***************************************************************** 01/31/01 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 9.29 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS 1 OFFICIALS WARN OF NUKE SHIPMENT DANGERS 2 Nebraska prepares for radioactive material shipments 3 State officials want law reviewed after workers are exposed to 4 Probe delays DOE report on Yucca 5 Congress may wrap power deregulation into broad bills 6 Nuclear Plant Proposed For Astoria 7 Eurotech Successfully Completes EKOR Sealer Testing 8 Taiwan Premier Backs Plant Decision 9 Taiwan Wants Nuke Plant Completed 10 Taiwan OKs Resolution on Nuke Plant 11 Chamber set to pass its Yucca resolution 12 Hostile lawmakers fail to diminish Chang's resolve 13 MPs demand nuclear plant completion 14 Anti-nuclear demonstrators divided into two camps 15 Power plant politics 16 PROCESSED JAPANESE NUCLEAR WASTE LEAVES FRENCH PORT 17 Nuclear waste shipment to arrive in Japan on Feb 20 18 GREENS REDISCOVER NUCLEAR TRANSPORT 19 Scientist: French keeping open mind on nukes 20 Russia Plans to Build 40 Nuclear Reactors by 2020 21 Iran Nuclear Plant to Be Operational by 2003 22 Nuclear waste recommendation stalled 23 Nuclear reactor malfunctions in Ukraine 24 4 bills aim to stop N-waste dump 25 Measure requires permits to ship 'hotter' N-waste NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS 1 Hanford Frees Up Tank Space for Treatment Operations 2 Benton County vows to fight on for FFTF 3 Weinberg gives 'limited' nod to Bush plan 4 CROET takes step in restructuring 5 Whitfield, panel seek Bush review of uranium deal 6 HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE MEMBERS QUESTION CHANGES TO RUSSIAN URANIUM 7 DOE solicits bids for replacement plant 8 DOE post called 'a can of worms' 9 House members seek review of Clinton administration decision 10 Depleted Uranium, Just The Tip of the Iceberg in Serbia 11 Press release on Depleted Uranium 12 PLUTONIUM TABLETS IN THESSALONIKI 13 Health scares hit Europe 14 U.S. expert says use of DU munitions a "war crime" 15 UN agencies are assisting a cover-up 16 The day the dragon’s tail was tickled 17 Amchitka cancer link explored 18 TVA says uranium limited to lab at Muscle Shoals in 1950s - ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 OFFICIALS WARN OF NUKE SHIPMENT DANGERS Elko Daily Free Press: Content Suddenly there are sirens and flashing lights and cops patrolling the streets telling everyone to either stay inside or evacuate. What about those who don't get the word? They might die a horrible, radiation-induced death. Elko and Spring Creek become ghost towns. The world as we know it comes to an end because every single one of us is forced to move to another town, far from the poisoned air, water and land we used to call home. What sounds like a "sci-fi" catastrophe movie could actually happen if and when nuclear waste is allowed to pass through Elko via the Interstate or rail line provided an accident does occur, which some say is inevitable. County Commissioner Mike Nannini warned commissioners last spring that Elko County was not receiving a penny from the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository project only because the county doesn't border Nye County and therefore hasn't the money or equipment to do emergency management training in case of nuclear spills. Nannini said early last year that it just wasn't fair to wait until the last minute to start funding the county for emergency management purposes. Other counties are receiving millions of dollars each year for emergency management preparedness including research into nuclear related issues, but Elko County gets nothing. Gov. Kenny Guinn and Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa are against the project ever reaching fruition, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seems to have the final word. Under a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plan, large amounts of the waste will be shipped through the county at the rate of 618 rail shipments annually for a period of 38 years equaling 19,800 total shipments, finally coming to an end in 2048. Wednesday the board heard from Robert Halstead, nationally regarded expert on nuclear waste transportation and consultant on the project to the state's Agency for Nuclear Projects. Joseph Strolin, administrator, planning division of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects also spoke to the county leaders. The men brought with them potential data and potential danger if certain plans pan out. Besides the rail shipments noted previously, truck shipments, also lasting 38 years beginning in 2010, would require 96,000 trips equaling 2,534 yearly and include 300 rail shipments as well. The DOE projects the statistical potential for a minimum of 129 truck accidents over the 38 year period of the project and an additional 1,935 "regulatory incidents" or violations of one sort or another involving trucks. The DOE also envisions a potential for 433 rail accidents with an additional 866 incidents. The two men spoke about a variety of scenarios and repeatedly mentioned possible legal battles with the DOE. Strolin said there may soon be $50,000 available to study transportation of the waste and its impact on Elko County, but said Elko was not one of the officially recognized nine "impacted" counties currently slated to continue receiving money from the federal government. He said it was ironic because there may be more impact on Elko County when the program starts than on the some of the counties now receiving aid. Strolin said that when the plan is fully implemented, 43 states would be involved in the transportation issue and the DOE "downplayed on purpose" the logistical complexity of moving large amounts of waste across the nation, preferring to let the country think it was "only a Nevada project." "Fifty percent of the population would die within two weeks," Halstead said, referring to how dangerous the material is "even after five years of cooling, if you stood next to it." "It's really dangerous material," he said. "We see this as a negative project," Strolin said. Halstead said 734 counties nationwide would be involved in the shipments and that Elko County may see as many as six truck shipments per day equaling 94 percent of the waste headed to Yucca Mountain. The two men explained that having trucks or rail shipments with zero emissions was not physically or financially feasible because the casing around the waste would have to be enormous and thus untransportable in normal highway scenarios and the amount of weight involved in wrapping such a shipment in protective armor of some type would be physically prohibitive. "There is a clear tradeoff between shielding and weight," Halstead said. "The federal government has carte blanche over nuclear issues," Halstead said, but said the "DOE should not nickel and dime us on safety." Strolin told the commission he felt Nevada "believes we have a good chance in the courts beating this project" and said the entire affair brings "constitutional issues" as to whether or not the federal government can "foist" the project on a state. The two men were invited back to Elko by commissioners Brad Roberts and Warren Russell to hold a town hall meeting on the subject and were told to bring a representative from the Nevada Division of Energy Management with them. Strolin said the Yucca Mountain project was estimated to cost $58 billion, but only $26 billion would be generated by commercial nuclear waste producers which would cause a "huge taxpayer liability" which may have great difficulty getting through Congress once they see the enormity of the debt burden. cElko Daily Free Press 2001 CURRENT OPINIONS Your story of January 26 presents some statements as facts that may not be and there are at least some inaccuracies or inconsistencies. The statement that does not seem accurate is that you refer to a “DOE plan” for nuclear waste shipments. The Department of Energy has not presented a plan as yet. It has estimated that it will require EITHER 49,500 truck shipments and 300 rail shipments OR 10,800 rail shipments and 2,600 truck shipments to move 70,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste from around the country to Yucca Mountain if that site is approved as the geologic repository. Those shipments could start as early as 2010 over a 24 year period. Your article uses the term “besides” the rail shipments there would also be 96,000 truck shipments. I don’t know where the 38 year period came from either. Perhaps you have accepted the State’s assumption that some 105,000 or more tons would eventually need to go to the repository. That COULD happen if Congress decides to lift the current capacity limit of 70,000 tons. I am not sure upon what basis you were led to conclude that all those shipments would go through Elko County. It seems likely that material from the Southeast, for example would be routed along southern routes to the site. Unfortunately, DOE has not only not selected the mode of shipment, it has not selected routes nationally or within Nevada. Many organizations, including ours, have urged DOE to so in consultation with States, tribes and local governments as soon as possible. [Just checking your math: 618 shipments per year over 38 years would be 23,484, not 19,800 that your article states.] Name: Brian O'Connell I have never seen such a vile, fear mongering article in the Elko Free Press such as this article! It is very obvious all the county wants is money. The county lacks the expertice to evaluate the minimal hazzards involved. Gasoline tankers and other 18 wheelers with leathal cargos drive all around Nevada and no one complains. Get your facts straight - these shipping casks have been hit by trains going 60 mph and they have not leaked, let alone loose their contents. Statistical events do not mean release of the contents but may include such everyday occurances as a flat tire or broken water hose. Quit using scare tactics and behave like responsible reporters! Name: Paul Harvey Copyright c 1995-2000 PowerAdz.com, LLC. Zwire!, AdQuest, LLC. ***************************************************************** 2 Nebraska prepares for radioactive material shipments theIndependent.com News: Last modified at 10:42 p.m. on Monday, January 29, 2001 The Independent Nebraska is gearing up for more frequent transport of radioactive material across the state by training emergency responders to identify the materials and what precautions need to be taken. Jon Schwarz, radiological programs manager for the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, said two training courses are being held around the state through March 20. Grand Island will be the site of the courses Feb. 20 through 23. Grand Island/Hall County Emergency Management Director Howard Maxon is taking local registration at 385-5360 and can answer questions about class times and locations. The first session is the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) First Responder Awareness Training. It's a four-hour course approved by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It focuses on ionizing radiation, describes the containers in which spent fuel is being transported, describes the physical condition of the fuel, reviews transportation regulations, provides clarification on communication equipment available and informs on how to control a scene, rescue responsibilities, how to create an emergency action plan and first responder decontamination procedures. The second session is the DOE First Responder Instrument Course. It focuses on radiological measuring units, protective measures, understanding radioactive sources, operating detection equipment, surveying contamination, contamination control and a demonstration of travel distances and penetration power of contaminants. Maxon said the training is important for emergency responders including law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics and hospital personnel. "This is something you can't see or can't smell," he said of radiological contamination. Training Division Officer Troy Hughes of the Grand Island Fire Department said about 60 firefighters and paramedics will participate in the training. He called it a follow-up to similar training held last year. Although most of the training is an awareness of radiological materials and how they are shipped, some of the training will mean reading radiological detection equipment. "We do have some radiological monitoring equipment from the '70s, " Hughes said. The training is also recommended for volunteer fire departments and response teams. Schwarz said the shipments prompting the training sessions include: *Foreign research reactor spent fuel shipments on Interstate 80. The first shipments are expected this spring and summer and will occur one or two times each year for eight years. *Low-level radioactive waste unit train shipments from Fernald, Ohio, to Clive, Utah. Forty to 60 rail cars are expected across the state one to two times each month. It is a four-year program in its second year. *U.S. spent nuclear fuel from the Department of Energy facility in West Valley, N.Y., to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. One shipment of two casks of fuel is expected this spring or summer on a Union Pacific train. *Department of Energy shipments to the Waste Isolation Treatment Project in Carlsbad, N.M. This is a possible arrangement involving 37 small shipments along Interstate 80. "In addition, a number of nuclear power stations have gone together to form a company that is in the process of getting site approval to build a temporary storage site in Utah for spent reactor fuel until the DOE Yucca Mountain Permanent Storage Site is completed and approved," Schwarz said. That temporary site, even if challenged in court, is expected to be open in 2003 and will mean additional shipments coming through Nebraska. Schwarz said Nebraska also has three irradiation facilities that sterilize equipment. The facilities, located in Norfolk, Broken Bow and Holdrege, need to be refueled with radioactive material from time to time. "Last but not least, we have routine shipments of radioactive medical supplies, industrial equipment and consumer products, such as smoke detectors," he said of the need for the training. AP materials c 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 3 State officials want law reviewed after workers are exposed to radioactivity postnet.com | Business | GOOD EVENING, ST. LOUIS | Posted: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 | 8:26 a.m. Of The Post-Dispatch A worker at the Mallinckrodt Inc. imaging plant in Maryland Heights breathed in a small amount of radioactive material while working on the plant's cyclotron in late December. The incident shows the inadequacies of state regulations, say the state officials charged with overseeing worker radiation safety. "The entire law needs to be looked at. It's outdated," said Gary McNutt, interim section chief of the environmental health section of the Missouri Department of Health. McNutt's section oversees safety at 200 industrial radiation facilities -- places where X-rays or radioactive materials are used for industrial purposes. State inspectors were unaware of the incident until an inquiry from the Post-Dispatch earlier this month. Most of the Mallinckrodt plant's operations fall under the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. But federal law specifically exempts cyclotrons and the materials produced in them from federal oversight. Cyclotrons are used to speed tiny pieces of atoms toward other atoms to make radioactive materials. The Mallinckrodt plant already is under increased supervision by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency for problems that exposed 15 workers' fingers to several times the annual dose limits for several years in a row. The company was fined $125,000 in those incidents. Mallinckrodt, now part of Tyco International Inc., makes products for nuclear medicine. Tyco Healthcare, the