***************************************************************** 10/29/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.254 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 Security of reactors reexamined 2 Egyptian electricity minister on privatization, nuclear power, 3 Hot Asphalt 4 Yankee editorial retracted 5 Waste should stay put 6 Norway puts pressure on Britain over nuclear pollution 7 NATIONAL NEWS: Nuclear power 'not needed' to hit green targets 8 Nuclear protest banned 9 NRC Seeks Public Input on Environmental Statement For Proposed 10 Defusing A Toxic Bomb 11 Experts Say Measures Needed to Protect Nuclear Reactors 12 Security of reactors reexamined 13 What Is the Worst That Could Happen? 14 Security guard sparks alert 15 EDITORIAL: Excessive secrecy 16 (W) To the Congress of the United States 17 Atomic Energy scores major U.K. power deal 18 What caused the accident? 19 State urges iodide pills, but availability questionable 20 Iodine deficiency poses health risks 21 in the event of A nuclear accident Is route a clear, present 22 Comments on Dateline's October 28th, 2001 show on nuclear power 23 Meeting Agenda - Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects 24 ADAMS: Items of Interest - Monday, October 29, 2001 25 Austrian chancellor wants Czechs to guarantee nuclear plant's 26 Dangers of proceeding with MOX NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 [southnews] US stands by to steal Pakistan's nukes 2 Bin Laden's Nuclear Weapons? 3 US prepares to take Pak nukes if Musharraf falls 4 Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons At Grave Risk 5 Opinion: Bombing comes home 6 Seeing the country: Road trips energize DOE official's music 7 America's 'elite' troops 8 First Kursk missiles removed 9 President Bush Announces Two Individuals to Serve in His Administration 10 Bin Laden's Nuclear Weapons? 11 Irish study finds plutonium in gun rounds 12 Analysis shows DU does not pose immediate risk 13 1961 Paducah tests indicated neptunium exposure 14 Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at risk 15 SRS's risk of attack is slight 16 Ukraine destroys last of 46 silos for SS-24 missiles 17 Russian experts discuss Bin-Ladin's possible nuclear plot 18 2 scientists suspected of helping the Taliban **************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Security of reactors reexamined Miami Herald: Posted at 6:48 a.m. EST Sunday, October 28, 2001 BY CURTIS MORGAN cmorgan@herald.com Security at Turkey Point has never been tighter. Some of it is visible. Private guards armed with assault weapons patrol the gate to the sprawling nuclear power plant along Biscayne Bay in South Miami-Dade County. Most isn't visible. Boaters once could chase fish to the mouth of the plant's channel. Now, motor too near and a state marine officer cruises over to politely suggest moving off. The advice carries added weight when he casually drops, ``There are three sniper rifles pointed at your heads.'' Since Sept. 11, the nation's 103 nuclear power plants have been on highest alert but despite significantly stepped-up defenses, in some ways they seem more vulnerable than ever. The most disturbing concern is whether nuclear reactors, built to withstand the worst nature can offer in hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, can weather a jet strike. Other critical components might be crippled more easily, from storage casks holding used radioactive fuel to cooling water systems that protect reactors from melting down. Watchdog groups and other critics, including some members of Congress, urge an overhaul of an industry they say has persistent security problems. Between 1991 and 1998, nearly half the sites tested failed to thwart assaults by mock terrorists -- despite advance notice. ``The Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to engage in a wholesale review of the security at nuclear power plants, considering not just the threat from ground forces, but also previously unevaluated threats,'' said U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has urged tougher security since the Gulf War. The NRC and the nuclear power industry are doing just that, conducting what spokesman Victor Dricks called a ``top-to-bottom review.'' The federal agency has issued a half-dozen advisories and urged cooperation with military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. ``Arrangements have been made with other agencies to protect plants by land, sea and air,'' Dricks said. ``I really can't get much more specific.'' Nuclear plants rank high on the at-risk list because of the potentially disastrous consequences of a successful assault. Deaths wouldn't come from a blast, but the release of high levels of radiation could, in severe cases, kill thousands. Since the attacks, the NRC and industry have provided only vague information about security upgrades. The level of secrecy is so high that on Oct. 11 the NRC shut down its website, which included voluminous declassified details about plant equipment, operations and locations, right down to longitude and latitude. Though the site is back up now, most information is accessible only by request. Response has varied widely from state to state. In New York and Massachusetts, governors ordered National Guard troops to patrol the plants. In New York, the U.S. Coast Guard reversed its decision to end 24-hour patrols around a plant on the Hudson River after a number of political leaders objected. The Federal Aviation Administration, until dropping them recently, also restricted flights over some plants, including Florida Power & Light Co.'s St. Lucie facility where a student pilot strayed close enough two weeks ago to scramble fighters. Now, the FAA is ``strongly urging pilots not to circle or loiter over nuclear or electrical power plants, industrial complexes, dams, reservoirs and military installations.'' FPL spokeswoman Rachel Scott would say only that the utility was taking ``extensive measures'' to protect the public. Do measures really go as far as snipers? Scott laughed, seemingly discounting that possibility, but said surveillance had been increased. ``Nuclear power plants have always been designed to protect against terrorist threats and we have always had a very stringent security program,'' she said. Unlike airport workers, for instance, nuclear plant employees all undergo criminal background checks. Increased patrols and industry assurances haven't comforted critics. The NRC has documented a history of security shortcomings. ``We don't know any of the details about what is being done now, that's classified,'' said Tyson Slocum, research director for energy and environment programs for Public Citizen, the Ralph Nader-run group that has long campaigned against nuclear power as expensive and dangerous. ``We do know the security record of nuclear plants is abysmal.'' The main problem, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union for Concerned Scientists, is that the NRC and industry have seriously underestimated terrorist threats. REACTOR SECURITY TEST Many vulnerable to `raid,' but none are in Florida Current regulations, designed with Cold War espionage in mind, aim to thwart a single insider spy or small teams of infiltrators, armed with hand-held weapons and grenades, Lochbaum said. In the 1990s, after the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center, those rules were altered to include car and truck bombs. But a large-scale assault always was considered the stuff of a Hollywood script. In fact, the rules specifically exempt utilities from protecting against attacks ``by an enemy of the United States, whether a foreign government or person.'' There also are no set standards at the 66 U.S. sites housing nuclear reactors, Lochbaum said. The NRC allows some to have as few as five armed guards on duty, depending instead on locks, fences and other engineering safeguards. When put to the test, security systems have failed nearly as often as they've succeeded. Under a program called Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation, which began in 1991, a team, comprised mainly of ex-military personnel, staged mock assaults on plants. By 1998, when the tests ended, 27 of 57 sites demonstrated what an NRC security specialist called ``significant protection weaknesses,'' even with months of notice and a list of potential scenarios. Teams were able to breach gates, fences and locks and elude or overwhelm security in attacks that allowed access to systems that, if damaged, ``would have put the nuclear reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and radiological release.'' Turkey Point and the state's other nuclear power plants -- FPL's St. Lucie and Florida Power's Crystal River, on the West Coast -- passed the drill. The NRC would not release full reports but a 1997 letter called Turkey Point's security plan ``generally sound.'' It also noted ``items of concern'' similar to ones first detailed in 1994. Lochbaum said he wasn't aware of details of Turkey Point's test but recalled that security lapses had contributed to the NRC's threat to shut down the plant in 1989. ``You could lift a manhole cover and crawl under the fence. It was things like that the NRC kept finding,'' Lochbaum said. ``The company would fix it but not six others like it.'' FPL spokeswoman Scott said the utility had ``seriously and directly'' corrected flaws. Lochbaum acknowledged that the NRC has since has given Turkey Point glowing reviews overall. Lochbaum and other critics charge that the NRC contributed to lax attitudes by inconsistently enforcing the rules, never shutting down utilities for failures. In fact, he said, the agency phased out mock raids after complaints of high expense and was just preparing to begin a pilot program of industry-designed drills which would make the utilities, in essence, self-policing. Under criticism from Markey and other members of Congress, the agency reinstated the tests and is now reviewing the entire security program. A QUESTION OF DESIGN A deliberate jet crash was not anticipated More troubling, and more difficult to correct, are concerns about the actual structures. The industry has long insisted that plants were designed to resist airplane crashes. FPL, which is seeking to relicense Turkey Point, last year dismissed activists' concerns about converting the old Homestead Air Force Base into a new commercial airport, calling the odds of a crash astronomical. But the NRC now acknowledges it isn't quite so sure about its calculations. While reactor vessels rank among the toughest structures in the world, with concrete walls ranging from two to six feet thick -- built to survive butt-end hits from telephone poles traveling 200 miles per hour -- the impact of a large jet aircraft laden with fuel and the resulting inferno were not in the design equations. There are even more concerns about less fortified support structures, like the buildings that hold spent, but still very radioactive, fuel. ``The NRC did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s or 767s, and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such crashes,'' the NRC said. REINFORCED WALLS Federal report suggests concern over blast In 1989, the United States and Japan crashed a rocket-propelled F-4 fighter on a track into a prototype containment wall of reinforced concrete six feet thick. At 480 mph, the jet disappeared in a puff of dust, leaving a gouge in the wall just 2.4 inches deep. But an earlier and largely overlooked study considered more than just the force of impact. In 1982, the Argonne National Laboratory issued a report suggesting that if enough vaporized fuel got into a double-walled containment vessel, it might generate a violent and damaging explosion. ``If only 1 percent of the fuel, say 500 pounds for an FB-111 fighter plane, is involved in such an event, the blast environment will be equivalent to the detonation of approximately 1,000 pounds of TNT,'' the study found. The NRC and FPL say they still believe the buildings would likely stand up to a crash, and any potential releases would be contained by redundant safety and cooling systems. But NRC's Dricks said more study was needed. ``We would not rule out the possibility that an aircraft could cause structural damage that would cause the release of radiation.'' Copyright 2001 Miami Herald ***************************************************************** 2 Egyptian electricity minister on privatization, nuclear power, other issues BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Oct 28, 2001 Minister of Electricity and Power Dr Ali al-Sa'idi denied that the Ministry of Electricity would have any intention of links with Israel under the current circumstances, and he confirmed that the linking projects with Syria and Jordan do not include Israel in any way and that this matter will not be discussed until comprehensive peace prevails over the region. In his interview with Al-Wafd, the minister added that there is a comprehensive plan to turn the Egyptian Nuclear Energy Agency into economic entities of a special type, in order to use its capabilities and Egypt's expertise, which is represented in the competent people working in the nuclear field. The minister explained that all Egypt's villages, suburbs and neighbourhoods have been lit with electricity and that while there are some deprived areas that continue to form, the ministry supplies them with electricity upon their request for the service. Dr Al-Sa'idi indicated that privatizing the electricity sector will result in raising the price of electricity bills, and that this is of concern to the Cabinet of Ministers, which concentrates on not adding more burdens upon the people and takes the social aspect into consideration. The minister stressed that not one employee in the electricity sector will be harmed as a result of privatization, as they are the noteworthy force in this sector, as well as the reason behind its growth and prosperity. He added that the Ministry of Electricity had implemented projects for lighting homes and is ready to supply its capabilities to rebuild the electricity stations in Iraq that were destroyed in the war. [Khayrah] It is said that Egypt has a surplus of electricity and that this was the reason behind its participation in the Arab linking projects. Yet despite that, you decided to establish an electricity station in northern Cairo with a capacity of 750,000 kw. Why are you establishing that station despite the present surplus? Does the average increase in consumption indicate the possibility of an imminent deficiency in the energy produced? [Dr Al-Sa'idi] The objective of linking is not related to surplus. It is limited to a number of technical, economic and political reasons. Not every country participating in the linkage has surplus, for if all the countries had surplus, then linkage would not be of importance to them. Some of the benefits of linkage are that it gives stability to the network, and the reserves could be used. If one of the countries participating in linkage with me needs electricity, I can supply it and benefit economically. Also when I need that electricity, I can disconnect it and cover my needs. In addition to that, a linkage between two countries does not necessitate that every country has a reserve, and this minimizes the investments needed for all the countries linked to each other... [Khayrah] Four times previously, the ministry has announced the privatization of electricity companies. Have you set a time for that? Will privatization be implemented at intervals? Are there concerns that domestic and industrial electricity prices will increase? [Al-Sa'idi] The concept of privatization does not exist for the people; they do not understand the meaning of privatization. We have production companies and distribution companies. Within the production companies, there are private sector companies to produce electricity; the first of these companies, the "Sidi Krir" company, will begin production at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. The "North West The Gulf of Suez" company will begin production in early 2003, and the "East Port Said" company at the end of 2003. All those are private companies. We also have two generating stations run by the private sector, which are the Karimat Station that is state owned, and the Sidi Krir Station, owned by the private sector. Is this not privatization?... [Khayrah] When will the current crisis facing the financing of the electricity sector end?! Why is the state borrowing from all saving accounts and foreign bodies and not from the National Investment Bank, despite the many debts it owes? [Al-Sa'idi] There is no crisis whatsoever, and this was proved when we put the North Cairo Station on the market, as we received serious and eager offers to finance it from the Arab Fund, the Islamic Development Bank and the European Investment Bank, which offered the highest sum for such projects, 150m euros... [Khayrah] We have started our nuclear programme with India and Argentina. India has become a significant nuclear power, and Argentina exported a reactor to us. Why did the Atomic Energy Agency stop its noted activity? [Al-Sa'idi] We have certainly started together, and each country has inclinations and policies and is governed by circumstances. India had decided from the beginning to enter into the field of nuclear stations and that this would be its basic inclination, and the political balances surrounding it forced it in that direction. Argentina had an ambitious programme with electric power stations - this was greatly reduced, but it had the capabilities for the design and implementation of major nuclear projects and it tried to use them to export projects to the world. Our situation in Egypt stopped the Egyptian nuclear programme. Thank God large quantities of gas were discovered, and it was natural to choose between using gas and building nuclear stations. The decision depended on economy, which indicated that the use of gas was preferable. If it were decided some day to enter the nuclear programme, we would not have a problem because we have the personnel and the capabilities. Source: Al-Wafd, Cairo, in Arabic 12 Aug 01 p 3 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter ***************************************************************** 3 Hot Asphalt October 28, 2001 Truckloads of Highly Radioactive Nuclear Waste Will Soon Roll Along California 127, Turning a Road Less Traveled Into a Vulnerable Transuranic Highway. Meet the Unhappy People in Their Path. By MATTHEW HELLER If you head north from Baker, Calif., on California 127, the first retail business you come to is 56 miles away, in the small southeastern Inyo County town of Shoshone. Set a few feet back from the highway, where it intersects with California 178 to Pahrump, Nev., C'Est Si Bon occupies a converted railroad depot. A small patch of dirt in front has been carved out for some whimsical weather vanes. The porch is painted a lemon yellow, and the glass-paneled door offers a view of the interior with its hardwood floor, potbellied stove and half-dozen tables. With everything from "crepes du jour" to French sodas on the menu, the restaurant is a touch of Gallic sophistication in the Mojave Desert. David Washum and his wife, Mireille Crete, refugees from Las Vegas, opened C'Est Si Bon last year, realizing a dream of owning their own business. It's also where they are raising their toddler son, Olivier. "We love this little town," Mireille says in her thick French-Canadian accent. "We found this little piece of El Dorado here." Business has been good, Mireille reports, particularly during the winter and summer, when thousands of tourists pass through Shoshone on their way to and from nearby Death Valley National Park. The only other place to eat in town is the somewhat less cosmopolitan Red Buggy Cafe and Crowbar Saloon, a few hundred feet farther north on 127. But in business, location is everything. And there's something troubling about C'Est Si Bon's location, something that clouds David and Mireille's dream of an idyllic future: The highway that brings traffic to their business could become California's busiest transportation corridor for radioactive nuclear waste. For two years, low-level waste--such as material from medical procedures involving radiation--has been hauled for safe storage at the Nevada Test Site via California 127, which runs from Baker to the Nevada border. But starting next spring, the U.S. Department of Energy plans to ship transuranic waste--potentially far more hazardous--from the test site to be buried deep underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. With Nevada refusing to let the waste anywhere near Las Vegas, just south of the test site, the shipments would be routed along 127's lazy loop through California's Mojave Desert--the first such shipments to travel on California roads since the pilot plant opened in March 1999. California 127 also would be a likely route for trucks carrying highly radioactive waste from the core of nuclear reactors and weapons if federal agencies approve the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The road, a 90-mile stretch of narrow, two-lane blacktop, features sharp curves and tends to wash out in flash floods. While 127 is among the least busy highways in the state in terms of average daily trips per mile, a large proportion of users are tourists--Death Valley receives 1.2 million visitors a year--unfamiliar with the road's quirks. "It doesn't seem like an appropriate route to be shipping hundreds of nuclear waste shipments," says Barbara Byron, nuclear waste policy advisor at the California Energy Commission. It's not new, of course, for isolated rural communities to shoulder the burden of disposing of the nation's nuclear legacy. Political realities mean that the environmental protests of urban areas carry more weight than those of their country brethren. "Like everybody else, we'd like to say, 'Not in my backyard,' " says Brian Brown, owner of a date farm near Shoshone. "We'd like to see it somewhere else. But there is no best place for it." At the same time, the reality for David and Mireille is that nuclear waste trucks could be regularly rumbling past their windows. And if the unthinkable--and according to some, inevitable--happens and an accident causes a radiation leak, the exposure could stretch far beyond their cozy cafe, threatening the isolation and security that the area's hardy individualists prize. Residents wonder if the government even considered that possibility. "I'm concerned about the survival of the area," says Marta Becket, owner of the celebrated Amargosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction. "I don't think the DOE even knows about us. We're just another entity on 127." much of southeastern inyo county, also known as the amargosa Valley, could fit the dictionary definition of desolate--endless vistas of barren scrub and dry lake bed, and a couple of dusty settlements. Only about 1,500 people--a mix of retirees, ranch workers and counterculturalists--live in the area. It's a four-hour drive from Shoshone to Independence, the Inyo County seat--about the same distance as from Shoshone to Los Angeles. But along California 127, you can spot signs of human life and culture as deeply rooted as the tamarisk trees that mark the winding course of the Amargosa River. Perched on a plateau just southeast of Shoshone is Tecopa, where hundreds of "snowbirds" park their RVs each winter to take advantage of its famed hot springs. On Shoshone's commercial strip, the amenities include the two eateries, a convenience store, a motel, a museum and a health center. At the north end of town is Death Valley High School, home of the Scorpions, and the Richard Neutra-designed residence of Susan Sorrells. Cousins Brian Brown and Sorrells are members of a clan that has been in the Amargosa Valley for four generations, since a mining boom first brought settlers in the early 1900s. Through the Shoshone Development Co., Sorrells and relatives own all of the town's acreage and operate most of its businesses. (David and Mireille are tenants.) They have invested in catfish ponds, date palms and a purification system for the water supply. They also plan to subdivide some of their land for housing and promote Shoshone as a center for art and geological research. "We have the opportunity to do something special," says Sorrells, a lanky woman with a girlish laugh. Sorrells believes the Energy Department sees the Amargosa only as a "wasteland" where "anything goes." Asked if the idea of trucks hauling transuranic waste through the valley offends her, she responds: "Of course it offends me. That's a very mild way of putting it. Actually, it outrages me." Unlike a nuclear reactor or weapons facility, which at least would create jobs, waste transportation provides no economic benefits to areas it affects. But that's irrelevant to Sorrells. "Even if it pumps $50 million into the community, I don't want it," she says. "It's bad karma." About 28 miles farther north, beside a particularly sharp curve on California 127, you reach the unlikely artistic oasis of Death Valley Junction. Since stumbling on the abandoned recreation hall of the Pacific Borax Co. in 1967, Marta Becket has written, produced and performed musical plays that attract visitors from around the world. The performances--given from October to May--sell out every show, and the theater's elaborate murals of an audience, painted by Becket herself, have made the building a candidate for landmark status. "People come out here to follow their dreams," says the former Broadway dancer, now in her 70s and--with her slender figure, pale complexion and jet-black hair--still capable of turning heads. "Where else could [I] do this? I couldn't do this in New York." Death Valley Junction's other buildings also belong to Becket, including a two-story home and the Amargosa Hotel, which features a colonnade that has made it a favored movie location. She even lets several wild horses roam around the compound. "I've made my life here," she says. "Everything I love is here." She winces at the very thought of a nuclear accident. "It's a nightmare. It would kill it all." A final seven-mile stretch gets you to the Nevada border, where California 127 turns into Nevada 373. Only 40 miles from there is a key piece in America's nuclear puzzle. longtime amargosa valley residents still remember when the u.s. government conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s. The valley came through unscathed--even though you could hear the detonations from Shoshone. But fallout contaminated downwind communities in Nevada and Utah and fed distrust of the government throughout the region. Now a new threat sits on a storage pad at the test site. The government has packed 22,000 cubic feet of waste generated during nuclear weapons research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., into 58 steel boxes and 1,637 steel drums. It's called transuranic waste because it is polluted with man-made materials that have a higher atomic number than uranium, chiefly plutonium. The radioactive material from Livermore includes everything from laboratory clothing and rubber gloves to glassware and solidified waste-water sludge, but the level of radioactivity outside a transport container is so low that it cannot even penetrate human skin. The energy department began transporting it by truck to Nevada in the 1970s, making the last shipment in 1989. If a human inhales or ingests even a