its 10-K report for FY 2001, USEC plans to select an
advanced enrichment technology in FY 2002. It will choose
between Silex, a laser-based technology, which the Australian
firm Silex Systems Limited is developing (USEC is paying for
exclusive rights to the application of Silex to uranium
enrichment) and gas centrifuge technology developed by DOE, on
which USEC has been working with University of Tennessee-Battelle
at Oak Ridge. During the past year they cooperated, at USEC’s
expense, under a DOE-approved Cooperative Research and
Development Agreement or Crada, which USEC hopes that DOE will
extend. USEC “believes new enrichment facilities using either
gas centrifuge or Silex could be ready by the end of the
decade.”[xxvii] Following a successful demonstration of
centrifuges, USEC would license, construct, and operate a lead
cascade “at a gaseous diffusion plant.” It would then seek
financial partners to construct a centrifuge plant, which it
would expand incrementally.[xxviii] Whether USEC can survive
until it is ready to deploy a new technology and whether the
technology that USEC chooses will operate successfully are open
questions.
Meanwhile, a US alternative to USEC is in the offing. Officials
of Exelon and Duke have sent a letter to President Bush stating
that a group of US utilities and additional partners are
“actively seeking to deploy proven and competitive enrichment
technology in the US.” They asked the administration not to take
any steps that would give a special advantage in building a new
plant in the United States to USEC and also asked the
administration to consider appointing a group known as Nuclear &
Energy Security Partnerships as a second executive agent under
the US-Russian HEU agreement.[xxix] The “additional partners”
include Urenco, which owns and deploys in Europe centrifuge
technology that is now in its sixth generation. In October the
chief executive officer of Urenco briefed Congressional leaders
in Washington on Urenco centrifuge technology. Urenco is owned by
the governments of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and by
two German utilities. Again we are back to the foreign factor.
I.E. Fuel fabrication
Fabrication of fuel for civilian reactors, like
production of uranium, is today largely in foreign hands. Four
plants located in the United States produce civilian fuel. The
only one that can be considered a US-directed operation is Global
Nuclear Fuel—Americas, which manufactures fuel for boiling water
reactors in Wilmington, North Carolina. The owner is Global
Nuclear Fuel--General Electric 51%, Hitachi Ltd. 24.5%, and
Toshiba Corporation 24.5%. Westinghouse Electric, which produces
fuel for pressurized water reactors in Columbia, South Carolina,
is now a 100% subsidiary of the British-owned British Nuclear
Fuels Ltd (BNFL). (Westinghouse Electric closed a fuel production
plant in Hematite, Missouri, in the summer of 2001 following
BNFL’s purchase of the nuclear fuel operations of Swiss-based
ABB, which had owned the plant.) Framatome ANP, which operates a
plant in Lynchburg, Virginia that produces fuel assemblies, and a
plant in Richland, Washington, that produces pellets and
assemblies for boiling water and pressurized water reactors, is
owned 66% by the French company Framatome and 34% by the German
company Siemens. (Prior to the creation of Framatome ANP in
2001, Framatome-Cogéma Fuels, a subsidiary of two French
companies, had owned the Lynchburg plant, and Siemens Power
Corporation, the Richland plant.)
For two additional plants the fabrication of fuel for
the US Navy is a major project. As would be expected, these
plants, which are authorized to handle highly enriched uranium,
are owned by US companies. They contribute to the commercial
fuel chain, notably by blending down uranium.
In order to render surplus plutonium removed from
weapons unsuitable for future weapons, the US Department of
Energy (DOE) has contracted with a consortium to build a plant to
produce mixed oxide fuel at DOE’s Savanna River site, also to
manage the irradiation of the fuel in civilian reactors, and the
eventual deactivation of the fuel production plant. The members
of the consortium are Duke Engineering Services, Stone and
Webster, and Cogéma, Inc., the US subsidiary of the French
company Cogéma. Subcontractors include Nuclear Fuel Services
(United States) , Belgonucléaire (Belgium), Framatome ANP through
Framatome Cogéma Fuels (France and Germany).
I.F. Generation of electricity
In 2001, 103 reactors produced 753.9 billion kilowatt
hours, approximately 20% of US electricity. The total was 3.5%
above the 1999 figure of 728.1 billion kilowatt hours. The
average net capacity factor in 2000 was 89.1%.[xxx] All of the
reactors are wholly or partly owned by US firms, but the industry
seems poised for change.
The joint venture AmerGen Energy was formed by the US utility
PECO[xxxi] and the foreign entity British Energy to buy US
nuclear power plants.[xxxii] This venture is today a partnership
in which the US utility Exelon[xxxiii] (formed by the merger of
PECO and Unicom) and the foreign entity British Energy each own
50%.
The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, and the NRC’s
regulations in 10 CFR 50.38 make foreign entities ineligible to
apply for and obtain a license to operate nuclear power plants.
The NRC staff evaluates license transfer applications that
involve foreign ownership by using the Final Standard Review Plan
(SRP) on Foreign Ownership, Control, or Domination, issued
September 29, 1999. In addition, the NRC must determine that a
license or license transfer “would not be inimical to the common
defense and security of the United States.” However, apart from
a prohibition on 100% ownership by a foreign entity, there is no
fixed percentage above which foreign ownership is strictly
prohibited.
When AmerGen sought a license transfer that would enable it to
operate Three Mile Island, Unit 1, the NRC, “Based on a
‘negation action plan’ developed pursuant to the SRP to mitigate
foreign ownership, control or domination . . . found that the
foreign partner did not control or dominate the safety-related
decision making related to the plant. Based on this assessment,
the NRC was able to approve AmerGen’s purchase of Three Mile
Island, Unit 1, as well as subsequent license transfers involving
AmerGen,” the NRC states.[xxxiv]
The subsequent license transfers through November 2001 have been
for the Clinton and Oyster Creek plants. AmerGen failed in an
attempt to purchase Vermont Yankee, because Vermont regulators
opposed the purchase and also did not succeed in acquiring Nine
Mile Point, because a single stockholder exercised his right to
veto.[xxxv]
The NRC states that it has analyzed proposals for
license transfers by entities other than AmerGen with some degree
of foreign involvement. “As industry consolidation progresses,
it is anticipated that there will be additional situations in
which foreign organizations seek to acquire domestic nuclear
power plants and domestic utility organizations. . . . Since
1999, the Commission has developed and submitted proposed
legislation that would remove restrictions on foreign ownership.
[italics ours] Senator Domenici has introduced in the current
session of Congress, S. 472, ‘Nuclear Energy Electricity
Assurance Act of 2001,’ which, among other things would eliminate
the foreign ownership restrictions for nuclear power plants.”
[xxxvi]
A look at non-nuclear power plants in the United States gives an
idea of what could be ahead for the nuclear sector if the
regulation on foreign ownership changes. The British utility
Powergen acquired Louisville Gas and Electric (headquarters in
Louisville, Kentucky) and Kentucky Utilities Company
(headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky). Then in April 2001 the
German company E.On AG offered to buy Powergen; and Powergen
accepted the offer. If regulatory authorities in the United
States and Europe agree, Kentucky consumers will be served by the
second-largest energy service provider in the world.
The German utility group RWE AG is interested in investing in US
electricity suppliers and has not ruled out nuclear
plants.[xxxvii] The Canadian Cameco Corp., which already owns
uranium mines in the United States, is also among the foreign
companies interested in US power plants. It is considering
investing in idle reactors or completing unfinished facilities in
the United States.[xxxviii] I.G. Waste management
The major problem in regard to commercial nuclear
waste is the lack of means of disposing of the waste as safely as
possible. The problem is not limited to the widely publicized
issue of what to do with irradiated fuel. A low-level waste
crisis is in the offing. Foreign corporations with experience in
waste management are eager for US contracts, and one of them has
made a major contribution to the dissemination outside the
industry of contaminated metal. Below we look briefly at the
waste situation by type of waste as defined in the United States.
I.G.1.High-level waste (irradiated fuel, the products of
reprocessing irradiated fuel, and other high activity, long-lived
waste from military activities)
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act made DOE
responsible for siting, constructing, and operating a deep
underground repository for irradiated fuel and other high-level
waste. The agency was to complete construction of a repository
and assume responsibility for the fuel by February 1998. It
missed the deadline.
A 1987 amendment to the act directed DOE to examine only one of
the three sites that were under intensive scientific study at the
time, Yucca Mountain, Nevada. (If DOE finds Yucca Mountain
unsuitable, the agency must seek new direction from Congress.)
Opposition to Yucca Mountain has been intense, with many people
regarding Congress’s choice as the result of politics rather than
science.
DOE is expected to decide later in 2001 whether Yucca Mountain is
acceptable for a repository. If DOE finds the site suitable, the
NRC will have to determine whether to license it. A repository at
Yucca Mountain will not open before 2010 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, irradiated fuel is accumulating in pools and in dry
casks at reactor sites. As of September 2000, about 42,000
metric tons of irradiated fuel from nuclear power plants awaited
a repository. By 2035, the 42,000 tons from power plants could
double, and an additional 2,500 tons from research reactors,
naval reactors, and reactors to produce material for weapons may
need disposal.[xxxix]
I.G.2. Transuranic waste (waste contaminated by transuranics,
i.e., radioactive elements that are heavier than uranium and
extremely long-lived.)
Waste classed in the United States as “transuranic” comes for the
most part from Department of Defense and Department of Energy
programs. The DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project, a
controversial waste disposal site deep underground in a salt
formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico, is receiving “transuranic
waste.” Waste classed and handled as “low-level” is allowed to
contain some transuranics. [xl]
I.G.3. Uranium mill tailings (waste material produced by the
milling and other processing of uranium ore to concentrate the
uranium)
Since the uranium ore mined in the United States contains less
than 1% uranium by weight, essentially all of the treated ore
ends up as tailings. The tailings are normally heaped near the
facility where they were created. They typically consist of a
slurry containing “ground-up, sand- and clay-size, waste-rock
particles, most of [the] uranium-daughter nuclides, and hazardous
chemical residues.” Releasing gamma radiation and radon among
other substances, they can contaminate the water, air, and soil.
Under the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action
Project, the Department of Energy, in cooperation with states,
Indian tribes, and owners of specific sites, has carried out
remediation activities on more than twenty sites where uranium
was milled from the early 1940s through 1970. The aim has been
to store the tailings, still normally near the point of
production, in such a way as to prevent further contamination of
the environment, and to clean up existing contamination. The
total cost of the program, as of December 31, 1999, was $1.48
billion.[xli] Tailings piles are yet to be remediated at
additional sites. The 10.5 million tons of tailings dumped by
the Atlas Corporation mill on the Colorado River near Moab, Utah
are a notorious example.[xlii]
I.G.4. Low-level waste (essentially all waste that is not
classified as high-level or transuranic and does not consist of
uranium mill tailings, certain other by-product material or
weapons material)[xliii]
The 1980 Federal Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy
Act, as modified in 1985, mandates that each state must take
title to and “provide for” the disposal of all “low-level” waste
generated within its boundaries. To encourage development of
disposal sites but limit their number, it allows states that form
waste disposal compacts to exclude from a regional compact
facility the “low-level” radioactive wastes generated outside the
compact region.
Most states have now entered into multi-state
compacts. However, none of the compacts has as yet created a
waste disposal site. Low-level waste is shipped to three
privately-operated waste disposal facilities: Chem-Nuclear’s site
at Barnwell, South Carolina; US Ecology’s site at Richland,
Washington (US Ecology is a subsidiary of American Ecology
Corporation), and Envirocare of Utah’s site in Utah. Only one of
the three sites, Barnwell, accepts all types of low-level waste
generated across the nation. Richland accepts low-level waste
only from the Rocky Mountain and Northwest Compact states.
Envirocare, because of the terms of its license, takes mainly
large-volume, low-activity waste such as soil and mill tailings.