subsidiary to which the Mallinckrodt plant belongs, called the worker contamination a " very minor incident." A"minimal" amount of zinc 65 isotope was released into the air, a company statement said. Five employees in the area at the time were tested, and traces of the isotope were found in one worker. The company's health physicist estimated the exposure at 81 millirems. That falls well below the limits for radiation exposure to a worker's whole body of no more than 3,000 millirems (or 3 rems) per 3-month period or 5,000 millirems (5 rems) annually. But the limits deal with exposure - just being near a radioactive material - which is different from contamination - radioactive material getting somewhere it's not supposed to be. When a worker has breathed in or swallowed radioactive material, some of it stays in the body, continuing to emit radiation and, in effect, exposing the worker continually until it is eliminated or breaks down into nonradioactive material. Had the zinc isotope contamination occured outside the cyclotron, federal regulators might have scrutinized the plant's procedures for possible violations of a requirement that tasks be performed with worker exposures "as low as reasonably achievable" said Jan Strasma, spokesman for the regional office in Chicago. But the exposure itself was not high enough to be reportable, to the state or federal agencies, Strasma said. Maryanne Kane, spokeswoman for Tyco Healthcare, said the company follows the federal safety requirements throughout the plant - even in the cyclotron, where it is not required. Reporter Virginia Baldwin Gilbert:\E-mail: vgilbert@post-dispatch.com\ Phone: 314-862-2153 ***************************************************************** 4 Probe delays DOE report on Yucca January 31, 2001 BY MARY MANNING LAS VEGAS SUN FOES RALLY Las Vegas businessman Stephen Cloobeck is holding a second organizational meeting of his grass-roots campaign against a Yucca Mountain dump. ˙When: 1 p.m. Thursday ˙Why: To organize opposition against a nuclear waste repository ˙at Yucca. ˙Who: The public is invited. ˙Where: Clark County Commission chambers at the County Government ˙Center. AMARGOSA VALLEY--An inspector general's investigation into a possible conflict of interest between the Energy Department and the nuclear industry has delayed the decision on whether to recommend Yucca Mountain as a high-level nuclear waste repository. Funding cuts for scientific studies and the lack of final radiation standards played into the DOE's decision to delay its report to President Bush and Congress until late this year, Lake Barrett, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told a scientific review panel Tuesday. The recommendation had been expected in June. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied to store 77,000 tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste. If it passes scientific muster, it could accept its first shipments by 2010. Barrett said he has no idea when the inspector general will complete an investigation launched after the Sun reported Dec. 1 that an anonymous two-page memo attached to a scientific overview showed the DOE is biased toward a repository at Yucca. The memo suggested that presenting the mountain as the best solution to the nuclear waste problem would help sell the project to Congress. In addition, Barrett said, the Office of Management and Budget has not set a schedule for reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation exposure limit for the mountain. The Clinton administration recommended a limit of 15 millirems of total radiation exposure each year with a 4 millirem limit in ground water. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed its own standard of 25 millirems. A chest X-ray is equivalent to 10 millirems. Congress also has slashed $150 million from DOE budgets for the Yucca Mountain project in the past four years, Barrett said. That is delaying scientific studies such as large-scale field tests in Yucca's volcanic rock, he said. Barrett, who stepped into the acting position after Clinton appointee Ivan Itkin resigned, disavowed the memo on the draft version of the overview. The memo was written by a non-scientist, Barrett said. "Its primary authors are not scientists, but liberal arts majors," he told the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel of scientists overseeing DOE's work at Yucca. "It was an unfortunate, inappropriate wrong note issued by one of the authors," Barrett said. "It was wrong. I think it is important that the inspector general investigates this, with a very competent team, and we wouldn't want it any other way." Nye County Commissioner Jeff Taguchi said he was concerned about politics driving the repository, given Yucca Mountain's status as the only site being studied. "We here in Nye County welcome that investigation," he said. Nye has always insisted any decision be based on science and not politics," Taguchi said, noting that the county did not volunteer Yucca Mountain as a repository site. ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 5 Congress may wrap power deregulation into broad bills TUESDAY JANUARY 30, 4:19 PM EASTERN TIME By Patrick Connole WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - After seeing the California electricity meltdown, Congress is likely to sideline any complicated or contentious deregulation law this year in favor of legislation encouraging steps such as building power plants and improving reliability, experts said on Tuesday. The Republican-controlled Congress has been tied up in knots for the past three years over how to open the nation's $230 billion electricity industry to retail competition with a set of national rules. While Congress delayed action, some 24 states and the District of Columbia have gone ahead and enacted laws to open retail markets to competition. California's landmark 1996 state law partially deregulated its electricity market by capping consumer rates while allowing wholesale prices to soar. Recent price increases have left the state close to running out of power and nearly bankrupted huge PG&E Corp. (NYSE:PCG - news) and Edison International (NYSE:EIX - news). Congress, which was never eager to push through a set of federal regulations to encourage a shift to free market electricity, now has little interest in reviving the debate. ``Last year's type of restructuring bill ... there is no appetite to go in that direction, in some part because of what's happening in California,'' said Eleanor Miller, a spokeswoman for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. TAX CREDITS, INCENTIVES Instead, the Bush administration plans to offer a broad package of energy policies aimed at improving the overall supply of crude oil, natural gas, coal, renewables and electricity. A Republican-backed bill due to be unveiled next week is expected to offer tax incentives for building new power plants and for improving reliability of electricity grids. Those incentives are likely to include investment tax credits and faster depreciation to bring more plants on line. ``The debate seems to be shifting to more about fuels and infrastructure issues,'' Miller said. Her association represents more than 900 generation and distribution cooperatives. Congressional aides said California's rolling blackouts and financial crisis will make it more difficult to pass any national deregulation bill this year. ``I think to some extent, it's going to slow down the process,'' Andrew Lundquist, chief of staff for the Senate Energy Committee, said last week. President George W. Bush on Monday named Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force to oversee solutions to expensive energy, amid fears the California crisis would spread to neighboring states. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was to attend a western governors meeting on the power crisis later this week. Bush and other Republican leaders have said California must take the lead in addressing its self-inflicted electricity crisis. Also stalling federal deregulation measures is the uncertainty over what exactly what went wrong in California. Lawmakers want to analyze why the nation's richest and most populous state failed to smoothly deregulate its market, setting back the timetable for any federal legislation. On Wednesday, senior executives from PG&E, Edison International unit Southern California Edison, and wholesale power marketers such as Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE - news) and Reliant Energy (NYSE:REI - news) will testify before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Hearings were also expected in the near term for comparing California's problems to deregulation efforts in other states like Pennsylvania and Texas, which have been hailed as models for deregulating power markets. But advocates of a national deregulation law say they still hope to offer legislation later in the year. Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, hopes to meet with Bush next month on the power issue and other energy matters. Barton aims to take up specific electricity deregulation legislation later in 2001. Samantha Jordan, a spokesman for the House energy subcommittee headed by Barton, said California's troubles, national energy legislation and nuclear waste would be addressed before deregulation. ``We'll pick up deregulation later in the year,'' she said. House Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, and Barton were to visit California in February to meet with producers, generators, regulators and environmental groups. Barton believes the California mess is unique to that state and its faulty deregulation law, which conflicted with other state statutes and highlighted the basic lack of generation in the fast-growing state, Jordan said. Proponents of federal legislation believe a national law is necessary to iron out the disparities between states, ensure reliable service and untangle decades-old regulations no longer applicable to the fast-changing sector. ***************************************************************** 6 Nuclear Plant Proposed For Astoria WEDNESDAY JANUARY 31 12:30 AM EST Is Nuclear Power A Good Solution? An energy consulting group is proposing a nuclear power plant near Astoria. KOIN 6 News reports that the Pacific Northwest Energy Consortium wants to put a 1,085-megawatt nuclear plant on the Oregon Coast, possibly on an island near Astoria in the mouth of the Columbia River. The consortium says that with the rising cost of oil, gas and other energy sources, nuclear power is a cheaper alternative. Supporters also say that new technology makes nuclear power even safer. The plant is still in the exploratory stages. It could be five years before crews break ground. Opponents argue that a power plant on the Oregon Coast spells environmental disaster. ***************************************************************** 7 Eurotech Successfully Completes EKOR Sealer Testing WorldNews.com, Tue 30 Jan 2001 Eurotech Ltd. recently announced that the first EKOR product, EKOR Sealer, has successfully passed a rigorous testing program developed both to define the properties of this unique product (EKOR is a silicon based polymer used to contain and encapsulate nuclear waste material), and to showcase its performance. Chad Verdi, Eurotech's Chairman, stated: "With the completion of acceptance testing and the business development and engineering team now in place, Eurotech is in position to deliver on the technological promise of EKOR." While Jeff Stephen, Eurotech's Chief Operating Officer explained: "EKOR is a unique family of ultra long life products that provide significant performance benefits such as extreme resistance to radiation damage, resistance to a broad range of chemical environments and outstanding barrier properties that were previously not available. The EKOR family of products addresses a broad spectrum of applications where its multiple forms can be used as sealers, coatings, and waste encapsulation matrices, or foamed into cavities to control airborne contamination." In the coming months Eurotech will roll out the initial members of the EKOR family of products. Eurotech is currently testing and preparing to test four other forms of the EKOR product family - EKOR Coating, EKOR Grout, EKOR Matrix and EKOR Foam. The tests on US fabricated EKOR products are expected to continue confirmation of the years of product development and testing performed by Eurotech's partner the EuroAsian Physical Society. Stephen went on to say that Eurotech developed the EKOR Materials Testing Program in coordination with leading engineering contractors to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The program consisted of tests aimed at defining the properties of the revolutionary material and demonstrating the unique performance of EKOR in tests typically used by the DOE to judge a material's acceptability for project use at its facilities. All tests were performed under a nuclear-grade Quality Assurance program that meets DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements. Seven different labs were used for material definition tests that included linear shrinkage/coefficient of thermal expansion, steady state heat flux, mass loss from aging, tensile strength/elongation, and water absorption. The material performance tests included chemical resistance, volatile organic content, permeability, adhesion, weathering, salt spray, ignitability, leachability, aging, compressive strength, and flame spread/smoke development. EKOR Sealer's performance in all tests was excellent, meeting all criteria for top ranking in project application. For example, in the chemical resistance test, separate EKOR Sealer coupons were immersed for 30 days in twenty different liquid solutions ranging in pH from 0.36 to 13.84. In all cases the test coupons of EKOR Sealer coated metal plates emerged without any loss of performance, demonstrating EKOR as an extremely valuable resource for a broad range of environmental challenges to the integrity of the product. In a unique aging test, EKOR Sealer test coupons were thermally conditioned to a simulated age of over 170 years. The conditioned coupons were tested for chemical resistance, tensile strength/elongation and adhesion. Proving EKOR Sealer's ultra long life, the aged coupons completely protected the encapsulated metal plates indicating outstanding integrity and flexibility while meeting the highest standard for coating adhesion. EKOR Sealer is the first EKOR product form to complete acceptance testing. EKOR was developed to encapsulate and "cocoon" nuclear and environmental waste and keep it from the environment. Unlike conventional radiation resistant geopolymers, EKOR can maintain its superior encapsulating properties for hundreds of years in a severe radiation environment. EKOR Sealer will provide a barrier on irregular, unprepared, corroded, or even wet surfaces. One of the early significant applications for EKOR Sealer is to coat entire nuclear waste containers or to repair existing containers, tanks or drums that are leaking contaminants into the environment. EKOR Sealer's aggressive adhesion properties in combination with superior chemical resistance make it ideal for long term patching of waste containers that range in size from 55- gallon drums to million-gallon tanks. Paul Childress, Eurotech's General Manager, Nuclear and Environmental Division stated: "EKOR Sealer's near term objective is to provide a quick, but long-term solution to the leaky containers that the DOE is managing across its complex. We now have the necessary testing and documentation to generate contracts with the DOE in the first quarter of 2001. Long term, we expect the family of EKOR products to be a significant tool used globally to prevent nuclear and hazardous waste contamination from leaching, dusting or seeping into the environment." ***************************************************************** 8 Taiwan Premier Backs Plant Decision January 30, 2001 ASSOCIATED PRESS TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)--Taiwan's premier on Tuesday defended the decision to scrap a nuclear power project in a raucous debate with opposition lawmakers, who had barred him from parliament for months in anger over the move. After the new government decided to scuttle the partially built nuclear plant in October, opposition legislators--who control parliament -- refused to meet with Premier Chang Chun-hsiung and threatened to topple the government. But on Tuesday, lawmakers allowed Chang, the island's No. 3 ranking leader, to defend the minority government's decision in a special session called to settle months of feuding and gridlock. Chang argued the plant was unsafe and unnecessary. "We have lived through an era of poverty, and we are not inclined to waste money, " he said. "But this is an issue about the lives and safety of 23 million people ... and about the welfare of our future generations." The $5.4-billion project to build Taiwan's fourth nuclear plant - now one-third complete--was approved by the former Nationalist Party government, which lost the March election. Opposition lawmakers have argued that the new government could not halt the project without consulting with the legislature. In heated exchanges during the a daylong question-and-answer period, several lawmakers wagged their fingers and shouted at the premier. Chang politely listened to most as they lectured him or cut him off as he tried to answer questions. Nationalist lawmaker Chu Li-luan accused Chang of abusing his powers. "Emperor Chang, how could you dare?" Chu said. "It is as if your position is even more important than (President) Chen Shui-bian's." So far, Chang has taken responsibility for the decision to cancel the plant, although it was one of the president's campaign promises and a core position of his Democratic Progressive Party. Lawmaker Wang Tein-ging of the People's First Party accused the premier of being undemocratic. Referring to ousted Philippine President Joseph Estrada, Wang said, "Estrada ignored public opinion and they took him down." The opposition was expected to finish the special session Wednesday by passing a resolution calling for the nuclear plant's completion. However, Chang said that the government was not obligated to follow the legislature's resolution. He said he hoped the government could work out a compromise with the opposition. Ho Chih-hui, the Nationalists' caucus leader, said his party would not accept an offer to negotiate a compromise if the government ignores a resolution. Some lawmakers proposed passing a law that would order the completion of the plant. The premier acknowledged that the government would have to respect the law. Outside the legislature, a crowd of about 50 peaceful protesters - including Buddhist nuns in gray robes--held pictures of nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. They also rolled out barrels painted yellow to look like storage drums for nuclear waste. On Monday, a man set himself on fire briefly at an anti-nuclear sit- in outside the legislature. Before torching himself, the man gave an anti-nuclear letter to reporters. He was in stable condition on Tuesday. ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 9 Taiwan Wants Nuke Plant Completed January 30, 2001 ASSOCIATED PRESS TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)--The opposition-led legislature passed a resolution Wednesday demanding that Taiwan finish building its fourth nuclear plant, a move that could bring months of political feuding closer to a resolution. Passed by a 134-70 vote, the resolution called for the immediate restoration of the project to build the power plant--but also urged the government to lay plans for a non-nuclear future. The next step could involve a round of dealmaking with the government, which has said it was not legally bound by the resolution but would negotiate a new agreement. For three months, the minority government and the legislature have been wrangling over the unfinished $5.4 billion plant, which the new administration wants to scrap as part of a plan to create a nuclear- free Taiwan. The plant was approved by the former Nationalist Party government, which lost the island's March presidential election. When Premier Chang Chun-hsiung announced in October that the project would be scuttled, the opposition-controlled legislature protested, saying lawmakers should have been consulted. On Wednesday, lawmaker David Chou of the anti-nuclear Democratic Progressive Party criticized the resolution, which also called for the gradual phasing out of nuclear energy in Taiwan. "If you want to accomplish a goal of getting rid of nuclear power, why would you want to finish completing the plant?" said Chou, the head of the DPP legislative caucus. Many opposition lawmakers oppose nuclear power, but money has already been spent on the power plant project and they were incensed at the government's unilateral decision to abandon it. Many had expected the resolution would demand Chang's resignation, and the fact that it did not was seen as an effort to smooth relations ahead of further negotiations. The resignation of the premier, Taiwan's No. 3 ranking leader, might have prompted the president to dissolve the legislature. Three weeks ago, Taiwan's highest court ruled that Chang erred when he decided to halt the project without legislative input, and several members of the three-party opposition coalition have suggested he resign. Lawmakers began a special two-day session Tuesday to discuss a resolution on the nuclear dispute. The vote came after further debate Wednesday morning. Diane Lee, of the Peoples First Party, accused the premier of breaking the law by canceling a major project whose budget was approved by the legislature, saying he put his party's anti-nuclear goals ahead of a respect for legal procedure. "The law is the law. Politics should be politics," Lee said. Although the premier has been the main target of the legislators' criticism, many believe that when he canceled the nuclear plant, he was merely following the orders of the man who appointed him, President Chen Shui-bian. The president has offered to mediate if the legislature's resolution fails to resolve the dispute. However, several lawmakers have said they doubt Chen would be an impartial mediator. ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 10 Taiwan OKs Resolution on Nuke Plant January 31, 2001 ASSOCIATED PRESS TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)--The opposition-controlled legislature approved a resolution Wednesday demanding that Taiwan finish building its fourth nuclear plant, a move that could help ease months of bitter political feuding. Passed with a 134-70 vote, the resolution ordered the immediate restoration of the nuclear project but urged the government to make a long-term plan to phase out nuclear power. The government had suspended construction of the plant in October, arguing that Taiwan had no place to store the waste and that developing alternative sources of energy would be cheaper than finishing the plant. The decision angered opposition legislators who said they should have been asked to vote on it first. The government is not legally bound by Wednesday's resolution. Government spokesman Chiou I-jen said President Chen Shui-bian would be able to negotiate a compromise and wanted to meet with opposition lawmakers within a week. But Legislators with the president's anti-nuclear Democratic Progressive Party complained that the resolution was contradictory. "If you want to accomplish a goal of getting rid of nuclear power, why would you want to finish completing the plant?" asked David Chou, the head of the DPP legislative caucus. Although several opposition lawmakers who supported the resolution also oppose nuclear power, they thought that since one-third of the $5.4 billion plant was complete, it would be a waste of money to stop construction. However, the main issue in the debate was whether the government could scrap the nuclear plant without seeking the legislature's support. Lawmakers argued that since they approved the plant's budget during the previous Nationalist Party government, they should have been consulted about the project's fate. The political feuding and gridlock over the plant was a factor in the stock market's 44 percent decline last year. But share prices surged 2.5 percent Wednesday to a near 12-week high. Many expected that the resolution would insist that Premier Chang Chun-hsiung resign, but lawmakers did not make that demand, a possible effort to smooth relations ahead of further negotiations. Three weeks ago, Taiwan's highest court ruled that the premier made "procedural flaws" when he decided to shut down the plant. The court ordered the premier to consult with lawmakers and negotiate an agreement. Opposition lawmakers and several business leaders have argued that Taiwan would have an energy crisis if it didn't finish the plant. Critics have long accused the once-ruling Nationalist Party of railroading it through the legislature in the 1990s. Outside the legislature on Wednesday, about 70 people wearing yellow headbands or straw farmer hats protested the resolution. One demonstrator held a sign that said, "Legislators get bribes, and the Taiwanese people get a nuclear nightmare." ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 11 Chamber set to pass its Yucca resolution January 31, 2001 BY JEFF GERMAN LAS VEGAS SUN The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce today geared up to pass a historic resolution opposing the storage of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. The chamber's 25-member board was to vote on the resolution, which outlines the organization's first-ever stand against the Nevada repository, at its 3 p.m. meeting. Chamber President Pat Shalmy said he expected the measure to pass. "I've talked with many of the board members, and no one wants nuclear waste to come through and be buried in Nevada," Shalmy said. "I'm confident that the board will approve this resolution." The one-page resolution, obtained by the Sun, refers to the state's key arguments against Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. It describes Southern Nevada as "one of the world's leading tourist destinations" and says millions of visitors might choose to stay away if the valley is seen as unsafe because of the storage of the deadly waste. Just one accident involving the transportation of the waste could "create fears and hysteria" among the public and further harm the multibillion-dollar tourism industry here, the resolution says. The "mere threat of a nuclear waste accident," the resolution adds, also could decrease property values in the country's fastest-growing community. "Whereas, there is no clear scientific consensus that storage of nuclear waste less than 100 miles from Las Vegas will not result in any adverse health impacts to the region in the long term," the measure concludes. "Now therefore be it resolved, the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce expresses its strong opposition to the storage of nuclear waste in Nevada." The chamber, which stayed out of the Yucca Mountain fight for nearly 20 years, decided to take its stand as part of Strip executive Stephen Cloobeck's grass-roots campaign against the dump. Cloobeck, president and CEO of Diamond Resorts International, is holding his second organizational meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday at the Clark County Government Center. "We're going to select a board and talk about fund-raising and unifying the message," Cloobeck said. Gov. Kenny Guinn wants Cloobeck's group to raise several million dollars for a nationwide media blitz espousing the dangers of transporting the radioactive waste to Nevada. Guinn is including $5 million in his budget toward the unprecedented advertising campaign and wants to double that amount with contributions from local governments and private citizens. The latest developments in the emotional nuclear waste fight come amid an investigation by the Department of Energy's inspector general into possible bias in the Yucca Mountain site selection process. A team of federal agents from Washington has been conducting interviews and poring over DOE documents in Las Vegas the past several weeks. The investigation was requested by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in December after the Sun reported that it had obtained documents that appeared to show the DOE collaborating with its chief Yucca Mountain contractor to win approval for the Nevada site. The Sun reported that it had obtained a 60-page draft of a DOE overview on Yucca Mountain declaring the site suitable for nuclear waste storage, even though scientific studies haven't been completed. Attached to the draft was a two-page memo that suggested the overview could be used to help the nuclear industry sell Yucca Mountain to Congress. Federal laws prohibit the DOE from taking sides in the selection process. The DOE had been preparing to make a recommendation on Yucca Mountain's suitability in June, but the decision was delayed because of the inspector general's investigation. ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 12 Hostile lawmakers fail to diminish Chang's resolve The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-31 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31ST, 2001 SPECIAL SESSION: The premier said he was right to scrap the nuclear plant and was not bound to accept an expected Legislative Yuan vote to reverse the policy BY LIN MEI-CHUN STAFF REPORTER In his first report to the legislature since his decision to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®ÖĄ|), Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (±i«T¶Ż) yesterday stood firmly behind the decision, saying it was neither illegal nor unconstitutional and that the Executive Yuan was not legally bound to accept any resolution to be passed by the Legislative Yuan today. Chang's remarks triggered relentless criticism from the opposition, who called his attitude disrespectful to the legislature and the Constitution. Some opposition lawmakers demanded he resign. "THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH IS NOT OBLIGED ... TO ACCEPT RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY THE LEGISLATURE." Premier Chang Chun-hsiung "The Cabinet's decision to halt the power plant construction was made unilaterally and violates procedural justice and the spirit of the Constitution," said New Party Legislator Levi Ying (Ŕç§Ó§»). Another New Party lawmaker, Lai Shyh-bao (żŕ¤h¸¶), said that the decision had led to a financial slump and destabilized social order, and he said that the premier owed the country an apology. Chang said that it was unfair to attribute the economic slowdown entirely to the controversy over the power plant. KMT Legislator Ting Shou-chung (¤B¦u¤¤) pressed the premier on whether he would resign to take responsibility for the country's protracted turmoil. "The current stalemate between the Legislative and Executive Yuan would not be resolved even if I stepped down," the premier replied. It is widely expected that opposition lawmakers, who hold an overwhelming majority in the legislature, will today pass a resolution to continue the project. In response to opposition lawmakers, who asked whether the Executive Yuan would withdraw its order if there was a resolution to resume construction of the power plant, Chang showed no sign of relenting. He said cancellation of the plant would not lead to electricity shortages and expressed hope that the existing three nuclear power facilities would all be decommissioned by 2017, making Taiwan a nuclear-free nation. "The executive branch is not obliged under the Constitution to accept resolutions passed by the legislature," Chang said. "In accordance with the verdict of the Council of Grand Justices, a president is entitled to put his campaign platform into practice by requesting the premier, appointed by him, to implement the necessary policy changes. This