microscopic particle of plutonium from a weapons lab, however, the consequences invariably are lethal. "A very small amount causes fatal lung cancer," notes Don Hancock, director of the nuclear waste program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, a think tank in Albuquerque, N.M. Worse, plutonium can be an invisible, undetectable enemy. If particles escape from a shipment, victims might not know for years that they have been contaminated. The radioactive elements in transuranic waste also are long-lived--half of the original amount of a plutonium-239 isotope will remain harmful after 24,000 years. The Energy Department isn't taking any chances. For transuranic waste transportation, it only uses teams of two drivers that have undergone more than 400 hours of specialized training. One driver must remain with the vehicle at all times, and the drivers' every move is tracked by satellite. "It's safe transportation," says Ray Anderson, a driver with one of the department's contracted haulers, CAST Transportation of Denver. "It's the safest." The waste boxes and drums are packaged in a shipping container called a TRUPACT-II, which has withstood test conditions 20 times more severe than the average traffic accident. Among other things, it has been dropped 30 feet onto a concrete pad and burned in jet fuel for 30 minutes at 1,475 degrees. Once the waste gets to the WIPP dump in New Mexico, the material is buried 2,150 feet underground in deep salt beds. Energy officials say transuranic waste is an unlikely target for terrorists, although low-level shipments to the Nevada Test Site were temporarily suspended in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the onset of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan. "It wouldn't have the type of impact terrorists would want," says Ralph Smith, the department's manager of institutional programs in Carlsbad, adding that they would find it difficult even to penetrate a TRUPACT and access the waste. But since the terrorist attacks, drivers have been instructed to "pay more attention to their surroundings." The first transuranic shipment to WIPP arrived safely from Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M., on March 25, 1999. The energy department estimates that the plant, designed to store more than 2 million cubic meters, ultimately will receive more than 37,000 shipments from 10 major federal sites and at least 13 small-quantity sites. Altogether, WIPP-bound trucks traveling the different routes will pass through at least 30 states. According to Smith, the department has the authority to ship transuranic waste along any route it wishes but prefers to negotiate with the states. Shipments from the Nevada Test Site, originally scheduled to start next month, have been delayed, in part because California has yet to agree to the route. "This route happens to be one of the few on non-interstate roads," Smith explains. Officials originally proposed that trucks use U.S. 95 from the test site to Interstate 40 near Needles, Calif., traveling through Las Vegas. That triggered howls of outrage from the gambling mecca. By default, the Amargosa Valley became the "preferred" route. Officials have yet to decide which route the trucks will take after passing through the valley. The first of 112 truckloads would set off for New Mexico in May; the last is scheduled for 2009. Insists Smith: "We've done everything humanly possible to make shipments as safe as we possibly can." on an early june afternoon at the longstreet inn casino, about 60 people are gathered around a conference room. They represent a multitude of federal, state and local government agencies--from the Energy Department to Caltrans to the Volunteer Ambulance Service of Beatty, Nev. They have come to this remote border casino on the proposed WIPP shipment route to take part in a "tabletop exercise." In the parking lot, a truck is available for inspection, with a stainless steel TRUPACT-II container mounted on the trailer bed. At the session--part of a training program that the Energy Department conducts around the country--the facilitator asks the agency representatives how they would respond to an accident on California 127 just north of Shoshone. A sedan, he hypothesizes, runs the stop sign at the intersection with California 178, forcing a waste truck to leave the road. A delivery van tailgating the truck swipes the sedan and crashes into the rear of the truck. The van's contents spill all over the road; a TRUPACT-II falls off the trailer. There's an air of unreality about the exercise. The only hazardous material released in the collision comes from the van, which just happens to be transporting iodine for medical use; the TRUPACT stays intact. Some of the participants don't seem to be taking things too seriously, reducing the facilitator at times to the role of a frustrated schoolmaster trying to control an unruly classroom. "It's all BS anyway," a Nevada highway patrolman grumbles. Larry Levy, a swarthy, full-bearded auto mechanic and anti-nuclear activist who has a view of 127 from his mobile home in Tecopa, leaves dissatisfied. The department "can't admit even to themselves that one of their containers would rupture," he says. "Their hidden agenda is to convince everyone there's nothing to worry about." But people in the Amargosa Valley are worried. What if, for example, a motor-home driver dozes off at a curve and runs into a transuranic waste truck? "I think it's inevitable that radioactive waste shippers are going to be involved in accidents," Levy says. Sorrells agrees: "I don't think it's a question of 'if'; it's a question of 'when.' " So far, more than 400 transuranic shipments have arrived safely at the waste isolation plant in New Mexico from other parts of the country. But there have been some glitches, or, as Smith prefers to describe them, "start-up problems." A patch of radiation contamination was found on the outside of a 55-gallon drum inside a TRUPACT-II shipped from Rocky Flats, Colo., and a shipment got stranded at a New Mexico truck stop during a snowstorm--in bad weather, drivers are supposed to stop at secure areas, such as a military base. In a bizarre incident, a driver heading for the waste isolation plant last November missed a turn in Santa Fe and illegally headed down Interstate 25 before police turned the truck around. According to the Energy Department, the satellite-monitoring system showed the truck had strayed off course, but those watching the monitors hadn't noticed. "Has [the program] gone as well as DOE said it was going to go?" asks Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center. "It has not gone as well." He also questions the department's testing of the waste containers. In a particularly remote area, he suggests, a fire could burn for more than 30 minutes before emergency services could respond. "We don't know whether [a TRUPACT-II] would fail in the case of a serious fire," he says. Emergency services in the Amargosa Valley are bare-bones. A single deputy sheriff patrols an area of about 1,200 square miles and, because of budget constraints, is on strict orders not to exceed 40 hours a week. The Southern Inyo Fire Protection District is made up of volunteer firefighters and paramedics and used ambulances--and it may not survive much longer. With no county support, the district has relied on bake sales and barbecues for funding. Three ballot measures that would have imposed a $30-a-year assessment on local property owners have failed to gain the required two-thirds majority. The district is going to the voters one final time Nov. 6, asking them to make a do-or-die decision. The initiative proposes an assessment that would raise about $75,000 for operating costs for the district. If it doesn't pass, officials say the district will go out of business Jan. 1. The nearest emergency response team with radiological training would be at the Nevada Test Site, at least an hour away from Shoshone. "It's a recipe for disaster," says Brian Brown, who volunteers as a firefighter-paramedic in addition to running the China Ranch date farm. The district has no radiological monitoring equipment or protective gear. "I would not be interested" in responding to an accident, says Levy, also a volunteer. Hancock recommends that the Energy Department solve the problem by providing each shipment to WIPP with an escort of personnel trained to respond to radiological emergencies. But says department manager Smith, the additional costs of such escorts would outweigh the benefits. "The risk level is so low," he says. Smith would like to see a solution to the fire district's problems. But he reaches a matter-of-fact conclusion: "We're like any interstate shipper. At the end of the day, our job is to ship this stuff. And we're going to ship it." under the energy department's proposed schedule, construction on the Yucca Mountain repository for high-level nuclear waste would begin in 2005. The department would designate transportation routes in 2006, with shipments scheduled to start in 2007. They would overlap for several years with transuranic shipments from the Nevada Test Site. Trucks carrying low-level waste already pass through Shoshone about three times a week. The potential build-up of nuclear waste traffic through the Amargosa Valley bothers county and state officials. "You've got low-level [waste], you've got Yucca Mountain down the line," says Barbara Byron of the California Energy Commission. "The concern is it's cumulative, that this corridor is being more and more used by DOE for shipments." Other remote areas affected by shipments, she notes, don't have heavy tourist traffic. In the Amargosa, the possibility of Yucca Mountain shipments is more food for fretting. For now, residents are focusing on the transuranic waste trucks. "They're not going to stop" in Shoshone, promises Sorrells. "We'll make darn sure they're not going to stop. We're going to have a citizens watch." At C'Est Si Bon, Mireille Crete baby-sits her son on a quiet morning and wonders about the future of her family's desert idyll. One of the reasons they came to Shoshone, she says, is because it would be "so fabulous" to raise Olivier there. "Olivier has as pure an environment as you can get," she says. One radioactive spill and "all that would be spoiled." There's no hysteria in Mireille's comments. She realizes that sober political realities have brought nuclear waste to her doorstep. Still, she says, "This is where I live. It's too close for comfort." She can't be convinced about the safety of this volatile, mysterious material. "Leak-proof, whatever-proof," she says, gesturing at the highway outside her restaurant, "it's not good enough for me.' For information about reprinting this article, go to http://www.lats.com/rights/register.htm Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 4 Yankee editorial retracted Times Record Opinion An apology to our readers 10/26/2001 The editorial that ran in Tuesday's edition, "Post National Guard at Maine Yankee," was not meant to run, for the simple reason that it did not reflect the views of the publisher. Its publication was a mistake that shouldn't have happened. The editorial was submitted Tuesday morning to Douglas Niven, The Times Record's publisher, for his review. This is our standard practice: Editorials are written by an editor with the understanding that the views expressed are intended to be the "position" of the newspaper. In this instance, the publisher asked an editor to pull the editorial off that day's page out of a concern that some of the assertions made within it were not supported sufficiently. He felt more discussion was required before the editorial could be published. The editorial was pulled from the page, and another one inserted in its place. To our deep regret, the wrong page — the one showing the original editorial — was placed in our printing press. As a result, our readers were presented with an editorial we did not intend to run. We did not realize the mistake until all of our newspapers had been delivered — too late to correct three inaccuracies and any false impressions that might result from them. Our assertion that security at Maine Yankee "has been breached repeatedly" by citizens concerned about the nuclear power plant's vulnerability to a terrorist attack is wrong. What those citizens have characterized as a "breach" is more accurately described as driving onto Maine Yankee property that is not part of the plant's secure zone. Nor is it accurate to say a "Chernobyl-style accident" is possible if terrorists crashed a hijacked airplane into the plant or used a truck bomb to destroy all or part of the building surrounding the spent nuclear fuel pool. Chernobyl was an entirely different type of nuclear reactor and the circumstances of its meltdown are not applicable to Maine Yankee. A key element in assessing the risk to Maine Yankee is the fact that it is no longer operating, making it a far less likely target than a plant with an operating nuclear reactor. Finally, while it is true the New York Times and others reported Oct. 18 that the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Harrisburg, Pa., had received a "credible threat," that report was repudiated the next day by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing sources in the "intelligence community" who deemed the threat "non-credible." We are printing this retraction because we feel our mistake may have contributed to the climate of fear concerning a potential terrorist attack on the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant in Wiscasset. We recognize that it is our responsibility to be accurate and balanced not only in our reporting, but also in our editorials. If not for a production error, the editorial that mistakenly ran Tuesday would have been revised to meet those standards. We apologize to you, our readers, and we've taken steps to ensure a similar mistake does not happen again. ***************************************************************** 5 Waste should stay put Pahrump Valley Times By:October 26, 2001 While great efforts are being made these days to get us to see nuclear wastes safely tucked away inside Yucca Mountain, we need to focus on the fact that they're safely tucked away now. Why move them by any means when they've been perfectly safe ever since onsite nuclear waste storage began nearly 60 years ago? We hear that nuclear reactor sites are choking in their own waste, but that's not entirely true. Before the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, several utilities had purchased large expanses of land, anticipating construction of several reactors, but the new reactors were never built. That means a lot of space is available to store wastes. In addition, several utilities have purchased, or are now purchasing land on which to store wastes. Perhaps those utilities who have sincerely run out of space can contract with those who have ample space: moving a few truckloads of spent fuel is preferable to the tens of thousands DOE is now considering moving to Yucca Mountain. I hope you don't see this as an intrusion into Nevada's business, but I couldn't allow the statement that utilities are being overwhelmed by waste go unchallenged. Ron Bourgoin Rocky Mount, N.C. ©Pahrump Valley Times 2001 ***************************************************************** 6 Norway puts pressure on Britain over nuclear pollution The Norway Post - Doorway to Norway 29. Oktober 2001 Norway's Minister of the Environment, Boerge Brende, will Monday meet with his British counterpart, in another attempt to stop the ever increasing radioactive emissions from the Sellafield plant. The two ministers will meet in Luxembourg, together with the environmental minister from the other Nordic countries. The meeting was called at the initiative of Norway. According to Aftenposten, the judicial section of the Department of Foreign Affairs is at present considering the leagal aspects of Britain's allowing the nuclear pollution to continue. The result could result in Norway taking Britain to court over the controversy, the paper writes. Ireland has already sued Britain over what it sees as a breech of the so-called OSPAR Convention of 1998. According to this, Britain committed itself to reducing the radioactive emissions from the Sellafield nuclear repossession plant. Instead the pollution has shown a strong increase over the past three years. -The meeting will put a collective Nordic political pressure on the British Government over this issue, Brende says. He points to the fact that the radioactive pollution of the waters along the Norwegian coast has increased strongly since 1996. -The Norwegian Government asks that the emission levels of Technetium 99 be reduced to what it was prior to 1994. Until proper cleansing equipment is in place, the nuclear waste should be stored on land, Brende says. The Bellona environmental organization supports the Norwegian stand. -It is a parody when Britain supports land based storage for Russian nuclear waste on the Kola Peninsula, while refusing the same for the Sellafield waste, Bellona leader Frederic Hauge says. (Aftenposten) Rolleiv Solholm ***************************************************************** 7 NATIONAL NEWS: Nuclear power 'not needed' to hit green targets Financial Times; Oct 29, 2001 By CATHY NEWMAN Ministers will meet ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without having to build any more nuclear power stations, according to a government-backed report. The Carbon Trust, charged by the prime minister to persuade business to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, has told the government's energy review that the targets can be met if power is generated through other means such as hydrogen, wind and waves. Ian McAllister, who chairs the trust and is also chairman of Ford of Britain, said: "Nuclear is a red herring in this particular debate: you can achieve your low-carbon economy without nuclear. It's not necessary to meet the targets." However, an official at British Nuclear Fuels said: "Without nuclear's contribution this country cannot have a continued, secure and environmentally friendly energy supply." All but one of Britain's nuclear power stations - Sizewell B in Suffolk - are to close by 2023. Nuclear power plants emit negligible amounts of carbon dioxide. But since September 11 there have been concerns that nuclear power stations could be vulnerable to terrorist attack. Ministers have promised that carbon emissions will be 20 per cent below their 1990 level by 2010. Carbon emissions account for up to 90 per cent of greenhouse gases. The review of how to meet energy demands over the next 50 years is being undertaken by Downing Street's performance and innovation unit, and will be completed by the end of this year. It is chaired by Brian Wilson, energy minister - an advocate of nuclear power whose constituency, Cunninghame North, includes the Hunterston plant. In its June manifesto Labour shelved a pledge not to build nuclear stations. However, the evidence from the Carbon Trust, set up by the government, will carry weight. The Carbon Trust submission to the unit says there must be a "clear and unambiguous political commitment beyond the lifetime of individual ministers and governments". Mr McAllister said tax breaks existed to persuade companies to become more energy efficient, but that "there may need to be more" incentives offered by the Treasury. Apart from using hydrogen or renewables such as the wind or waves to generate power, carbon emissions can also be reduced by using energy more efficiently and growing more trees to absorb carbon dioxide. The UK's own emissions target goes beyond the Kyoto protocol, which promised that by 2012 greenhouse gas emissions would be 12.5 per cent lower than in 1990. The unit estimates that half the UK's energy needs would by 2020 be met by gas, with 6 per cent coming from coal, 4 per cent from renewables and 3 per cent from nuclear power. Copyright: The Financial Times Limited ***************************************************************** 8 Nuclear protest banned Independent on Sunday - United Kingdom; Oct 28, 2001 Officials in Lueneburg, north Germany, have banned anti-nuclear protesters from blocking a rail route to the Gorleben nuclear waste dump. Reprocessed fuel rods are expected to arrive in Germany on 12 November. All Material Subject to Copyright ***************************************************************** 9 NRC Seeks Public Input on Environmental Statement For Proposed Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant License Renewal Press Release - Region I - 2001-061 - UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGION I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 No. I-01-061 October 26, 2001 CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610)337-5330/ e-mail: [opa3@nrc.gov] Neil A. Sheehan (610)337-5331/e-mail: [nas@nrc.gov] Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will accept public comments on Wednesday, November 7, regarding an application submitted by Exelon Corporation to renew the operating licenses for its Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in York County, Pa. Members of the public are invited to attend and comment on which environmental issues the NRC should consider in its review of the application. There will be two sessions held on November 7 at the Peach Bottom Inn, 6085 Delta Road (Route 74), Delta, Pa. The first session will convene at 1:30 p.m. and continue until 4:30 p.m. The second session, which will be a repeat of the first session, will get under way at 7 p.m. and continue until 10 p.m. The NRC will host an open house beginning one hour before the start of each meeting to provide members of the public with an opportunity to talk informally with agency staff. Both sessions will begin with identical overviews. The NRC staff will provide a presentation on the license renewal and environmental review processes. Exelon will then discuss its application and possible environmental impacts from license renewal. Under NRC regulations, the original operating license for a nuclear power plant has a term of 40 years. The license may be renewed for up to an additional 20 years if NRC requirements are met. The current operating license for Peach Bottom Unit 2 is due to expire on August 8, 2013, while the current operating license for Peach Bottom Unit 3 is scheduled to terminate on July 2, 2014. (Peach Bottom Unit 1 has been permanently shut down since 1974.) Exelon submitted its license renewal application in early July. As part of its application, the company submitted an environmental report. Copies are available for review at the NRC Public Document Room, located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md., 1-800-397-4209, and at the following two libraries: + Harford County Public Library, Whiteford Branch, 2407 Whiteford Road, Whiteford, Md. 21160; and + Collinsville Community Library, 2632 Delta Road, Brogue, Pa. 17309. An existing NRC document, "Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Power Plants" (NUREG-1437), assesses the scope and impact of environmental effects that would be associated with license renewal at any nuclear power plant site. The document for which NRC will gather information at the November 7th meeting will be a supplement to that generic environmental statement that is specific to Peach Bottom. It will contain a recommendation regarding the environmental acceptability of the license renewal action. At the conclusion of the information-gathering process, the NRC staff will prepare a summary of the conclusions reached and significant issues identified. A copy will be sent to each person who participated. The summary will also be available at the agency's Public Document Room and at the previously mentioned libraries. The NRC staff will then prepare a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) supplement for public comment and will hold a public meeting to solicit comments. After consideration of comments on the draft, the NRC will prepare a final EIS supplement. Interested individuals may register to attend or present oral comments at the November 7th meetings by contacting Duke Wheeler at 1-800-368-5642, ext. 1444, or by e-mail at [dxw@nrc.gov] no later than November 1. Members of the public may also register to speak at the meeting within 15 minutes of the start of each session. Individual oral comments may be limited by the time available, depending on the number of persons who register. In addition, members of the public may send written comments on the environmental scoping process for the supplement to the GEIS to: Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, Mailstop T-6 D 59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington D.C., 20555-0001. Written comments should be postmarked by November 26. Comments can also be sent via e-mail to Peach_Bottom_EIS@nrc gov no later than November 26. ***************************************************************** 10 Defusing A Toxic Bomb Monday, Oct. 29, 2001. Page 12 By Yevgenia Borisova [yevgenia@imedia.ru] Staff Writer Dirty roads wind through the 40-hectare site where the Gorny chemical weapons reprocessing plant is being built. Along them stand rows of tidy half-built and almost-finished yellow and red buildings that resemble Western warehouses. The sun shone brightly through clear blue skies on a recent autumn day, keeping the coming chill of winter out of the dusty air. An ordinary passer-by could easily think that a commercial business was going up behind the fences. He would be wrong. Inside the works is an 8 billion ruble ($266 million) plant that will destroy enough lewisite and mustard gas to kill 1.2 billion people. The project, which was started in 1995, was first scheduled for completion in 1998, but due to insufficient funding is now set to open next summer. The delay is the tip of the iceberg of what is happening to Russian plans to dispose of its 40,000 tons of chemical weapons. Low funding has derailed an international pledge to build seven reprocessing plants for the destruction of the weapons by 2007. Russia is seeking fewer plants, more time to get rid of the weapons and new requirements for what constitutes a destroyed weapon. But there is little question in government circles that the chemical weapons must be disposed of. "We must destroy chemical weapons," said Sergei Kiriyenko, head of a state commission for the destruction of chemical weapons and the presidential representative for the Volga Federal District, which includes Saratov. "As long as they exist, there's a threat that they could be used," Kiriyenko said in a recent interview. The Chemical Dilemma Russian government officials say that the country has its 40,000 tons of chemical weapons stored at seven sites, mainly in the central regions and the Urals. The stockpile includes 32,300 tons of sarin, soman and similar gases, 7,700 of lewisite, mustard gas and combinations of the two, and 5 tons of phosgene. Russia told the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international watchdog established in 1997 to supervise the fulfillment of the Chemical Weapons Convention, that it would dispose of the weapons by 2007 through a program approved by the OPCW. It ratified the weapons convention in 1997. But this summer, the destruction program was amended by the government and has been sent to the OPCW for approval, Kiriyenko's office said. The reason it was amended -- no money. Russia wants to push back the