Such waste is classified as Class A. The waste classified as
“Classes B and C” are more radioactive and tend to contain
isotopes with very long hazardous lives. Barnwell, which accepts
“B and C” waste will stop receiving waste “from all but a handful
of states” in 2008. In 2000 South Carolina entered into an
Atlantic Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Compact with
Connecticut and New Jersey. The South Carolina legislature closed
Barnwell to waste from states other than compact members as of
2008.[xliv]
The category of low-level waste includes brooms and
protective booties with a few hundred becquerels (Bq) of
radioactivity. It also includes ion exchange resins and cartridge
filters, used for purifying the water that circulates in a
reactor and in its irradiated fuel pool. The resins and filters
are contaminated, after use, with long-lived radionuclides,
notably iodine129 and plutonium 239. In addition, low-level
waste includes reactor components that have become highly
radioactive because of neutron bombardment within the reactor and
also the reactors themselves.
Since 1980, the NRC has tried to solve part of the
low-level waste problem by deregulating the less contaminated
(but vast) portion of this waste variously called by the
authorities “de minimis” (i.e., “trivial” waste), “Below
Regulatory Concern,” and “Incidental Radioactive Material.” The
agency wanted to allow this waste to be dumped into municipal
solid waste landfills and sewers or to be recycled into unlabeled
consumer products. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 thwarted the
agency’s initial deregulation plan, but it has since been revised
under various guises.[xlv]
At the present time the NRC, DOE, Department of
Transportation, and even the Environmental Protection Agency –in
cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and
European Union-- would like to set a one millirem per year dose
standard for deregulated low-level radioactive waste, which would
allow the release of a vast volume of radioactive materials into
the commercial marketplace for refabrication into consumer
products. DOT has finalized a rule to “harmonize” at this dose
level, transportation regulations for radioactive materials in
trans-boundary, international trade. The NRC is, in late 2001, in
the process of rulemaking in regard to waste that it regards as
very weakly radioactive and has hired the National Academy of
Sciences to provide recommendations on streamlining the release
of these radioactive materials from regulatory control.[xlvi]
Furthermore, DOE is drawing up a Programmatic Environmental
Impact Statement on the Disposition of Scrap Metals. The
industry is particularly eager to establish standards that allow
release of contaminated materials, because of the enormous
quantities of so-called “slightly radioactive” material that will
need to be disposed of as nuclear facilities are cleaned up and
dismantled.
Around 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium
hexafluoride stored in cylinders at the gaseous diffusion plants
are among the wastes that will be impacted by the new rule-making
on release. Depleted uranium hexafluoride is hazardous. If it
escapes into the atmosphere, it reacts with moisture in the air
to form hydrogen fluoride, a corrosive gas, and uranyl fluoride,
a soluble compound, toxic from both a chemical and a radiological
point of view. In 1998 Congress enacted PL 105-204, mandating
construction of two facilities to convert the UF6 into a more
stable solid. DOE is, in 2001, in the process of selecting a
contractor to build and operate the plants and is compiling an
environmental impact statement on conversion. Whether the
depleted uranium, after conversion, is to be buried as waste,
made into containers for use within the nuclear industry, or
incorporated into items to be used outside the industry is still
an open question.
Contaminated metal also poses a special problem because of its
volume. DOE expects to generate a million tons of scrap metal in
its complex as a whole within the next twenty years as a result
of decommissioning and dismantling facilities. Much of this
waste will come from facilities that played a predominantly
military role. However, the gaseous diffusion enrichment
plants, because of their size, are a major source of scrap. At
the present time the Paducah plant stores 54,000 tons of
contaminated scrap metal, more than any other facility in the DOE
complex.[xlvii] DOE contracted with British Nuclear Fuels
Limited (BNFL) for the decontamination and dismantling of the
three process buildings at Oak Ridge’s K-25 enrichment plant, a
plant which had played a commercial as well as a military role.
The contract gave BNFL the right to “recycle” some 126,000 tons
of contaminated metal from the plant. In 2000, then-secretary of
energy Bill Richardson first suspended release of certain
volumetrically contaminated metal, notably nickel that BNFL was
disseminating, and then the release of any possibly contaminated
scrap from the entire DOE complex. Richardson’s decision caused
a subsidiary of BNFL, Manufacturing Sciences Corp., to get out of
the business of recycling scrap.[xlviii]
When it comes to low-level waste, nuclear reactors
are in a class by themselves. Dismantling the reactors will
result in waste that can be released if a one-millirem-per year
dose standard goes into effect. However, it will also result in
steel and concrete that is more radioactive. No commercial-size
reactor anywhere in the world has been completely decontaminated
and dismantled.
Andra, the French agency in charge of radioactive waste, has
estimated the volume and radioactivity of the waste that will be
produced by the complete dismantling of the first pressurized
water reactor constructed in France, Chooz A. Chooz A has
undergone the initial stage of decommissioning and dismantling
and is now mothballed. The reactor had a capacity of only 305
MWe, roughly one third the capacity of a typical reactor
operating in the United States today. Today it contains what the
French accurately call highly radioactive waste (control bars,
adapters, and test assemblies), also diverse moderately active
and “weakly” active waste (resin, solvents, etc.) destined for
an above-ground disposal site. In addition there are 5650 tons
of contaminated or activated metal (0.54EBq, contaminated with
cobalt 60, iron 55, and nickel 63), 2000 200-liter drums of
technological waste, and 1000 tons of activated concrete. The
volumetric contamination of the most contaminated concrete is
1.35 TBq/m3. The activity of the steel components of the reactor
vessel is 0.17 EBq.[xlix]
I.H. Academic infrastructure
A further indication of the lack of a viable
domestic uranium industry is the crumbling of the academic
infrastructure needed to maintain the nuclear industry. An
opinion piece by a friend of the industry in the Wall Street
Journal makes the point: “Across the country, university
programs in nuclear science and engineering are seeing their
funding cut, their faculty dispersed, their laboratories
padlocked. There are already too few qualified nuclear engineers
to meet current demand.” “There are roughly three positions for
each recent graduate.” If current trends continue, the situation
will worsen. “Most experts in the field, who entered the
discipline in the heroic early days of nuclear research, are now
approaching retirement, including three-quarters of the workforce
in the national laboratory system.”[l] The Bush administration’s
national energy bill, HR 4, reports statistics: “Since 1980, the
number of nuclear engineering university programs has declined
nearly 40 percent, and over two-thirds of the faculty in these
programs are 45 years of age or older.”
Teaching reactors are closing. Twenty-eight university reactors
were functioning as of mid-2001, fewer than half the reactors
that were operating in the United States in the late sixties.[li]
Cornell University decided in May of 2001 to close its nuclear
teaching reactor. At Columbia’s Ward Center for the Nuclear
Sciences, the installation is the last research reactor in New
York state and the last in the Ivy League. It will cease
operating in 2001. The University of Michigan made a decision in
the fall of 2000 to shut down its reactor.[lii] The University
of California at Irvine is considering closing its reactor,
although it is the only reactor on a University of California
campus in southern California..[liii] The reactor operated only
98 hours during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2001. HR 4
notes that many of the existing reactors were built in the late
1950s and 1960s, and “many will require relicensing in the next
several years.”
II. WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO REVIVE THE URANIUM INDUSTRY?
We can gain an idea of the initial payment needed to
strengthen the domestic industry, from legislation pending in
Congress and from additional steps under consideration by the
Bush administration. They include the following, arranged by
industry sector: II.A. Uranium mining
S 472, the Nuclear Energy Electricity Supply
Assurance Act of 2001, and HR 4, the Bush administration’s energy
bill, would authorize expenditure of $10 million a year for three
years to domestic corporations to assist them in improving mining
of uranium by in situ leaching. (Lobbying against this provision
by Navajo residents of an area that was targeted for in situ
mining has reportedly caused Senator Pete Domenici and
Representative Heather Wilson, who introduced the mining
provision, to withdraw their support for it.[liv])
Limitations on the sale by DOE of uranium from its inventory are
proposed. S 472 would, with certain exceptions, prevent sale
until 2006; HR 4, until 2009. (DOE’s uranium competes with newly
mined uranium.). II.B. Conversion
S 472 would grant DOE up to $8 million a year for FY 2002, 2003,
and 2004 to be used to compensate ConverDyn for losses incurred
in providing conversion services, based on the difference between
ConverDyn’s costs and the price at which it can sell its
services. (The difference has recently narrowed. See the section
on Conversion in the first part of this report.)
HR 4 would grant DOE $800,000 “for contracting with the Nation’s
sole remaining uranium converter for the purpose of performing
research and development to improve the environmental and
economic performance” of US conversion operations. II.C.
Enrichment
For the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, S 472 would authorize
$36 million for FY 2002 and “such sums as are necessary for FY
2003, 2004, and 2005” to keep the plant in cold standby for five
years. (March 1 the Bush administration announced that the
government would provide $125.7 million for cold standby and
worker transition--$59.2 million for FY 2001 and $66.5 million
for FY 2002. The fate of the plant after September 30, 2002 was
to be decided by task forces. In April the administration agreed
to an extra $5 million for deposit remediation. It should be
noted that much of the money for cold standby will go to heating
the three major process buildings and thirty-two other buildings.
Electric heaters were to be installed in the process
buildings.)[lv]
As to the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, the administration is
reportedly considering subsidizing operations to keep the plant
functioning if USEC cannot afford to do so.
DOE may also be considering contributing financially to the
development of centrifuge enrichment technology. (Congressman
Ted Strickland tried to attach to HR4 in committee, authorization
for funding for this purpose; but was defeated by the Bush
administration, which was not ready to make a decision on the
subject.)
Renewal of the Price Anderson Act (see below), which would be
authorized through the passage of any of several pieces of
legislation, would subsidize USEC, since USEC enjoys Price
Anderson protection. This protection saves it from having to try
to buy liability insurance and from the liability itself. In the
words of USEC just after privatization, “DOE is required to
indemnify USEC against claims for public liability (1) arising
out of or in connection with activities under the Lease
Agreement, including transportation and 2) arising out of or
resulting from a nuclear incident or precautionary evacuation.
DOE’s obligations are capped at the $8.96 billion statutory limit
set forth in the Price-Anderson Act for each incident.”[lvi]
II.D. Electricity production
S 472 would move the restriction on foreign ownership of nuclear
reactors imposed by the Atomic Energy Act. (Foreign corporations
may be more willing than US corporations to invest in new nuclear
plants.) It also states, as one of the Findings of Congress,
that the process of licensing nuclear plants should be
streamlined. A Nuclear Generation Report that the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) is to submit to Congress within 180
days of passage of the act is to include suggestions for
improvements in the licensing process.
In addition S 472 would authorize $50 million for FY 2002 and as
much as necessary for FY 2003 through FY 2006 for research
relating to nuclear energy; $15 million for FY 2002 and as much
as necessary for FY 2003 through 2006 for a Nuclear Energy Plant
Optimization Program (a joint cost-sharing program with
industry); $15 million each for FY 2002 and FY 2003 for fees
incurred by licensees in obtaining NRC approval for permanent
increases in rated electricity capacity; $3 million for FY 2002
for a study of the feasibility of completing unfinished nuclear
plants; $15 million for both FY 2002 and FY 2003 for an early
site permit demonstration program; $50 million for FY 2002 and as
much as needed for FY 2003 through 2006 for a report on a new
generation of nuclear reactors (Generation IV); and $25 million
for FY 2002 and as much as needed for subsequent years for
research on the regulatory process in relation to new types of
reactors.
Several bills that include reauthorization of the Price Anderson
Act are pending in Congress. The Act was first passed in 1957 as
a means of subsidizing the then-fledgling nuclear industry by
lowering its insurance costs and reducing its liability. It is
due to expire in August of 2002. Price-Anderson requires that
operators/owners of commercial reactors obtain $200 million in
insurance liability coverage per reactor from private insurers.