is simply a norm in democratic politics." "Even if the legislature passed a resolution which contradicted the Cabinet's decision, the responsible authorities should follow the opinion [offered by the Council of Grand Justices] to enter into negotiations, or resort to possible avenues to seek a solution in accordance with the Constitution," Chang quoted the justices' ruling as saying. During the interpellation, Chang repeatedly emphasized that the Cabinet was willing to negotiate with opposition parties to seek a solution in accordance with the Constitution, even if the legislature passed a resolution challenging the Cabinet's decision. Chou Po-lun (©P§B­Ű), convener of the DPP's legislative caucus, said he thought the most effective means of breaking the current political impasse was to negotiate. "The ruling DPP has set no precondition for negotiations. All [the DPP] wants is for the two sides to sit down and seek a solution that is acceptable to both sides." This story has been viewed 705 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 13 MPs demand nuclear plant completion BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Wednesday, 31 January, 2001, 03:57 GMT [I] There have been street protests against the plant Taiwan's opposition-controlled parliament has voted to complete construction of a controversial nuclear power plant that was scrapped by the government. We must take into consideration the well-being of our descendants[I] Prime Minister Chang The resolution - which was passed by a margin of 134-70 votes - accused the executive of "ignoring the constitution and causing political turmoil" by cancelling the project in October. The issue has caused a bitter political dispute, with opposition deputies threatening to topple the new government by calling for an indefinite recess of parliament. [I] Chang made a strong appeal to deputies Addressing parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Chang Chun-hsiung had said the proposed plant - the fourth in Taiwan - would not be a safe source of energy. He said the island, which is prone to earthquakes, was ill-equipped to store radioactive waste or to deal with a nuclear accident. "Once a nuclear disaster occurs Taiwan, which is small in size, cannot possibly evacuate people," Mr Chang said. COURT RULING In a 34-page report, Mr Chang listed nine reasons for his decision to halt the construction of the $5.5bn plant, which is already one- third complete. [It's] an issue of life and survival... concerning the future welfare Prime Minister Chang The prime minister had been ordered to appear before parliament by Taiwan's highest court, which ruled he must win the support of parliament to proceed with his policy. Last October, the government scrapped the plant without consulting parliament. The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) had demanded to be involved in a decision over the plant, having pushed through the project while it was still in power. The KMT has argued that scrapping the 2,700-megawatt plant was unconstitutional, could lead to power shortages and was undermining business confidence. VOTE DUE In his address, Mr Chang showed deputies a portrait of a deformed child, a victim of a nuclear accident. [I] The nuclear power plant is about one-third built He had only just returned from a three-month ban from parliament, imposed by opposition deputies in retaliation for halting the project. The decision to cancel the plant means the government will have to pay almost $3bn in compensation. The political turmoil has also brought Taiwan's stock market to its knees. The island's three main opposition parties hold 141 of the legislature's 221 seats. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party has 68, with the remainder held by independents. ***************************************************************** 14 Anti-nuclear demonstrators divided into two camps The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-31 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31ST, 2001 BY CHIU YU-TZU STAFF REPORTER An anti-nuclear activist's attempt to immolate himself in protest of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant on Monday left many stunned, some disgusted. But his act, while desperate, highlights a clear division among protesters and the difficulty they have in drawing attention to their cause. "It's sad that in this new era, which has been ushered in with the DPP's rise to power, some anti-nuclear activists still have to draw attention by using such violent means," Lai Wei-chieh (żŕ°¶łÇ), secretary- general of the Green Citizens Action Alliance (şń¦â¤˝ĄÁ¦ć°ĘÁp·ů), said yesterday. The Alliance is part of a grassroots organization that has focused on organizing anti-nuclear groups in Kungliao township, Taipei County, where the controversial plant is located. Still, it was Huang Ting-fang's (¶Ŕ©wŞÚ) act that drew more protesters to the fringes of the Legislative Yuan yesterday to join in on a 30-hour sit-in protest there. Anti-nuclear activists in Taiwan have walked a long and winding road since the early 1980s. Since the very beginning, the anti-nuclear movement and other social movements, such as environmental and labor, joined with the DPP in opposition to the former KMT central government. At that time, breaking the rules was a useful way to highlight issues. Lai said Huang is a typical grassroots anti-nuclear activist, many of whom are opposed to nuclear energy just because they are members of the DPP. Huang,53, once held a post in the DPP's Keelung City Chapter and was the eighth member to join the party there, established in 1986. Some grassroots activists told the Taipei Times they were not satisfied with some of the professors who had joined the sit-in, especially after they distanced themselves from Huang and his act. The professors, who believe the nuclear issue should be debated rationally and calmly, continued their sit-in yesterday, joined by nearly 100 activists. They sang songs, gave speeches, and performed skits to highlight their opinions. Outside the sit-in zone occupied by the professors' group--the focus of the media--grassroots anti-nuclear activists stood or sat. Speaking to the Taipei Times, some anti-nuclear grassroots protestors said that President Chen Shui-bian (łŻ¤ô«ó) should have done something to crack down on opposition parties in order to fulfill his campaign promise to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. Grassroots organizers said that anti-nuclear professors have said a lot during the six-month re-evaluation of the project convened by the Ministry of Economic Affairs last year, but that it wasn't enough. "In Taiwan's political arena, the prospect of calm and rational discussion of the nuclear issue is just a fairytale," said one activist, who preferred to remain anonymous. Grassroots anti-nuclear activists said that more aggressive measures should be taken, including an attempt to surround the Legislative Yuan, planned for today. Activists said that the action would force political figures, both DPP and opposition parties, to hear the people's real voice. The 30-hour sit-in protest led by the professors ended peacefully at 6:00pm yesterday afternoon, after which protesters packed up and went home. But most said they would be back today. "We are against the opposition parties' use of mob violence. It is an insult to our argument to build a nuclear-free country," said Shih Shin-min (¬I«HĄÁ), chairman of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union. Participants of the sit-in said they would mobilize more people to gather in front of the Legislative Yuan this morning. Grassroots activists, including residents of Kungliao, will also join another wave of anti-nuclear demonstrations today. This story has been viewed 334 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 15 Power plant politics The Taipei Times Online: 2001-01-31 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31ST, 2001 The need for a referendum on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (®ÖĄ| ) could be obviated if only the people of Taiwan, and in particular the opposition parties, were prepared to accept the true nature of democracy. Democratically elected governments may from time to time have to make unpopular decisions. This may be to honor campaign promises or simply for the good of the nation. Are the Taiwanese people adequately informed on issues relating to the safety of nuclear power or Taiwan's future energy needs? While a majority may vote in favor of the plant, would the same majority vote in favor of nuclear waste being stored near their home? I think not. Despite the constant criticism levelled at him, President Chen Shui-bian (łŻ¤ô«ó) must be admired for the principled stand he has taken on this issue. He has acted both to keep an important campaign promise and to ensure a safe and healthy future for the people of Taiwan. David Reid Hobart, Australia By reducing the nuclear plant to a debate over the pros and cons of nuclear energy, we lose sight of the damage being done to the political system here in Taiwan. I believe a strong democracy comes from strong, well-functioning institutions. In the US, there are three balanced and independent branches of government that contribute equally to the stability of the nation's democracy. Recent events have shown that Taiwan's executive, legislative and judicial branches are not mature enough to support a stable democracy. Because its institutions are not functioning well, the government has been anything but stable ever since the political transition. I am particularly displeased with the ruling party's attempts to subvert normal political processes. Instead of establishing the groundwork for cooperation between parties, the DPP has tried to undermine the legitimacy of the legislature which does not agree with its policies. Though none of us may like the existing political system, it should be respected. This is not because the system deserves our respect, but because undermining basic government institutions does serious damage to Taiwan's democracy. Under Taiwan's semi-presidential system, the executive and legislative branches may from time to time be led by opposing parties. Given this situation, the executive branch must reach out to the majority party in the legislature to garner support for its policies. By encouraging talk of snap elections and referendums, both the government and media have exhibited a great deal of contempt for government institutions. It is imperative for everyone to work harder to make the present system work and not try to circumvent established legal and constitutional procedures in order to achieve short-term political goals. William Hoyle Taichung NEGLECTED TOURISTS President Chen recently suggested that tourism was a possible growth industry. Since attracting foreign tourists is the only way to give Taiwan a net benefit, some fundamental re-thinking is needed. Even for foreign residents, making your own arrangements is not easy, unless you can read Chinese on the Internet. Many travel agents deal only in overseas trips and will do nothing to assist you in finding a local tour agent, who themselves are not really friendly to foreigners. Anyway, we set off for Alishan (Şü¨˝¤s) during the New Year period without tickets but I was able to buy an overnight package privately from a stranger at the Chiayi train station. We enjoyed the trip and were housed at the Alishan Gou Hotel, which apparently is where customers of Taiwan Railway packages end up. The room was spartan, no heat or air conditioning, no hot water from 10am during the daytime and a view typical of Taiwan--abandoned, rusty machinery and other miscellaneous junk. The hairballs behind the furniture suggested that only obvious dirt was swept daily and that vacuuming was rare. Towels and sheets were changed, but I bet against the blankets. After seeing the sunrise, I asked the desk clerk if we could stay over. Since he replied that the hotel was going to be full, I asked if he could help me find an alternative. This request was met by a look of incredulous dismissal. And apparently, there is nothing or nobody that serves this simple function in what is one of Taiwan's premier locations. Certainly, Alishan is beautiful. But in the town itself, you can spot the progressive, general tackiness and disrepair you find in your own neighborhood or at places like the Sun-Yat Sen Memorial Hall. And signs, like in most of Taiwan, are either poor, irrelevant, inconsistent or just plain wrong. For Taiwan tourism to capture any real foreign tourist dollars under these circumstances is a bizarre notion. John Hanna Taoyuan City This story has been viewed 267 times. Copyright c 1999, 2000, 2001 The Taipei Times. All rights ***************************************************************** 16 PROCESSED JAPANESE NUCLEAR WASTE LEAVES FRENCH PORT AOMORI, JAPAN JAN. 30 KYODO - A British cargo ship carrying vitrified high-level radioactive waste will arrive at Mutsu-Ogawara port in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan, on Feb. 20, the Federation of Electric Power Companies and other sources said Tuesday. The shipment of Japanese nuclear waste, the sixth of its kind, has been reprocessed by French nuclear fuel company COGEMA and is to be delivered to a storage facility in the village, the federation said. The cargo comprises eight containers of 192 vitrified blocks. The 5,000-ton Pacific Swan's radioactive cargo was processed by COGEMA on behalf of five electric power companies in Japan--Kansai Electric Power Co., Tokyo Electric Power Co., Chubu Electric Power Co., Kyushu Electric Power Co. and Japan Atomic Power Co., a nuclear power venture mainly owned by Japan's nine major electric power firms. The cargo ship left Cherbourg in northwestern France for Japan on Dec. 19 last year and is expected to arrive in Rokkasho after passing round Cape Horn in South America, the sources said. The cargo will be stored at the facility operated by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL) for 30-50 years, it said. A total of 272 vitrified blocks have been sent back to Japan so far. 2000 Kyodo News (c) Established 1945. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear waste shipment to arrive in Japan on Feb 20 Updated 4:47 AM ET January 30, 2001 TOKYO, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A controversial shipment of nuclear waste that is returning to Japan after being reprocessed in France will arrive in Aomori prefecture, northern Japan, on February 20, industry officials said on Tuesday. The waste was reprocessed by France's Cogema, the world's leading nuclear fuel reprocessor, and is being shipped back in 192 containers aboard the Pacific Swan, a ship owned by a unit of British Nuclear Fuels. Loaded with the sixth such shipment of reprocessed nuclear waste to be returned to Japan, the Pacific Swan will dock at the northern port of Rokkasho, the Federation of Electric Power Companies said in a statement. Toxic waste from Japanese nuclear reactors is shipped to European reprocessing plants and later returned to Japan as fuel--along with the waste that results from the reprocessing. The shipments have sparked outrage from anti-nuclear activists. Earlier this month, the Chilean Navy dispatched a ship and several airplanes to monitor the Pacific Swan as it passed through its waters amid protests by environmental groups and Chilean legislators. Japan is also due to receive a shipment of MOX fuel--a blend of uranium and plutonium recycled from spent nuclear fuel--in late March. The specific arrival date for the MOX shipment, which is bound for Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc's (TEPCO) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, has not been disclosed yet. c2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication and ***************************************************************** 18 GREENS REDISCOVER NUCLEAR TRANSPORT By Ralph Atkins and Uta Harnishfeger in Berlin Published: January 30 2001 20:34GMT | Last Updated: January 30 2001 23:21GMT These are hair-raising days for Germany's nuclear industry executives. A ban on the transport of nuclear waste, dating from the government of Helmut Kohl, the former chancellor, is threatening gradually to throttle the industry. If spent fuel rods cannot be removed, power stations may have to shut down. The question in the boardrooms of the biggest utilities is, will the Social Democratic/Green coalition government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder ride to the industry's rescue? It has started to look like it. True to his Green, anti-nuclear convictions, Jürgen Trittin, the environment minister, took steps last week to halt plans to resume nuclear cargoes at the beginning of March with the transport of spent rods from the Neckarwestheim power station in Baden Wurttemberg, southern Germany, to storage facilities in Ahaus, North Rhine Westphalia. But at the same time, Mr Trittin allowed the power station to store additional spent fuel rods on site, preventing a bottleneck that would have shut the plant. His decision reflected a significant change in strategy by the governing coalition that - despite the participation of Greens - could bring relief to the nuclear industry. As Klaus Wertel, spokesman at Energie Baden-Wurttemberg (EnBW), says wryly, "the situation is becoming stranger by the day". In a landmark statement last Monday, the Green party's leadership declared itself opposed to any attempt to block "necessary transports" - and particularly violent protest action. Earlier, Mr Trittin had confirmed that the nuclear industry had legal rights to resume the controversial transports he once furiously opposed. At the same time, a dispute with France over the return of German waste processed in The Hague appears to have been resolved: preparations are under way for its return soon to storage facilities in Gorleben, north Germany. And the federal radiation protection office - which operates under the wing of Mr Trittin's environment ministry - has approved the resumption of transport for reprocessing at British Nuclear Fuel's (BNFL) site at Sellafield, in the UK. "Suddenly the utilities have found themselves in the same boat as the more moderate Greens - we are all being attacked verbally by the radical, anti-nuclear front," says Mr Wertel at EnBW. The Greens have an immediate motive for avoiding a repetition of the angry protests which accompanied atomic transports until 1998 - when Angela Merkel, then environment minister, ordered a stop after the discovery that nuclear shipments were regularly breaching maximum contamination levels. Mr Trittin and Joschka Fischer, the Green foreign minister, are facing a wave of media scrutiny about their past as 1970s radicals who moved in the same circles as urban terrorists. But there is a broader explanation for the Greens' surprisingly accommodating stance towards the nuclear industry. Last summer, Mr Schröder's government struck a deal with the nuclear industry on the eventual phasing out of nuclear power in Germany. It was a hard deal for the Greens to swallow: the industry took a tough negotiating stance and only agreed to plans which would phase out nuclear power over 20 years or more. But most Greens accepted that, as junior partner in the Berlin coalition, they had to accept a compromise. Greens had wanted in particular to stop "nuclear tourism" - the trundling of so-called Castor transport trains across Europe. But the deal stipulates that waste can be transported for reprocessing in the UK or France until 2005, or within Germany until adequate intermediary storage facilities are built on the sites of atomic power stations. In his actions this week, Mr Trittin has kept faith with that compromise. The industry is not yet placing too much trust in Mr Trittin. There remains suspicion about his motives. The big power utilities such as EnBW, Eon and RWE remain opposed to the amendments Mr Trittin plans to Germany's atomic law. Pending compromises by the minister, the utilities have pledged not to sign last summer's consensus agreement, which has yet to be translated into law. Moreover, the utilities remain uncertain about how Mr Trittin's decision on Neckarwestheim affects other power plants. RWE, which operates the Biblis nuclear plant in the state of Hesse, is assuming it will be able to go ahead with plans to transport two containers containing spent rods to Ahaus. "We are only waiting for the state governments of North-Rhine Westphalia and Hesse to set a date," said Manfred Lang, RWE spokesman. Adding to the confusion, transports are subject not just to intervention by the federal administration - but also by the powerful state governments and police responsible for the security of the transports. Not until the first nuclear transports roll successfully, will the industry be able to breathe again. UK: financial times ***************************************************************** 19 Scientist: French keeping open mind on nukes January 31, 2001 BY MARY MANNING LAS VEGAS SUN AMARGOSA VALLEY--Instead of zeroing in on a single remote site to study for dumping highly radioactive waste, a French scientist said his country is keeping an open mind on options ranging from reprocessing to storing the spent nuclear reactor fuel. Geochemist Jean-Claude Duplessy, who reviews France's nuclear waste management efforts, said a final report is due in 2006 on what direction the country will take in handling its radioactive waste problem. Duplessy said he oversees the French panel similar to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent scientific committee watching the Department of Energy's efforts at Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only U.S. site under study to become the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository. The technical review board is meeting in Amargosa Valley through today. France is weighing transforming the waste into less toxic material in a process called transmutation, Deplussy told the board. The United States, on the other hand, is starting to review new transmutation technology developed at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico this year. But American scientists criticize the $34 million price tag and length of time to develop the process. Deplussy said the French solution might allow nuclear power plants to reprocess the waste, either recovering uranium fuel for reactors or allowing smaller amounts to be buried in stable granite. The French program puts the burden of containing the radioactivity squarely on the rock. The French are not designing waste containers, shields to protect the buried casks or gravel or cement shoved around the metal alloy canisters, as the DOE has proposed for Yucca Mountain. One granite site has already been canceled, because ground water moved too fast through it, he said. Critics of a Yucca Mountain repository have noted for years that there is too much water in the volcanic tuff that makes up the mountain, and the ground water moves too fast through its rock to keep radioactivity from 77,000 tons of waste safe for 10,000 years. Steve Frishman, technical adviser to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the DOE once relied on the mountain to contain the waste, but currently 98 percent of containing the waste rests with manmade barriers such as containers and shields. Nye County Commissioner Jeff Taguchi said he was impressed with the French approach to managing nuclear waste. "You can't cut through granite," he said. "Our stuff you can cut like a hot knife through butter." ALL CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2001 LAS VEGAS SUN, INC. ***************************************************************** 20 Russia Plans to Build 40 Nuclear Reactors by 2020 Russia Today - MOSCOW, Jan 31, 2001--(Agence France Presse) Russia plans to build 40 nuclear reactors by 2020 to prevent a potential "energy crisis" deputy atomic energy minister Boulat Nigmatulin announced Monday. "We are 20 years behind. These reactors have to be built by 2020, " Nigmatulin told AFP. He explained that the original plan to build the reactors was devised in the 1980s but stalled in the 1990s. Russia currently has 19 nuclear reactors operating at nine plants. "Russia's European flank will soon face an energy deficit. The only possible solution open to the government is to build new reactors, " the vice minister said. "We can't burn up all our gas reserves and what kind of future can our children look forward to?" Another advantage to the nuclear option is that the plants operate using Russian equipment and technology, unlike the thermal power stations which required imported equipment, Nigmatulin added. Over the next decade, Russia plans to build 10 new nuclear reactors, he said. He said that Russia would spend the money required to assure security at the reactors "in line with international norms". The world's most infamous nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine -- then part of the Soviet Union--was the site of the worst nuclear accident in history in 1986. An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people have died as a result of the explosion that contaminated three quarters of Europe, spewing radiation into the atmosphere equivalent to 500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima 41 years earlier. Nigmatulin said that 1.4 billion rubles (50 million dollars) had been earmarked for the scheme in 2001. Last year production at Russia's nuclear power stations increased by 8.3 percent over 1999, producing 130 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, said Yuri Iakovlev, director of Rosenergoatom, the state monopoly in charge of the nuclear reactors. It was also stressed that security at the plants had improved last year when 67 incidents were registered against 88 in 1999. However Rosenergoatom announced in a statement Tuesday that a fault at a nuclear power plant in Russia's central Urals region forced a partial shutdown of one of its generators as a security measure. The fault was discovered in generator number five at the Beloyarsk nuclear plant, and as a result the generator's output was reduced by 33 percent early Tuesday. Radioactivity levels at the plant remained normal, and the safe operation of the plant had not been put at risk, the statement went on. ((C) 2001 AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE) ˙GMT ˙10:15 GMT ˙3 Feb 2001 10:15 GMT ˙10:48 GMT ˙Card Factory 3 Feb 2001 10:15 GMT [*][I] [*][I]   c 1995-2001 European Internet Network Inc. ***************************************************************** 21 Iran Nuclear Plant to Be Operational by 2003 ˙˙˙NEWSMAX.COM WIRES WEDNESDAY, JAN. 31, 2001 TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's first nuclear power plant, under construction in the southern city of Bushehr, was expected to be operational in about two years, according to a media report Wednesday. The Persian daily newspaper Jam-e Jam quoted Khalil Mousavi, the head of public relations office of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as saying that construction of the plant was at "full speed." The construction is being handled by Russian technicians. According to the newspaper, Russia signed a contract with Iran in September 1998 to finish the project within 52 months. The plant was designed to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity during the first phase, Mousavi said. The facility was initially to be built by the German company Seimens, but the company pulled out following the 1979 Islamic revolution and the subsequent Western embargo on high-technology transfers to Iran. Iran filed a lawsuit against Germany seeking compensation for losses, while Germany counter-sued on claims that Iran failed to meet its commitments. The United States has voiced fierce opposition to the construction of Iran's nuclear plant, claiming Iran can use it for producing weapons of mass destruction. Iran has repeatedly stressed its "peaceful objectives" in pursuing the production of nuclear energy. (C) 2001 UPI. All Rights Reserved. NewsMax.com [?] Your e-mail address ***************************************************************** 22 Nuclear waste recommendation stalled Wednesday, January 31, 2001 Copyright c Las Vegas Review-Journal DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON--A recommendation whether nuclear waste can safely be buried at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is being pushed back by six months while project managers face an internal investigation and review suggestions for changes in repository design, a government executive said Tuesday. A senior staffer told members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the delay stems in part from a probe by the Energy Department inspector general into allegations of political bias in favor of getting a Nevada repository approved. "I'm basing my statement on what the DOE told me within the last two weeks, clearly the site recommendation has slipped by somewhere on the order of five to six months." Carl Paperiello, commission deputy executive director in charge of waste management and spent fuel programs, told the five commissioners at a briefing. Afterwards, Paperiello noted scientists also are following up on suggestions by a technical review board to develop more information on a larger repository design that might allay concerns about repository temperatures. Paperiello said he was told informally by DOE staff the schedule delay stems from "a combination of things, giving a chance for the IG to do their thing, and dealing with comments from the nuclear waste oversight board." An Energy Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that Yucca Mountain managers are waiting for the inspector general's work to be completed but she had not heard any estimates of when or how it might affect schedules. A recommendation by the energy secretary whether to move ahead at Yucca Mountain was expected sometime this summer. But already, a key pre-decision report that was scheduled for release in December has been put on hold pending the results of the inspector general's probe. After receiving an Energy Department application, the commission must decide whether to license a nuclear waste repository. Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied. In response to questions from commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield, Paperiello said commission staffers will not hesitate to say so if they believe Yucca Mountain should not be licensed. "We're going to give the commission our best views," he said. "We're putting out continuous reports on what we're finding and raising issues. We've raised a number of issues with the DOE in public forums, so I don't think we've even exhibited a predisposition. We're looking at the information and challenging the information and applying our own thoughts on the issues. "I think we are trying to do, and are doing, the best science we can and are showing it to everybody," he said. Federal law requires the commission to monitor and comment as the Energy Department studies to develop the first underground nuclear waste repository. The agency has two representatives at Yucca Mountain. Nevada leaders have complained that relationship has given the commission a vested interested in seeing Yucca Mountain built into a repository. Interviewed after the session, Paperiello said the complaints are speculative. "If we were together with (the Energy Department), I'm not sure we would have raised the number of issues we've raised, " he said. "There are issues like (volcanic activity) we've been very persnickety on. "We're trying to license something that we've never licensed before," Paperiello said. "It's the first of its kind and we have to understand it. Much of what we're doing now, we would have to do regardless." ***************************************************************** 23 Nuclear reactor malfunctions in Ukraine THE ASSOCIATED PRESS [I] KPnews.com--News about Ukraine 31 Jan 2001 KYIV, Jan. 31 - A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Yuzhna nuclear power plant was shut down briefly due to a malfunction, officials said Wednesday. The No. 1 reactor was temporary halted late Tuesday to repair an isolating switch, and was restarted early Wednesday at 60 percent capacity, the state nuclear company Energoatom said. The reactor is expected to reach full capacity later in the day. Currently, 12 out of 13 atomic reactors at Ukraine's four nuclear power plants are operating. Ukraine was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986, when a reactor at the Chernobyl atomic power plant exploded and caught fire, sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. Chernobyl was closed down for good on Dec. 15. c2000 SputnikMedia.net ***************************************************************** 24 4 bills aim to stop N-waste dump Tuesday, January 30, 2001 Deseret News staff writer It's been more than 100 years since Utahns declared war on the Goshutes. Tooele County Commissioner Dennis Rockwell wonders if the time has come again. "The American people tried to wipe them out, and now we have a governor who is doing the same thing," Rockwell said. Rockwell's comments came in response to proposed legislation by Sen. Terry Spencer, R-Layton, who has introduced four bills aimed at blocking the shipment of high-level nuclear waste to Goshute tribal lands in remote Tooele County. Although the exact wording of Spencer's bills, introduced at the behest of Gov. Mike Leavitt, has not been released, Spencer told the Deseret News his legislation will attack the nuclear- waste proposal from four fronts: ˙Making it illegal for counties or private companies to supply electrical ˙power, natural gas and water to the proposed storage site about ˙70 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. "No water, no electricity, ˙no nothing," Spencer said. ˙Taxing the nuclear-power utilities at a rate of 75 percent of gross ˙receipts for any high-level nuclear waste headed for the site. ˙"We are going to make it economically unfeasible," he said. ˙Appropriating $1.6 million to pay for a legal strike force to challenge ˙the consortium of utilities, known as Private Fuel Storage (PFS), ˙at every turn. It would also fund a public-relations campaign. ˙Putting together an economic development package for the Goshutes ˙to replace the lost PFS revenue. It could include educational ˙scholarships and technical assistance for any economic venture. Blocking PFS's plan to store 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods has become a priority for Leavitt, who said Utah does not produce the highly toxic waste and in no way, shape or form wants to become the nation's dumping ground for nuclear waste. "The governor said not now, not ever and over my dead body," Spencer said, adding his support to the governor's position. Rockwell wonders if the state isn't setting itself up for some serious legal challenges if it tries to block counties or anyone else from providing services to the storage site. Aside from the fact the Legislature will have a $1.6 million legal war chest, Spencer said the state is perfectly within its right to restrict such services. The counties, after all, are political subdivisions of the state and as such are subject to the Legislature's will. Utilities are also subject to state law. Spencer said the bills have the support of the Utah Association of Counties. "This is not the state stepping in with a heavy hand," he said. A fifth piece of legislation, sponsored by Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake, is a resolution expressing legislative support for a lawsuit filed by Goshutes opposed to the waste dump. Many involved in the issue see that lawsuit as the state's best chance to block PFS. Goshute tribal Chairman Leon Bear couldn't be reached for comment. The consortium of mostly eastern utilities is in a quandary as to what to do with tons of spent nuclear fuel rods. Storage facilities at the nuclear power plants are rapidly filling up, and without a place to store the waste the power plants would be shut down. PFS entered into a 20-year lease with the Goshutes to store the waste on a temporary basis until a permanent storage site is completed by the federal government, presumably at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But Leavitt and other Utah political leaders fear that if the waste comes to Utah it will remain here permanently. And Utah will be stuck with waste that will remain lethally hot for 10,000 years. E-MAIL: [*]donna@desnews.com [I] [I] [I] [I] c 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** 25 Measure requires permits to ship 'hotter' N-waste Tuesday, January 30, 2001 Out-of-state waste companies would have to apply for a Utah permit before shipping "hotter" low-level radioactive waste to Utah under a bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Wright, R-Elberta. Another requirement of SB72 would be setting up a perpetual fund that would pay for the care of the landfill 500 years after it closes and the hotter waste remains radioactive. The bill was introduced Monday without text. Wright said he is still working out details, but it is intended to address some of the issues that would allow Envirocare of Utah to import so-called Class B and C wastes, which are mainly contaminated materials from nuclear power plants, research labs and hospitals, at its landfill in remote Tooele County. Those wastes are thousands of times more radioactive than the Class A waste, which is mainly contaminated soils that the company is now licensed to accept. Currently the generators of the waste aren't required to obtain a license from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). If there's a problem with the shipment, a state permit would give state regulators the ability to "jerk their license," Wright said. "It provides more oversight." Envirocare does have money set aside to pay for the care of its facility 100 years after it closes, but a perpetual fund would guarantee there's money available for another 400 years while the hotter waste remain radioactive, Wright said. The Utah Division of Radiation Control Board based its approval granting Envirocare an exemption to bury the waste on private land contingent on those conditions. Envirocare still needs Legislative and governor approval. And company officials say they will wait until the 2002 Legislative session, after they have received permission from DEQ. A series of public hearings are scheduled in February on a tentative decision to approve Envirocare's license. c 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES ***************************************************************** 1 Hanford Frees Up Tank Space for Treatment Operations RICHLAND, WA, January 30, 2001 - The Department of Energy's Office of River Protection (ORP) and its tank waste contractor CH2M HILL Hanford Group at the Hanford site in Washington State have retrieved over 800,000 gallons of highly radioactive and hazardous waste from an underground Hanford double-shell tank for processing in a nearby evaporator facility. The space was needed because selected double- shell tanks are to serve as staging points for waste being moved from Hanford's older, single-shell tanks before heading to a planned treatment facility. The project was completed two months ahead of schedule. "Reducing the amount of waste in this tank is an essential step in getting ready to treat Hanford tank waste in a vitrification treatment facility," said CH2M HILL Double-Shell Tank and Waste Feed Delivery Project Manager Dale Allen. "It shows we're making progress toward cleaning up Hanford tanks and reducing the risk to the nearby Columbia The tank in question, AW-104, held approximately one million gallons of waste before the transfer of 801,818 gallons of liquid waste out of the tank. The waste was sent to a double-shell tank where it will remain until it can be sent to Hanford's evaporator facility. Once the waste arrives at the evaporator facility, treatment should reduce the waste volume by approximately 80 percent. "We're reducing the total amount of waste in our double-shell tanks by about 600,000 gallons to make room for retrieval of waste from single-shell tanks," said Allen. "We're continuing to show we can do the difficult work needed to move this project forward to treatment, the important next step toward the ultimate closure of the Hanford waste tanks." ***************************************************************** 2 Benton County vows to fight on for FFTF Jan. 30, 2001: Commissioners also approve lease agreement with fair board This story was published Sat, Jan 30, 2001 BY KRISTIN M. KRAEMER HERALD STAFF WRITER Benton County commissioners decided Monday not to give up their fight against the dismantling of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility. "We're staying the course and moving ahead," Commissioner Claude Oliver said. Commissioners met Monday morning with Richland council members Wanda Munn and Larry Haler to discuss their next steps toward a potential lawsuit. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson signed the paperwork Jan. 19 to permanently shut down and dismantle the dormant research reactor. Despite reports last week that new Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham doesn't plan to reverse his predecessor's decision, Tri-City officials believe they still have a shot at overturning the order. "As far as we can tell, they're still open to new information coming in, to a challenge to this action and to review it based on that challenge," said Gary Ballew, Benton County's sustainable development manager. He said political allies in the fight include U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings. Oliver said he expects the commission next Monday to sign an agreement with the four cities, the ports of Benton, Kennewick and Pasco and the Tri-City Industrial Development Council. The Tri-City agencies and governments each have offered different amounts of financial support for a potential lawsuit. "Our communities are united," Oliver said. A delegation of Tri-City representatives will make a five-day trip to Washington, D.C., next week to meet with political leaders on various issues, including FFTF. The group will include Pam Brown, executive director of the Hanford Communities, Mayor Jerry Peltier of West Richland and Harold Heacock of TRIDEC. They will meet with the committee staff for the House and Senate authorization and appropriations committees, staff of the Washington and Oregon delegations dealing with Hanford, Department of Energy officials and representatives of the Hanford contractor companies, Brown said. "We have done this each year for the past four years and, basically, it's to present the position of the local elected officials regarding Hanford cleanup and the budget for the Hanford cleanup," Brown said. "This year we'll be particularly focusing on funding necessary to build the vitrification plant, as well as funding to support Hanford 2012." The delegation also will cover funding to support the newly extended contracts for Fluor and CH2M Hill, she said. "According to staff in DOE headquarters, our efforts have made a difference, so we will continue," Brown said. COPYRIGHT 2001 TRI-CITY HERALD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS ***************************************************************** 3 Weinberg gives 'limited' nod to Bush plan GIVES 'LIMITED' NOD TO BUSH PLAN Nuclear pioneer Alvin Weinberg, a long-time advocate of a missile defense system in the United States, supports President Bush's controversial proposal--although he hedges somewhat. "It's a limited support," the 86-year-old Weinberg said this week. "We should go in that direction, but the trick in doing it in a way that does not destabilize the whole situation is to offer to take out some offensive missiles every time we put in a defense system. We call that the defense-protected build-down." It's not clear whether the Bush defense package will fully incorporate that strategy, but Weinberg said he's encouraged by some of the language being bandied about by authorities. * TAYLOR-MADE POST: Bill Madia, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has said he hopes to name a new executive director of the Spallation Neutron Source by March 1--the tentative departure date for SNS chief David Moncton. Madia is looking at several candidates to head the $1.4 billion science project, and that list apparently includes Andrew Taylor, who directs a neutron-based research facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom. The ISIS Facility is reputed to be the world's top spallation source now available to researchers. Taylor came to Oak Ridge this week as a member of the SNS Scientific Advisory Committee, but his schedule reportedly was restructured to give more time for discussions with Madia et. al. regarding the job opening. Asked if Taylor was a candidate for the SNS post, Madia responded: "Andrew is a world-renowned neutron scientist and is the type of person we would consider as David's replacement." * WHO'S WHO? Bill Bibb, a retired Department of Energy executive who formerly managed defense activities in Oak Ridge, is president of the Y-12 support group known as Citizens for National Security. "CNS was the first organization to call for modernization of the Y-12 plant," Bibb noted in a letter commenting on the draft environmental impact statement. Bibb also has been a big supporter of the National Nuclear Security Administration--the quasi-autonomous agency within DOE that was created last year to oversee the nation's nuclear weapons complex, including Y-12. In his recent letter, Bibb suggested it's time for the federal folks to get their act together and decide who's actually in charge-- DOE or NNSA. The roles are confusing, he said, noting that a letter from Bill Brumley (NNSA's Oak Ridge chief) referred to the environmental impact statement as an NNSA document but referred comments to DOE's Oak Ridge office. "We will look forward to a clear explanation of these relationships in the final (report)," Bibb said. * FORWARD THINKER: The anticipated lifetime of new production facilities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant is 50 years, according to the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed modernization projects. Some folks, however, are more optimistic. In his letter supporting the work, Anderson County Executive Rex Lynch (a former Y-12 engineer) wrote: "Modernization of the Y-12 plant will ensure that its critical mission will be effectively and efficiently performed well into the next century." Hmmmm. Wonder what he knows that others don't? * SOFT NEWS: Oak Ridge officials at a public meeting last week were anxious to talk about the proposed facilities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant unless, of course, the questions involved security. I was interested in the design of the new storage center for bomb- grade uranium, particularly the plan to cover the operation with an earthen berm. Asked if the berm's inclusion in the design was strictly for security, Bill Brumley--the federal officer who oversees the Oak Ridge weapons work--talked in a circle before finally acknowledging that was the case. He declined to comment, period, when asked if the uranium storage facility would be hardened for added protection. Senior Writer Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News-Sentinel. He can be reached at 865-482-9213 or at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This column is also available on the Web at www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/ munger/ Copyright c 1999-2001, The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. All Rights ***************************************************************** 4 CROET takes step in restructuring Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 1:49 p.m. on Wednesday, January 31, 2001 BY PAUL PARSON Oak Ridger staff Three Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee board members have been appointed to the subsidiary corporations that will be created under the entity's restructuring effort. The appointments were announced Tuesday during the CROET board of directors meeting at the Oak Ridge Mall Club Room and include: * Jeff Bostock--Heritage Development Corp., responsible for reindustrialization activities at the Oak Ridge K-25 site. *Dave Patterson--Horizon Development Corp., which would manage industrialization operations on CROET land. *Bill Manly--Vista Corp., charged with the task of capitalizing on opportunities not clearly within the purview of other CROET subsidiaries. "We're trying to develop a slate of individuals to populate these (subsidiary) boards," said Lawrence Young, CROET's president. A total of five subsidiaries are expected to be created under CROET's recently adopted strategic plan. The other two subsidiaries are CROET Foundation Inc., responsible for handling CROET's grant operations, and CROET Investments Inc., which would administer the organization's revolving loan fund for small and startup businesses. In addition, the CROET Holding Co. will be established to serve as a parent company for the subsidiary corporations. CROET officials say creating the holding company and its subsidiaries will insulate each corporation from legal and tax liabilities accumulated by the other corporations. [*][I] All Contents.cCopyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 5 Whitfield, panel seek Bush review of uranium deal - By Bill Bartleman The Paducah Sun Wednesday, January 31, 2001 The Clinton administration deal gave USEC permission to buy already enriched uranium, which plant workers say threatens their jobs. Members of a congressional committee are asking the Bush administration to review a last-minute decision by the Clinton administration to allow USEC Inc. to import more processed nuclear fuel from Russia. USEC Inc. is the broker for a specific amount of Russian weapons grade uranium, as part of an agreement to keep the uranium away from countries that might use it to build nuclear weapons. USEC processes the uranium to the grade needed to fuel nuclear power generating plants. In the final days of the Clinton administration, the Enrichment Oversight Committee agreed to an amendment allowing USEC to purchase civilian- produced enriched uranium that is ready for use in power plants. On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, and other members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote a letter to Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, requesting the Enrichment Oversight Committee review its earlier decision. The EOC was formed to oversee implementation of the U.S./Russian Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Agreement. The committee, chaired by Rice, has some new members who are part of the Bush administration. The lawmakers are asking for a staff briefing on the review by Feb. 5. Members of Kentucky's congressional delegation, the labor union representing workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and others have criticized the decision by the Clinton administration, contending it will cause production cuts in Paducah and eventually the loss of jobs. They also allege it is part of a plan by USEC Inc., the nation's only supplier and producer of nuclear fuel, to eventually stop all domestic production and become a broker of foreign-produced fuel. Critics say that would result in the United States becoming too dependent on foreign sources and jeopardize national security interests. USEC denies the allegations, saying the amended agreement with Russia would result in lower prices for the imported nuclear fuel, which would help make USEC more competitive in the world market. Whitfield says the amended agreement is a bad deal. "We are concerned that this 'side agreement' is inconsistent and dilutes the important non-proliferation objectives of the HEU agreement, " Whitfield said. He added that the original agreement involves highly enriched uranium from dismantled nuclear weapons, while the new agreement involves commercially produced fuel for power plants. "Our top priority must be to maintain a domestically produced uranium supply," Whitfield said. "The HEU agreement has already jeopardized our production capabilities and this side agreement could do even further harm. This is a case of what's good for USEC may not be good for Paducah, Portsmouth, the U.S. uranium production industry and our national security." USEC already has announced plans to end production in Portsmouth in July, which could leave 2,000 workers without jobs. In addition to Whitfield, the letter to Rice was signed by Energy and Commerce Chairman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, R-La.; ranking member John Dingell, D-Mich.; Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas; and five other congressmen. ***************************************************************** 6 HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE MEMBERS QUESTION CHANGES TO RUSSIAN URANIUM DEAL IN CLINTON'S FINAL HOURS Committee on Energy and Commerce News Release: 1/30/ 2001 Ken Johnson Peter Sheffield 202.225.5735 WASHINGTON (JANUARY 30) - Led by Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-LA), a bipartisan group of House Energy and Commerce Committee members today raised concerns over the Clinton Administration' s last minute changes to a crucial non-proliferation agreement to purchase uranium taken from Russia's dismantled nuclear weapons. In a letter sent today to President Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Chairman Tauzin along with Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX), Ranking Member John Dingell (D-MI), Reps. Rick Boucher (D-VA), Richard Burr (R-NC), Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Ted Strickland (D-OH), and Thomas Sawyer (D-OH), called for a thorough review of then President Clinton's authorization of changes to the US/Russian Highly Enriched Uranium Agreement (HEU Agreement) that would allow Russia to export uranium produced in its civilian uranium enrichment plants. "We are concerned that this ' side agreement' is inconsistent and dilutes the important non-proliferation objectives of the HEU Agreement," the Congressmen wrote. "We are also concerned with the impact this additional material may have on the struggling U.S. domestic uranium industry." A landmark "swords-to- plowshares" program, the HEU Agreement was signed in 1993 with the goal of purchasing uranium from Russia' s dismantled nuclear warheads, and peacefully recycle it as fuel to generate electricity. However, the changes to the HEU Agreement approved in the final hours of the Clinton Administration allow for the exclusive importation of large amounts of civilian- produced Russian uranium by the United States Enrichment Corporation. ; (ATTACHED BELOW IS A COPY OF THE LETTER SENT TODAY TO NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR CONDOLEEZZA RICE): January 30, 2001 Ms. Condoleezza Rice Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs National Security Council Old Executive Office Building Washington, D.C. 20503 Dear Ms. Rice: We are writing to you regarding decisions made in the final days of the Clinton Administration by the Enrichment Oversight Committee (EOC) regarding an amendment to the implementing contract to the US/Russian Highly Enriched Uranium Agreement (HEU Agreement). As you know, the EOC is chaired by the National Security Council (NSC) and was created by Executive Order 13085 to oversee the implementation of the HEU Agreement including the activities of the country's Executive Agent to that agreement - - the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC). For several years, the Committee on Energy and Commerce has closely followed the activities of the EOC, and has expressed serious concerns regarding the lack of attention the NSC has afforded this vital non- proliferation agreement. Attached is a copy of a November 16, 1999 letter from former Chairman Tom Bliley to former Director Samuel Berger that described the Committee's concerns regarding the manner in which the NSC has carried out its oversight responsibilities pursuant to Executive Order 13085, and the considerable difficulty the Committee has experienced in obtaining basic information about the activities of the EOC. We share these same concerns. It is our understanding that in the waning hours of the Clinton Administration, the EOC met and approved an amendment to the implementing contract that would allow the importation of significant quantities of civilian-produced Russian separative work units (SWU). We are concerned that this "side agreement" is inconsistent and dilutes the important non-proliferation objectives of the HEU Agreement to maximize deliveries of SWU obtained from down-blended HEU from dismantled nuclear weapons, not civilian SWU produced by Russia's commercially competing gas centrifuges. We are also concerned with the impact this additional material may have on the struggling U.S. domestic uranium industry. Furthermore, we have concerns regarding the terms of the proposed side agreement that preclude other interested private companies from any opportunity to bid on the imported civilian-produced Russian SWU. It is important that the implementing contract to the HEU Agreement is renegotiated and extended before the current implementing contract expires at the end of this calendar year 2001. However, we do not believe the EOC or the Clinton Administration, in its recent actions, adequately considered the implications or potential impact the importation of additional civilian-produced Russian SWU may have on national security interests. Therefore, we request that the EOC review its decision to allow USEC to act on behalf of the United States to finalize any amendment to the implementing contract. We also request that the EOC initiate a full analysis of the potential impact the side agreement could have on national security interests, including its impact on the U.S. domestic uranium industry. The EOC had ignored a recommendation by the General Accounting Office in its December 2000 report "Implications of the U.S. Purchase of Russian Highly Enriched Uranium" that such an analysis be conducted. Furthermore, in order to obtain a better understanding of the EOC's activities, we are requesting that NSC provide a briefing on these matters to the Committee staff by February 5, 2001. Thank you for your cooperation sp; W.J. "Billy" Tauzin Chairman Committee on Energy and Commerce John D. Dingell Ranking Member Committee on Energy and Commerce Joe Barton Chairman-designate Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality Committee on Energy and Commerce Rick Boucher Member of Congress Richard Burr Member of Congress Thomas C. Sawyer Member of Congress Ed Whitfield Member of Congress Ted Strickland Member of Congress cc: The Honorable Colin L. Powell, Secretary of State The Honorable Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy The Honorable Paul H. O'Neill, Secretary of Treasury The Honorable Donald Evans, Secretary of Commerce -30- The Committee on Energy and Commerce 2125 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-2927 Feedback ***************************************************************** 7 DOE solicits bids for replacement plant 01/31/01 OFFICIALS LOOK TO FILL VOID OF FAILED TREATMENT FACILITY THAT COST TAXPAYERS $489 MILLION, MORE THAN 10 YEARS TO DEVELOP Web posted Wednesday, January 31, 2001 augusta Forums. Staff Writer A replacement for a failed Savannah River Site plant is inching closer to reality. Officials at the federal nuclear-weapons site hope to solicit bids for the project in June, said John Reynolds, the U.S. Department of Energy's program manager for the effort. The new plant will replace the failed In-Tank Precipitation Facility, which cost taxpayers $489 million by the time it was declared inoperable in January 1998. Some cost estimates for the replacement plant have gone as high as $1 billion. About 50 people, many representing potential bidders for the job of designing, building and operating the new plant, attended an Energy Department workshop Tuesday in Augusta. The meeting attracted representatives from companies such as Bechtel, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Inc., COGEMA Inc., Foster Wheeler Environmental Corp., Duke Engineering and Services, Burns and Roe Enterprises Inc. and Fluor Corp. The event was held to inform potential bidders about the latest efforts to develop a new method for treating the waste the failed plant was supposed to handle. ``We heard a common theme that the best way for vendors to find out what's going on at the research level was to talk to the people who are doing the work on the benchtops,'' Mr. Reynolds said. The In-Tank plant was supposed to treat about 30 million gallons of a salty, highly radioactive liquid waste now stored in dozens of underground tanks at SRS. But despite more than a decade of development, engineers could not prevent an excess of flammable, hazardous benzene from building up inside the plant's tanks during operation. Since the setback, the Energy Department has worked to find a new method to replace the facility. Three methods remain under consideration. ``At this point, I cannot say there is a strong leader,'' Mr. Reynolds said of the three possibilities. The department might select a method before soliciting bids, or it might allow the winning bidder to help select a method from the three, he said. ***************************************************************** 8 DOE post called 'a can of worms' January 30, 2001 By Lisa Friedman WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON--Just what has Spencer Abraham gotten himself into? In his first week at work, President Bush's new energy secretary found himself smack in the middle of California's exploding energy crisis, one so volatile it threatens to rock the state's vibrant economy. And that might not even be his worst problem. In taking on the Department of Energy, Abraham assumed control of a $17 billion annual budget, about 16,000 employees and more than 50 laboratories, weapons facilities and environmental cleanup sites around the country. But the agency he inherits also is overflowing with troubles, from financial mismanagement to desperately low morale among scientists, persistent security mishaps to staffing shortages that threaten to reach crisis level by the end of the decade. "It's really a can of worms, this job," said Martin Butcher, director of security programs for the Washington nonprofit, Physicians for Social Responsibility. "The whole thing is really a nightmare. I mean, I wouldn't want Spencer Abraham's job." Most of the management problems awaiting Abraham are messy, long- term and not the least bit glamorous, said T.J. Glauthier, who has spent three years at the department as deputy secretary to Clinton's appointee, Bill Richardson. "It's bad news if you don't do it right, but when you do it right no one really talks about it," Glauthier said. The General Accounting Office, the Congressional watchdog agency, warned recently that "while DOE has made improvements in its management, the department continues to face significant performance and accountability challenges." In Washington, that's government-speak for "you've got your work cut out for you." Among the big problems Abraham will face: The National Ignition Facility. Under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the NIF is expected to be the world largest laser--and at one of the world's largest price tags: $3.5 billion and counting. Eventually, the NIF is expected to simulate hydrogen bomb explosions on a tiny scale by blasting BB-size capsules of radioactive fuel with 192 powerful ultraviolet laser beams. But the project is already $1 billion over budget and six years late. The problems posed an enormous embarrassment to former Secretary Richardson, and promise to remain a thorn in Abraham's side. Energy