project's completion date to 2012. The country also wants to build only three facilities instead of seven -- according to the number of places where chemical weapons are being stored now and because Russian law forbids the transport of chemical weapons. The government has prepared a special bill that would allow the transportation of chemical weapons and -- like a similar bill on the transportation of spent nuclear fuel -- it has been met with little criticism in the State Duma. The bill has passed two readings this year and is expected to be approved in a third, final hearing by year end. Russian officials are also resisting a requirement in the convention that facilities built for the destruction of chemical weapons be flattened afterward, saying such a move would be uneconomic. Furthermore, the government wants to cut funding of the chemical weapons program from $7 billion to a more palatable $3.5 billion. The money, it says, will sufficiently cover the construction of the three plants as well as security measures, building infrastructure in nearby areas and environmental monitoring. Of this sum, Russia expects to get at least $1 billion from abroad, including $880 million from the United States. In addition, Russia is asking the OPCW to accept a new definition of what constitutes a disposed chemical weapon. Russia is insisting that substances sent through the neutralization process but still contain small quantities of toxic materials such as arsenic should be recognized as disposed. Those substances would then be stored until such time that technology has been put in place to allow the chemicals to be used for peaceful purposes -- to extract pure arsenic for the semi-conductor industry or even, after further detoxification, as blocks in construction. The OPCW is to consider the changes in the program at a conference in October 2002. Russian officials believe that if they can demonstrate at least one fully operational plant -- the plant in Gorny -- they will get the green light for their modified program. Chemical Weapons Facilities Being Converted or Destroyed Location Type of chemical Number of sites Number destroyed Number to be destroyed Number converted Number to be converted Volgograd, Volga region Blistering 8 2 1 2 3 Novocheboksarsk, Chuvash republic Nerve Gas 5 Ð 1 2 3 Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod region Blistering 7 3 2 Ð 2 Chapayevsk, Samara region Blistering 3 1 Ð 2 Ð Berezniki, Perm region Blistering 1 Ð Ð 1 Ð TOTAL 24 6 4 7 8 The Reprocessing Plants The Gorny plant is to process 1,133 tons of chemical weapons, including 218.1 tons of lewisite and 690.7 tons of mustard gas. "What does this mean, the 1,200 tons of chemicals in Gorny?" said Alexander Kharichev, an adviser for chemical weapons disposal to Kiriyenko. "If used as a chemical weapon with average efficiency -- 1 milligram per person -- it would kill at least 1.2 billion people." The plant in Gorny will destroy 2.9 percent of all toxic chemicals in Russia, according to Kiriyenko's office. The other two plants Russia wants to build are bigger. One is planned for Kambarka in the Udmurtia, where 15.9 percent of Russia's toxic chemicals is stored, and the other in Shchuchye in the Kurgan region, where 13.6 percent are stored. The four other plants in the original plan were in Kizner in the Udmurtia, Maradykovsky in the Kirov region, Pochep in the Bryansk region and Leonidovka in the Penza region. The current plan envisions Gorny starting to operate next year and finishing its work in 2005. Shchuchye and Kambarka will be built in 2004 and operate until 2011. Where's the Money? A total of 45 buildings are being constructed by 2,500 builders at the Gorny plant. Among the buildings are main workshops where the neutralization of chemicals will take place, an administrative building, a boiler, an energy center, fuel tanks, a monitoring laboratory, a canteen and even a car wash. The partially built warehouses are impressive. Walls are massive, and the floor is covered with ceramic tiles that are about 3 centimeters thick. Some of the buildings have their foundations laid, but plant officials believe that with sufficient funding the plant will open as scheduled next summer. "This year we have already received about 900,000 rubles, everything we were budgeted until this time of the year," said Colonel Yury Sudorgin, head of military object No. 1282, as the construction site is called by the military. "Actually, this year we got as much money as we got in all the years since the cornerstone was laid." Spetsstroi, a former Defense Ministry agency, is overseeing construction after winning a tender to build the huge facility from Rosboyepripasy, a civil agency set up to supervise chemical weapons destruction. Much of the equipment -- mostly German made -- has already been delivered. Experts from the OPCW are frequent guests at the site to monitor construction. A special apartment block to house them has been built in the vicinity. The No. 1-1 facility at the site is the biggest structure there -- a 14-meter-high building with 14,000 square meters of space filled with giant pipes and reactors. Huge 100- to 250-liter barrels of lewisite are to be delivered here from warehouses in special crates. Then -- with OPCW representatives watching -- lewisite will be funneled through pipes to a collector and then a reactor. The facility also has its own security, including anti-aircraft defense, provided by the Defense Ministry. However, the plant still needs at least 2.5 billion rubles to be finished, and its future -- and the future of the whole program -- now rests with the Duma. The Duma gave the program 3 billion rubles from this year's federal budget, a sum that is six times more than in 2000. The government is lobbying to double the funding to 6 billion rubles in 2002 -- or, at worst, keep it the same level as this year. The Duma is expected to pass the 2002 budget by the end of November. In addition to the five years needed to process all chemical weapons at its territory, the Gorny plant could work another five years to process lewisite and mustard gas from other areas -- if the legislation of transporting the weapons is approved. After that, according to the international convention, the plant must be destroyed. The Safety Question Officials from Kiriyenko's team and Rosboyepripasy say that the disposal of the toxic chemicals will be environmentally safe. Environmentalists are not so sure that fields surrounding the half-constructed plant will remain filled with green grass in years to come. "Yes, there are fields around and nothing will change after the plant starts operating. Our technology is safe," said Sudorgin. He said all waste will be completely burned in a special oven. Fumes will go through special filters. Water will be treated before use and filtered afterward. "The warehouse is concrete, with several different degrees of defense. Even if a fire breaks out or an explosion takes place, nothing will get out," Sudorgin said. Kiriyenko argues that the disposal method will be even more environmentally friendly than the United States. "Americans burn their chemical weapons. This is done at a higher temperature, which means the risk of explosions is high," Kiriyenko said recently on Mayak radio. "Our technologies have a low temperature." Kiriyenko said that the technologies to be used in Gorny have got all the necessary examinations -- from "the Russian Academy of Science, an expert council, and the ecological examination needed by law." However, some experts said they are unconvinced -- particularly because it is unclear what technologies Russia plans to use. Lev Fyodorov, president of the Union for Chemical Security, is among the harshest of the critics. "There are no approved technologies to be used in Gorny," said Fyodorov, who is also a member of the Duma industrial committee's working group on the destruction of chemical weapons. "Now they are building a plant without properly testing the technologies. When such work isn't done, incidents can take place," he said. Fyodorov said he is seeking to review technical documentation that has not been made available to the public or even his working group. "Without such examination and a discussion with the public, we think that Russia must not push ahead with getting this plant in operation," Oleg Zharkov, an ecologist at the union's Saratov branch, said in an interview. "It all depends on what our government's target is -- to pay our international obligations or to destroy chemical weapons in a way that it does not hurt the local population," he said. Fyodorov said former President Boris Yeltsin did not put enough thought into preparing Russia for such a big and dangerous job. "He just wanted to make the West happy," Fyodorov said. Even Anatoly Kuntsevich, head of the Scientific Council for Conventional Problems of the Disposal of Chemical and Biological Weapons, an inter-governmental agency said a number of key issues need to be hammered out before chemical weapons can started to be disposed. But he added: "Our council's position is to accept all proposals to improve the project. In any moment before the plant starts working there is a possibility to change things if needed." Rosboyepripasy said it has sufficiently tested its technologies. "Several developmental projects have destroyed more than 5 tons of chemical weapons," said Zinovy Pak, general director of Rosboyepripasy. "The last stage of this work took place from July to September at three stationary units for the destruction of leaking chemical weapons. The works were conducted under OPCW supervision. "As for the unit to destroy lewisite in Gorny, it is specially designed as a developmental one, and judging by the results of its work, the bigger plant to destroy lewisite in Kambarka will be built. And this unit has been built after testing in laboratories -- which is what we must have done." In response to worries about insufficient examination, Pak said, "All the technologies for the disposal of chemical weapons are unique and designed for implementation at individual facilities. "That is why it is not technologies as such that are subject to state examination but the facilities. There are three such facilities [Gorny, Kambarka, Shchuchye]. Corresponding project materials have obtained state examination." However, it is unclear which technologies have been tested with lewisite. Olga Pitsunova, head of the Saratov-based Center for Assistance to Environmental Initiatives, said that several tons of lewisite in Gorny was destroyed at the end of the 1990s at a testing unit that turned lewisite into arsenicum chloride, a raw material for obtaining arsenic. Pitsunova said that neither the unit nor the technologies had state examination. "I think Rosboyepripasy is wrong," said Yevgeny Usov, an activist with Greenpeace. "It is even more dangerous as a unique technology -- we absolutely must see the state examination before it starts working." Locals Not Thrilled To make potentially dangerous facilities more palatable for local residents, the international convention allows for 10 percent of all funding to be spent on regional infrastructure. The project could bring a windfall to Gorny, a small town of about 8,000 people located three kilometers from the plant. The town has never had a sewage system. Sudorgin said that about 1,000 builders have been hired to build new infrastructure, including apartment blocks, cottages, energy and gas supplies, bridges and roads, a new boiler, a new water pipeline with filters and a sewage system. But locals are not thrilled. "No one is welcoming this construction," said Nikolai Petrov, a Gorny resident. "Few have benefited from it. If we had been asked about it, we would not have allowed it. But no one is interested in our opinion." Only a few families will move to the 18 apartments in the new block of flats, and less than a 100 families will get their own homes. Petrov said most Gorny residents live in pre-World War II apartment blocks -- which he called barracks -- without toilets. "Everyone here expected at least some improvements like, say, new equipment in the hospital," he said. "But what happened was we were gathered together and told to change power lines and paint walls. Why didn't they hire builders for such work?" Petrov said that there have been no protests in Gorny against the construction because residents have given up. [http://www.themoscowtimes.com ***************************************************************** 11 Experts Say Measures Needed to Protect Nuclear Reactors U.S. Newswire 24 Oct 12:42 International Measures to Protect Nuclear Reactors Sorely Needed Experts Say; Authors Bunn, Steinhausler Available To: National and International desks Contacts: George Bunn, 650-725-2709; Fritz Steinhausler, 650-725-0936; or Daryl Kimball of Arms Control Association, 202-463-8270; WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- In light of the Sept. 11 attacks, nuclear power plants and associated infrastructure present a significant terrorism vulnerability in the United States and abroad; directly attacking reactors with aircraft or truck bombs, sabotaging reactor control systems, or attacking nuclear material transports could all lead to a dangerous dispersal or theft of nuclear materials. According to a new article by Ambassador George Bunn and Fritz Steinhausler in the October 2001 issue of Arms Control Today, "Many countries provide some form of physical protection for their nuclear material, but because there is no international standard or requirement for physical protection of civilian nuclear material, countries' physical protections for nuclear facilities vary widely and are often inadequate." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has recently endorsed efforts aimed at fortifying the physical protections of nuclear facilities, but efforts need to be pursued with greater urgency, according to Bunn and Steinhausler. There is one international treaty that provides for protection of civilian nuclear material, the 1980 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, but it only applies to the protection from theft of nuclear material in international transit. The authors argue that "Adoption of new physical protection standards . is essential, and the sooner the better. Unfortunately, revising the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material will take several years." In the interim, they suggest, new principles and standards for improving physical protection of nuclear facilities worldwide, which have already been recommended by the IAEA, should be applied immediately by national governments. In addition, with adequate funding, "the IAEA can provide guidance, training, advisory services and technical assistance to help countries improve their protection practices," write Bunn and Steinhausler, who are with the Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation. The authors are available for comments and analysis on this vital security issue. Their article, "Guarding Nuclear Reactors and Material From Terrorists and Thieves," can be accessed on-line at (http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2001_10/bunnoct01.asp [http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2001_10/bunnoct01.asp] ). For comprehensive news coverage and expert analysis of nuclear non-proliferation and related issues, visit (http://www.armscontrol.org [http://www.armscontrol.org] ) KEYWORDS: Copyright 2001, U.S. Newswire ***************************************************************** 12 Security of reactors reexamined Miami Herald: Posted at 6:48 a.m. EST Sunday, October 28, 2001 BY CURTIS MORGAN [cmorgan@herald.com] Security at Turkey Point has never been tighter. Some of it is visible. Private guards armed with assault weapons patrol the gate to the sprawling nuclear power plant along Biscayne Bay in South Miami-Dade County. Most isn't visible. Boaters once could chase fish to the mouth of the plant's channel. Now, motor too near and a state marine officer cruises over to politely suggest moving off. The advice carries added weight when he casually drops, ``There are three sniper rifles pointed at your heads.'' Since Sept. 11, the nation's 103 nuclear power plants have been on highest alert but despite significantly stepped-up defenses, in some ways they seem more vulnerable than ever. The most disturbing concern is whether nuclear reactors, built to withstand the worst nature can offer in hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, can weather a jet strike. Other critical components might be crippled more easily, from storage casks holding used radioactive fuel to cooling water systems that protect reactors from melting down. Watchdog groups and other critics, including some members of Congress, urge an overhaul of an industry they say has persistent security problems. Between 1991 and 1998, nearly half the sites tested failed to thwart assaults by mock terrorists -- despite advance notice. ``The Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs to engage in a wholesale review of the security at nuclear power plants, considering not just the threat from ground forces, but also previously unevaluated threats,'' said U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has urged tougher security since the Gulf War. The NRC and the nuclear power industry are doing just that, conducting what spokesman Victor Dricks called a ``top-to-bottom review.'' The federal agency has issued a half-dozen advisories and urged cooperation with military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. ``Arrangements have been made with other agencies to protect plants by land, sea and air,'' Dricks said. ``I really can't get much more specific.'' Nuclear plants rank high on the at-risk list because of the potentially disastrous consequences of a successful assault. Deaths wouldn't come from a blast, but the release of high levels of radiation could, in severe cases, kill thousands. Since the attacks, the NRC and industry have provided only vague information about security upgrades. The level of secrecy is so high that on Oct. 11 the NRC shut down its website, which included voluminous declassified details about plant equipment, operations and locations, right down to longitude and latitude. Though the site is back up now, most information is accessible only by request. Response has varied widely from state to state. In New York and Massachusetts, governors ordered National Guard troops to patrol the plants. In New York, the U.S. Coast Guard reversed its decision to end 24-hour patrols around a plant on the Hudson River after a number of political leaders objected. The Federal Aviation Administration, until dropping them recently, also restricted flights over some plants, including Florida Power &Light Co.'s St. Lucie facility where a student pilot strayed close enough two weeks ago to scramble fighters. Now, the FAA is ``strongly urging pilots not to circle or loiter over nuclear or electrical power plants, industrial complexes, dams, reservoirs and military installations.'' FPL spokeswoman Rachel Scott would say only that the utility was taking ``extensive measures'' to protect the public. Do measures really go as far as snipers? Scott laughed, seemingly discounting that possibility, but said surveillance had been increased. ``Nuclear power plants have always been designed to protect against terrorist threats and we have always had a very stringent security program,'' she said. Unlike airport workers, for instance, nuclear plant employees all undergo criminal background checks. Increased patrols and industry assurances haven't comforted critics. The NRC has documented a history of security shortcomings. ``We don't know any of the details about what is being done now, that's classified,'' said Tyson Slocum, research director for energy and environment programs for Public Citizen, the Ralph Nader-run group that has long campaigned against nuclear power as expensive and dangerous. ``We do know the security record of nuclear plants is abysmal.'' The main problem, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer with the Union for Concerned Scientists, is that the NRC and industry have seriously underestimated terrorist threats. REACTOR SECURITY TEST Many vulnerable to `raid,' but none are in Florida Current regulations, designed with Cold War espionage in mind, aim to thwart a single insider spy or small teams of infiltrators, armed with hand-held weapons and grenades, Lochbaum said. In the 1990s, after the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center, those rules were altered to include car and truck bombs. But a large-scale assault always was considered the stuff of a Hollywood script. In fact, the rules specifically exempt utilities from protecting against attacks ``by an enemy of the United States, whether a foreign government or person.'' There also are no set standards at the 66 U.S. sites housing nuclear reactors, Lochbaum said. The NRC allows some to have as few as five armed guards on duty, depending instead on locks, fences and other engineering safeguards. When put to the test, security systems have failed nearly as often as they've succeeded. Under a program called Operational Safeguards Response Evaluation, which began in 1991, a team, comprised mainly of ex-military personnel, staged mock assaults on plants. By 1998, when the tests ended, 27 of 57 sites demonstrated what an NRC security specialist called ``significant protection weaknesses,'' even with months of notice and a list of potential scenarios. Teams were able to breach gates, fences and locks and elude or overwhelm security in attacks that allowed access to systems that, if damaged, ``would have put the nuclear reactor in jeopardy with the potential for core damage and radiological release.'' Turkey Point and the state's other nuclear power plants -- FPL's St. Lucie and Florida Power's Crystal River, on the West Coast -- passed the drill. The NRC would not release full reports but a 1997 letter called Turkey Point's security plan ``generally sound.'' It also noted ``items of concern'' similar to ones first detailed in 1994. Lochbaum said he wasn't aware of details of Turkey Point's test but recalled that security lapses had contributed to the NRC's threat to shut down the plant in 1989. ``You could lift a manhole cover and crawl under the fence. It was things like that the NRC kept finding,'' Lochbaum said. ``The company would fix it but not six others like it.'' FPL spokeswoman Scott said the utility had ``seriously and directly'' corrected flaws. Lochbaum acknowledged that the NRC has since has given Turkey Point glowing reviews overall. Lochbaum and other critics charge that the NRC contributed to lax attitudes by inconsistently enforcing the rules, never shutting down utilities for failures. In fact, he said, the agency phased out mock raids after complaints of high expense and was just preparing to begin a pilot program of industry-designed drills which would make the utilities, in essence, self-policing. Under criticism from Markey and other members of Congress, the agency reinstated the tests and is now reviewing the entire security program. A QUESTION OF DESIGN A deliberate jet crash was not anticipated More troubling, and more difficult to correct, are concerns about the actual structures. The industry has long insisted that plants were designed to resist airplane crashes. FPL, which is seeking to relicense Turkey Point, last year dismissed activists' concerns about converting the old Homestead Air Force Base into a new commercial airport, calling the odds of a crash astronomical. But the NRC now acknowledges it isn't quite so sure about its calculations. While reactor vessels rank among the toughest structures in the world, with concrete walls ranging from two to six feet thick -- built to survive butt-end hits from telephone poles traveling 200 miles per hour -- the impact of a large jet aircraft laden with fuel and the resulting inferno were not in the design equations. There are even more concerns about less fortified support structures, like the buildings that hold spent, but still very radioactive, fuel. ``The NRC did not specifically contemplate attacks by aircraft such as Boeing 757s or 767s, and nuclear power plants were not designed to withstand such crashes,'' the NRC said. REINFORCED WALLS Federal report suggests concern over blast In 1989, the United States and Japan crashed a rocket-propelled F-4 fighter on a track into a prototype containment wall of reinforced concrete six feet thick. At 480 mph, the jet disappeared in a puff of dust, leaving a gouge in the wall just 2.4 inches deep. But an earlier and largely overlooked study considered more than just the force of impact. In 1982, the Argonne National Laboratory issued a report suggesting that if enough vaporized fuel got into a double-walled containment vessel, it might generate a violent and damaging explosion. ``If only 1 percent of the fuel, say 500 pounds for an FB-111 fighter plane, is involved in such an event, the blast environment will be equivalent to the detonation of approximately 1,000 pounds of TNT,'' the study found. The NRC and FPL say they still believe the buildings would likely stand up to a crash, and any potential releases would be contained by redundant safety and cooling systems. But NRC's Dricks said more study was needed. ``We would not rule out the possibility that an aircraft could cause structural damage that would cause the release of radiation.'' Copyright 2001 Miami Herald ***************************************************************** 13 What Is the Worst That Could Happen? The Salt Lake Tribune -- Monday, October 29, 2001 GWYNNE DYER TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES The Worst That Could Happen As the Rent-A-Threat analysts expound their ever more ingenious scenarios for new kinds of terrorist attacks on prime-time television, it seems fitting to ask: what is the worst that can happen? It certainly isn't "bio-terror." We have had weeks of saturation publicity about "anthrax attacks" throughout the United States (the vast majority of which are actually talcum powder, baking soda and cocaine attacks). Only two people have died, but most of the other 275 million Americans, if you believe the media accounts, have turned into panic-prone wimps. Perhaps it's because their knowledge of statistics is inferior to that of the average New Guinea highlander, so the infinitesimal risk of being infected by anthrax frightens them more than the far greater dangers posed by their neighbor's driving and their neighbor's handgun. Even Canadians (who have not had a single anthrax case) have taken to running out of buildings at the drop of a hat in what one Canadian journalist scathingly called "panic envy." Things would get a lot more interesting if terrorists had access to some really dangerous disease like smallpox, which can spread from person to person and would encounter no resistance whatever in most of the present population. But no terrorists would be wasting their time with anthrax if they had smallpox, so that is probably not a danger in the present situation. Even if it were, prompt quarantine measures by an already alert medical establishment would probably confine the loss of lives to some thousands or tens of thousands. That would be quite a lot of people, but no more than the toll in a single big air raid in the latter years of the Second World War. Today's people are not really more timorous than those of 50 years ago, but