If an accident that exceeds $200 million in damages occurs, all
commercial reactor operators in the United States must pay up to
$88.095 million per reactor towards the damages. Potential
payments by the entire commercial nuclear industry would be
capped at around $10 billion. (This sum would likely prove far
from adequate. In 1982 Sandia National Laboratory calculated the
financial cost of a severe accident, on behalf of the NRC. The
laboratory estimated that damages could run as high as $314
billion--more than $560 billion in current dollars.)[lvii]
HR 4, as passed in the House, would ensure that all companies
that own nuclear power plants can deduct from their federal taxes
the money that they set aside to cover the cost of
decommissioning. At present the tax break is assured only for
companies with regulated rates. The tax break is not
automatically transferred when a plant is purchased by a company
without regulated rates. The Internal Revenue Service has been
granting the break on a case by case basis as plants are bought.
The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the
proposed change, which would make the transfer automatic, along
with other changes related to decommissioning, would cost the
federal government $1.93 billion in revenue between 2002 and
2011.[lviii] II.E. Waste management
S 472 would create an Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research to
study “treatment, recycling and disposal” of irradiated fuel and
other high-level waste. The office will study advanced
reprocessing, in particular. For FY 2002, $10 million is to be
allotted to development of “advanced fuel recycling technology,”
with money as needed in FY 2003 through 2006. HR 4 authorizes
funding for FY 2002 and for FY 2003 and FY 2004 on the same
subject. II.F. Academic infrastructure
S 472 would authorize $34.2 million for fiscal year (FY) 2002 and
such sums as are necessary in future years to upgrade university
research reactors and to provide grants, fellowships, and
scholarships to students, faculty and staff associated with
nuclear engineering programs and related specialties. HR 4 would
authorize $32.2 million for FY 2000 and increasingly larger sums
for each of the next four fiscal years to strengthen educational
programs in nuclear engineering and nuclear science through such
means as research grants for faculty, and fuel and
instrumentation upgrades for reactors.
III. WOULD REVIVING THE INDUSTRY BE WORTHWHILE?
III.A. A domestic industry is not needed as a source of fissile
material for weapons, as a source of energy, or even as an answer
to global warming
DOE currently has an inventory of approximately 73 million pounds
of uranium. This inventory is made up of 15 million pounds
contained in 33 tons of HEU that DOE has committed to the
Tennessee Valley Authority for downblending into fuel and 58
million pounds that are to be stockpiled until 2009 as part of an
agreement relating to the Russian HEU agreement. The stockpiled
uranium includes 5.9 million pounds contained in 10 tons of HEU
that DOE holds under IAEA safeguards.[lix] DOE will obtain
additional HEU through the dismantling of nuclear weapons, as
President Bush plans to reduce greatly the size of the US
strategic arsenal. The United States is therefore not dependent
for new weapons or naval fuel on enriching natural uranium.
Nuclear power plants furnished 19.8% of US electricity in 2000;
but less than 9% of the total energy we consume. The energy from
these plants could be replaced.
In developing a Clean Energy Blueprint, the Union of Concerned
Scientists found that the United States can meet at least twenty
percent of its electricity needs through renewable energy
sources—wind, biomass, geothermal, and solar-by 2020.[lx]
Nuclear power can also be replaced by energy efficiency. Amory
B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute
report that electricity efficiency alone “can save four times’
nuclear power’s output.”[lxi] Gains in energy efficiency would
not require complex technology, the Lovinses say, simply good
basic engineering. The energy spent on pumping, for instance,
the main application of motors, could be decreased by reducing
friction through increasing the diameter, shortening the length,
and eliminating the bends in piping. Energy managers would need
to think in terms of meeting peoples’ specific needs rather than
in terms of delivering a certain number of kilowatts. Thus a
need for cooling could be met, at least in part, by planting
trees and shrubbery and installing light-colored roofing and
sidewalks rather than by powering air conditioners.
Conservation can also help; but to many people conservation
implies deprivation, and, if sufficient energy efficiency
measures are implemented, deprivation will not be necessary.
Bill Prindle, Director of Buildings and Utilities Programs at The
Alliance to Save Energy, explains the difference between energy
efficiency and conservation with a series of graphic examples,
the first of which is: “Conservation means sitting in the dark.
Efficiency means installing lights that use one-fourth the
energy, and letting an automatic sensor turn them off when you
leave. If each household in the U.S. replaced four 100-watt
bulbs with compact fluorescents, we would save the energy output
of thirty 300-MW power plants,”[lxii] or about ten average size
US nuclear power plants.
That energy efficiency and conservation can bring about dramatic
changes in consumption is illustrated by California. California,
before its deregulation crisis, was the nation’s second most
efficient state in the use of energy. Because of the crisis, the
state reduced its consumption of energy by an additional 15%,
which helped it avoid the large-scale power cuts predicted for
the past summer.[lxiii]
Energy gains through renewables and energy efficiency cost less
than gains through construction of new nuclear power plants. To
quote the Lovinses:
Enthusiasts claim hypothetical new reactors might deliver a
kilowatt-hour for 6 cents vs. 10+cents for post-1980 plants.
(Nearly 3 cents pays for delivery to customers.) But
super-efficient gas plants or wind farms cost 5-6 cents;
co-generation of heat and power often 1-5 cents The cost of
saving a kilowatt-hour through efficient lights, motors and
other electricity-saving devices is under 2 cents; and they’re
all getting cheaper. So are the next winners: fuel cells and
solar cells. . . .[lxiv]
An editorial in British newspaper The Guardian, November 10
notes:
The main argument against nuclear power is not safety. It is
cost. . . The latest Cabinet Office figures suggest that by 2020
onshore wind farms will generate energy at 1.5p to 2.5p per
kilowatt hour, offshore wind at 2p to 4p while nuclear will be 3p
to 4.5p without including the costs of terrorism or the unsolved
problem of waste disposal." “If 60% of the . . . cost of
building six nuclear stations was spent instead on alternatives
like wind, wave, solar, fuel cell, photovoltaics and massive
conservation measures, it is highly unlikely, there would be any
need for a nuclear option.
Furthermore, as a Department of Energy working group has made
clear, we do not need nuclear energy in order to cut back on
greenhouse gas emissions. The Interlaboratory Working Group on
Energy-Efficient and Clean-Energy Technologies demonstrates in
Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future that use of renewable energy
and energy efficiency options could, by 2020, reduce fossil fuel
use by 21 percent and cut climate-changing emissions by 31
percent while shrinking the United States’ total energy bill by
18 percent.[lxv]
According to Amory Lovins, a dollar invested in energy efficiency
produces roughly double the reduction in greenhouse gases than a
dollar invested in the nuclear industry does. Since a dollar can
be spent only once, investments in nuclear energy thus actually
impede reduction of the greenhouse effect.[lxvi]
III.B. The industry detracts from the nation’s security
The nuclear industry has a negative impact on the
nation in varied ways, from the effects of uranium mining on
health and the environment, to the example that our industry sets
to developing countries. Here we look briefly at three aspects
of the impact, related too the possibility of nuclear terrorism.
Nuclear power plants and their stocks of irradiated fuel
are a liability due to their potential for releasing massive
amounts of radioactivity. During operation of a reactor, fission
products and transuranics, including plutonium, build up in the
reactor fuel. As a result, the fuel becomes highly radioactive
and also literally hot. The melting of a reactor core releases
radiation into the air, with the amount of radiation varying with
the length of time that the fuel has been in the reactor. Sandia
National Laboratory examined for the NRC the consequences of a
severe nuclear accident at each US plant. Their statistics
include fatalities that occur within one year. Salem 1 and 2,
south of Wilmington, Delaware, had the greatest estimated
number--100,000 fatalities.[lxvii]
A release could be triggered by an accident, as at
Chernobyl. It could also be triggered by terrorists. Since
September 11, David Kyd, spokesperson for the International
Atomic Energy Agency has admitted that “The West’s reliance on
electricity, much of it from nuclear sources, is such that a
nuclear plant would be a potential weak point for terrorists to
pick out.”[lxviii] Both the IAEA and the NRC, responding to
questions from the public, have stated that plant containment
structures were not built to withstand attacks by airliners such
as Boeing 757s or 767s.[lxix] The media have relayed reports of
al-Qaida’s interest in nuclear terrorism; and the actions of
governments at various levels have underlined the fact that the
terrorist threat is real. Security measures for US plants,
though insufficient, have included patrols by the National Guard
and the Coast Guard, the closing of roads, and a moratorium on
flights by general aviation near specified nuclear sites.
In regard to terrorism, an even greater danger than the
reactor itself may be the pools of water in which utilities
store irradiated fuel that they have removed from their reactors.
The pools at US plants are always in buildings that are outside
the reactor’s containment structure. The buildings are designed
to resist earthquakes but not to withstand explosions or impacts
from airplanes. Furthermore, they contain many times as much
radioactivity as the reactor core.[lxx] The water in storage
pools must be continuously cooled. If cooling stops, the water in
the pool heats up and boils. If the water boils or if it simply
drains away, the irradiated fuel assemblies will overheat and
either melt or catch fire, with catastrophic consequences.
When fuel storage pools become full, utilities store fuel
in dry casks. The casks are generally a more secure means of
storing fuel than pools, because they rely on passive cooling by
radiation and air convection rather than on active cooling by
water and pumps.[lxxi] However, at some plants the dry casks are
“line-of-sight visible” from open areas or inside unguarded chain
link fences. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists,
explosives or weapons that are available on the black market or,
in some cases, available legally inside the United States could
“cause the casks to be penetrated resulting in the release of
large amounts of radiation.”[lxxii] The Energy Information
Administration has removed from its Web site the quantities of
irradiated fuel at each nuclear plant, tacit admission that the
stored fuel poses a problem.
Nuclear power plants are a liability also in terms of
the nation’s energy supply, as they are major components of
centralized systems of electricity production and distribution.
One nuclear power plant’s being off line can affect the
electricity supply of a large area. In fact, the unavailability
of the San Onofre-3 reactor after a fire February 3 was a factor
in the California energy crisis.[lxxiii]
Furthermore, the sabotage of key transmission lines could prevent
the electricity from nuclear plants that are operating from
reaching consumers. As journalist has summarized, “thousands of
miles of high-voltage lines crisscross America. Attacks on key
lines could trigger vast power outages because grids are widely
interconnected.”[lxxiv]
Severe weather, which is becoming increasingly common as global
warming proceeds, can also wreck havoc on transmission systems.
The ice storm in Quebec and the northeastern United States in
1998 and the wind storm in France in late 2000 strikingly
illustrate the problem. In France some areas were without
electricity service for more than a month.
The problem of nuclear waste also makes the nuclear
industry a liability. Here we discuss irradiated fuel. At the
same time that the Bush administration is supporting construction
of a deep underground repository at Yucca Mountain, a location
that is highly questionable from the standpoint of geology, it is
advocating recycling. Legislation in Congress would create an
Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research, to study this subject in
particular. In reference to irradiated fuel, recycling involves
what is called reprocessing, treating irradiated fuel to separate
the constituents. Plutonium is one of the constituents that is
separated out. Thus reprocessing increases the risk of nuclear
proliferation. The United States currently has more than 40,000
metric tons of irradiated heavy metal, stored in pools at reactor
sites.[lxxv] Had this fuel been reprocessed, the US would have
produced some 400 tons of separated plutonium.
Industrial facilities today use the wet, Purex method of
reprocessing, in which chopped up fuel is dissolved in nitric
acid. France and the United Kingdom, which operate the La Hague
and Sellafield reprocessing plants respectively, are both edging
away from reprocessing. France has admitted that it does not
intend to reprocess all the irradiated fuel that its electricity
utility EDF discharges. The French Atomic Energy Commission has,
in fact, begun research on centralized above-ground or
near-surface facilities for long-term storage of irradiated
fuel.[lxxvi] Furthermore, by stationing anti-aircraft
batteries to protect the La Hague reprocessing site, the French
government has admitted that terrorists could cause a
catastrophic release of radioactivity from the site. In the
United Kingdom, the electricity utility British Energy has
announced that for economic reasons it does not want to reprocess
its fuel any longer. Irish political leaders, afraid of the
contamination spread by the plant during its normal operation and
of the results of a terrorist attack have called for the plant to
be shut down.
The Bush administration’s energy policy proposes that the United
States develop and deploy a dry process known as
“pyroprocessing.” The fuel is chopped up and dipped in baskets
into molten salt through which an electric current is passing.