they have fallen victim to media hype. Having become targets, North American journalists have also become the chief panic-mongers. So if "bio-terrorism" is not the worst that can happen, what is? Nuclear terrorism, maybe? The time for stealing nuclear weapons is past, thanks largely to the decade-long effort (subsidized by the U.S. Congress) to track down and render safe every nuclear weapons that belonged to the old Soviet Union. Terrorists of the ilk of al-Qaeda cannot make nuclear weapons on their own, lacking the specialized scientific personnel and the sophisticated equipment that would be needed. The most they could manage, given access to lots of fissile material, is a sub-nuclear explosion that scatters radioactive material over an area with a radius of a mile or so. Even that is very unlikely, but imagine for a moment that terrorists did get their hands on a real nuclear weapon, smuggled it into a major Western city, and set it off. (Go on, pour your money down the Ballistic Missile Defense rat-hole. None of your real enemies care.) It would be a calamity that would dwarf the attacks of Sept. 11, or indeed anything else that has happened to the citizens of an industrialized country in the past half-century. But it would not be the end of the world. Such an attack could kill hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even half a million. But it would happen once, in one place, and then it would be over. If it were to happen in the United States, it would be a loss equivalent to four or five month's population growth -- and life would go on much as usual for everybody else. Making these calculations and comparisons may seem a bit cold-blooded or even ghoulish, but there is a reason for it. The point is that the very worst attack that terrorists could plausibly make would cause no more casualties than any single month of the Second World War. And it would not cost as many lives as the opening five minutes of the Third World War. A sense of proportion is always useful in times like these. Imagine what it would be like if the current military operations in the Persian Gulf region were taking place just a dozen years ago, when the world was still divided into two rival blocs bristling with nuclear weapons. With American aircraft bombing within earshot of the old Soviet Union's border, we would probably already be deep into a crisis as bad as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. One false step, and hundreds of millions could die. There are serious risks in the current crisis: more terrorist attacks are possible, and violence could spread to other Muslim countries in the Middle East/West Asian region if the coalition strikes cause large numbers of needless Afghan civilian casualties. But compared with the scale of risks we lived with all the time until only 10 years ago, these dangers are very small potatoes. We have emerged from a long period of deadly peril, when the great powers were perpetually ready to go to war with one another and blow half the world up. We now live in a period so safe that the worst threat is mere terrorism, and it is practically impossible to imagine a scenario in which the great powers could drift back into that kind of confrontation. Yet very few people seem to understand how great the change has been, or how lucky we are. In fact, if historical ingratitude were a crime, the entire chattering classes of the West would be serving life sentences at hard labor. © Copyright 2001, The Salt Lake Tribune All material found on ***************************************************************** 14 Security guard sparks alert BBC News | SCOTLAND | 28 October, 2001, 14:21 GMT [Torness Nuclear Power Station] Public tours have been halted following September 11 A security guard at a Scottish nuclear power station sparked an alert when he was spotted with a shotgun. The incident at Torness, in East Lothian, occurred when the man involved took the weapon to work after a colleague said he was interested in buying it. The alarm was raised when the guard and the would-be buyer were spotted in the power station's car park examining the gun. A spokesman for British Energy as an "embarrassing lapse of judgment" by the individual involved. The incident should not have happened, especially given the fact we have stepped up security. It was a stupid thing to do Bob Fenton, British Energy spokesman The incident comes as extra personnel and measures have been put in place around nuclear power stations across the UK to guard against terrorist attacks. British Energy spokesman Bob Fenton said the men involved in the alert 10 days ago were being dealt with internally by the company. At Torness, public tours have been cancelled, business visits restricted, and concrete blocks placed on approach roads to the site to prevent attacks. Mr Fenton said: "The security officer had advertised his shotgun on the staff noticeboard at work and had brought it in for a colleague to look at. "The gun was only produced in the car park and was not brought on to the site. 'Stupid thing' "But the incident should not have happened, especially given the fact we have stepped up security. It was a stupid thing to do." In a separate incident, the company confirmed an improper discharge of radioactive contaminated water had taken place at the plant last Wednesday. A tank of fluid was emptied into the sea before checks were carried out to ensure its contents were within permitted levels. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency was investigating the incident and the company could face prosecution. The discharge had not posed a threat to the environment or human health, the company said. Mr Fenton said: "A panel of inquiry has been set to look at why procedures were not followed in this case. New procedures have already been put in place to ensure this never happens again." See also: 03 Oct 01 | Wales Toy gun prompts security alert 27 Sep 01 | Scotland MP denies sparking security alert Internet links: Sepa [http://www.sepa.org.uk/] British Energy [http://www.british-energy.com/] ***************************************************************** 15 EDITORIAL: Excessive secrecy [Las Vegas Review-Journal] Monday, October 29, 2001 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal What's needed are balance and common sense The Luddites, who rioted and destroyed textile machinery in England's industrial midlands in the early 19th century, were not agents of a foreign power, but home-grown malcontents upset that the new factories of the industrial age were throwing established artisans out of work. The Luddites have their heirs, today. On the fringes of the environmental movement lurk a group of extremists who oppose industry and development entirely. One tactic recently developed in the campaign to embarrass and slow down industrial projects is the federal requirement that those proposing mines, chemical plants and the like spend time and money drawing up a detailed scenario for the "worst-case" industrial accident they can imagine happening at their planned facility. Their tormentors then insist they present this scenario at a public hearing, an opportunity for the activists to ramp up public fears and opposition to the project. Guess what? Following the events of Sept. 11, it now occurs to all involved that those "worst-case scenarios" -- mandated by federal law and placed on file in libraries and on web sites as public documents -- are virtual "how-to" manuals for any would-be terrorist. The race is now on to shut down access to these, and other, public documents. Folks at the Environmental Technical Information Project sponsor of a web site called "Nuclear Power Plant Accidents: A Guide for Informed Citizen Response." The site is designed to "provide information to citizens and journalists, so they can protect themselves and ask appropriate questions" after any accident. One of the more popular features of the site used to be the interactive maps provided by the International Nuclear Safety Center -- operated by the Argonne National Laboratory on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy -- at www.insc.anl.gov/pwrmaps/map/world_map.html. Visitors could locate nuclear power plants by state and county, and learn more about each. But now, in the post-Sept. 11 panic, that link has been shut down. Mapmakers in Russia started out inserting purposeful mistakes in street maps of Moscow during the Second World War, the better to confuse invading Germans. But once the precedent had been set, they kept generating faulty maps -- on purpose -- for another 40 years. That's institutionalized paranoia. Yes, the security of military and nuclear design information which really needs to be secret may be overdue for review. But in our open society, does anyone really imagine some foreign agent can be kept from finding out where America's commercial reactors are located by censoring the Internet? Don't these things generally show up on road maps? In the very short term, the instinct "better safe than sorry" was understandable. But public access to public documents is part of what makes America free -- supposedly the very value we're now fighting for. There are legitimate reasons why Americans might want to know where the closest nuclear reactors are -- and everyday Americans are the only ones likely to be kept in the dark by overreactions like these. Meantime, if documents like the new "industrial worst-case scenarios" are too dangerous to reveal to the public ... maybe it's time to stop requiring such dog-and-pony shows, in the first place. This story is located at: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-29-Mon-2001/opinion/17320041.html [http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-29-Mon-2001/opinion/17320041.html] ***************************************************************** 16 (W) To the Congress of the United States Office of the Press Secretary October 25, 2001 I am pleased to transmit to the Congress, pursuant to sections 123 b. and 123 d. of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2153(b), (d)) (the "Act"), the text of a proposed Protocol Amending the Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy signed at Washington on May 30, 1980. I am also pleased to transmit my written approval, authorization, and determination concerning the Protocol, and an unclassified Nuclear Prolifera-tion Assessment Statement (NPAS) concerning the Protocol. (In accordance with section 123 of the Act, as amended by title XII of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-277), a classified Annex to the NPAS, prepared by the Secretary of State in consultation with the Director of Central Intelligence, summarizing relevant classified informa-tion, will be submitted to the Congress separately.) The joint memorandum submitted to me by the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Energy and a letter from the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stating the views of the Commission are also enclosed. I am informed that the proposed Protocol has been negotiated to be in accordance with the Act and other applicable law, to meet all statutory requirements, and to advance the nonprolifera-tion and other foreign policy interests of the United States. The Protocol amends the Agreement for Cooperation Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy in two respects: 1. It extends the Agreement, which expired by its terms on May 16, 2001, for an additional period of 20 years, with a provision for automatic extensions thereafter in increments of 5 years each unless either Party gives timely notice to terminate the Agreement; and 2. It updates certain provisions of the Agreement relating to the physical protection of nuclear material subject to the Agreement. As amended by the proposed Protocol, I am informed that the Agreement will continue to meet all requirements of U.S. law. Morocco is in the early stages of developing a nuclear research program, with support from the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United States firm, General Atomics, is currently building the country's first reactor, a small (2 megawatt) TRIGA Mark II research reactor that will use low-enriched uranium fuel. General Atomics? completion of the project cannot occur without an Agreement for Cooperation in force. Morocco is a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and has an agreement with the IAEA for the application of full-scope safeguards to its nuclear program. Morocco is a signatory to (but has not yet ratified) the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which establishes international standards of physical protection for the storage and transport of nuclear material. I have considered the views and recommendations of the interested agencies in reviewing the proposed Protocol and have determined that its performance will promote, and will not constitute an unreasonable risk to, the common defense and security. Accordingly, I have approved the Protocol and authorized its execution and urge that the Congress give it favorable consideration. This transmission shall constitute a submittal for purposes of both sections 123 b. and 123 d. of the Atomic Energy Act. My Administration is prepared to begin immediately the consultations with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House International Relations Committee as provided in section 123 b. Upon completion of the 30-day continuous session period provided for in section 123 b., the 60-day continuous session period provided for in section 123 d. shall commence. GEORGE W. BUSH THE WHITE HOUSE, October 24, 2001. ***************************************************************** 17 Atomic Energy scores major U.K. power deal October 29, 2001 Mary Fagan The Daily Telegraph British Energy PLC, the privatised electricity generator, is about to place an order with Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the state-owned Canadian company, to develop a series of new nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom. The move is expected to cause a political storm since British Energy has chosen AECL ahead of its British rival, Westinghouse, which is part of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. and owned by the government. British Energy wants to replace its advanced gas-cooled reactors with seven or eight new nuclear stations, each costing about £1-billion ($2.3-billion). It has also been talking to Westinghouse but the power generator already operates several of AECL's Candu heavy-water reactors in Ontario and has strong links with the Canadian company. The agreement with AECL will be signed this week. But the deal will exacerbate tension between BNFL and British Energy, which wants to end a £300-million-a-year contract to have spent fuel reprocessed at BNFL's Sellafield site. The Canadian deal also comes amid speculation that the government will break up BNFL and sell the Westinghouse arm. The government is considering the future of nuclear power as part of an overall review of the energy sector, which is due for completion by the end of this year. British Energy accounts for 25% of power generated in the U.K. but its seven AGRs are due to be retired by 2014. AECL's plants are heavy water reactors that use natural uranium rather than an enriched blend of the metal. Some scientists say that the use of natural uranium makes power plants easier to clean up because the radioactive content of the waste is reduced. National Post Online is a Hollinger / CanWest Publication. ***************************************************************** 18 What caused the accident? BBC News | EUROPE | Wednesday, 30 August, 2000, No-one has yet established the truth about what caused the Kursk K-141 nuclear submarine to lose contact with the outside world and sink to the bottom of the Barents Sea with all hands on board. The extent of the damage discovered by rescuers has led experts to conclude that the submarine was hit by a large explosion or that it collided with the sea bed or another large vessel. Some theories suggest a collision triggered an explosion. Two explosions were heard at the time of the accident, by US and Norwegian authorities monitoring Russian exercises. The second explosion was reported to be equivalent to two tonnes of TNT and bigger than the first. The theories about the cause of these explosions abound, and so far none have been substantiated: + A torpedo in the Kursk's forward compartment - which was carrying up to 30 warheads - exploded. "There may have been an explosion in one of the weapons systems aboard, for example a torpedo, which then triggered a bigger explosion two minutes later," said Norwegian armed forces spokesman Brigadier Kjell Grandhagen. Russia's official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda has reported that the Kursk's battery and propeller torpedo-launching technology had been replaced with a cheaper and potentially dangerous liquid fuel system, against the wishes of Navy officials. The liquid fuel is highly combustible. US naval experts also believe volatile fuel could be to blame. Using data obtained from an intelligence gathering ship and two US nuclear submarines that were monitoring the Kursk during exercises, they say the first explosion involved fuel from a torpedo or a long-range anti-shipping missile carried by the sub. They say this then created a fire which set off other warheads, provoking an explosion which ripped open the Kursk's twin-pressurised hulls. + The submarine collided with the seabed during a manoeuvre, causing tanks of pressurised air inside the submarine to explode or otherwise triggering a larger explosion. A retired commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin, has suggested that the accident was a result of incompetence, bad planning and bad training. "The Kursk is designed for the ocean, not for shallow waters. Where it was manoeuvring and where it perished is completely wild - strong currents and strong winds. You can't carry out torpedo firing there," he said. + The submarine collided with a US or British submarine, which triggered a second explosion. Russia's navy chief Mikhail Motsak said three non-Russian submarines were in the Barents Sea at the time of the accident. "We think that it could have been a British submarine", he said. The Russian daily Sevodnya said it had evidence that the Kursk crashed into a US submersible, which then limped into a Norwegian port. The Pentagon has admitted that two US submarines were in the same zone, but denied they were involved in a collision. "We have found absolutely no indication that there has been a collision in the area," Norwegian armed forces spokesman Brigadier Kjell Grandhagen has told the BBC. + The submarine hit a surface vessel, possibly a Russian ship + It hit a mine left over from World War II. Casualties It is thought that whatever happened to the Kursk it happened quickly - so quickly that it could not even send out a distress call, or release an emergency beacon. President Vladimir Putin took a trip on a submarine, the Karelia, earlier this year Doubts have arisen regarding the news disseminated by the Russian navy that seamen inside the vessel had been communicating with rescuers by tapping on the submarine wall. Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says the sounds detected were never more than a faint knocking sound coming from somewhere inside the vessel. And a US intelligence analysis, details of which were apparently leaked to the US media, is said to indicate that no communication of any kind was heard from inside the submarine at any time after the disaster struck. ***************************************************************** 19 State urges iodide pills, but availability questionable October 29, 2001 MANCHESTER (AP) — Despite encouragement by state officials, pharmacies in New Hampshire have yet to stock the drug that would provide some protection against radiation in the event of a nuclear disaster. But pharmacists throughout southern New Hampshire said it isn’t their fault. They said their suppliers list the potassium iodide tablets as available only to state and federal agencies, and the state hasn’t done anything to help them get it. The availability of the pills has been an issue in New Hampshire since 1990, the year the Seabrook nuclear plant went online, and the state began stockpiling them in the event of an accident. But the Sept. 11 attacks prompted fears of attacks against Seabrook, and the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant on New Hampshire’s western border. With that come fears the state’s supply of the pills, and its delivery system, are insufficient. Potassium iodide works by saturating the thyroid with iodine, which protects it from the radioactive iodine that could be released in a nuclear accident. But the state’s stockpile would be distributed during an emergency only to those who would have to work in or near the nuclear plant, or to those unable to leave the area, such as prisoners, nursing home residents and hospital patients. And two years ago a study committee reported to Gov. Jeanne Shaheen that it would be "inappropriate and ineffective" for government agencies to distribute the tablets to the public during an emergency. The reported suggested the state "encourage retail pharmaceutical outlets in New Hampshire to maintain supplies of KI (the chemical symbol for potassium iodide) for purchase by members of the public." James Van Dongen, spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Management, said his agency thinks it’s good for people to maintain their own supply. "The only problem is that people haven’t physically been able to lay their hands on it," he said. "We’ve been trying for two years to get pharmacies to stock this stuff as a public service." He said last week he is sending lists of pharmacies in southern New Hampshire to two companies that make the pills, hoping they will contact the pharmacies. But Jennifer Hicks, director of the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League, said the state isn’t doing enough. "I don’t think the pharmacies have been given any real incentive to do this," she said. "We’re depending on a for-profit system to take care of a public health need." And even with incentive, the pharmacists may still need government help getting the pills. Donald Messina, president of the New Hampshire Pharmacists Association, said potassium iodide is essentially unavailable in New Hampshire. "As far as we’re concerned, right now, there is no potassium iodide available," he said. "I checked the catalogs and I cannot come up with any potassium iodide tablets." Several companies do offer the tablets to the public, but they are available only over the Internet and is not sold to drug wholesalers, the companies that supply pharmacies. [http://www.citizen.com/healthbeat/index.htm] © 2001 Geo. J. Foster Co. ***************************************************************** 20 Iodine deficiency poses health risks ireland.com - The Irish Times - HEALTH October 29, 2001 A low iodine diet will put people at greater risk in the event of a nuclear disaster, writes Peter Smyth Amid the recent furore over the availability of iodine tablets in the event of a nuclear accident at Sellafield or beyond, one fact was largely overlooked. In common with most of western Europe, the Republic is an area of mild or borderline iodine deficiency and, as a result, the population is at greater risk of suffering negative health effects both in and outside of nuclear emergencies. This not only makes us more vulnerable to absorbing any radioactive iodine that might be emitted from a nuclear installation following an accident, but also makes us more susceptible to iodine-deficiency disorders that, in children, can result in diminished IQ and learning capacity. Our studies of dietary-iodine intake in the Irish population, particularly in pregnant mothers and their babies - carried out at the thyroid diagnostic unit of University College, Dublin - have shown that by World Health Organisation criteria, the Irish diet can be classified as iodine insufficient. Uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland can result in the development of thyroid cancer. This was particularly evident in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, following which a dramatic increase in childhood cancer was observed. A feature of the Chernobyl accident was the relative dietary-iodine deficiency of the population living around the reactor in Belarus and Ukraine, resulting in iodine-deficient thyroid glands taking up greater amounts of radioactive iodine. Iodine in the diet is selectively trapped by the thyroid, a two- lobed gland located in the neck, on either side of the windpipe. This trapping ability allows the thyroid to concentrate iodide to about 50 times its level in the bloodstream. Trapped iodide provides raw material for the production of thyroid hormones, controlling many processes in the body. The thyroid does not discriminate between stable - non-radioactive - and radioactive iodine. The amount of iodine taken up by the thyroid is governed by the amount already there. A thyroid relatively empty of iodine will take up more iodine than one already replete with it. So the simple expedient of taking iodine tablets, and thereby saturating the thyroid with iodine, would offer protection against the results of ingestion of radioactive iodine following a nuclear accident. A single tablet of iodine, containing potassium iodide in the range of 50-100 milligrams (children would receive half the dose administered to adults), will provide adequate thyroid blockade for 24 hours. Iodine tablets must be taken very early following an accident - within six hours, for greatest effectiveness - if thyroidal uptake of radioactive iodine is to be prevented. This might not be feasible if tablets have to be distributed following the accident, thus making the case for predistribution to designated sites or, preferably, to individual homes. It must be emphasised that stable iodine protects only against the uptake of ingested radioactive iodine. It does not provide protection against other radioactive substances or against external irradiation caused by radioactive iodine. The question of deciding what steps should be taken to protect against the consequences of a nuclear accident are not unique to the Republic. The consequences of the Chernobyl accident have caused an increasing recognition of the radiosensitivity of the developing thyroid, however, leading to a progressive downward revision of the level of radiation that may constitute a risk for developing thyroid cancer. With luck, the Republic will not encounter a nuclear accident of the magnitude of Chernobyl, but a population at risk could be given significant protection against the effects of radioactive-iodine uptake simply by increasing their dietary-iodine intake. The most effective method of achieving iodine sufficiency, recommended by the World Health Organisation, is iodisation of table salt. Consumption of table salt would not have to change; only minor alterations to the production of salt would be needed. Unlike in some other countries, iodisation of table salt is not mandatory in the Republic, and recent figures suggest that only 2 per cent of salt sold here is iodised. According to the World Health Organisation, only 27 per cent of European households have access to iodised table salt, compared with 90 per cent in the Americas, 70 per cent in South-East Asia and 63 per cent in Africa. While there is no absolute protection against the harmful effects of ingested radioactivity, taking stable iodine either immediately, in the form of iodine tablets, or long term, by increasing dietary-iodine intake, can at least provide a degree of protection to susceptible individuals in exposed populations. Peter P.A. Smyth is a senior lecturer in medicine and director of the endocrine laboratory at University College, Dublin, and a member of the Government's consultative committee on nuclear-emergency planning [http://www.ireland.com/mediainfo/index.htm] ***************************************************************** 21 in the event of A nuclear accident Is route a clear, present danger? Published Sunday, October 28, 2001 Peninsula residents are worried about tie-up of Brawley School Road By SHIRLEY HUNTER MOORE MOORESVILLE -- For Brawley School Road peninsula residents, the Sept. 11 terror attacks have brought to the forefront a nagging question: If there were an attack or severe accident at nearby McGuire nuclear power plant, how could thousands safely escape the peninsula on the only two-lane road that leads out? "It's something you have in the back of your mind every day," said Carlos Salas, who lives on the peninsula, across from Lake Norman Elementary School. "It's something you think about." David Boone, a former Iredell County commissioner who chairs the Iredell County Board of Health, said he questions how more than 10,000 residents can be evacuated using chronically congested Brawley School Road. "From a traffic standpoint, it's a giant cul-de-sac," he said. Duke Power's McGuire plant is across Lake Norman in northern Mecklenburg County, about five miles from the tip of the Brawley peninsula in southern Iredell. Part of it opened in 1981. Duke operates two other nuclear power plants, Oconee in Seneca, S.C., and Catawba on Lake Wylie. The three plants produce half of all the electricity used by the company's customers in the Piedmont area of the Carolinas, Duke spokeswoman Guynn Savage said. The chance of a severe radiation problem is highly unlikely because of the way the facilities are built and the security that's in place, she said. Security concerns prevent her from disclosing many details. But she said the plants are designed to withstand natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes. The reactor buildings, where nuclear fuel is and the nuclear reaction takes place, are constructed with three feet of concrete and with steel liners 3/4-inch thick. The nuclear process that helps produce the electricity takes place inside 8-inch-thick steel vessels. The plants are protected by armed guards. Badge and palm identification are required for sensitive areas. Other security measures are "invisible" to the public. "There are layers of security in place," Savage said. "We are not reliant on any one piece of equipment to safely operate or shut down the reactor." Larry Dickerson, Iredell County's emergency management director, agrees that the chance of a radiation release because of an accident or terrorist attack is extremely low. "I have been in that plant and virtually every place in that facility," he said. "If (people) understood how this facility was built, I think it would alleviate a lot of their concerns." Former U.S. Ambassador Mark Erwin of Charlotte, however, told the Statesville Rotary Club last week that Duke's plants should be regarded as "bombs" not in the explosion sense, but because of the potential radiation release. If a plant is successfully attacked, he said, "Charlotte is a dead city" because of radiation. He said the nation's 63 such plants should be protected with National Guard troops and surface-to-air missiles. As ambassador to three African nations - the Indian Ocean nation islands of Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros, Erwin was alert to potential terrorism. He urges people to write Gov. Mike Easley to have National Guard troops protect N.C. nuclear plants. Dickerson said officials regularly practice for emergencies, most recently in August after about a year's preparation. About 100 volunteers and county employees from various agencies participated in the exercise, which did not include a mass evacuation. Iredell County is in contact with Duke officials almost daily about different issues, such as updates on emergency response plans, Dickerson said. Iredell even has a special room on Water Street in Statesville for briefings and drills related to McGuire. There are maps, tables, books, manuals and direct communications links to Duke officials. But all the preparation in the world won't erase the traffic problem on the peninsula, Dickerson said. "I wish something could be done by snapping my fingers and it be fixed, but that's not going to happen," he said. It would take a maximum of eight hours to get people out of McGuire's federal emergency planning zone - the 10-mile radius around the plant, Dickerson said. That zone includes parts of Mecklenburg, Iredell, Lincoln, Gaston and Catawba counties. Leaving on Brawley School Road would have been easy years ago, when it was a rural route. But the popularity of living at Lake Norman has driven the peninsula population to at least 8,000. The rapid growth has made the road a motorist's nightmare, especially during morning and afternoon commutes. Widening by the state is years away. To speed an evacuation, Iredell County's escape plan could call for both lanes of the road to become exit routes, Dickerson said. Helicopters could be flown in to whisk away the injured. The plan could also request, but not require, that exiting cars be washed to remove radiation. Tommy Bowles, a Board of Health member and an Iredell commissioner, sees that as a potential problem. "There will be no way to stop all the traffic coming off Brawley School Road," he said. "It will be like the Wild West with a stampede of cattle." Dickerson suggests residents be proactive instead of worried about McGuire. Families can better prepare for any type of emergency by packing emergency kits and keeping them handy, he said. Residents in the 10-mile emergency planning zone can find tips related to McGuire in the calendar Duke Power mails to them each fall. The calendars include information about siren testing, emergency notification, radiation, and emergency kits. Savage stressed that people shouldn't lose sleep over McGuire. "We work very diligently to ensure that we have good, comprehensive security plans, and we execute them well," she said. "We don't lay them on a desk to gather dust. We practice them." Staff writers Joe Marusak and Jim Wrinn contributed to this article. E-mail iredell@ charlotteobserver.com We'll publish your thoughts. ***************************************************************** 22 Comments on Dateline's October 28th, 2001 show on nuclear power plant vulnerabilities To: "NBC Dateline" From: "Russell D. Hoffman" Subject: Comments on today's Dateline show on nuclear power plant vulnerabilities Cc: president@whitehouse.gov, graydavis@governor.ca.gov, California Senators To: Producer, Dateline, NBC Date: October 28th, 2001 From: Russell Hoffman, Concerned Citizen Re: Comments on today's Dateline show on nuclear power plant vulnerabilities To The Producer: Your report on nuclear power plants which aired today, Sunday, October 28th, 2001, was weak and unfair. It minimized the reality of the many vulnerabilities, which it is our duty -- both yours and mine -- to point out to the public. You didn't do your job and you stand in the direct way of me doing mine. For example, Dateline gave Ralph Beedle of the Nuclear Energy Institute (an industry sponsored-group, as you pointed out) the cover of legitimacy by allowing viewers to assume that you've researched the subject of nuclear power plant security. Why did you let your reporter, Victoria Corderi, let Ralph Beedle say things which are unrealistic, unsubstantiated, and/or personal opinion, and not let anyone refute them, and not ask him to name names if he feels anyone in the so-called "anti-nuclear" side has misstated the situation for any reason, let alone for the evil intent he suggests? He has slandered many good scientists as well as activists, philosophers, humanitarians, etc. etc. etc. But who exactly? He paints us all with a broad brush, and you provide him with millions of dollars worth of free "advertising time" to spew his slander. The reality is that nuclear power is dangerous, dirty, and inefficient. There is no "anti-nuclear" viewpoint. There is a pro-nuclear viewpoint, and a reasonable, sane, safety-minded, realistic viewpoint. I'm pretty sick of seeing Ralph Beedle be given air time (and print space) to unquestioningly promote his herd of deadly dinosaurs. To balance that, you need to give equal time to the doctors who oppose nuclear power, and to the economists who have become convinced not to invest in it, and to all the engineers, geologists, statisticians and other experts who each oppose nuclear power for different, valid reasons. And you need to give equal time to the housewives who are tired of being terrified, and to the insurance companies who won't invest in nuclear power, forcing the U.S. Government to insure the plants with the absurd Price-Anderson Act. It's hard to undo the crime of misleading the public. "Equal time" is not enough. The "reasonable" viewpoint needs to make up for more than 50 years of lies by the government, the nuclear industry, and the media, not just Ralph Beedle's many moments in the spotlight since September 11th. His pulpit should be the dock of a court. Why don't you visit my web site, and start reading? There is no way Beedle, or anyone else in the nuclear industry, can refute the many reasons presented there for why we need to not just increase security and add anti-aircraft guns, but why we need to completely shut the plants down: [http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm] You need to do another show -- and quick. I'm sure Scott Portzline had a lot more to say (you didn't even tell the public about his web site, [http://www.tmia.com/] ), and there are plenty more waiting in the wings to talk to the American media, to help you (and through you, all of America) to recognize that this is the most important story in America today -- yes, even, and especially, today. Some of us have been trying to bring up the issue of the vulnerability of Nuclear Power Plants to terrorism and airplane crashes (intentional or otherwise) for years, but have been ignored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, our complaints invariably and utterly denied. The NRC's refusal to talk to you for your report stunk, and was unfair to the public whose interests they are supposedly protecting. Their excuse was hollow, but maybe you just didn't try hard enough. Dateline NBC has a lot of clout. Use it. Time is not on our side; the terrorists will wait for no one. We need to shut down the nuclear power plants immediately and permanently, and convert to renewable energy solutions. Piano tuners know it. Computer programmers know it. Doctors know it, engineers know it, and millions of other America know it, too. It can be done, and it must be done. But even after the plants are shut down, we will still need to greatly increase security. Besides airplane strikes, here's a list of "25 simple ways terrorists can destroy a nuclear power plant". It is no joke: [http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/simple25.htm] There is NO WAY Ralph Beedle, the NRC, or anyone else in the "Nuclear Mafia" can possibly resolve all these issues without shutting the plants down and storing the waste in guarded underground facilities (note: I am not advocating Yucca Mountain as a solution). Sincerely, Russell Hoffman Concerned Citizen P.O. Box 1936 Carlsbad, CA 92018 P.S. #1 Have you taken another look at those timelines you presented a few weeks back, for the fighter jets that were scrambled on September 11th, as I suggested earlier? You had them flying backwards or something. I mean, for a name like DATELINE, you ought to be able to catch impossible timelines when they are handed to you by the military! Specifically, can you now tell us how it was possible that fighter jets could have taken off from Langley AFB, bound for Washington, DC, at 9:30 am on September 11th, but 13 minutes later, at 9:43, when the plane struck the Pentagon, those jets were said to be "12 minutes away"? Langley AFB is about 130 miles from DC. So at the speed these planes fly at, even allowing for acceleration and takeoff, they are less than 7 minutes away from DC to begin with. You should be ashamed, but hardly lonely -- the stated timeline from a number of media for the fighter jets bound for New York is that they were 8 minutes and 80 miles away when the second jet crashed into the second tower -- also ridiculous. P.S. #2 If you ever do get to talk to the NRC, please ask them what exactly they did from approximately 9:02 am on September 11th, when it was clear to the entire world that terrorists were attacking America, until 10:00 am when THEY SAY they contacted the 103 operating nuclear power plants and told them to go on "high alert", whatever that means (not much). The following letter was sent to NBC Dateline by Jack Shannon: Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 13:43:26 EST Subject: Re: Comments on today's Dateline show on nuclear power plant vulnerabilities To: rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com, dateline@nbc.com (NBC Dateline), elie@highlands.com, fbord2@ctaz.com, cavaluza@acc.sunyacc.edu, Volega@cs.com, fair@fair.org, Tapler05@aol.com, Donhart@pobox.mtaonline.net, advocacyline@hotmail.com (Beth Hills), OBrien688@aol.com, Susannesaltzman@aol.com, jsanders@wrgb.com, smirnowb@ix.netcom.com, rstater@pipeline.com, KTunn931@aol.com Producers of Dateline: Dateline serves no National Patriotic service if it's only purpose is to mouth the standard nonsense as laid down by the NRC/DOE, or their minions. Neither of these agencies has told the truth in fifty years and they are not about to start doing so now. The lack of truth from these so called "oversight agencies" are, in fact, the reason for this debate at this time. They have never performed their oversight in anything approaching a professional or objective manner. Mr. Beedle is not being honest when he tells the American people that Nuclear Power, in the present day environment is safe. It is not safe and has, furthermore, a host of problems in a non terrorist environment that have never been debated in an open and objective manner. The terrorist environment of today requires, in fact demands, an open debate on this subject. It is unconscionable to keep the plants running and exposing the spent fuel to an attack, of any kind, and not keep the public fully informed as to the dangers associated with the nuclear industry. Nuclear Power Plants are not now nor have they ever been safe! I have spent 30 years in the Nuclear Business and can tell you that I know more about the business than Beedle or anyone in the DOE or the NRC, and I, furthermore, have no reason to lie. I designed the most widely used nuclear power plant in the United States today. It is referred to as D1G Core 2 by the United States Navy and is used on all High Speed Nuclear Attack Submarines and most, if not all, of the nuclear-powered Cruisers [previously referred to as DLGN's destroyers]. It was I who eventually got the Navy to shut down two Nuclear Power Plants near Saratoga Springs, NY because they were being operated for years without containment vessels. They were closed down one day after I appeared on local TV [WRGB Channel 6, Schenectady, NY] telling the local population of the dangers associated with such reactors even in a non terrorist environment. In a terrorist environment it was unforgivable to keep these plants running. Mr. Beedle does no patriotic or good service to the American public by downplaying what may be the single biggest danger to the public in this Country today. It doesn't even have to be a 737 airplane, a large bore antitank weapon could do the job. Maybe a "tow" or a 3.5 inch rocket launcher would do the job and most of New York City would have to be evacuated, if Indian Point 3 were the target, probably forever. I would like to know Mr. Beedle's credentials as a Nuclear Engineer, explosive expert mechanical engineering or an expert on weapons. I qualify in three of the four areas and have done some work as a mechanical engineer. I will, furthermore be willing to take on Mr. Beedle or any other NRC/DOE employee in a debate on the safety of nuclear power containment vessels. So let's have a debate. Nothing less will do. This is too important a matter to be left up to the likes of an NRC talking head. John Shannon Major USMC [Retired] Nuclear Physicist/Nuclear Engineers. 11th hour protest against nuclear power: [http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/11thhour.htm] For more information please visit: [http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/index.htm] Learn about the effects of nuclear weapons here: [http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/no_nukes/tenw/nuke_war.htm] This web page has been presented on the World Wide Web by: The Animated Software Company [http://www.animatedsoftware.com/index.html] [Mail to:] rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com First posted October 28th, 2001. Webwiz: Russell D. Hoffman ***************************************************************** 23 Meeting Agenda - Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects Meeting Agenda Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects Tuesday, October 30, 2001 9:30 a.m. Clark County Commission Chambers Las Vegas, Nevada 9:30 a.m. - Welcome and Introductions Chairman McKay Approve June 8, 2001 Draft Minutes Commissioners Nevada Protection Fund Update Robert R. Loux Executive Director State of Nevada Oversight Program Update Robert R. Loux Technical Division Report Susan Lynch Administrator of Technical Division Planning Division Report Joe Strolin Administrator of Planning Local Government & Tribes Updates Local Government &Tribal Leaders Public Comment Public Schedule Next Meeting and Adjourn Commissioners ***************************************************************** 24 ADAMS: Items of Interest - Monday, October 29, 2001 State of Nevada [http://www.state.nv.us/] Agency for Nuclear Projects [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/] ADAMS - Items of Interest Recent Released Documents Added - Monday, October 29, 2001 These documents and others may be retrieved at the NRC PERR web site [http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams/login.html] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item ID: 012990087 Accession Number: ML012890111 Document Date: 10/11/01 Title: 10/11/01 House Energy and Commerce Antiterrorism Legislation and Report to Accompany H.R. 3016. Author Affiliation: NRC/OCA Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990079 Accession Number: ML012970229 Document Date: 10/18/01 Title: Completion of Staff Reviews of NRC Bulletin 96-03, "Potential Plugging of Emergency Core Cooling Suction Strainers by Debris in Boiling-Water Reactors," and NRC Bulletin 95-02, "Unexpected Clogging of a Residual Heat Removal (RHR) Pump Strainer While... Author Affiliation: NRC/NRR/DSSA Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990233 Accession Number: ML012920729 Document Date: 10/15/01 Title: Draft Regulatory Guide (DG)-1085, "Standard Format and Content of Decommissioning Cost Estimates for Nuclear Power Reactors," and Draft NUREG-1713, "Standard Review Plan for Decommissioning Cost Estimates for Nuclear Power Reactors" Author Affiliation: NRC/ACRS Document/Report Number: R-1964 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990232 Accession Number: ML012920703 Document Date: 10/12/01 Title: Draft Regulatory Guides Associated with a Proposed Revision to 10 CFR 73.55, "Requirements for Physical Protection of Licensed Activities in Nuclear Power Reactors Against Radiological Sabotage" Author Affiliation: NRC/ACRS Document/Report Number: R-1962 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990172 Accession Number: ML012560294 Document Date: 9/11/01 Title: G20010377/DSB-01-137 - Katie Sweeney e-mail re: Petition for Rulemaking Submitted by National Mining Association Requesting that Uranium Recovery Licensees be Exempted from PR-170 & 171 Fees. Author Affiliation: National Mining Association Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990089 Accession Number: ML012920095 Document Date: 10/18/01 Title: Indian Point No. 2, Ltr, Re: Telephone Conference Summary Re: Responses To Bulletin 2001-01, Circumferential Cracking Of Reactor Pressure Vessel Head Penetration Nozzles. Author Affiliation: NRC/NRR/DLPM/LPD1 Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990227 Accession Number: ML012920717 Document Date: 10/15/01 Title: Proposed Resolution of Generic Safety Issue (GSI)-173A, "Spent Fuel Storage Pool for Operating Facilities" Author Affiliation: NRC/ACRS Document/Report Number: R-1963 _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990083 Accession Number: ML012880089 Document Date: 10/12/01 Title: Response to Congressman Sununu re: licensing hearing process for nuclear power reactors. Author Affiliation: NRC/OGC Document/Report Number: _________________________________________________________________ Item ID: 012990002 Accession Number: ML012910156 Document Date: Title: Transcript of 486th ACRS Meeting, October 4, 2001, pages 1-265. Author Affiliation: Document/Report Number: ***************************************************************** 25 Austrian chancellor wants Czechs to guarantee nuclear plant's safety BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Oct 28, 2001 Text of report in English by Czech news agency CTK Vienna, 28 October: The Austrian government will not let the Czech Republic close the energy chapter at EU accession talks unless Prague makes an obligatory promise that its Temelin nuclear power plant will achieve European standards, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said on television today. "It must be guaranteed and set obligatorily. Until the issue is resolved, it is not possible to approve the energy chapter," Schuessel said. "I will not let myself be forced even by [EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter] Verheugen or anybody else," Schuessel said, alluding to the letter sent by Verheugen to the Austrian and Czech governments, calling on them to complete the Melk process of safety and environmental impact of Temelin [agreed upon by the Czech premier and the Austrian chancellor last December] as soon as possible, preferably by mid-November. Schuessel nevertheless said he was against vetoing the Czech Republic's admission to the EU, as coalition far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) demands. The effort of all parties should focus on increasing the plant's safety standards, Schuessel said... Source: CTK news agency, Prague, in English 1505 gmt 28 Oct 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 26 Dangers of proceeding with MOX ireland.com - The Irish Times - OPINION October 29, 2001 Britain's decision to go ahead with the MOX plant at Sellafield was illogical, ridiculous and scandalous, writes David Andrews THE letters BNFL conjure up images of contaminated beaches, radiation leaks and faked safety records in the minds of Irish people everywhere. The words Windscale, Thorp and Sellafield are equally objectionable. Following Clement Attlee's decision to launch a programme to build a British atomic bomb, the British began producing plutonium at Windscale in Cumbria. Not long afterwards, in 1957, there was a serious fire at the plant in which large amounts of radioactive energy were released. This was the first of a string of safety incidents which brought the very word Windscale into such disrepute that the site had to be renamed Sellafield. Renaming Windscale did little to improve the safety record. In March 2000, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate published three reports on Sellafield. One report concerned the falsification of safety data relating to Mixed Oxide Fuel manufactured at the Sellafield MOX demonstration facility. Another related to the control and supervision of operations at Sellafield; it was highly critical of safety standards at the plant. Nobody in Ireland had expected any different. Of the 28 safety recommendations made in the report, few have been implemented. Despite the appalling safety record, the pollution, the danger to all life on these islands and the increased risk of terrorist attack since September 11th, the British government has given the green light to the Sellafield MOX fuel fabrication plant. It was a ridiculous, illogical and utterly scandalous decision, contemptuous of the millions of Irish people whose lives are daily placed in danger from the very existence of Sellafield, a faulty relic of the military-industrial complex. Their own people are also in very serious danger. The environment knows no political borders and, just as it is wrong for one nation to pollute the rivers which flow into another, it is wrong for the British to endanger our lives and environment in this way. At every stage in its development, we have objected strenuously to the MOX plant. In the early 1990s, British Nuclear Fuel Ltd first sought planning permission for the plant and despite our objections, permission was granted in 1994. In 1996, BNFL applied to the British Environment Agency for approval to operate the plant. The application was subject to five public consultations between 1997 and 2001, all of which featured strong Irish objections to the plant. In addition, the British government at every level has been left in no doubt as to our opposition. It ignored all objections. The Sellafield plant already possesses an excess of stockpiled plutonium, without buyers and endangering us. MOX is part of the economically and environmentally illogical continuation of nuclear reprocessing at Sellafield which is producing gaseous and liquid radioactive material which contaminates the seas and air, creating even larger stockpiles which simply cannot be sold. There is no economic justification for the MOX plant. The two main markets identified by BNFL for MOX fuel were Japan and Germany. Germany has already announced that it is phasing out nuclear power. Japan plans to build its own MOX plant thereby cutting Sellafield out of the equation. The plant, which has already cost about £750 million, has firm orders for only 11 per cent of its output. Is it any wonder the British continue to refuse to fully release the information which they claim supports the economic justification of the plant? Worldwide, the spent nuclear fuel industry is separating more plutonium than the nuclear industry can utilise. The Sellafield stockpile is going to lie there for generations at least, getting bigger all the time, a growing danger. Any reductions of the stockpile will be achieved largely by shipping the MOX or plutonium through the Irish Sea with the associated dangers of accident or terrorist attack. Could a MOX-carrying ship withstand the impact of a shoulder-held SAM missile? Could Sellafield withstand the impact of a fully fuelled 747? Plainly, there is no justification for the British government giving the green light to the MOX plant. We have already initiated legal action in regard to the MOX plant under the OSPAR Convention. This convention, for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic, was opened for signature at the ministerial meeting of the Oslo and Paris Commissions in Paris on September 22nd, 1992. Britain has ignored our calls to hold back on any final decision on the plant while this arbitration process was under way. Maybe the Taoiseach's close and genuinely warm relationship with Mr Tony Blair, which was a key factor in pushing the peace process to near settlement, would bring closure to these dangerous and serious differences between our two countries. On this issue, as a nation, we are at the end of our tether. Additional legal action is required, at EU and UN level, to shut this plant. The legal route is painfully slow, however, and while I understand that the Government will decide on its particular course of action within days, I feel that this is one of those issues, like the Birmingham Six or Carnsore Point, where people-power, letter-writing and peaceful public protest will play a key role. Sellafield remains the most serious threat to our environment: it is in all of our interests that it be shut. dandrews@irish-times.ie [dandrews@irish-times.ie] [http://www.ireland.com/mediainfo/index.htm] ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 [southnews] US stands by to steal Pakistan's nukes Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 23:41:09 -0600 (CST) U.S. Special Unit 'Stands by to Steal Atomic Warheads' http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/29 /war129.