Most of the components of the fuel dissolve. Some remain in the
salt; uranium and plutonium collect on different cathodes and are
removed. Proponents of the process say that it is proliferation
proof, because the plutonium that is retrieved is contaminated
with some uranium, other transuranic elements, and some fission
products; but the contamination is not such as to prevent
terrorists from using the plutonium in a nuclear device; and the
process can be altered to separate out pure plutonium.[lxxvii]
The Bush energy policy also talks about combining pyroprocessing
with what is called Accelerator Transmutation of Waste. The aim
of transmutation is to transform specific isotopes, removed from
the waste by one or more separation techniques, into isotopes
that are stable or short-lived. The transmutation occurs when
neutrons bomb the target isotope(s). Bombardment takes place in
a reactor, preferably a breeder or a subcritical reactor, the
latter combined with an accelerator-driven spallation neutron
source to form a hybrid system. Some long-lived radionuclides
cannot be so transformed. Among them are carbon 14, strontium
90, uranium 238 and cesium 135. Certain radionuclides that can
be transmuted must pass through a reactor several times and be
subject to several bouts of advanced reprocessing between each
passage. Scenarios involving transmutation on a major scale
require parks of nuclear reactors, and specialized installations
to manufacture reactor fuel and to reprocess irradiated fuel.
They also demand long periods of time.[lxxviii] A 1999 DOE
report to Congress, “A Roadmap for Developing ATW Technology”
described the transmutation of the US irradiated fuel inventory
over 118 years at a cost of $279 billion.[lxxix] This method,
like the other reprocessing methods, gives rise to wastes that
require disposal deep underground. Thus reprocessing does not do
away with the need for an underground repository.
In considering how to manage irradiated fuel, transportation is a
major issue. Trains and trucks loaded with fuel, whether on their
way to a repository or to a reprocessing plant, are a highly
dangerous proposition, from the point of view of both terrorism
and of accidents.[lxxx] However, storing the fuel at the
scattered sites where it now rests is not without risk. With
irradiated fuel, we are between a rock and a hard place. One
thing we can be sure of: we do not need more of it.
III.C. Congress could make better use of taxpayers’ dollars than
to invest them in the uranium industry
III.C.1. Initiatives that do not merit support
On the basis that the uranium industry as a whole is not
necessary and endangers the nation’s security, we recommend that
Congress and the administration not adopt any of the measures
under consideration to support the industry. In other words, in
situ mining and ConverDyn should not be the recipients of federal
largesse; the government should not operate the Paducah
enrichment plant if USEC cannot afford to do so; the Portsmouth
enrichment plant should be closed down; the federal government
should not subsidize the development of centrifuges; the Price
Anderson Act should be left to expire in August of 2002 . . . We
also recommend that regulations not be changed to make possible
the ownership and licensing of US plants by foreign entities or
to facilitate the construction and licensing of new plants in
general. If the domestic industry cannot survive without federal
subsidies, foreign capital, and a reduction in public oversight,
it should not survive.
In addition we recommend substantially modifying the Megatons to
Megawatts program, under which Russia sends downblended weapons
uranium to the United States for use in US civilian reactors.
This program in its entirety would be worthwhile only if the
United States benefits by continuing to obtain electricity from
US nuclear reactors. For the reasons stated above, we do not
believe that nuclear-generated electricity is an asset.
Discontinuing the program while ending federal subsidies to the
industry would, in a sense, level the playing field. The various
entities that make up the fuel chain would be left to compete in
the free market.
Securing the stocks of Russian HEU is too serious a
matter to be left to the vicissitudes of the commercial nuclear
industry, as events of the last few years illustrate. In late
1999, for example, USEC requested a government subsidy of $200
million to compensate for a discrepancy between its cost of
production and the price it paid for Russian SWU, and it
threatened to resign if the subsidy was not forthcoming. Now
USEC is trying to secure Russian weapons and commercial HEU at
prices lower than its current marginal production cost; and needs
the imported uranium to stay afloat financially. The company is
lobbying to remain the sole US executive of the Russian HEU
agreement. Meanwhile, a group of utilities is planning to try to
license a new enrichment plant and asking the administration to
consider appointing a group known as Nuclear & Energy Security
Partnerships as a second agent.[lxxxi] Non-proliferation policy
should not be the pawn of competition among members of the
nuclear industry.
The program gets rid of one fissile material only to
create another. The Bush administration, to bypass the commercial
enrichment industry, could appoint a newly formed or existing
government entity as executive agent and then proceed with the
current program. However, to do so would not alter the fact that
the irradiation of uranium fuel in a reactor creates plutonium,
the stuff of nuclear weapons. We cannot further non-proliferation
and at the same time create plutonium. The United States does
not now separate out plutonium from commercial irradiated fuel,
but the fuel is a tempting source of the fissile material and the
Bush administration has proposed carrying out the separation.
The Megatons to Megawatts agreement is not the bargain
that it is often described as being. USEC pays for the Russian
SWU; but the government is now considering subsidizing ConverDyn
and the plants that USEC leases. Furthermore, the government will
have to deal with the irradiated fuel unloaded from US reactors
as a result of the program. Protecting the irradiated fuel from
terrorists and disposing of it will be costly.
The original terms of the Russian HEU agreement are not
being carried out. The US was to buy outright the low-enriched
uranium that resulted from the downblending of Russian HEU.
However, because of protests from the mining and conversion
industries, the agreement was watered down. Now USEC buys the
SWU, the work of enriching the uranium. It turns over to Tenex
natural uranium equivalent to the natural uranium and conversion
service (to convert the U3O8 to UF6 for enrichment) that was
incorporated in the downblended HEU. This situation is
financially disadvantageous to Russia, because Russia cannot
easily sell the natural uranium that is returned to it.
Twenty-six million pounds have already gone back to Russia where
they form part of a stockpile.[lxxxii]
The program cannot possibly cover all the Russian HEU
that should be downblended at the pace that it needs to be dealt
with. The Russian Federation is believed to have more than one
thousand tons of HEU. About half of the HEU is in weapons; about
half is divided among three buildings at fifty sites.[lxxxiii]
USEC has thus far purchased only 125 tons of HEU and is scheduled
to purchase 375 tons more by 2015. Importation of the 125 tons
has made America increasingly dependent on Russia for uranium for
nuclear fuel.[lxxxiv] A report issued in March by the Center for
Strategic and International Studies states that “the time has
come to buy more HEU, and faster” and that Russia should be
enabled to downblend all its excess HEU within the next few
years.[lxxxv] Selling the uranium on the market at the rate that
it needs to be downblended would overwhelm the uranium and
conversion markets. III.C.2. Initiatives that merit
implementation
We recommend that the United States buy outright all the HEU that
Russia is willing to sell, enable the Russians to downblend it
rapidly, and store it in Russia. Russia has reportedly hinted
for several years that it would be willing to sell the United
States its excess HEU and plutonium.[lxxxvi] The idea of storing
downblended HEU in Russia is not new. The House Appropriations
Committee, for instance, in the report that accompanied its FY
2002 energy and water development appropriations bill, urged the
United States to increase purchases of HEU from Russia and to
look into down-blending the extra material and leaving it in
Russia until it can be sold without harming the uranium
market.[lxxxvii]
We recommend that the federal government give high priority to
securing nuclear materials and protecting nuclear power plants
and their irradiated fuel from attack within our own country.
We recommend that the federal government encourage the
implementation of energy efficiency measures and the development
and application of renewable energy technologies.
We also recommend that the government give workers who are
displaced as nuclear plants close, opportunities to be employed
in the shift to a viable energy system.
The workers most likely to be affected in the immediate
future by the shrinking of the uranium industry are employees of
USEC at Portsmouth and Piketon. The Portsmouth and Paducah
Gaseous Diffusion Plants were constructed and operated to help
this country win the Cold War. Workers at the plants and other
residents of the areas where they were located made immense
personal sacrifices to achieve this goal. They have suffered, in
recent years, from the privatization of USEC, which has resulted
in the loss of many jobs and in years of uncertainty for those
who are still employed.[lxxxviii] The federal government should
see to it that all displaced Paducah and Portsmouth workers and
all who have been made ill by these facilities receive financial
compensation.[lxxxix] Just as importantly it should help provide
employment opportunities in fields that will be viable in the
twenty-first century. Kentucky is on the right track with its
plans to turn the Paducah Information Age Park into an
energy/environment research facility, provided that the park’s
research is focused on nuclear cleanup and renewable and
energy-efficient technologies.
The outlook for the nuclear industry is unsure at
best. The future of the energy industry lies in decentralized
production. A decentralized system is more resilient than a
centralized system. It also saves the money and the energy that
would be lost in the transmission lines of a centralized system.
Most energy-efficient technologies for the generation of power
are modular and thus lend themselves to being located near the
point of use. The trend to smaller plants has already begun. The
average size of new utility power stations in the United States
fell from 600 megawatts in the mid 80s to 21 megawatts in 1998 (a
typical nuclear plant is 1000 megawatts).[xc] Business Week in a
special August 1999 issue put local, “personal” power plants at
the head of a list of “21 ideas for 21st century.”
Finding ways to help Piketon’s and Paducah’s workers become
involved in the new modular, energy-efficient technologies will
require of DOE more creativity than developing at one or the
other plant the centrifuge enrichment technology that DOE worked
on and rejected years ago. However, the communities and the
nation deserve that effort.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
APPENDICES
A. Production of fuel and disposal of waste
B. Generation of electricity
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Mary Byrd Davis is director of the Uranium Enrichment Project,
compiler of the Uranium Enrichment Newsletter, and author of La
France nucléaire: matières et sites, 2002 (WISE-Paris, 2001) and
(in collaboration with Bruno Barrillot) Les déchets nucléaires
militaires français (CDRPC, 1994), among other publications.
We are grateful to The John Merck Foundation for making this
report possible.
The Uranium Enrichment Project is a project of Earth Island
Institute’s Yggdrasil Institute, POB 131, Georgetown, KY 40324
Copyright © 2001 by Yggdrasil Institute
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Matthew L. Wald, “Bush Ponders Aid for Only Domestic Supplier
of Reactor Fuel,” The New York Times, July 24, 2001.
[ii] US Representative Ted Strickland, Press Release, July 18,
2001, citing a letter from Under Secretary Bob Card to Energy
Subcommitte Chairman Joe Barton.
[iii] Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy,
Uranium Industry Annual 2000, available at www.eia.doe.gov
[http://www.eia.doe.gov/] , accessed in August and October 2001.
(Hereafter UIA 2000)
[iv] Peter Diehl, Wise Uranium Project; Spokesperson, Southwest
Research and Information Center, Personal Communications.
[v] Malcom Brenner, “Crownpoint Uranium Mining,” Gallup
Independent [at http://cia-g.com/~gallpind/
[http://cia-g.com/~gallpind/] , undated] and Larry Di Giovanni,
Gallup Independent, November 8, 2001. Memo from Chris Sheuy,
Southwest Research and Information Center, July 30, 2001.
[vi] Don Hancock, Southwest Research and Information Center,
Personal Communication.
[vii] UIA 2000.
[viii] Although the terms “yellowcake” and U3O8 are often used
interchangeably, yellowcake is actually only about 80% U3O8. (Web
site of Washington Nuclear Corporation, www.nuke-energy.com
[http://www.nuke-energy.com/] , accessed November 2001)
[ix] Julian Steyn, “Fuel Review; Conversion; Conversion
Services,” Nuclear Engineering International, September 30,
2001; Uranium Institute, The Global Nuclear Fuel Market, Supply
and Demand, 1998-2020 (London, 1998), p. 129.
[x] Steyn, “Fuel Review; Conversion.”
[xi] Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, October 16, 2000.
[xii] Steyn, “Fuel Review; Conversion.”