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/29/ixhome.html By BEN FENTON THE TELEGRAPH - London, UK - Monday, 29 October 2001 AN elite American military unit is preparing for possible incursion into Pakistan in order to steal its nuclear weapons arsenal, it is reported today. The special forces unit is training with Israel's most trusted anti-terrorist unit, and would be called into action in the event that Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf lost power in Pakistan, the New Yorker magazine said. The CIA believes that Pakistani army officers sympathetic to the Taliban could pose a threat to Gen. Musharraf, and that some of the country's estimated 24 nuclear warheads could be stolen by renegades within Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. Seymour Hersch, a journalist whose reporting on the post-September 11 crisis has been broadly accurate so far, said that members of Israel's Unit 262, or Sayeret Matkal, came to America soon after the attacks and have been training with Pentagon special forces. Mr. Hersch quoted a "senior military officer" as confirming that intense planning was going on for the "exfiltration" - theft - of warheads. But there are doubts about whether the CIA - or any other intelligence agency - knows the exact location of Pakistan's warheads, which were first tested, to the surprise of American intelligence agencies, in [May] 1998. The fear that Gen. Musharraf could lose control of the country and some or all of the warheads is based on the close links between the ISI and the Taliban. Last week, the Pakistani President dismissed such concerns. "We have an excellent command-and-control system which we have evolved, and there is no question of their falling into the hands of any fundamentalists," Gen. Musharraf said. Pakistan is thought to have a number of intermediate-range missiles to carry its warheads as well as using F-16 fighter-bombers. There are a number of possible targets for the use of these weapons by renegades sympathetic to the Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. These include India, itself a nuclear power, or the four American aircraft carriers and British vessels currently cruising off Pakistan's coastline as bases for air and commando attacks on the Taliban and al-Qaeda. ---------- US mulls neutralising Pak nuclear facilities The Times of India 27 October 2001 WASHINGTON: President George W Bush is consulting senior leaders on plans to neutralise Pakistan's nuclear capabilities if the Pervez Musharraf regime collapses, a senior US lawmaker has indicated. Joe Biden, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, strongly hinted this at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Biden was asked about an article in The New York Times on the need to render Pakistani nuclear weapons ineffective if the Musharraf regime falls. The Democrat senator replied: "Those discussions are underway with the Democratic and Republican members of Congress and the president on setting those priorities." There have been strong protests from fundamentalist groups in Pakistan against Musharraf's decision to back the US war against Afghanistan. This has given rise to questions about a threat to the military regime and the possibility of Pakistan's nuclear facilities falling into the hands of religious groups. Biden said: "The question is, the president (Bush) has an internal dilemma he has to overcome first. He (Bush) is focusing on first things first, but then he has to deal with ...and I'm going to get in trouble for saying this... but he has to deal with what has not gone away. There is, for lack of a better phrase, still a Rumsfeld-Powell split on how they look at the world, and how they look at these very issues that you've stated here." Biden indicated a split between Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell with the suggestion that Rumsfeld, a known hawk, supported such a plan in Pakistan while Powell opposed it. Biden, who said he had been in close consultations with Bush, also set out his views on US relations with India and Pakistan. "I think there has to be a clear understanding, both in Delhi and Islamabad, that we are interested, we are looking and we are watching. Secondly, I think a message should be delivered very strongly to the Indians - do not attempt to take advantage of the circumstances at this moment, it's against your interests across the board." But finally, he said, "we have to make clear to the Pakistanis that, notwithstanding the fact we need you very much right now, you are in a position where if you are going to continue to foment the terror that does exist in Kashmir, then you are operating against your own near-term interests, because that very viper can turn on you." Pakistan on Friday dismissed as absurd British media reports that Osama bin Laden had obtained nuclear material from Islamabad. The Times newspaper and Channel Four television quoted Western intelligence sources as saying the Saudi-born dissident had obtained the material illegally from Pakistan, a nuclear capable country. A Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday that the allegation was absurd. "Our nuclear materials are in very safe hands, these are absurd allegations," spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan said. The Times and Channel Four said that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network of Islamic extremists, which operates out of neighbouring Afghanistan, did not have the technology to make a nuclear bomb. Kashmir will become central to resolving tensions between India and Pakistan, he said. "The truth of the matter is, the whole world is looking at their problem now in Kashmir, not just us, the spotlight is on and the consequences for how they will be treated relative to all other nations in the world is very much up in the air right now, and they should be made constantly aware of how tenuous the circumstance is for both of them. In this case, particularly India, in my view, particularly India." Replying to a question on relations with India after the US had been seen to be moving close to the country before September 11, Biden said: "I think that was then, and it's almost still that way now. And let me explain what I mean by that. "I may be mistaken, and I may be a bit cynical, but I think the initial `tilt' toward India was related to Beijing more than it was to Pakistan or anything else. And I think that the relationship with Beijing was going south very rapidly." Biden said "there is a desire in the administration to actually, genuinely (have) better relations with India. I think it is an absolute essential element of American foreign policy that that be done. And part of that is simply engaging ... engaging them and treating them like what they are. They will not (in) too long be the largest, most populous nation in the world. They are a democracy, as flawed as you may think it is. They are someone with whom we should and must have a much, much, much better relationship and understanding." The whole world has changed for India in recent years, Biden said. "It has changed not only when the wall came down, and when their protector evaporated, it changed now as the relationship with China begins to mature, and they're going to have some great difficulty internally figuring out how to deal with that. "But we should be engaged at the highest level on a daily basis, literally with India. So I don't think the administration is jettisoning India, but I think they're beginning to look at India in a different way, not as cynically as just a card to have been played against Beijing." ( IANS ) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: southnews-unsubscribe@egroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ***************************************************************** 2 Bin Laden's Nuclear Weapons? NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story Sunday, Oct. 28, 2001 11:45 p.m. EST London's "Eye Spy" reports on a secret operation at least 18 months ago whereby Al-Qaeda operatives acquired nuclear technology and hardware. According to the Arabic language newspaper Al-Watan al-Arabi, well-organized terrorists smuggled nuclear warheads, bought with opium and cash from the Russian mafia, overland out of Russian territory via secret routes through Uzbekistan. There, former Soviet scientists removed the active uranium to be processed and placed it in backpack-sized nuclear bombs ready for transportation to the West, undetected. Sources say bin Laden has used two tons of Afghan opium and $30 million to buy over 20 nuclear warheads. He has hired an international team of rogue nuclear scientists working in a secret underground base to convert warheads 'expropriated' from former Soviet republics into portable nuclear devices capable of striking targets around the globe. The newspaper further states that bin Laden developed ties with the mafia of former Soviet republics during the Afghan war, which provided him with the key to obtaining nuclear missile warheads from the disintegrating USSR. The magazine says MI6 and the CIA now have in-depth intelligence on this operation. Indeed, it is almost certain that when Colin Powell spoke with Pakistan, some of this information was divulged, prompting Islamabad to react. Analysts believe bin Laden would have little hesitation in exploding a nuclear warhead, which many governments believe would lead to a frightening escalation in the war against terror. NewsMax.com Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 3 US prepares to take Pak nukes if Musharraf falls Expressindia.com Washington, October 29: A special US unit is training with Israeli commandos to take out Pakistan's nuclear weapons in case of a coup against President Pervez Musharraf, The New Yorker magazine reported on Monday, citing past and present government officials. The US force is training in the United States with members of Israel's Unit 262, a commando team that has engaged in behind-the-lines operations including theft and assassinations, according to The New Yorker. The US unit, operating under Pentagon control with CIA assistance, specialises in slipping undetected into foreign countries to find, and if necessary disarm, nuclear weapons, the magazine reports. US sources told the magazine that Pakistan has at least 24 nuclear warheads that can be delivered by intermediate-range missiles and F-16 air planes. However the US intelligence cannot be sure of the precise location of all of the Pakistani warheads, officials said. US regional experts quoted by the magazine say they doubt Musharraf's ability to control the military and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if there is a coup -- and say dissident fundamentalists within the military might try to seize a nuclear warhead. One US intelligence officer expressed alarm over the recent questioning in Pakistan of two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists with reported Taliban connections, describing it as "the tip of a very serious iceberg." © 2001: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights ***************************************************************** 4 Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons At Grave Risk Updated on 2001-10-29 14:50:46 SAN FRANCISCO (PNS) October 29, 2001 - A report just released by Britains Telegraph quoting Ben Fenton claims United States has contingency plans to raid Pakistan's Nuclear facilities and steal it. The report further claimed U.S. special forces has been training for this mission. Although the report claims, CIA does not the exact location of Pakistan's warheads. Legal issues and International consequences of conducting such a raid on a sovereign country were not mentioned in the report. LINKS: U.S. MAY STEAL PAKISTAN'S NUKE WEAPONS http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/29/war129.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/29/ixhome.html HEAVY PRESENCE NEAR RASKOH NUCLEAR PLANT http://www.paknews.com/main.php?id=16&date1=2001-10-21 ***************************************************************** 5 Opinion: Bombing comes home Berkeley Daily Planet Wednesday October 31, 2001 The Daily Planet received a copy of this letter addressed to the mayor and City Council: by Leuren Moret Berkeley Margo Shafer is right - the bombing of Afghanistan by U.S .government forces is our problem. I commend Councilmember Dona Spring for bringing this forward for debate. It is not true that it is happening “over there” so that it doesn’t affect us “over here.” Citizens must get good information in order to make good decisions and participate fully to ensure a democratic government. We are part of a global community, and should be informed and interested in government policy which does not directly affect us in our local community. The United States has hundreds of thousands of tons of depleted uranium piled in heaps outdoors at DOE facilities. It is 99.5 percent of what is left when the most fissionable isotope (one of three) is extracted from naturally occurring uranium. The extracted uranium is used in nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel for nuclear reactors. The 99.5 percent that is discarded cannot be put back into the mines it came out of because, after crushing and processing, the volume is greater than before it was removed from the mines. The Department of Defense got the bright idea of using DU in weapons because (1) it is very dense giving it greater penetrating power to destroy tanks etc. (2) it is pyrophoric – upon impact, it explodes into fire and smoke creating submicroscopic radioactive particles which travel great distances and can remain suspended until “rained out” of the atmosphere, (3) it is radioactive and will continue acting internally long after the battlefield has been cleared - with delayed effects which continue acting on soldiers and civilians the rest of their lives (4) it is cheap and passes the responsibility for disposal from DOE on to civilians (that means us) and the environment. The half life of uranium is 4.5 billion years - in 10 half lives radioactivity becomes an insignificant amount. In 45 billion years it will no longer be a danger. In other words - it’s “fun” for the DOD, it’s “cheap” for the arms manufacturers (at good profits), and “good riddance” says DOE. The United States has manufactured, used, tested DU in 39 states. The cleanup bill - just for the DU - at the Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana would be $7.8 billion. It has not been cleaned up, but DOD has closed it. Communities living near these test ranges will continue to be exposed and suffer health problems. The Sierra Army Depot in California, for 40 years, has burned millions of tons of old munitions – including 20 times more DU than used in the Gulf War. The radioactive ash full of heavy metals, phosgene gas and dioxins contaminated local communities as well as Native American communities downwind - especially the Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation. The health problems in those communities has been horrendous. The Sierra Army depot burned old munitions in open pits - and was the single largest contributor to air pollution in California - 17-23 percent. Did anyone in this city know that, or do anything to inform the citizens? I doubt that anyone was aware or informed. Several months ago I made a short presentation to the Peace and Justice Commission. Norman Harry, former Pyramid Lake Tribal Chairman, and Senator Harry Reid worked with others to shut it down. Less than a month ago Lassen County refused to renew the burn permit for the Sierra Army Depot - finally. The United States has used DU weaponry in the Gulf War, Kosovo, Serbia, Vieques Island, Torishima Island near Okinawa, Japan, and sold it to at least 23 countries. Israel uses it nearly daily on the Palestinians. It is in the arsenal the United States is using on Afghanistan. It can be detected on gamma meters in Greece and Bulgaria on windy days. It’s the weapon that “keeps giving”... Leuren Moret Berkeley ***************************************************************** 6 Seeing the country: Road trips energize DOE official's music interest KnoxNews: Sci/tech By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer Working for the U.S. Department of Energy is not an easy assignment. Over the years, I've watched it drive men to prostitution and drive men to drink. (There have been some highly publicized examples of each.) But working for DOE did something to Walter Perry that I'd never seen before. It drove him to country music, and that's the truth. Perry, a public affairs specialist in DOE's Oak Ridge office, doesn't look like a country music fan. Don't ask me what a country fan looks like (personally I'm a devotee of George Strait), but trust me when I say Perry doesn't fit the traditional profiles. Anyway, his taste in music changed over the past couple of years as he spent many hours in government cars driving to and from Paducah, Ky., and Piketon, Ohio -- two out-of-the-way hot spots in the ongoing controversy regarding sick nuclear workers. Perry commuted regularly to these sites to organize public meetings and help with other activities at the uranium-enrichment plants, which were built by DOE in the 1950s and are now operated by the U.S. Enrichment Corp. According to Perry, there wasn't much to do while on the road for hours at a time and, in rural areas Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, there wasn't much on the radio but country music. "You don't have a lot of choice," he said. Pretty soon, however, that dead time became a fun time. He liked what he heard -- a lot -- except for the stuff "that's real twangy." The 36-year-old federal worker converted from pop to country with a passion. How so? This past summer, he anted up for one of those fantasy excursions, where he and a few other fans traveled via bus with country music stars and got the behind-the-scenes treatment at three concerts on the "Girls Night Out" Tour. "It was the life-on-the-road experience, and over four days and three nights, we went to concerns in Myrtle Beach (S.C.), Winston-Salem (N.C.) and Louisville (Ky.)." The stars included Reba McEntire, Martina McBride, Sara Evans, Jamie O'Neal and Carolyn Dawn Johnson. The trip was pretty cool, although Perry and the other country junkies didn't get the all of the meet-the-stars treatment they expected (and say they were promised). The real highlight of his summer came in late August when Perry went to a Lee Ann Womack concert at Biltmore House near Asheville, N.C. Womack happens to be his favorite artist, and as a member of the Lee Ann Womack Fan Club, Perry got to meet and talk with the budding superstar before the concert. "That was very special. We got to sit on the third row, and it was a nice evening. Great temperature. Great turnout." He is especially fond of, "I Hope You Dance," Womack's big hit. "I think that's got a lot of inspiration for all of us," Perry said. "She is so sincere." Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science and technology also is available on our Web site at http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. ***************************************************************** 7 America's 'elite' troops Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Marcus Scriven Monday October 29, 2001 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] mince his words. "I would be reluctant to jump into a battle zone with any conventional American unit. I would hate to take them into battle - they ain't ready, they are not 'good to go'." With British and American ground troops poised to take the war against the Taliban into a new, perilous phase, Hackworth's appraisal of the army he once served will do little to calm nerves in the corridors of power. And his verdict on "crack" American troops such as those likely to be deployed in Afghanistan, is scarcely more complimentary. The soldiers of the vaunted 82nd Airborne are only "a little better" than ordinary infantry. And of the supposedly fearsome 10th Mountain Division, he says, "I hear a lot of rhetoric about the famous 10th Mountain Division. In World War II it was unquestionably America's finest unit - trained for three years, made up with men from Colorado, Montana, Idaho, really tough men, experts in mountain fighting. What we have now in the 10th Mountain Division is a bunch of kids that are better qualified to play computer games than they are to fight in that kind of terrain." Confronted by the sudden prospect of putting their training to the test in Afghanistan, more than a handful of American soldiers show signs of agreeing with Hackworth's dismal assessment. "A large number of them have been submitting release from active duty requests, feigning that they're conscientious objectors, which is exactly what we went through in Vietnam," he says. It is difficult to envisage anyone now emulating Hackworth's record even if they took on the Taliban during an extended campaign. After lying about his age, he managed to enlist, aged 15, in the second world war, "winding up on the Morgan Line around Trieste, trying to keep the Yugoslavs and the Italians from wasting each other". Thereafter, in Korea and Vietnam, he was awarded a brace of Distinguished Service Crosses, 10 Silver Stars, four Legions of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross and a remarkable eight Purple Hearts - meaning that he was wounded, on average, in each of the (almost) eight years that he was in combat. Commissioned in the field in Korea, he became the army's youngest captain; less than 20 years later, as its youngest colonel, he condemned America's involvement in Vietnam. It was, he said, "a bad war... it can't be won. We need to get out." He also predicted that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon within four years - a prediction made no more palatable to his superiors by being right. Hackworth's critics might like to dismiss him as a battlefield dinosaur; most are wise enough not to try. After his public denunciation of the Vietnam war, he left the army and headed to Australia, where he gave his medals away to a class of 12-year-olds, burned his uniform, lived under the stars and smoked - and inhaled - a little dope. Nearly 20 years later, after making himself a fistful of money by selling a Brisbane restaurant and starting Australia's first Peking Duck farm, he returned to the US. During his years of self-imposed exile, he had become an anti-nuclear campaigner but that proved no bar to re-establishing contacts with friends in the army, who were invaluable allies in his next career as a war reporter. He discovered that - with some admirable exceptions - most of his new colleagues "wouldn't know a tank from a Range Rover or a B-52 bomber from a Valujet". During the Gulf war, he sensed that it was "almost as if frightened reporters who knew nothing about military realities wanted to inflate the war to inflate themselves". He decided on a new mission: to educate and inform his countrymen about those "military realities". Several years before he had co-authored the Vietnam Primer, which became a classic. On his return from Australia, he wrote About Face, a chronicle of his war experiences. It became a best-seller, as did three further books, the profits from the last two of which have been ploughed into Soldiers For The Truth, Hackworth's non-profit foundation dedicated to military reform. But that reform, he says, will only come after America has suffered "a terrible performance in battle. Then we'll see maximum attention to re-establishing discipline and getting standards up". This, though, will come too late to make a difference in Afghanistan. Hackworth recently watched three weeks of basic training at Fort Jackson and left "appalled at the lack of discipline, the lack of hard training". The American military, he argues, is undermined by twin evils - a culture of grotesquely profligate, misdirected expenditure and by a toadying, self-serving caste of senior officers interested only in securing their own advancement. But most corrosive of all, he says, has been the almost comic absurdity of making the forces politically correct. "There is now something called 'Consideration for Others' training," says Hackworth. "That's where Joe and Jane will get along and live in harmony. One, Joe and Jane shouldn't be in the foxhole together; two, harmony is not the name of the game; the name of the game is killing your enemy." (He is kinder about their British counterparts. "The Brits that I have found - the units that I've seen as a reporter in ex-Yugoslavia and so on - are not suffering as badly as the Americans from political correctness. It seems that your standards haven't been so lowered.") Such idiocies, argues Hackworth, could have been prevented "if the top brass had opposed the politically correct leadership which was engendered and supported by Bill Clinton". "Do you think Clinton would have appointed any leader that would say, 'We've lowered the standard, we're not training our people hard enough or fierce enough'? No: the guys who get promoted are the guys who go along to get along. They are the Perfumed Princes." But the "perfumed princes" are in for an unsettling ride, he says. "We are in round one - which is not even over - in a 30-round fight. I think my grandkids, who are five and eight, will be in college before we're in round 30. It's going to be a very long war, not like a war we've fought before. We will win, as long as everybody realises that it is not going to be a Desert Storm, wham-bam, thank you mam." Last August, Hackworth made another prediction. Outlining three scenarios of future terror, he described a terrorist gas attack at the Indianapolis sports arena, killing 4,000. Hackworth set the date at June 4 2005; the terrorist responsible? Osama bin Laden. He concluded: "The chances are eight out of 10 that we will see a devastating terrorist attack from abroad within the next 10 years. Up to now we've been