[xiii] World Nuclear Association. The Uranium Institute Market
Report Update, 2000, p. 27
[xiv] Under the current interpretation of the US-Russian accord,
USEC purchases only the SWU component of the low-enriched uranium
from Russia. According to a memorandum of agreement into which
USEC entered, USEC can be terminated or can resign as executive
agent upon the provision of thirty days notice. However, in the
event of termination or resignation, USEC would be obligated to
purchase the SWU that is to be delivered during the calendar year
of the date of termination and during the following calendar
year. The US government can appoint alternative or additional
executive agents.
[xv] United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), 10-K Report for
2001 to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), p. 10.
[xvi] Operation of Paducah and Portsmouth at full capacity would
require 5200 Megawatts, the approximate electricity consumption
of the states of Connecticut or Arkansas. (USEC, Report 1-A to
the SEC, pp. 48-49.)
[xvii] Web site of Washington Nuclear Corporation,
www.nuke-energy.com [http://www.nuke-energy.com/] , accessed
August 2001.
[xviii] USEC, 10-Q Report to the SEC, filed May 7, 1999.
[xix] John R. Longenecker and Ron Witzel, Nuclear Engineering
International, “Fuel Review, Uranium Enrichment,” September 30,
2001.
[xx] USEC, Report 10-K for Fiscal Year 2001 to the SEC.
[xxi] Michael Knapik et al., Nuclear Fuel, October 29, 2001.
[xxii] USEC, 10-K filing to the SEC for Fiscal Year 2001, p. 3.
USEC requested anti-dumping and countervailing duty
investigations of its European competitors in an apparent effort
to drive up SWU prices. The price of SWU did rise 20% during
USEC’s FY 2001; but not sufficiently to ensure that USEC’s prices
are competitive. The tentative duties on Eurodif and Urenco
announced thus far would not make enriched uranium from Urenco,
at least, uncompetitive in the United States nor push the market
price up to the level apparently desired by USEC. Importers of
low-enriched uranium from France and from the United Kingdom must
post bonds to cover duties of 31.45% and 7.07% respectively on
the value of the imported uranium. Importers of low-enriched
uranium from Germany and the Netherlands must post bonds to cover
duties of 3.72% of the value of the uranium. (USEC, 10-K filing
with the SEC for Fiscal Year 2001, pp. 15-16)
[xxiii] Michael Knapik and Daniel Horner, NuclearFuel, October
15, 2001
[xxiv] USEC, Report 10-K for Fiscal Year 2001 to the SEC, p. 5
[xxv] John R. Longenecker and Ron Witzel, Nuclear Engineering
International, “Fuel Review; Uranium Enrichment,” September 30,
2001.
[xxvi] Jenny Weil, NuclearFuel, July 23, 2001. Exelon has
engaged the NRC in discussions on licensing a PBMR in the United
States, although it has not yet applied for a license.
[xxvii] USEC, 10-K report for FY 2001 to the SEC.
[xxviii] Platt Nuclear News Flashes, October 2, 2001; speech of
Dennis Spurgeon, available at www.usec.com [http://www.usec.com/]
.
[xxix] Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, October 30, 2001,
[xxx] EIA 2000.
[xxxi] PECO was formerly Philadelphia Electric.
[xxxii] US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)., Industry
Consolidation. Preliminary Impact Assessments, p. 36.
[xxxiii] Exelon Nuclear, one of the three major operating groups
of Exelon Corporation represents, in its own words, “the largest
nuclear fleet in the United Sates and the third largest
commercial fleet in the world.” It owns ten power plants with a
total of seventeen nuclear reactors and a generating capacity of
16,810 megawatts. The plants are located in Illinois,
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.[xxxiii] Thus the US company
working with British Energy in AmerGen is one of the most
influential and powerful of the US utilities with nuclear plants.
(Web site of Exelon, www.exelon.com)
[xxxiv] US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Industry Consolidation,
p. 36.
[xxxv] World Nuclear Association, US Nuclear Power Industry,
August 2001, on the Web at www.world-nuclear.org
[http://www.world-nuclear.org/]
[xxxvi] US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Industry Consolidation,
p. 36.
[xxxvii] Borsen Zeitung, October 23, 2001.
[xxxviii] Financial Post [Canada], August 9, 2001.
[xxxix] Web site on Yucca Mountain, www.ymp.gov
[http://www.ymp.gov/] .
[xl] The NRC’s regulations on land disposal of radioactive waste
(10CFR61) increased the allowable concentrations of transuranics
in “low-level waste.” (Nuclear Information and Resource Service,
Fact sheet on “Low-level” Radioactive Waste” on the NIRS Web
site, www.nirs.org [http://www.nirs.org/] , accessed October
2001.)
[xli] Energy Information Administration, U.S. Uranium Production
Facilities: Operating History and Remediation Cost under Uranium
Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project as of 2000, August 2001.
Available on the EIA Web site,
www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/page/umtra/background.html
[http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/page/umtra/background.html] .
[xlii] NuclearFuel, October 16, 2000.
[xliii] Judith Johnsrud, “Low-Level” Radioactive Waste (LLRW) on
the Sierra Club Web site’s Nuclear waste page,
www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/low.asp
[http://www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/low.asp]
[xliv] Jeffrey Collins, “Nuclear Plants Operating Costs Set.” The
State [of South Carolina]. May 23, 2001.
[xlv] Judith Johnsrud, “Low-Level” Radioactive Waste (LLRW) on
the Sierra Club Web site’s Nuclear waste page,
www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/low.asp
[http://www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/low.asp] .
[xlvi] Johnsrud and NIRS Fact Sheet on Radioactive Waste
“Recycling” into the Free Market.
[xlvii] Joe Walker, Paducah Sun, October 18, 2001; Tuss Taylor,
Kentucky Environmental Oversight News, October 2001.
[xlviii] Uranium Enrichment Newsletter, February 2000 and
November 2001. BNFL has billions of dollars in clean-up
contracts with DOE, but most are for predominantly military
plants.
[xlix] Andra, Où sont les déchets radioactifs en France? Rapport
de l’Observatoire National de l’Andra, Edition 2000, p. 294.
[l] Samuel Goldman, “Academic Meltdown,” The Wall Street Journal,
July 21, 2001.
[li] Gary Robbins, Orange County Register, November 7, 2001.
According to HR 4, “since 1980, the number of research and
training reactors in the United States has declined by over 50
percent.”
[lii] Goldman.
[liii] Robbins, November 7, 2001.
[liv] Don Hancock, Southwest Information and Resource Center,
Personal Communication.
[lv] DOE Oak Ridge Operations Office, Portsmouth Plant
Winterization/Heating Activities for Cold Standby, handed out at
a public meeting in Piketon, Ohio, May 15, 2001.
[lvi] USEC, Report SEC 1-A, December 18, 1998, p. 48.
[lvii] Public Citizen, Fact Sheet on the Price-Anderson Act, at
www.citizen.org [http://www.citizen.org/]
[lviii] Associated Press, “Nuke Plant Tax Break Criticized,”
August 2001.
[lix] Julian Steyn, “Fuel Review; Uranium Supply,” Nuclear
Engineering International, September 30, 2001.
[lx] Union of Concerned Scientists, Clean Energy Blueprint:
Analysis, on the Web at www.ucsusa.org/energy/blueprint.html
[http://www.ucsusa.org/energy/blueprint.html] . The Union of
Concerned Scientists developed the blueprint with assistance from
the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and the
Tellus Institute.
[lxi] Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, “Nuclear Power: A
Future Technology Whose Time Has Passed,” USA Today, April 17,
2001, on the Web at www.rmi.org [http://www.rmi.org/] . The
Lovinses are CEOs of Rocky Mountain Institute. Reports on energy
efficiency can be found on the institute’s Web site at the above
address.
[lxii] This article, “How We Can Reduce 1300 Power Plants to 490”
is available on the Web site of the Rocky Mountain Institute,
www.rmi.org [http://www.rmi.org/] . The quote in the text is
followed by the words, “(Note: doesn’t estimate peak coincidence
or load diversity, and hence doesn’t directly predict peak power
impact.)”
[lxiii] Harvey Wasserman, “America’s Terrorist Nuclear Threat to
Itself,” circulated by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice
Center.
[lxiv] Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, “Nuclear Power: A
Future . . .”
[lxv] Interlaboratory Working Group. 2000. Scenarios for a Clean
Energy Future (Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge National Laboratory and
Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory),
ORNL/CON-476 and LBNL-44029, November. The report is available
on the Oak Ridge Web site, www.ornl.gov [http://www.ornl.gov/] .
[lxvi] Amory B. Lovins, “Profiting from a Nuclear-Free Third
Millenium,” in “Forum,’ Power Economics, November 1999, available
on www.rmi.org [http://www.rmi.org/] .
[lxvii] The study, made by Sandia National Laboratory in 1981 was
named Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences for U.S.
Nuclear Power Plants (CRAC-2). Reportedly, it was the last time
that the NRC looked at this question. Jim Riccio prints
statistics from the study in his Risky Business: The Probability
and Consequences of a Nuclear Accident (Greenpeace, 2001).
[lxviii] Quoted in Patrick Rahir, “Nuclear Plants at Risk from
Airborne Suicide Bombers: IAEA,” Agence France Presse, September
19, 2001.
[lxix] Rahir (above) and Jeff Long, Chicago Tribune, September
23, 2001.
[lxx] Matthew L. Wald, “Reactors and Their Feul Are among the
Flanks U.S. Needs to Shore Up,” New York Times, November 2, 2001.
[lxxi] WISE-Paris, Possible Toxic Effects from the Nuclear
Reprocessing Plants at Sellafield and Cap de la Hague (European
Parliament, The STOA Program, November 2001), available on the
Web site of WISE-Paris, www.pu-investigation.org
[http://www.pu-investigation.org/] .
[lxxii] Union of Concerned Scientists, Fact Sheet on Spent Fuel
Security, on the Web at www.ucusa.org [http://www.ucusa.org/] .
[lxxiii] Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), News
Release, March 22, 2001. The release states that “California has
lacked up to 800 Megawatts (MW) of power during the blackout
periods. When running at full power, San Onofre-3 produces 1120
MW of electricity. Had the reactor been operating, the
blackouts almost certainly would not have occurred.” A circuit
breaker fault caused the fire.
[lxxiv] H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Online, September 18,
2001.
[lxxv] The Web site of DOE’s Energy Information Administration
states that at the end of 1998, 37,658.3 metric tons of uranium
were stored at reactors.
[lxxvi] Mary Byrd Davis, La France nucléaire: matières et sites
(Paris: Wise-Paris, 2001), p. 60.
[lxxvii] Edwin S. Lyman, Scientific Director, Nuclear Control
Institute, “Research on Accelerator Transmutation of Waste and
Pyroprocessing Is a Colossal Waste of Taxpayer Money,” Statement
delivered May 24, 2001 and available on the Institute’s Web site,
www.nci.org [http://www.nci.org/] ; Arjun Makhijani, Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research, Press Release, May 17,
2001.
[lxxviii] Davis.
[lxxix] Cited by Lyman.
[lxxx] See Marvin Resnikoff, The Next Nuclear Gamble (Council on
economic Priorities, 1983).
[lxxxi] Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, October 30, 2001,
[lxxxii] For further information on implementation of the
agreement, see Nikhil Anand and Mary Byrd Davis, USEC
Privatization and the Russian HEU Agreement (Yggdrasil Institute,
June 1999) on the Web at www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil
[http://www.earthisland.org/yggdrasil] .
[lxxxiii] Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
“Managing the Global Nuclear Materials Threat; Policy
Recommendations,” March 2001, summarized on the Web site
www.nuke-energy.com [http://www.nuke-energy.com/] . The text of
the report was presented on the Web site of CSIS (www.csis.org
[http://www.csis.org/] ) when it appeared, but seems not to be
available there in November of 2001.
[lxxxiv] US General Accounting Office, Nuclear Nonproliferation:
Implications of the U.S. Purchase of Russian Highly Enriched
Uranium (GAO-01-148), December 2000.
[lxxxv] CSIS, “Managing the Global Nuclear Materials Threat.” A
draft Report Card on the Department of Energy’s Nonproliferation
Programs with Russia, from an advisory panel sponsored by DOE and
cochaired by former Senator Howard Baker (R-TN) and by Lloyd
Cutler, former white House counsel and issued January 10, 2001,
reaches much the same conclusions.
[lxxxvi] Brett Wagner, “The U.S. Should Seize the Chance,”
Pioneer Planet, November 4, 2001.
[lxxxvii] Platt’s Nuclear News Flashes, June 26, 2001.
[lxxxviii] The loss of jobs may have been inevitable, given the
age and technology of the enrichment plants that USEC leased.
The promises and the withdrawal of promises were not.
[lxxxix] We also support federal compensation for workers at
other fuel cycle facilities that were involved in the Cold War
effort. The status of the various compensation programs is,
however, beyond the scope of this report.
[xc] Energy Information Administration, Annual Electric Generator
Report, electronic database, cited in Worldwatch Institute, State
of the World 2000 (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 144.
News | Uranium Enrichment Project | France Nucléaire
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[http://www.old-growth.org] | Green Tourism | Contact Us
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*****************************************************************
29 BNFL liabilities transferred to aid part-privatisation
Guardian Unlimited | Archive Search
Patrick Wintour, chief political correspondent Guardian
Thursday November 29, 2001
More than £35bn of British Nuclear Fuels' past liabilities are to
be transferred to a new government company, in a bid to refocus
nuclear waste clean-up efforts and improve the chances of partial
privatisation of some of the company, the industry secretary,
Patricia Hewitt, announced yesterday.
A new liabilities management authority will take charge of the
liabilities, the bulk of which were created during the civil and
military nuclear programme in the 50s and 60s. The historic
liabilities will include the Sellafield and Magnox sites.
Ms Hewitt also announced that any plans to part-privatise BNFL
have been deferred by two years to 2004 at the earliest.
Ms Hewitt said: "BNFL's management and workforce have made
considerable progress in their efforts to turn the company
around, but there is still more to do."
The new authority will focus on nuclear decommissioning and
clean-up. Ms Hewitt told MPs: "This task requires the same focus,
intensity and technological innovation as the original nuclear
development programme". The new structure, she said, "strengthens
the emphasis on converting legacy facilities and wastes to forms
that will keep them safe for decades to come, pending their
disposal".
Ms Hewitt said it did not alter overall government liabilities,
since the liabilities were just being transferred from one part
of government to another.
The bulk of the liabilities consist of redundant radioactively
contaminated facilities, equipment and materials which need to be
dismantled and disposed of. It is estimated that the cost of
handling the waste will be around £1bn a year for the next 10 to
fifteen years. Ms Hewitt said the transfer of the liabilities to
a separate authority would increase transparency and
accountability. The move was welcomed by unions representing
workers in the nuclear industry, which said it gave BNFL an
opportunity to operate as a normal commercial company.
Greenpeace said the announcement marked the beginning of the end
of nuclear fuel reprocessing, and predicted that only two BNFL
firms - the US-based Westinghouse and the fuels division in
Springfield, Lancashire - could be sold.
Friends of the Earth said the announcement proved that BNFL was
effectively bankrupt.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****************************************************************
30 Nuclear shake-up strips BNFL of most of its assets
The Times - UK Abstracts; Nov 29, 2001
Secretary of state for trade and industry Patricia Hewitt
yesterday proposed the creation of the Liabilities Management
Authority, which will assume the responsibility of cleaning up
nuclear facilities currently handled by British Nuclear Fuels
(BNFL). The proposed body will also relieve BNFL of long-term
decommissioning liabilities amounting to GBP35bn as well as the
burden of paying the cost of the clean-up worth GBP42bn, which
the company at present shoulders with the help of the UK Atomic
Energy Authority. Ms Hewitt's proposal is expected to restructure
the UK's nuclear sector as it will pave the way for the partial
privatisation of BNFL and the entry of new players in the legacy
management business. BNFL chairman Hugh Collum welcomed the idea
saying, "We are now going to be in a commercially competitive
world."
Abstracted from: The Times
+
Copyright: Financial Times Information
*****************************************************************
*****************************************************************
NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES
*****************************************************************
1 Ban nuclear weapons in space
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 22:21:05 -0600 (CST)
Reply-To: Jim Harris
Here is a new Progressive Secretary Letter.
[ ] Send - Send this letter to congress people for zip code ________
[ ] Send - Send this letter to congress people for the state of
____ Sign my letter _____ [ ] No - Don't send this letter
Note: This letter supports a campaign by Global Network Against
Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. It goes to President, Vice
President, and Congress.
Further information: http://www.space4peace.org click on "Support
the Kucinich Space Ban bill"
From: Your Name and eMail Address To: The President, The
Vice President, Your Senators, Your Representatives
Subject: Ban nuclear weapons in space
Dear _________________:
The threats to peace, security, and human life have grown much more
real to the American people since September 11, 2001.
One of the several terrible threats that could affect all people,
everywhere, is that of nuclear war -- whether by warring governments
or terrorists.
Now there is a sensible, straightforward bill in Congress that
would support the banning of nuclear weapons and the achievement
of a new world agreement never to resort to their use. This could
provide just the move forward the world needs.
I urge everyone in the United States Government to voice their
support of H.R.
2977, the "Space Preservation Act of 2001."
Sincerely,
Your name
Sincerely
Jim Harris
http://www.ProgressiveSecretary.Org.
Make Your Voice Heard. Enroll in http://www.ProgressiveSecretary.Org.
Progressives send far fewer letters than conservatives. This is an
easy way to level this field.
( ~#\L=Ban_Nukes_5\P=22216\S=P)
*****************************************************************
2 Scheduled work to be carried out at unit of Russia's Balakovo
nuclear plant
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 29, 2001
Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax
Saratov, 29 November: The Balakovo nuclear power station has
started reducing its second unit's capacity to carry out planned
work, the press service of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry
told Interfax today.
Radiation is within normal levels. Work is to be tentatively
completed by the end of 1 December, the press service reports.
Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 0740 gmt 29 Nov
01
/BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.
World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright
*****************************************************************
3 Russian naval spokesman "angrily dismisses" newspaper's Kursk
theory
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Nov 29, 2001
Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 29 November:
The Russian navy commander's aide angrily dismissed a media
version of the wreck of nuclear-powered submarine Kursk.
An expert of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Dmitriy Vlasov,
said in his paper that the Kursk was wrecked by the blast of a
torpedo with a technical defect which the Kursk had on board.
The commander's aide, Capt Igor Dygalo, said in an interview with
ITAR-TASS on Thursday [29 November] that the version was based
only on a "personal incompetent opinion of its author" which
"does not have anything in common with the actual state of
affairs in the investigation of causes of the catastrophe".
Dygalo said the newspaper article only sought to "heat" the wreck
topic. Investigators of the Kursk's perish gave "a maximum of
information" to the Russian and Western public, Dygalo said.
"Against this background, assessments by various pseudo-experts
look just absurd and illiterate," he said, adding that the
governmental investigation commission and the navy command "tens
of times answered arising questions" concerning causes of the
wreck.
Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1331 gmt 29 Nov
01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to
*****************************************************************
4 House OKs $20 billion anti-terror package
11/29/2001 - Updated 01:40 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House overwhelmingly approved a $20 billion
anti-terrorism package Wednesday after derailing a Democratic
drive to defy President Bush and add billions for domestic
security, defense and aid to New York.
The popular $318 billion defense bill, to which the terrorism
funds were added, was approved by 406-20. The $20 billion is to
finance the war in Afghanistan and the battle against domestic
terrorism and to help New York and other areas recovering from
the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The fight now moves to the Senate. Majority Democrats plan
initial votes there next week on whether to challenge Bush's
threat to veto any spending beyond the $20 billion.
In the day's key showdown, majority Republicans suffered just
four defections in a 216-211 victory that blocked Democrats from
even offering amendments to increase anti-terrorism funds. Bush
has cast the fight as a test of fiscal austerity, coupling that
with a promise to seek more money early next year if needed.
"Congress will respond" when more money is requested, said Rep.
Ray LaHood, R-Ill. "But we need to be responsible about these
things."
Democrats said now was the time to lay out more money to buy
vaccines, hire sky marshals, secure Russian nuclear material,
increase food inspections and otherwise thwart terrorists.
"We're going after the snake," Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., said
about the U.S.-led hunt for Osama bin Laden and other suspected
terrorist leaders in Afghanistan. "They're going to try to
retaliate."
The vote underlined the strong pull the widely popular Bush has
on GOP lawmakers. That influence, plus pressure from party
leaders, let them withstand lobbying by unions, mail-order
businesses, ports and other groups that stood to benefit from the
Democrats' proposal.
Bush won a victory in the Democratic-controlled Senate as well.
Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Democrats would no
longer seek extra domestic security spending as part of their
economic stimulus legislation. Their domestic security proposal
had been a major obstacle to a bipartisan deal on using tax cuts
and new spending to prod the slumbering national economy.
That move, coupled with signals of widespread support for a plan
to erase Social Security taxes for a month, breathed new life
into the economic stimulus bill.
At a morning White House meeting, Bush asked congressional
leaders to intensify efforts for compromise. The leaders met
Wednesday night and planned to resume talks on Thursday.
"Hopefully, we'll get this done in the next week or so," said
Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla.
Though Daschle said his party was shrinking its spending demands
for domestic security — and like the House would attach it to a
defense bill — aides said Senate Democrats still wanted about $35
billion overall for anti-terrorism. That amount — $15 billion
beyond what Bush supports — includes money for bioterrorism and
other domestic security programs, defense and aid to New York.
The Senate Appropriations Committee planned to vote on its
version of the anti-terror package next Tuesday, signaling a new
confrontation with Bush.
The $20 billion in anti-terrorism spending in the House bill was
half the $40 billion that Congress approved three days after the
attacks. Bush controls half, while the rest must be approved anew
and in detail by lawmakers.
Almost from the beginning, Bush threatened to veto spending that
would exceed the $40 billion. White House officials renewed that
threat Wednesday.
"We look forward to working with the Congress to ensure that the
highest priority needs are met in an expeditious manner," they
wrote to congressional leaders.
The 216-211 tally blocked votes on three Democratic amendments
aimed at adding $7.2 billion for protecting drinking water,
hiring border guards and other domestic security steps; $6.5
billion for defense; and $9.7 billion to help New York and other
communities recover from the attacks.
Before Thanksgiving, New Yorkers from both parties were demanding
the extra $9.7 billion for local recovery. They cited a promise
they said Bush made to give those communities half the $40
billion.
But in negotiations with the White House led by Rep. James Walsh,
R-N.Y., most Republican New Yorkers settled for an extra $1.5
billion that would be shifted from other funds within the $20
billion package. Democrats remained opposed.
Of the $40 billion, about $11 billion is for New York and the
other areas. Administration officials have said the total will
reach at least $20 billion with later bills helping jobless
workers and providing other aid.
Overall, $21 billion of the $40 billion is for the military.
The defense bill has $20 billion more than last year's total and
equals Bush's request. It cuts $441 million from Bush's $8.3
billion plan for national missile defense.
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
5 Experts say there is enough material and know-how out there for
terrorists to mount a lethal radiological attack with a 'dirty
bomb,' turning a U.S. downtown into a death zone
By Bill Nichols and Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- It's a scenario even more horrific than the Sept.
11 attack that destroyed the World Trade Center: Terrorists
launch a nuclear strike on an American city.
If a crude nuclear bomb were set off, as many as 100,000 people
would be killed instantly within a 3-mile radius of the blast.
Thousands more would die slowly of radiation poisoning.
This nightmarish picture might be on the minds of many worried
Americans in the wake of Osama bin Laden's statements that his
al-Qaeda network has acquired nuclear weapons. There also have
been reports that al-Qaeda members have boasted of plans for a
''Hiroshima'' against America.
But U.S. intelligence and defense officials have some comforting
news. They don't believe that al-Qaeda, which the Bush
administration and its anti-terrorism partners believe carried
out the Sept. 11 attacks, or any other terrorist group has
acquired or built a nuclear bomb -- yet.