relatively lucky. But this kind of luck can't last... This dude [Bin Laden] ain't gonna give up. Neither will a thousand fanatics like him. It's a mistake to believe you can stop a terrorist movement by taking out its leader. You can cut off the head, but the body will still live on." Consequently, Hackworth does not get overly excited by Bin Laden's fate. "He's got many, many fall-back positions, but he's a hard guy to hide. He's going to come in, in his Mercedes or his four-wheel drive; if people in the local village know he's there, the word is going to go out. He's got 30m bucks on his head; if you're an Afghan or Yemeni and you're making a dollar a week, $30m is a hell of an enticement. I wouldn't want to be in his sandals. But he's more the figurehead than the principal military planner; it's like getting rid of Saddam Hussein - there are other rattlesnakes that are even worse." Hackworth has yet to get to Afghanistan to see the situation for himself; in the meantime, he is urging people to read a paper written by Richard Kidd, a West Point graduate who spent two years in Afghanistan working in the UN's mine clearance programme. Kidd argues in favour of giving the Northern Alliance "a big wad of cash so that they can buy off a chunk of the Taliban army before winter. Second, also with this cash I would pay some guys to kill some of the Taliban leadership, making it look like an inside job to spread distrust. Third, I would support the Northern Alliance with military assets, but not take it over or adopt so high a profile as to undermine its legitimacy." Hackworth urges people to "burn [Kidd's] words and advice into your brain". He believes that they have been heeded in the White House, which he praises for its handling of the campaign so far. Hackworth says Washington should leave the fighting to groups like the Northern Alliance, confining British and American troops to an advisory role. As for the tens of thousands of American troops wondering if they could soon find themselves face to face with the Taliban, Hackworth suggests they should not expect to experience real combat any time soon. "I see them only in a defensive, perimeter role, because that's what they've got experience doing in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo: standing behind a wall of sandbags and peering out into the darkness. That's what they're very good at." The evidence against Bin Laden Read the dossier in full (pdf file) [http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2001/10/04/terrorism.p df] Talk Debate the issues on our talkboards [http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?13@@.464] Media response Special report from MediaGuardian.co.uk [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Media/attack/0,1301,550543,00.html] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001 ***************************************************************** 8 First Kursk missiles removed BBC News | WORLD | 29 October, 2001, 15:56 GMT [Investigators on the deck of the Kursk] Investigators are working round the clock in shifts Russian salvage workers have removed the first three of 22 Granit cruise missiles from the Kursk nuclear submarine. "The operation followed normal procedure, just as it would with any other submarine," an official of the Northern Fleet told the AFP news agency. People are hellishly tired, but nothing can make them leave the wreck Leonid Troshin, prosecutors' spokesman Experts expressed fears, as the submarine was being lifted from the sea bed, that any sharp movement could cause a damaged missile to explode. Russian officials have always denied that the missiles are carrying nuclear warheads. The Kursk, one of Russia's most advanced submarines, sank after two mysterious explosions during military exercises in the Barents Sea in August 2000 with the loss of all 118 men on board. Tired So far 45 bodies have been removed the submarine since it was lifted into dry dock last week. Of these 25 have been identified, and seven have been flown out to relatives. Another 12 bodies were removed last year. Investigators have been working round the clock in shifts. Seven of the bodies have been returned to relatives "People are hellishly tired, but nothing can make them leave the wreck," said Leonid Troshin, spokesman for prosecutor general Vladimir Ustinov. Mr Ustinov, who is leading the investigation, described on Saturday the "hell" that followed the explosions as fire swept through the submarine. The flames would have been quenched by the icy water that flooded the Kursk within seven to eight hours, but any attempt to rescue crew members who fled to the rear of the boat would have been futile, he said. Missile questions Mr Troshin said the search for bodies was now focused on the middle of the vessel, as there were none left in the three sections closest to the stern. Mr Troshin said work was stopped briefly on Monday because some compartments had to be cleared of high concentrations of lethal hydrogen sulfite. Investigators also could not reach a section connecting the two compartments containing the submarine's two nuclear reactors as it was filled with debris from the blasts, he said. Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer has questioned the official line that there were no nuclear warheads on board the Kursk. He points out that immediately after the Barents Sea exercises, the submarine had been due to leave for the Mediterranean on an expedition for which it would certainly have been armed with nuclear missiles. Investigators believe the wreck will provide many clues to the cause of the blasts, but say a definitive answer may only become possible when the bow section is raised. It was sawn off and left on the seabed and is due to be raised next year. The three official alternative versions are an on-board accident, a collision with another vessel and a wartime mine. ***************************************************************** 9 President Bush Announces Two Individuals to Serve in His Administration For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary October 25, 2001 President George W. Bush today announced his intention to nominate one individual and his intention to appoint one individual to serve in his administration. The President intends to nominate Darryl N. Johnson to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Kingdom of Thailand. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Johnson has been Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs since June 2000, and was previously the Political Advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. Johnson served as the Director of the Institute of Taiwan at Taipei from 1996 to 1999, as Deputy Coordinator of the Office of the New Independent States from 1994 to 1996, and as Ambassador to Lithuania from 1992 to 1994. His overseas assignments have included service in Warsaw, Beijing, Moscow, Hong Kong and Bombay. Johnson earned Senior Foreign Service Performance awards in 1999, 1998, 1992, 1991, and 1990 and Superior Honor Award in 1992. He is a graduate of the University of Washington and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. The President intends to appoint Antonio Andrade to be a Member of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. Andrade is the Group Leader of the Radiation Protection Services Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where he has served since 1985. His past positions at Los Alamos include service as a member of the National Security Programs Support Team, Technical Assistant to the Associate Director for Defense Research and Applications, Nuclear Reactor Projects Specialist in the Reactor and Analysis Group, and Director of the Omega West Reactor. Andrade received an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas and a M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. ### ***************************************************************** 10 Bin Laden's Nuclear Weapons? NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff Sunday, Oct. 28, 2001 11:45 p.m. EST London's "Eye Spy" reports on a secret operation at least 18 months ago whereby Al-Qaeda operatives acquired nuclear technology and hardware. According to the Arabic language newspaper Al-Watan al-Arabi, well-organized terrorists smuggled nuclear warheads, bought with opium and cash from the Russian mafia, overland out of Russian territory via secret routes through Uzbekistan. There, former Soviet scientists removed the active uranium to be processed and placed it in backpack-sized nuclear bombs ready for transportation to the West, undetected. Sources say bin Laden has used two tons of Afghan opium and $30 million to buy over 20 nuclear warheads. He has hired an international team of rogue nuclear scientists working in a secret underground base to convert warheads 'expropriated' from former Soviet republics into portable nuclear devices capable of striking targets around the globe. The newspaper further states that bin Laden developed ties with the mafia of former Soviet republics during the Afghan war, which provided him with the key to obtaining nuclear missile warheads from the disintegrating USSR. The magazine says MI6 and the CIA now have in-depth intelligence on this operation. Indeed, it is almost certain that when Colin Powell spoke with Pakistan, some of this information was divulged, prompting Islamabad to react. Analysts believe bin Laden would have little hesitation in exploding a nuclear warhead, which many governments believe would lead to a frightening escalation in the war against terror. ***************************************************************** 11 Irish study finds plutonium in gun rounds ireland.com - The Irish Times - IRELAND October 29, 2001 By Dick Ahlstrom, Science Editor Irish scientists examining depleted uranium rounds fired during NATO attacks on Kosovo in 1999 have confirmed the rounds also contained plutonium. A group from University College Dublin are studying the health effects of these rounds on people living near where they were used, after claims they were leading to cancers, notably leukaemia, and causing gross pollution of groundwaters. The Irish research has led to important new findings on the impact of the controversial anti-tank shells. The UCD research group managed to recover intact depleted uranium (DU) rounds fired over Kosovo. They found radiation doses to the public from the DU were very low, despite the presence of the plutonium, which is a dangerous radioactive material. The data also suggested the plutonium might have been from "weapons grade" material that got mixed up in the DU production cycle. Dr James McLaughlin, director of Natural Radiation Studies within the UCD Physics Department, headed the work. The plutonium could be detected only in minute quantities, he said. "We are measuring it at very, very low levels. Even though it is that nasty word plutonium, the doses are insignificant compared to what the uranium is giving." DU rounds are used in large calibre machine-guns as armour piercing projectiles. It is half again as dense as lead and is highly "pyrophoric", in that it disintegrates on impact and burns at a high temperature. It can melt through tank or personnel carrier armour, killing those inside. The US confirmed it had fired about 31,000 DU rounds during the NATO-led attacks on Serbian positions inside Kosovo and Britain had fired about 6,000 rounds. There were widespread claims of diseases including leukaemia caused by DU radioactivity earlier this year and NATO and a number of countries including Britain rushed to assess the possible health risks to military personnel who served in Kosovo. Dr McLaughlin's study, which was conducted in cooperation with Dr Zora Zunic of the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Belgrade, looked instead at the radiation left behind in the environment and how it might affect people living nearby. "What we are more interested in is the general population in these areas. Is there a risk to them?" The team went to inspect sites in Kosovo where DU rounds were used. Damaged and intact samples were collected and then analysed in Dublin by members of the UCD team including Dr Luis Leon Vintro and Mr Kilian Smith. "We took one of the worst possible scenarios, if you inhaled the material," Dr McLaughlin said. The measurements suggested "the risk is minimal", he said. If a person inhaled a milligram of DU dust then its uranium content would deliver a dose of 0.15 millisieverts and its plutonium would give a dose of 0.7 naonsieverts (0.7 billionths of a sievert). The average exposure from natural sources is about three millisieverts per year. "This is well below most radiological protection levels," Dr McLaughlin said. "They wouldn't breech them." Local concern was raised about the dangers of these rounds. "The fact that people have a perception that stresses them is itself a health effect," he said. Children and others might also receive unacceptable radiation doses via ground water. He cited a pilot study this year which showed that DU was found in urine samples from a small number of people in Kosovo and Bosnia where at least 10,800 DU rounds were fired during the conflict. Urine samples from people in DU sites in Kosovo are being analysed at UCD and water supplies from these sites will also be studied as part of this joint ongoing programme with Vinca. As to possible weapons grade plutonium being found in the DU rounds, Dr McLaughlin said processing centres such as that at Paducah, Kentucky were also sometimes involved in uranium enrichment for the nuclear industry or for weapons. These materials could get into the DU during subsequent processing. "There is some cross talk where trace amounts get into the depleted uranium," he said. ***************************************************************** 12 Analysis shows DU does not pose immediate risk ireland.com - The Irish Times - IRELAND October 29, 2001 Following claims that 6 Italian soldiers contracted leukaemia after exposure to DU residues, Irish researchers travelled to Kosovo to investigate. Science Editor, Dick Ahlstrom, reports Wild claims were made about the health risks posed by the use of depleted uranium rounds used by NATO during the conflict in Kosovo. These were easily dismissed but questions remain about more subtle threats left after the use of these weapons. A research team from University College Dublin has begun looking into these threats, with scientific colleagues in Belgrade. In particular, they are looking at any possible effect on groundwater and whether people living near where the rounds were used are absorbing depleted uranium (DU). A major scare was raised earlier this year when claims were made that six Italian soldiers had contracted leukaemia after exposure to DU residues left behind on the battlefield. Portugal also reported cases allegedly linked to DU. Medical experts dampened down these scares, pointing out that the disease usually only arises many years after exposure, not within 12 to 18 months. No high radiation levels were found in Kosovo that could have altered this picture. Earlier this year Dr James McLaughlin, head of Natural Radiation Studies in the Physics Department at UCD, travelled to Kosovo and toured DU sites with Dr Zora Zunic of the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Belgrade. He had a long-standing scientific collaboration with Vinca through the study of natural radiation levels in the Balkans. Dr McLaughlin managed to recover an intact DU round and brought it back to Dublin for analysis. The research team discovered that aside from the expected uranium-238, it discovered small amounts of plutonium, a particularly persistent and dangerous radioactive material linked both to nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. Analysis of the plutonium led Dr McLaughlin to speculate it was weapons grade. "The ratio between plutonium-238 and plutonium-239/240 is possibly an indication of weapons grade material in the production plant" where the DU was made. DU plants tend to be involved in uranium fuel and weapons production, he said. There can be cross contamination of the DU from either of these sources. The Irish analysis showed however that even in the worst case scenario the DU did not pose an immediate health risk to the people living in regions where DU rounds were fired. Despite containing plutonium, the expected dose was so low as to be negligible and lower than the dose received from natural uranium found in the Balkans. This did not preclude long-term risks, particularly if the DU in rounds that missed their targets, now resting deep in the ground, begin to leech into groundwater. Dr McLaughlin is involved in studies of groundwater and urine samples to see if the DU begins migrating into the food chain. Plutonium is likely to remain a trace ingredient in DU rounds given the way uranium is refined. DU is a by-product of the enrichment process that feeds both the weapons and nuclear power industries. Uranium ore after conversion into metal typically contains a mix of 99.28 per cent uranium-238 and 0.72 per cent uranium-235. The nuclear industries are only interested in the U-235 content. The leftover U-238 is the depleted uranium found in armour piercing rounds and other specialised applications. It is used as shielding in some medical x-ray units and because of its density and toughness is sometimes used in aircraft-part manufacture. It makes an ideal weapon for several reasons. It is 40 per cent denser than lead so even a small amount makes a projectile with a great deal of mass. This increases the energy delivered when it impacts a target. Plutonium is also "phyrophoric", a word derived from the Greek for "fire-bearing". Much of its volume disintegrates to dust on impact and spontaneously ignites. The round effectively melts through the armour, punching a hole into the metal plate. Initial health worries related to the DU dust left behind either outside or inside the vehicle hit by the round. The concern was that the dust could be inhaled, but Dr McLaughlin's analysis suggests that only a very small number of people may have inhaled or ingested DU during and in the immediate aftermath of hostilities. ***************************************************************** 13 1961 Paducah tests indicated neptunium exposure Daily news from Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana from courier-journal.com October 29, 2001 + Ex-safety official at uranium plant said he believed tests showed permissible levels of the dangerous substance. By James R. Carroll The Courier-Journal WASHINGTON -- The man whose job was to protect Paducah uranium plant workers from excessive radiation had evidence from tests conducted in 1961 that some workers had measurable radiation in their bodies from neptunium exposure. But Richard C. Baker, who headed radiation protection at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for most of 35 years until he retired in 1986, concluded the findings in urine tests were no cause for alarm. He said he believed the test results on 21 men reflected recent exposure to permissible levels of neptunium dust at the plant, which processed uranium for nuclear weapons. Baker also said he was not required by law to calculate how much radiation workers were getting. The Department of Energy ordered such calculations in 1987 ''in their great wisdom and ignorance,'' he said. His comments are contained in a deposition for a $10 billion lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court at Paducah against the plant's uranium suppliers and its former operators. Louisville attorney William McMurry, who is representing current and former plant workers and their families who are the plaintiffs in the case, contends the urine test results on the 21 men revealed neptunium stored in their bodies from long-term exposure to dust levels that were ''off the scale.'' If the tests had been done properly, McMurry said in an interview, ''they would have had to recognize that they were nuking people in there, but they turned their heads in an unscientific way.'' Baker's deposition, taken last month, marks the first time the man who was largely responsible for radiation protection at the plant from its first days of operation has discussed in a legal setting the contamination at the Paducah facility. In September 1999, then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson went to Paducah to apologize to workers who may have been exposed to dangerous radiation and acknowledged the government hadn't been forthcoming about the threat. Questioning Baker The exchanges between Baker and McMurry during the deposition frequently grew testy, and attorneys for the defendants regularly objected to questions McMurry posed to Baker. Early in the questioning, McMurry asked Baker whether Richardson's apology and the conclusions of government investigators about radiation exposure at Paducah were a fair criticism of him, as the person responsible for radiation protection. ''No,'' Baker responded. ''Can you tell me why, sir, just generally?'' McMurry asked. ''Generally, they were not based on fact,'' Baker said. ''You think that these investigators . . . made up the facts?'' McMurry asked. ''No, I don't believe they made up the facts. I believe they were greatly influenced in the way that they presented their case by the directions they had received from their management,'' Baker said. David Fuller, a 33-year Paducah plant worker who retired Oct. 1, said he understood why Baker's answers were defensive, given his former position. ''But without a doubt, protections at the plant -- radioactive and otherwise -- in those days were not what they should have been,'' said Fuller, who headed PACE -- the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, Energy workers' union at the Paducah plant -- until he retired. Richardson's apology and a new federal law to compensate Paducah workers and their families are ''recognition of the damage'' that was done to them, Fuller said in a telephone interview. ''They were not monitored properly. They were not protected properly. . . . It was a time in our nation's history when expedience took the place of good judgment,'' he said. McMurry also said the procedures in place during Baker's tenure failed to protect workers. ''If they had recognized that their processing of uranium was exposing their workers to neptunium and plutonium to the degree it was, they would have been required to redesign the plant to keep the workers from breathing in these substances,'' he said. ''That plant was designed to process uranium. It was never designed to protect workers from the most dangerous substances known to man,'' he said. But Robert Tait, the Columbus, Ohio, attorney representing some of the companies being sued, described Baker as ''a hero of the Cold War.'' ''We thought his testimony was clear and forthcoming,'' Tait said last week. ''. . . At the time he was there, he was one of the top experts in the world. And he did everything possible through (the) years he was at the plant to ensure everyone who worked there, including himself, was protected.'' Tait said the plant was in compliance with the law and applicable regulations ''from the outset of operations through the present day.'' The lawsuit McMurry filed the lawsuit last year against Union Carbide, which ran the plant until 1984; Lockheed Martin, whose predecessor Martin Marietta Corp. took over from Union Carbide; and uranium suppliers General Electric Co., E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., NLO Industries Inc. and NLO Inc. It is scheduled for trial in July 2003. The lawsuit alleges workers were unknowingly exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and were ''assaulted'' by radioactive material brought to the plant from other facilities. In April, a federal judge ruled that Kentucky's worker compensation law barred plant workers from suing their own employer, but plaintiffs were allowed to proceed against defendants other than their employer. Whether workers were being adequately shielded from radioactive material was the crux of McMurry's questioning of Baker. Those materials were principally plutonium and neptunium, both highly radioactive and dangerous to people since they can collect in the body and interfere with blood cell production. Plutonium and neptunium are often produced when uranium is enriched for use in nuclear weapons or nuclear reactor fuel. During his videotaped deposition, Baker conceded he had little formal training on the health effects of radiation. He also said: + He didn't recall readings found by the Department of Energy of extremely high levels of contamination from airborne uranium, neptunium and plutonium. + Eating, drinking and smoking in contaminated areas ''was not prohibited.'' + He did not think it was unsafe for Paducah workers to not wash their hands before eating. + People and equipment leaving the plant were never checked for contamination. Baker, who early in his career worked on the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb, had a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana Tech when he was hired in 1951 by Union Carbide to head the radiation protection program at Paducah. He had been an instrument maintenance supervisor for the thenAtomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and worked for three years in the health physics department there. He also took graduate courses in molecular, atomic and nuclear physics at the University of Tennessee and, almost a decade after working at the Paducah facility, took leave for a nine-month program on industrial hygiene engineering at Harvard University. Baker said he did not have formal training in the health effects of radiation but had ''learned a lot about it'' by the time he went to Paducah. Tait said Baker's background was appropriate for the time. ''You have to understand that in 1945, no one had any background in radiation health effects,'' Tait said. In 1964, Baker wrote a paper describing urinalysis results from tests conducted three years earlier on 21 workers who showed radiation counts in their urine. ''These results could be indicative of more than the permissible body burden or as no significant exposure,'' Baker wrote. At the deposition, he told McMurry he was not surprised to see such results because the men were tested after being in the plant, and the numbers would be consistent with exposure to acceptable levels of neptunium dust. Lung tests on 14 other men supported that conclusion, he said. Urine tests were subsequently suspended at Paducah until 1989. People who inhale neptunium will excrete much of it through urine in the first few days after exposure. But some neptunium stays in the body and is deposited in the bones. McMurry said calculations based on accepted health physics practices point to the 21 men being exposed to much higher than permissible levels of neptunium dust -- 32 years' worth of dust in a facility that had been processing uranium for only about eight years at the time the men were tested. Testing of employees Baker emphatically disagreed. He also disagreed with the 1993 findings of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, which called the system that replaced urine tests ''unreliable and erratic.'' That system, which monitored lung intake, used machinery that wasn't always on site and was sometimes being repaired, NIOSH found. The inability to make ''on demand'' examinations of workers ''was a serious deficiency,'' the agency said. An Energy Department investigation conducted about four years after Baker left the plant also found the lung-testing program deficient, and urine tests were reinstated. Baker said the NIOSH investigators ''may not know what they are talking about.'' When he was at the plant, he said, the lung tests were ''very efficient, not deficient.'' Baker also disputed a February 2000 federal report that found widespread lapses and deficiencies in efforts to protect employees from harmful radiation levels. ''Contamination control practices were lax at Paducah from the beginning of operations until the mid'80s,'' the Department of Energy concluded. As a result, the report said, some workers probably were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and contamination from hazardous chemicals. In the 2000 report, the Energy Department found that during checks made in 1962, some measurements of airborne contamination from neptunium were as much as 100 times what the plant considered permissible. And in 1980, according to the report, airborne radiation from uranium in one Paducah plant shop was 1,680 times the plant limits; from neptunium 2,121 times; and from plutonium 2,483 times. Baker said he didn't remember such readings. ''And if they existed like this, they were probably very, very infrequent or of very short duration.'' Many current and former plant workers have told of eating and smoking in contaminated areas. They said they were assured by supervisors they were not in danger of ingesting contamination. The Energy Department report said ''eating, drinking and smoking in contaminated work areas was common practice.'' Asked about that, Baker said: ''Where it says 'common practice,' it was not prohibited.'' He also said that the plant's policy was to encourage hand-washing, but ''there's no practical means of enforcing that'' and that he did not think it was ''an unsafe practice'' for workers to not wash their hands before eating. Contamination outside the plant also concerned Energy Department investigators. Lax practices ''made clear the probability'' that radioactive material left the plant on workers' clothes and equipment, they said. The department found no records of monitoring people or machinery leaving the site until 1986. Asked whether he kept such records, Baker said: ''Not of personnel, not so ever. Are they now?'' Tait, the attorney representing some of the defendants, said there is no indication that ''substantial contamination ever left the plant through personnel.'' Gregory Cook, spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., the company handling environmental cleanup at the Paducah plant, said radiological monitoring records are kept of workers and equipment leaving the site. People and machinery are scanned if they have been in a known contaminated area, and spot checks are carried out for contamination of vehicles regularly at the plant, Cook said. Copyright 2001 The Courier-Journal. ***************************************************************** 14 Pakistan's nuclear arsenal at risk U.S. seeks to protect atomic arms with high-tech safeguards Keay Davidson, Chronicle Staff Writer [kdavidson@sfchronicle.com] Sunday, October 28, 2001 The worst-case scenario in the terrorism crisis involves "loose nukes" -- nuclear weapons that fall into the hands of Osama bin Laden or his backers. The U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan are raging on the border of Pakistan, a politically unstable nuclear power whose atomic arsenal lacks many of the sophisticated safeguards that the United States maintains on its nuclear weapons. "Where are the Pakistani weapons? We don't really know. Are they safe? We don't know that either," said Robert Norris, a leading authority on foreign nuclear weapons at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington. Anxious U.S. officials have conferred with Pakistan on the security of its nuclear complex. "There's been some discussions -- very hush-hush -- going on between the U. S. and Pakistan on protecting (its nuclear weapons) in a way so that if things go to pot, (the bombs) won't go to the wrong people," said George Bunn, a consulting professor at Stanford University who served on the team that negotiated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty during the Cold War. One possibility: The United States could provide Pakistan with high-tech "Permissive Action Links" (PALs) like those attached to U.S. nuclear weapons. PALs are, in effect, super-combination locks that would supposedly frustrate the most determined burglar. But U.S. diplomats conferring with Pakistanis must choose their words carefully, for Pakistan is a very nervous ally. The central Asian country faces not only internal turmoil but a possible future in which it is sandwiched between two foes, should the Northern Alliance take over Afghanistan, located to the west. To Pakistan's southeast is nuclear-armed India, with which it is engaged in a bitter struggle over Kashmir. "This is a most delicate matter. We can't come in (to Pakistan) and announce, 'We're training a (Navy) SEAL team to come in on helicopters and snatch your nuclear weapons' " in case they get out of control, Norris said. "That's not a very diplomatic message." But that Hollywood scenario is also a very real one. A WORST-CASE SITUATION Bruce Blair, a leading scholar on nuclear weapons and president of the Center for Defense Information in Washington, recently wrote an article stating: "There is no evidence that any terrorist has nuclear materials now, but the possibility is serious enough so that the United States government should be heightening security at home by monitoring foreign nations' weapons more closely and planning military raids, if necessary, to keep weapons out of the wrong hands." In a worst-case situation, Blair said, the United States should be prepared to send special forces into Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons. The special forces would be accompanied by the U.S. Nuclear Emergency Search Team, an elite force of scientists, based in Las Vegas, with special equipment that allows them to track down nuclear materials. Bunn speculates that machine-gun-armed terrorists in armored trucks might try to crash through the gates of a Pakistani nuclear site. "Whether they would be able to find the nuclear material and get away in time before some troops came is another question," said Bunn, who co-wrote an article on nuclear terrorism and theft for the October issue of Arms Control Today. "But if they had help from an insider who knew right where to (find the nuclear bombs), the chances would be pretty good." In 1998, Pakistan successfully tested a nuclear bomb. It is now believed to have between 35 and 45 bombs, and "they're probably building a half-dozen a year," said Norris, co-author of numerous reports on the world's nuclear weapons complexes and author of a forthcoming biography of Gen. Leslie Groves, who managed the U.S. atomic project in the 1940s. Pakistan also is trying to shrink the bombs so that they're small enough to fit in the nose cone of a missile. From Pakistan's perspective, "You don't want it to be so heavy that it goes only four miles," Norris said. "You want it to go 400 miles -- say, all the way to New Delhi." Pakistan does not yet have missiles able to carry nuclear weapons, but its air force includes F-16 aircraft. "U.S. F-16s can carry nuclear weapons, and one would presume the Pakistanis could use them for that purpose," said physicist Tom Cochran, another nuclear weapons expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council. India has had nuclear weapons since 1974, and already possesses missiles powerful enough to orbit satellites. The situation is especially fraught with danger because Pakistan and India border one another. If India feared Pakistan's nuclear weapons were about to fall into the hands of renegade forces, it might launch a pre-emptive atomic strike to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons complex. Otherwise, Indian generals might reason, Pakistan could strike India's nuclear force fast enough to decimate it. A similar "use 'em or lose 'em" scenario, as strategists jokingly called it, dominated much U.S. strategizing during the Cold War. Scholars at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica conducted many "war games" in which the United States launched a "first strike" on Soviet missiles and bombers to pre-empt an anticipated assault on the United States. A HALF-HOUR WARNING Because thousands of miles separated the two Cold War superpowers, "We and the Soviets at least had a half-hour early warning" of nuclear attacks, Norris said. By contrast, Pakistan and India are so close that "they've got nothing -- the span of time available to them is unbelievably short." Lacking time for reasoned reflection, either side might frantically launch a pre-emptive strike "on warning" -- say, if a radar operator spots what appear to be incoming F-16s or missiles. The radar objects might later prove to be "bogies," that is, false targets created by birds, weather conditions or commercial airliners, but by then, it might be too late. Pakistani nuclear weapons, however, aren't as vulnerable to takeover by renegade soldiers or terrorists as feared, said Gaurav Kampani, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Pakistan's military is "a very professional institution" that contains no "fanatic supporters of Osama bin Laden," Kampani said. Pakistan previously backed Afghanistan's Taliban for strategic reasons, "but they've now dropped them completely." And despite Western press coverage of Pakistan's internal turmoil, "The Islamic parties together have never won more than 8 percent of the popular vote in any general election," Kampani said. "They can generate a lot of heat and dust in Pakistani society. But they don't have a lot of political clout." Nuclear range INDIA India's nuclear complex contains large civilian and military including 16 reactors. Highly enriched uranium and/or plutonium from at least one of those reactors has been used in nuclear warheads possibly up to 100. India also can launch satellites and likely can launch small nuclear weapons atop its missiles. Its most powerful missile, could penetrate deeply into Central and Southeastern Asia, including most of China. Nuclear potential -- Reactors operating: 14 -- Reactors under construction: 2 Current missile range -- Prithvi (93 miles) Potential missile range -- Prithvi (155 miles) Agri (1,243 miles) . PAKISTAN Pakistan's small nuclear complex consists of two atomic reactors, which presumably provided material for its arsenal of 35 or more bombs. The nation also has F-16 jets that can be fitted for nuclear weapons. Pakistan is testing missiles; to date its nuclear weapons are probably too heavy for missiles. Its most powerful missile can purportedly travel more than 1,200 miles. Nuclear potential -- Reactors operating: 2 Reactors under construction: 0 Current missile range -- Hatf I (50 miles) Hatf III (186 miles) Ghauri (808 miles) Potential missile range -- Shaheen I (466 miles) Shaheen II (1,243 miles) (Ranges claimed by Pakistan) Sources: International Nuclear Safety Center, U.S. Department of Defense Chronicle Graphic E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com [kdavidson@sfchronicle.com] . ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle   Page A - 17 ***************************************************************** 15 SRS's risk of attack is slight [charlotte.com] Sunday, October 28, 2001 Experts say safeguards at sitemake it unlikely terror target By HENRY EICHEL Columbia Bureau COLUMBIA -- Although it guards the most potent cache of radioactive material in the United States - plus undisclosed quantities of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium - the Savannah River Site 150 miles southwest of Charlotte is an unlikely target for terrorists, experts say. "I would think terrorists could have much more of an impact doing other things," said Clemson University environmental engineering professor Robert Fjeld, who studies radiation protection. "There are much more vulnerable targets." He and others say cite several reasons: There aren't any bombs there for someone to set off, only material that could be used for bombs. Stealing the materials to make a bomb would require a highly trained, heavily armed military unit that could storm the facility and then somehow escape. Crashing a large airplane into a buried tank of liquid nuclear waste to spew deadly radioactivity into the atmosphere would be far more difficult than hitting the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Even if that happened, experts say, it's debatable whether the radioactivity would travel far enough to harm a large number of people. "I would say, from all the information I have, that the risk of a catastrophic terrorist incident at Savannah River is very low," said Fred Wehling of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. The center is devoted to research on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Although residents of nearby Aiken have called it the bomb plant since it was built 50 years ago, Savannah River's business during the Cold War wasn't making bombs. Rather, it was the U.S. government's only supplier of weapons-grade plutonium for bombs. The plutonium was then shipped to weapons plants in Texas, Colorado and elsewhere. The collapse of the Soviet Union ended that role. Savannah River's five production reactors have been shut down for about 10 years. Work there now is focused on cleaning up decades of accumulated radioactive waste. The highest potential risk of harm to people outside the site is posed by 34million gallons of radioactive chemical sludge and salts left over from plutonium manufacturing. While plutonium itself is deadly only if it's inhaled or swallowed, the chemical waste emits intense amounts of radiation capable of causing cancer to anyone in the immediate vicinity. The 51 steel tanks, lined with concrete and each holding 1.3million gallons of waste, are concentrated in two tank farms several miles apart on the 315-square mile government-owned land. They are either buried or surrounded with earthen berms. In either case, the tanks' only visible part is a concrete cap. Work began in the mid-1990s to remove the waste from the tanks and turn it into glass logs for safer permanent storage. But the process will take at least 20 more years. So for the time being, terrorists could conceivably turn Savannah River's chemical waste into a deadly weapon. "If one of those tanks were exploded and the material were lifted into the air, obviously there would be some disastrous on-site consequences" for the almost 14,000 people who work there, said Tom Clements, executive director of the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington. Even though the waste itself isn't flammable, a raging jet fuel fire might cause some radioactivity to be drawn up into the smoke plume, affecting people miles away, said Brian Costner, a former Department of Energy senior policy adviser who once ran the Columbia-based watchdog group Energy Research Foundation. But Costner said he thinks such a scenario is unlikely. "The World Trade Center towers poked way up in the air," he said. "In order to get something that is essentially buried means crashing directly into the ground." Officials at the site acknowledge plutonium and highly enriched uranium there could be fashioned into bombs by people with the know-how. But SRS officials say it would be very difficult for anyone to get their hands on it. "It's stored in very secure areas with armed guards and in vaults," said Savannah River spokesman Jim Guisti. Some critics argue security at Savannah River and other Department of Energy nuclear facilities is inadequate. A former DOE security consultant last month said in letter to a Senate committee that the guards at nuclear weapons depots lose over half the time in exercises with mock assailants. But other experts say the criticisms are overblown. "Mock attacks point out weaknesses and show that, in theory, somebody could get in," Costner said. "But the reality of getting into Savannah River, where you have to get a half-dozen miles from the border of the facility, into some immensely secure buildings to get to a vault, past heavily armed guards - I don't think it's likely." Also, Costner said, "If you're a terrorist trying to get your hands on plutonium to make a bomb, Savannah River is probably one of the last places on your list to go try to find it. The former Soviet Union and some other countries are going to be much easier sources." Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Savannah River has been on the next-to-highest level of security, said spokesman Guisti. Public access is limited to people who are signed for and escorted by employees. Higher security also means better checks on all vehicles entering the site, more guard patrols and new procedures for how materials are stored, experts say. Costner said that he has toured the site several times and can't see how terrorists would think that any damage they could do there would be worth the effort. "To get to any vault where plutonium might be stored," he said, "you have yet additional perimeters set up within the building itself, where you've got to navigate narrow hallways where armed guards are present. The reality of it is vastly different from what it took to pull off the attacks on September 11." ***************************************************************** 16 Ukraine destroys last of 46 silos for SS-24 missiles BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Oct 29, 2001 Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS Kiev, 29 October: Ukraine completed preparations to destroy the last of 46 silos for SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Two blasts that will rip through the air in Pervomayskyy District, Mykolayiv Region, on Tuesday [30 October], will be the final ones in the three-year-long work on the destruction of silos under the 1991 treaty on the limitation and reduction of strategic offensive weapons. The museum of strategic missile troops which is being created on the basis of a SS-24 missile silo, will soon be the only reminder of Ukraine's nuclear potential, the third largest in the world in the past. Recultivation work has already been carried out on the site of 30 missile silos and command posts. Plots of land under the remaining 16 former silos will be returned to the national economy in 2002. Apart from SS-24 missile silos, Ukraine destroyed 130 combat and two training SS-19 missile silos between 1996 and 1998. The United States allocated 500m dollars for this work, including technical and expert assistance and funding of projects to step up export control. Besides, Ukraine received 9m dollars from Germany and 2.5m dollars from Canada. Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in English 1247 gmt 29 Oct 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 17 Russian experts discuss Bin-Ladin's possible nuclear plot BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Oct 28, 2001 Text of report by Russian Centre TV on 27 October [Presenter Aleksey Pushkov] As you see, Bin-Ladin could obtain a nuclear charge from many sources [reference to the previous item about nuclear potential of Pakistan, India, Iran and Israel]. However, the Western press is given to think that, in case Bin-Ladin really possesses nuclear weapons, he got them from Russia rather than from Islamic countries. See Aleksey Dubnov video report for details. [Correspondent] While, according to some information, the Pentagon does not rule out precise nuclear strikes on Bin-Ladin's bases, press articles began to appear more and more often saying that the Terrorist Number One already has a nuclear device, at least a primitive one. US intelligence says that Bin-Ladin and his people have been hunting for a nuclear bomb for a long time. They said more than once that the search for weapons of mass destruction was their duty. Moreover, experts say that it is not so difficult to produce a home-made nuclear device. [Vladimir Belous, captioned as leading research worker of the Institute of International Economy and International Relations under the Russian Academy of Sciences and Doctor of Military Sciences] I would give just one simple example. In 1975 a university student in America assembled a nuclear device using only information from open sources. Experts examined it and said that, if the device was staffed with a fissile material, it could explode and cause serious damage. Now foreign press is trying to prove that, if Al-Quidah really possesses a nuclear device, it must be of Soviet origin. In particular, `The Times' has said that Bin-Ladin's accomplices are trying to buy a portable nuclear device, namely a so-called nuclear rucksack allegedly created by Soviet specialists in the 1970s. It weighs just 30 kg and consists of silver-zinc accumulators, a nuclear charge and a starting source of neutrons. [Well-known Russian military commander and politician, now Krasnoyarsk Territory governor] Aleksandr Lebed was the first to say that such rucksacks could exist. In 1997, being a secretary of the [Russian] Security Council, he claimed that dozens or even hundreds of portable A-bombs had gone missing in early 1990s. The newspaper [`The Times'] said that Gen Lebed had even named the weapon systems: RA-115 and RA-115-01. Meanwhile, all this was refuted long ago not only by Russian but also by foreign experts. Even [well-known Russian environmentalist] academician [Aleksey] Yablokov, who once supported Lebed, later acknowledged that this was impossible. Another source of nuclear terrorism might be illegal purchase of radioactive materials. `The Times' says that the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna confirmed hundreds of cases of nuclear smuggling after the collapse of the USSR and draws a conclusion that, if a nuclear black market really existed in the Soviet Union and in Russia, than radioactive materials could have been bought by Bin-Ladin. However, such market could exist in Iran, Iraq or some other country. There are even more audacious theories. The Arab magazine Al-Watan joins in the hysteria. It went as far that said that Bin-Ladin had struck a big deal in the beginning of 1999. The Chechen mafia allegedly obtained for him no less than 20 nuclear warheads for 30m dollars and two tonnes of opium. However, it appears that foreign media that accuse us are guided by a simple assumption: if somebody has something and somebody else wants this, that second one always gets what he wants. Experts are laughing at this, because in early 1990s all [Russian] tactical nuclear weapons were evacuated deep inside Russia and placed to storage dumps managed by the Russian Defence Ministry. [Belous] When this procedure was over, it was clearly and officially stated that no nuclear charges had been stolen, lost anywhere or sold, as some politicians claimed. If this had happened, today we would be well aware of this. It could not lay somewhere for such a long time not being used. In this case it would lose its combat capabilities. It must be stored under certain strictly determined conditions. [Correspondent] Meanwhile, no complex nuclear device is necessary to disseminate panic, fear and chaos. [Ivan Safranchuk, captioned as head of the Russian bureau of the centre for military information, interviewed in his office] An explosion of some usual explosive substance mixed with radioactive materials would be enough. There would be no chain reaction. There would be no A-bomb or H-bomb, just a conventional bomb in which some radioactive materials are used, but for the public opinion, for the population this would be a nuclear explosion. [Pavel Felgengauer, captioned as independent military expert] If this had happened in Manhattan, a certain part of Manhattan would become a deserted area for 1,000 years, like the town of Pripyat in the Chernobyl zone [in Ukraine]. We tried to clean up Pripyat, but it is practically impossible to clean up a modern city from radioactive dust. It is impossible to find all grains of sand hidden somewhere. It would be impossible to live there. [Correspondent] Finally, experts say that another hijacked plane may be targeted at a nuclear facility. In this case the consequences would be even more tragic than those of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. [broadcast at 1613 gmt; video shows archive footage of Islamic fighters; the interior of physics labs; experts commenting] Source: Centre TV, Moscow, in Russian 1600 gmt 27 Oct 01 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 18 2 scientists suspected of helping the Taliban Chicago Tribune | By Michael Zielenziger Knight Ridder/Tribune Published October 29, 2001 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Authorities who detained two of Pakistan's most prominent nuclear scientists say they are investigating whether the men used the cover of their private charitable organization to help Afghanistan's Taliban regime develop chemical or biological weapons. Government officials said they do not think Sultan Bashir ud din Mahmood and Abdul Majeed, two retired members of Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) detained last week, had the broad scientific know-how or financial resources to help the Taliban build nuclear weapons. But members of Pakistan's intelligence service, now holding the two in an Islamabad "safe house" for questioning, expressed concern that the men who founded a non-governmental organization, purportedly to build flour mills and grain warehouses in Afghanistan, might have helped the Taliban build facilities to develop chemical or biological weapons. "We have received very strong indications that Mahmood might have assisted the Kabul government" in trying to develop methods of creating chemical or biological weapons, one senior official said. Officials expressed greater confidence, however, that the two, who knew a lot about building plutonium reactors, were not involved in providing nuclear bombmaking skills to the Taliban or to Al Qaeda, the terrorist network operating in Afghanistan, as first suspected. "For that kind of operation you need dozens and dozens of people and millions of dollars," said one senior member of the PAEC. "The chance that they gave the Taliban nuclear arms is zero." Pakistan exploded its first nuclear device in 1998, the official noted, "and we were working on this for many years, with many top scientists, and millions and millions of dollars." Although Mahmood won national recognition for helping establish Pakistan's first plutonium reactor, he retired from the agency three years ago, upset that his winning a prominent award had not led him to receive a bigger job. A devout Muslim, he traveled frequently to Afghanistan and helped found the Holy Koran Foundation, which said it worked on economic reconstruction projects within Afghanistan. Intelligence agencies now are trying to determine whether Holy Koran Foundation, and another foundation in which Mahmood was active, served as a cover for more nefarious ends. Rumors have circulated widely in recent months that the Taliban might be trying to develop chemical or biological agents. The recent outbreak of anthrax exposures in the U.S. has created concerns that the Taliban or Osama bin Laden might be responsible, although no evidence has been made public that links the two. 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