The more immediate worry is a lethal radiological attack. Experts
say terrorists could construct a ''dirty bomb'' that uses
dynamite to disperse radioactive material in an urban setting. It
lacks the force of a nuclear blast but still could kill 1,000
people in an urban district, render the area unlivable for months
and pose cancer risks for decades.
The radioactive material needed to construct a dirty bomb is more
accessible than the uranium and plutonium used in nuclear bombs,
and the amount needed for such a device could fit into a
measuring cup. Building a dirty bomb ''is not a daunting task for
a terrorist,'' says Bruce Blair, president of the Center for
Defense Information.
By contrast, nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to steal or
construct. ''It's really hard to get one,'' Iranian President
Mohammad Khatami told reporters in New York this month. He should
know: Iran has been trying to acquire nuclear technology for
years.
So too, apparently, has al-Qaeda. U.S. military officials said
Tuesday that they have found 40 sites in Afghanistan where bin
Laden forces might have conducted research on chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, U.S. officials
said al-Qaeda papers were found in Kabul on how to make nuclear
bombs, but they were crude diagrams that lacked technological
sophistication.
An idle boast from bin Laden
In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper this month, bin Laden
declared, ''If America used nuclear or chemical weapons against
us, then we may retort with chemical and nuclear weapons. We have
the weapons as deterrent.'' U.S. officials, however, dismiss such
rhetoric as an idle boast.
Mohamed el Baradei, director of the United Nations International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says the odds are slim that
terrorists could obtain a ready-to-use nuclear device. Even so,
after Sept. 11, he urged all eight nuclear powers to review their
arsenals' security. But el Baradei shares the concerns of many
U.S. officials and proliferation experts about the possibility
that terrorists could steal or purchase on the black market
enough nuclear fuel or radioactive material to build a
rudimentary atomic weapon or, more likely, a dirty bomb.
From 1993 through 2000, the U.N. agency, which monitors nuclear
security, confirmed 153 cases of theft of nuclear materials. The
thefts included plutonium and highly enriched uranium that could
be used immediately as fuel for a nuclear weapon, as well as less
volatile nuclear material, such as uranium fuel and wastes from
nuclear power reactors, that would need high-tech processing
before it could trigger a nuclear blast. There also were 183
cases of thefts of other radioactive materials used by industry
and medicine that could be converted into dirty bombs.
''The controls on nuclear material and radioactive sources are
uneven,'' el Baradei told delegates from dozens of nations
gathered for an international symposium on nuclear terrorism this
month. ''Any such materials being in illicit commerce and
conceivably accessible to terrorist groups is deeply troubling.''
Nuclear scenarios
There are four leading scenarios under which terrorists could
launch a strike.
1. Obtaining a nuclear bomb
Existing nuclear weapons are the most lethal threat, but the
least likely to be used by terrorists. There have been reports
that some Soviet warheads are missing, but Russia says its
arsenal is secure and intact. So do the other nuclear states: the
United States, Britain, China, France, Russia, India, Pakistan
and Israel. There has never been a confirmed theft or loss of a
ready-to-use nuclear weapon from any of these nations. But deep
concerns remain about the theft or black-market purchase of a
Russian nuclear device. This month, Russian officials revealed a
frightening lapse in nuclear security.
At a U.N. atomic energy agency conference in Vienna, a
high-ranking Russian nuclear official reported a previously
undisclosed security violation of the ''highest possible
consequence'' during the past two years. He did not provide
details.
A report submitted to Congress in January by a task force led by
former Senate majority leader Howard Baker -- now U.S. ambassador
to Japan -- and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler
catalogues dozens of incidents of attempted theft of nuclear
devices or material in Russia since the Soviet Union fell in
1991.
U.S. concern centers on small, portable nuclear weapons called
''suitcase bombs.'' Russian officials insist that fewer than 100
of the devices were ever constructed and all have been destroyed
or put under impregnable security. U.S. officials fear however
that the Russians can't account for all of them. Even if some
portable devices were stolen, the sophisticated hand-held units
would need expert maintenance -- such as replacement of
fast-decaying tritium used in triggering mechanisms -- to retain
their effectiveness.
2. Building a nuclear bomb
Experts fear that terrorists might obtain weapons-grade nuclear
material and build a crude bomb.
It's a steep technical challenge, but not impossible, especially
if former Soviet weapons scientists have sold their expertise.
The U.S. government estimates that Russia and the former Soviet
republics have about 1,100 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium
and 160 metric tons of plutonium at 123 sites.
Nuclear experts hotly debate how difficult it would be to build a
nuclear bomb using such material. Many believe a crude device is
possible using information in the public domain.
The weapon would be large, perhaps the size of a compact car, and
the nuclear material would have to be shaped and packed with
explosives in a precise way. Finally, the detonation process
would have to be timed perfectly to trigger a nuclear reaction.
But there would still be a threat if terrorists botched the job
and the bomb didn't detonate properly. It could produce a
''fizzle reaction'' equal to one-tenth the force of a normal
nuclear device. Such a blast would approximate 1,000 tons of TNT,
several hundred times the force of the 1995 Oklahoma City
bombing.
Successful detonation of a rudimentary nuclear bomb like those
dropped on Japan during World War II would have the force of 10
kilotons, or 10,000 tons of TNT.
3. Launching a missile
This nightmare scenario, deemed highly unlikely by experts,
envisions the seizure of a missile site or computer codes to
cause an illicit missile launch. Such concerns had focused on the
former Soviet Union, which had nuclear warheads scattered at
missile sites throughout its republics. The arsenal is now
consolidated in Russia, however, and most experts say an
unauthorized missile launch, even by a disaffected military
commander, is implausible. ''It would require a lot of knowledge
of launch codes,'' says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for
Energy and Environmental Research. Although Russian missiles are
no longer targeted at U.S. cities under a 1994 agreement, ''the
target codes can be restored very quickly, in less than a
minute,'' Makhijani says, ''but you would have to know what
you're doing.''
These days, experts say terrorists would be more likely to try to
seize a nuclear weapons facility in India or Pakistan, the newest
members of the nuclear club.
Since Sept. 11, the Bush administration has kept a worried eye on
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, estimated to contain 30 to 50 bombs
or warheads. They are controlled by the Pakistani army, which
contains factions that share al-Qaeda's extremist Islamic views,
intelligence officials say.
Pakistan's arsenal is under tight security, experts say. Nuclear
devices are kept unassembled at different locations, which makes
scientific expertise essential for assembly. U.S. officials
became alarmed when Pakistani authorities detained two Pakistani
nuclear scientists last month because of their contacts with the
Taliban. Pakistani officials are still investigating whether the
pair helped the Taliban develop weapons of mass destruction.
4. Building a dirty bomb
Although a radiological bomb lacks the destructive force of a
nuclear bomb, experts say it poses a far greater threat because
it would not require weapons-grade nuclear material. There are
tens of thousands of radiation sources that would suffice,
ranging from material used in nuclear power plants to isotopes
used by radiology clinics and industrial machinery used to detect
cracks in buildings and pipelines.
Many of the radiation sources, typically sealed in protective
containers, contain only tiny amounts of material. But others
hold large amounts of radioisotopes, such as cesium used in X-ray
equipment, that could be very dangerous in a dirty bomb.
U.S. officials have particular concerns about a nuclear waste
site in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya, where bin
Laden has support. Chechen terrorists planted cesium in Moscow's
Izmailovsky Park in 1995. The device, which contained no
explosives and caused no harm, apparently was meant to warn how
easily a dirty bomb could be set off.
Smuggling dirty bombs into the United States would be difficult.
They probably would lack protective shields that mask radioactive
emissions, and thus could be detected at U.S. ports. In recent
years, U.S. customs officials have been equipped with Geiger
counters that detect radioactivity.
The U.S. government has other equipment to locate a nuclear or
radiological device, although officials would need an approximate
idea of where to look. The Energy Department has nuclear
emergency search teams equipped with special aircraft and
vehicles set up with technology that can detect the presence of a
nuclear weapon. That equipment's range is classified.
The most difficult challenge for authorities assessing the threat
of nuclear terrorism is tracking thefts or black-market purchases
of nuclear material. Worldwide inventories are grossly
inaccurate, and some countries can't account for hundreds of
pounds.
The IAEA's accounting standards allow for losses of up to 5% of
the nuclear material that passes through some large processing
facilities, in part because some countries chafed at having to
track bits of material that might escape in waste streams.
Despite the wiggle room, some countries still ignore the agency's
reporting requirements.
''Nobody knows to this day what's gone missing because of the
large uncertainty factors,'' says Paul Leventhal, president of
the Nuclear Control Institute, an independent watchdog group.
The U.N. atomic agency ''is fond of saying there's no evidence
of any diversion, but there would be no way to know,'' Leventhal
says. ''If you have someone inside (a nuclear facility)
influenced by bribery, extortion or ideology to get stuff out, he
probably is going to be able to do it. When you talk about an
industry that produces by the ton what nuclear weapons require by
the pound, the arithmetic gets very, very scary.'' Cover
storyCover story Cover storyCover story
© Copyright 2001 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
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6 Lab Reports Uranium Levels Higher Since Fire
ABQjournal: 505-823-7777
Thursday, November 29, 2001
Albuquerque Journal--> By Jennifer McKee
Journal Staff Writer
The Cerro Grande Fire, combined with repeated freezing and
thawing over last winter, put more depleted uranium in the air
around Los Alamos, according to a lab scientist, but those levels
are generally minuscule and expected to fall.
Craig Eberhart, leader of the lab's environmental air
monitoring program, presented the information at a regular
meeting of the Community Radiation Monitoring Group in Santa Fe.
According to Eberhart's research, the lab picked up depleted
uranium above background levels of natural uranium at 13 of its
55 air monitoring stations in the first quarter of this year.
Most of those were on lab property. A few were in White Rock and
Los Alamos.
In the second quarter, five stations picked up such amounts.
That compares to just two stations reporting depleted uranium
levels above background in the last two quarters of 2000.
In only three quarters since 1997 have more than two air
monitoring stations picked up levels of the metal above
background.
Eberhart said it is not surprising that the stations picked
up more airborne depleted uranium after the Cerro Grande Fire,
which burned over parts of the laboratory. The burn denuded the
land and exposed any depleted uranium to the wind. Adding to the
dispersal was last year's winter, which Eberhart speculates broke
up the soils with freezing and thawing, thus exposing even more
uranium to the wind.
Eberhart said he expected the levels of depleted uranium to
fall back to levels similar to those found before the fire and
maybe even lower. That's because crews cleaning up after the fire
found pockets of the metal the forest duff had concealed and
cleaned them up.
Eberhart also talked about airborne radioactive materials
picked up at an air monitoring station at the Los Alamos County
Landfill and compared that to other stations away from the lab,
including ones in Santa Fe, Española and Jemez Pueblo.
From plutonium to tritium, the landfill generally reported
more radioactive pollution than any other site.
Eberhart said he doubted that was due to anything
radioactive actually in the landfill. Rather, the lab
purposefully has placed the station at the dump because it is at
the edge of lab property. The site also happens to be especially
dusty.
Because radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests
now covers most of the Earth, more dust in the air also means
more suspended radioactive fallout, which Eberhart said explains
some of the higher levels detected at the dump.
That is not to say the lab plays no role in radioactive air
pollution, Eberhart said. The lab monitors for plutonium,
americium, tritiated water and other radioactive materials, all
of which have been used at the lab at some point. Eberhart said
the lab probably plays some role in the elevated levels detected
at the Los Alamos dump.
Still, the pollution detected at the stations was very small
— far below any government safety limit — and Eberhart said
there's nothing dangerous about the air pollution.
"We do have a small, but detectable impact on the public,"
he said.
Copyright Albuquerque Journal
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7 Energy Secretary: Russian Energy Role Expanding
Wednesday November 28 6:49 AM ET
By Samantha Shields
MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (
[http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news?
p=%22Spencer%20Abraham%22&c=&n=20&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw] -
[http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Spen
cer%20Abraham&cs=nw] ) said on Wednesday that Russia's influence
as an energy exporter to world markets was expanding.
``I think Russia is emerging as a separate nucleus of the energy
equation,'' Abraham told reporters at a round table briefing.
``We treat the Russian role as a very important one, we have
great respect for the energy role that Russia is playing and we
believe it will be an expanded role in future,'' he added.
A statement from Russia's Ministry of Energy said Russian
minister Igor Yusufov had told Abraham during a meeting in Moscow
that oil prices should be fair for both producers and importers.
Abraham said he and Yusufov had discussed Russia's
smaller-than-hoped-for export cut of 50,000 barrels of crude oil
a day, announced last week after a protracted stalemate with OPEC
(
[http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news?
p=%22OPEC%22&c=&n=20&yn=c&c=news&cs=nw] -
[http://rd.yahoo.com/DailyNews/manual/*http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=OPEC&h=c
] ), but would not give details.
``Decisions on production need to be taken in the context of
growth in the world economy. We want to see as much economic
growth as possible,'' Abraham said.
OPEC President Chakib Khelil on Tuesday issued a veiled threat to
hike production if rival exporters failed to curb production
sufficiently. But Abraham refused to comment on the possibility
of lenders helping Russia in the event of an oil price collapse.
The United States is strongly in favor of additional pipelines to
transport oil and gas from the energy-rich Caspian Sea to world
markets, said Abraham. The U.S. Caspian envoy, Stephen Mann, who
was also present at the briefing, said plans for a $3 billion
pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan,
completely bypassing Russia were moving ahead.
``Baku-Ceyhan is moving along nicely, Baku-Ceyhan and CPC are
complimentary,'' he said, referring to the $2.5 billion pipeline
from Kazakhstan to NovoroSsiisk in Russia which opened officially
on Tuesday.
Observers have in the past seen the United States favoring export
routes west which avoided Russia.
The spirit of new collaboration between Russia and the United
States in the wake of the September 11 attacks is seen ending
traditional rivalries over routes.
``Our position on Caspian energy transport has never been
anti-Russian, only anti-monopoly,'' Mann said.
``We think it makes sense to give producer countries more options
for the export of products,'' he said.
Abraham will stay in Moscow until Thursday evening, when he
leaves for Vienna to hold nuclear nonproliferation talks with
officials from the International Atomic Energy Association.
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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8 Enemy of My Enemy
November 29, 2001
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON -- Here is the modern corollary to a Middle Eastern
proverb: The enemy of my enemy can be my enemy, too.
Iran's Shiites despise the Taliban Sunnis; fundamentalists of
both branches of Islam have long been killing one another. Iran's
ayatollahs also hate another U.S. enemy, Saddam Hussein of Iraq,
who killed a half million Persians in the Iran-Iraq war.
Does that enmity of our enemies make Iran our friend? You might
deduce that from the warm handshake extended to Iran's foreign
minister by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the U.N. last
week, the first such contact since the mass kidnapping at our
Tehran embassy in 1979. Or from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
when asked by Bob Schieffer of CBS about Iranian liaison with
U.S. forces in Afghanistan: "You're going to see new
relationships coming out all across the globe."
That's because we've been falling for the tough-cop-nice-cop
routine from Tehran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who rules as Iran's
religious commander, punishes dissenters as he spews hatred of
Israel and "Great Satan" America. Meanwhile, nice-cop President
Mohammad Khatami condemns the Sept. 11 attacks and supports the
Afghan rebels, feeding dreams of "moderation" in bloom.
But reformers in Iran's Parliament are repeatedly squelched by
Khamenei's ruthless Guardian Council. Suppressed Iranians now
know that front-man Khatami's election led to a false spring.
Fifty newspapers have since been closed; the vigilantes of
Hezbollah, the "Party of God," are urged by clerics to beat up
students with democratic yearnings; savage public executions are
on the rise. When rumors spread last month that the government
had bribed soccer players to lose a World Cup qualifying match,
tens of thousands marched in the streets to denounce the
ayatollahs and to hail America.
In our State Department's most recent report on global terrorism,
Iran beat out Iraq and Syria to win the title of "most active
state sponsor of terrorism." This conclusion, unwelcome to dovish
policy makers at Foggy Bottom, was not lightly arrived at.
Evidence is mounting that Tehran sponsored the killing of
Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Even today, Iran's
air cargo planes fly arms and explosives to Damascus for trucking
to terrorist headquarters of Hezbollah in Lebanon, for use by
suicide bombers against Israeli civilians.
Most dangerous to us, Iran leads the terror-sponsorship world in
the development of nuclear capacity. Sitting atop a sea of cheap
oil, Iran needs atomic energy like a hole in the head, but its
rulers take income sorely needed by hungry Iranians and spend it
on nuclear material and scientific know-how from Russia. Vladimir
Putin, President Bush's fervently trusted ally, continues to
refuse all appeals from the U.S. and Israel to curtail sales to
its customer at the center of terror sponsorship.
Why the intense economic and diplomatic pressure from Tehran on
Moscow, which overwhelms the pleas of the Bush White House?
Because Iran's Hezbollah wants its nuclear bomb and no so-called
moderates in Tehran stand in its way.
Here's new evidence of Hezbollah's increased power: Imad Mughniya
is called by Israelis "the Lebanese Carlos," after the former
jackal of terror, because he is suspected of leading a string of
hijackings and embassy bombings, including the attacks on Jews in
Buenos Aires in 1994. A key figure in the Islamic Jihad, he has
enjoyed asylum in Iran. Six weeks before Sept. 11, in a meeting
in Beirut, the top Hezbollah commander, Hassan Nasrallah, placed
Mughniya on the terror group's governing body, the Shura Council.
To maintain the fiction that Hezbollah is a local Lebanese
political party, the global terrorist's name was changed to Jawad
Nour al-Din.
Whatever he calls himself, the Lebanese Carlos is now considered
by Israelis to be the man selected by Iran's strongman, Khamenei,
to be Tehran's operational leader in Lebanon. The significance is
that Mughniya is not a radical politician, like the man he
replaced, but an experienced international terrorist on the lam
from three governments.
In Iran as in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Syria, local tyranny and
global terror go hand in hand. That's why we should resist
strange antiterrorist bedfellowship with Iran's
tough-cop-nice-cop rulers. Iran is becoming ripe for democratic
revolution. We should not ally ourselves with the cruel clerics
whom secular Persian patriots will one day throw out.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information
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9 Nuclear gap in resume no deterrent for StratCom chief
Omaha.com
November 29, 2001
BY JOE DEJKA
He's more familiar with zoombags than poopie suits.
Adm. James O. Ellis Jr.
But don't hold that against him.
Unlike previous commanders in chief of the U.S. Strategic
Command, Adm. James O. Ellis Jr. has not climbed a career ladder
that required him to maintain, protect and target nuclear
weapons. When he takes over as StratCom commander on Friday,
Ellis will be responsible for all three tasks.
Three military experts and two U.S. senators say, however, that
Ellis has the credentials and demeanor to take control of the
nation's nuclear deterrent force of missiles, bombers and
submarines in the post-Sept. 11 world.
Ellis, 54, will become the first former Navy fighter pilot to
lead StratCom and the third admiral since the command was formed
in 1992. The first two admirals to oversee StratCom had served on
ballistic missile submarines.
Navy pilots call their flight suits zoombags. Poopie suits are
what submariners call their blue coveralls.
Ellis will take over at a time when President Bush and Russian
President Vladimir Putin are acting like old school chums, and
most Americans are more fearful of Osama bin Laden than a hail of
Russian missiles. The Spartanburg, S.C., native will need a
pilot's quick reflexes to face the difficult task of implementing
Bush's sharp warhead reductions while maintaining a credible
force to deter an attack on America or its allies. "He definitely
has an outstanding resume," said John Pike, director of
GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that seeks to
reduce reliance on nuclear weapons.
"He has gotten his ticket punched doing just about everything
imaginable," Pike said. "He's had command responsibility in two
full-scale wars and several contingency operations. He's been a
test pilot and a lobbyist." U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who
served as a foot soldier in Vietnam, said the admiral's
experience as a commander at sea will be useful. "I think he's
superbly qualified and well-rounded," Hagel said.
The Senate confirmed Ellis' appointment Sept. 25.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said he sat down with Ellis for about an
hour after Ellis was appointed.
Nelson, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said Ellis
seemed well-acquainted with the fundamental tenets of arms
control and nuclear deterrence. "He satisfied me that he has a
full range of knowledge," Nelson said.
Retired Rear Adm. Stephen H. Baker, a senior fellow at the Center
for Defense Information, said Ellis is "about as seasoned a
warrior as we have as a four-star."
One key to Ellis' appointment, according to Baker, was his
command of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham
Lincoln. To hold that post, Ellis had to pass the Navy's
demanding and highly technical nuclear-power training school, he
said.
"That check in the box was the qualifier for him being eligible"
to lead StratCom, Baker said. "It's by far the most
comprehensive, hardest, challenging course they can throw at any
human being."
Ellis commanded the carrier in 1991 and participated in Operation
Desert Storm. The ship, then on its maiden voyage, was deployed
in the western Pacific and Arabian Gulf.
Baker said he sees no weaknesses in Ellis' resume.
Although submariners gain hands-on experience - giving them keen
understanding of their deterrence mission - they also can be
narrowly focused, Baker said.
The global focus of Ellis' assignments - Europe, the Pacific, the
Atlantic, Washington, D.C. - ensures his understanding of U.S.
strategic interests, he said.
When America launched a bombing campaign to stop Serbian ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo, Ellis was in the thick of things. At the
time, Ellis was commander in chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe,
headquartered in London, and commander in chief, Allied Forces,
Southern Europe, headquartered in Naples, Italy.
Ellis has held both positions since 1998.
The air campaign, code-named Operation Allied Force, and the
Kosovo Force that followed, involved more than 50,000 personnel
and more than 900 aircraft from all NATO nations.
It was Ellis' performance during and after the conflict that
impressed Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. O'Hanlon co-authored the book, "Winning Ugly: NATO's
War to Save Kosovo," released last year. The book is critical of
the Clinton administration's handling of the war.
"I'm a big fan" of Ellis, O'Hanlon said.
He said Ellis was "a good soldier" during the war, but afterward
wasn't shy about offering constructive criticism on the
preparedness of U.S. and NATO forces.
O'Hanlon said implementing Bush's warhead cuts is a clear task
for the next leader of StratCom. Equally important, he said, is
dealing with the instability caused by Russia's relative
weakness.
Ellis, O'Hanlon said, must figure out how to cut warheads and
make sure Russia doesn't lose control of its nuclear weapons
while protecting against the threat of future bin Ladens.
Ellis declined an interview, but during the Senate confirmation
process he expressed his support for the Triad: the three-legged
model of strategic defense.
Submarines provide survivability, bombers provide flexibility and
intercontinental ballistic missiles provide a prompt response, he
said. Ellis said the country's nuclear-weapons manufacturing
complex is old and requires modernization.
He expressed support for "denuclearizing" former Soviet states,
to continue to promote weapons stockpile safety and security in
Russia and help stem the proliferation of weapons.
In response to written questions from the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Ellis admitted that he has some learning ahead, but
said, "Thirty-two years of service in the U.S. military have
fully prepared me for this position."
World-Herald staff writer Matt Kelley contributed to this report.
©2001 Omaha World-Herald.
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10 NATIONAL NEWS: MoD rejects submarine plan NEWS DIGEST
Financial Times; Nov 29, 2001
By ALEXANDER NICOLL
MoD rejects submarine plan The Ministry of Defence has rejected a
proposal from Babcock International, owner of Rosyth dockyard, to
dismantle the disused nuclear submarine Renown, one of seven
floating at the yard near Edinburgh. Babcock, which had hoped to
preserve 100 jobs, said it was disappointed.
Lewis Moonie, defence minister, said the work by Babcock, which
required regulatory approvals, could not have been done in time
to provide information for the MoD's separate consultation
process with industry on how to store disused submarines.
Alexander Nicoll
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 1995-1998
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