officials have already addressed many management flaws responsible for the NIF setbacks. Still, government auditors report, confusion continues to reign in many parts of the agency about who has responsibility for what job. Security. While deregulation and the mess that California has made of it dominate the agency's attention for now, the serious security lapses that thrust the energy department onto the front pages for weeks at a time last year are still waiting in the wings. With the recent creation of an autonomous agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, to oversee such issues, the agency has an opportunity to make important reforms. Federal investigators said, however it was the agency's deeply rooted culture of "bureaucratic insolence" and "low regard for security issues" that led to lax control and the repeated mishandling of sensitive NUCLEAR weapons information. "If these challenges are not resolved, DOE may continue to face periodic incidents that threaten the nation's control over its NUCLEAR weapons and other sensitive information," federal investigators warned. Morale is low and turnover. It's high. The combination, many fear, could create its own disaster inside the agency. Scientists complain they have been made scapegoats for systemic security problems and theyresent as punitive new security measures like polygraph tests. Retirement, and lucrative jobs in the private sector are becoming more attractive alternatives, draining much of the agency's talent. In the words of the GAO: "a crisis is looming." At his confirmation hearing, Abraham said boosting morale would be one of his top priorities. Vowing to examine the controversial policy on lie detector tests, Abraham said he intends to create "the kind of environment that attracts and retains talented people." "Many of the challenges that DOE faces," government auditors werote, "... are long-standing, and sustained management attention will be needed to correct these weaknesses." ');}// --> ***************************************************************** 9 House members seek review of Clinton administration decision Posted at 6:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, January 30, 2001 WASHINGTON (AP)--A bipartisan group of House members asked the White House on Tuesday to re-examine a decision to permit more Russian uranium imports. A letter sent by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., to National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice urged her to review a Clinton administration decision to let U.S. Enrichment Corp. buy commercial uranium from Russia. That would be in addition to uranium salvaged from former Soviet warheads and sold by USEC to nuclear power plants. The letter was signed by Tauzin; the committee's top Democrat, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, and six other committee members. It said they were concerned about Russia's gas centrifuges competing with U.S. plants as a source of electricity-grade uranium. Reps. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, and Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., were among those who signed the letter. Both have said they fear that in the future, USEC might buy more uranium from Russia and reduce the need for American-processed uranium. Their districts include the nation's only uranium processing plants. ``We should not allow this new deal with Russia to proceed. We must put our national security and domestic energy security needs before USEC's desire to increase their profits,'' said Strickland. USEC said a new agreement for commercially produced uranium from Russia at market prices is essential because otherwise, the company will have to continue paying above-market prices for the warhead uranium. USEC said it expects to work out a final agreement with Tenex, its Russian counterpart, later this year. AP-CS-01-30-01 1801EST --> ***************************************************************** 10 Depleted Uranium, Just The Tip of the Iceberg in Serbia BY JEREMY SCAHILL BELGRADE — Already in Serbia the effects of NATO’s depleted uranium munitions are apparently being felt by members of the Yugoslav Army who fought in Kosovo. Two former soldiers were recently discovered to have cancerous eye tumors. The Belgrade weekly tabloid Nedeljni Telegraf recently reported that three officers from the Army’s Pristina Corps died of leukemia, while 10 others now suffer from the disease; four of them terminally. They join the dozens of soldiers involved with the wars in the Balkans now sick from what is being referred to as “Balkans Syndrome.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t until soldiers from Western countries began dying of cancer and getting sick that depleted uranium in the Balkans became an international issue for the corporate media. A fact not lost on people here. “The West wouldn’t give a damn if their troops weren’t getting sick and dying,” says 53 year-old taxi driver Nenad Bulatovic. “If we get sick, that’ s collateral damage. We call that America’s Milosevic Syndrome.” While leading scientists and environmentalists in Serbia are indeed concerned about the effects of DU munitions, they say it is just the tip of the toxic iceberg. “Depleted uranium is just one page in a very thick book of the ecological and health catastrophe caused by the NATO bombing,” says Vukasin Pavlovic, Director of the Belgrade- based ECOCenter. Pavlovic’s group has just issued a ground-breaking report titled “Environmental Impacts of the NATO War in Yugoslavia.” Though the report does deal with the question of depleted uranium, it seeks to sound alarm bells about the lesser-publicized effects of NATO’s targeting of petrochemical factories, oil refineries and chemical plants during the 1999 bombing. "War-induced negative effects cannot be viewed as collateral damage, because they are not induced by unintentional targeting, but by the deliberate and planned destruction of industrial and other environmentally hazardous systems,” the report states. During the bombing it became domestic wisdom not to eat fish from the Danube River because of concerns the NATO bombardment had contaminated the international waterway. Their fears are certainly not unfounded. One of the stunning revelations in the report is the sheer quantity of toxins released into the Danube, the source of drinking water for 10 million Europeans. The report highlights NATO’s April 14-15th strikes on the Petrochemical Industrial Complex in Pancevo, which lies on the banks of the Danube, 10 miles outside of Belgrade. Within moments of the bombings, a devastating toxic cocktail poured into the river. This included some 3,000 tons of alkalis, 1,400 tons of vinyl-chloride monomers (VCMs), 1,000 tons of ethylene dichloride and 800 tons of 33% hydrochloric acid, according to the report. Attacks on the plant also resulted in an estimated 20 tons of highly carcinogenic VCMs entering the atmosphere. In 78 days of attacks, the petrochemical plant was bombed 9 times. “NATO didn’t use chemical weapons during the bombing,” says Dr. Zorka Vukmirovic, a leading environmental physicist and one of the authors of the report. “But indirectly it caused the effects of chemical weapons use. If you release so many hazardous substances, major air pollutants and carcinogens in the vicinity of big cities like Belgrade and Nis, it is obviously a deliberate action against the civilian population.” But NATO’s attacks on the Pancevo petrochemical plant are not limited to Serbia. Environmental groups and environment ministries from throughout the Balkans have discovered contamination of the Danube in several other countries. There are also studies from Greek environmentalists that the bombing caused increased pollution levels in the air over the northern Greek city of Xanthi. The ECOCenter’s report also raises particular concern over the repeated attacks on an oil refinery situated in a populated area in Serbia’s second largest city Novi Sad. The report estimates that over the course of 12 NATO attacks on the refinery, some 80,000 tons of crude oil were incinerated, exposing the city’s residents to a high concentration of hazardous, carcinogenic and toxic substances multiple times during the bombing. “These compounds have a high cancer risk, particularly when inhaled, ”writes Professor Pavlovic. “Their deposition in the environment also jeopardizes other environmental media, particularly food storages and grain silos.” “The people of Novi Sad are and will continue to be victims of the NATO bombing,” says Dr. Vukmirovic. The report estimates that up to 50% of the sites targeted by NATO warplanes were “industrial and other hazardous objects with high environmental risks.” Professor Pavlovic is now calling for modification of international war law conventions and standards. “Crimes against nature and its ecosystems must be added to the list of war crimes, ”he says. “International war law should confirm that ecocide, equal to genocide, is the most harmful and most dangerous form of destruction of nature.” The environmental destruction wrought by NATO’s attacks continues to pierce through everyday life in Serbia. Dr. Vukmirovic says she doesn’t drink the milk from a leading dairy farm near Pancevo for fear of contamination, “I only buy milk from Subotica (in the north of Serbia),” she says. Professor Pavlovic admits, “I love fish soup, but all of the scientists I know who are monitoring the Danube tell me not to eat it, so I just go without.” These sentiments are echoed at Green Markets around Belgrade where people make it a practice of asking merchants where their food is from. “We know they lie sometimes if they have goods from an area heavily hit by NATO,” says Mirjana, a mother of 2. “It just makes me feel better to ask.” There are also fears in the agricultural sector here that goods exported from Serbia will eventually require labels with warnings about their safety. Though the discussion of depleted uranium is certainly not new in Serbia, the current publicity makes it difficult to go anywhere without encountering a discussion or mention of DU. “Carla Del Ponte should take her depleted uranium out of this country before she takes Milosevic, ”a70-something pensioner said outside the press conference of the Chief War Crimes Prosecutor when she was in Belgrade last week (He was not allowed in to the press conference). In Kosovo, NATO has identified some 112 sites where it acknowledges using depleted uranium munitions. But NATO has not given the government in Belgrade a comprehensive list for the rest of Serbia. Estimates from the Yugoslav Army say that as much as 1.5 tons of DU was dropped on other areas of Serbia. Authorities in Belgrade have to date confirmed 5 sites in Serbia other than Kosovo where depleted uranium munitions were used. Four of these have been fenced off and declared public health risks. Since NATO’s bombing ended in June 1999, a number of reports from international agencies have examined the environmental impact of the NATO bombing. In several instances, these studies have supported NATO’s contention that the consequences are negligible. In the first visit of the United Nations Environmental Program to Serbia weeks after the attacks ended, the agency declared they found no negative impact of the use of depleted uranium. When asked what methodology was used to search for DU contamination, the head of the delegation, Pekka Havisto, said they had taken random soil samples in Serbia. Scientists here say that’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Rather than publicizing the fact that NATO refused to provide the UNEP with a map of areas targeted by DU munitions, the agency elected to declare it had found no significant health risks. “The United Nations tried to diminish or reduce the scope and negative environmental impacts of the NATO campaign,” says Professor Pavlovic. Eventually NATO released the map of 112 sites in Kosovo, most likely a fraction of the actual total. Now, almost two years after the bombing campaign started, the UN has begun analyzing the areas. But that’s just Kosovo. The rest of Serbia remains in the dark because of NATO’s refusal to make public the full extent of its DU use. Without a highly detailed map of areas hit by depleted uranium, future health consequences may be the only way to discover where measures might have been taken to prevent further tragedies. Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist based in Belgrade. He reported live daily for Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! during the 1999 NATO war and was one of the few foreign journalists in Belgrade to witness the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in October. He can ©Copyrighted 1997-2000 All Rights Reserved. Common Dreams. www.commondreams.org ***************************************************************** 11 Press release on Depleted Uranium WINGS OF DEATH & THE SECOND EVENT THEORY EURATOM READING LIST HE'S KIDDING? DEPLETED URANIUM SCIENTISTS BLAME RADIATION UPDATES ON THE THEORY HEALTH EFFECTS NEWS Magnox consultation - Environment Agency put on notice COMARE'S SELLAFIELD REPORT -THE FATAL FLAW LEUKAEMIA IN WALES: LATEST DEVELOPMENTS West Mersea A Geo-Physicist out of his depth and out of date: aresponse to the MoD's Scientific Adviser, ˙˙˙ ˙The clash of opinion over DU's alleged low level radiation hazard ˙is, essentially, one of common sense versus the bogus science ˙of the International Commission on Radiological Protection and ˙its satellites. Common sense says that mutations are to be expected when cells receive chronic local doses from insoluble oxide particles (a 0.5 micron U238 particle delivers 10 times natural background to the cells within range of its alpha decays); but ICRP's model says "we average the dose across the whole lung or the whole body and it's very small compared with Natural Background." They go on to say: "We know the relationship between cancer and dose from studying the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and the dose from DU is too small to do any harm." NRPB says the Hiroshima and Nagasaki studies are "pivotal". There are many criticisms of them, but the most telling is that they are completely silent on internal radiation, as both the "exposed" group (those who were in the open when the bombs went off) and the control group (those who were shielded or absent at the time) lived in the cities and were therefore equally exposed to ingesting, inhaling and absorbing fallout. The "exposed" group had ˙ ˙a large dose of ˙externally delivered ˙gamma rays, ˙at high dose rate. ˙The control group did not, but both groups had ˙chronic low doses from ˙internal ˙alpha and beta emitters ˙at low dose rate. Secondly, ICRP's estimate of the cancer and leukaemia yield at low dose is derived by looking at the two high dose data points (i.e. large gamma doses to two subgroups of the "exposed" - one close to ground zero, the other more distant) and connecting them in a straight line down to zero dose. This extrapolation to the low dose region has been widely criticised on various grounds. For example, Dudley Goodhead, one of the UK's most senior radiation biologists, calls it "a large region of uncertainty". A further shortcoming is that doses are averaged over large volumes of tissue, although it is well known that radiation damage to body cells is caused by discrete tracks which either hit vital structures or miss them altogether. A simple but valid analogy: a gunman shoots at a football crowd; the conventional ICRP view divides the kinetic energy of the six bullets into the thousands of people in the stadium, but in the real world six people are dead while the rest are unscathed. The fact that cancers are also known to be monoclonal (i.e. to start with mutations to one cell) ought to alert us to the inadequacy of the averaging approach. The central concepts of ICRP's estimates of disease at low dose have rat4211.htm ICRP's model is physics based. Radiation biologists know it's deeply The MoD's scientific adviser Keith O'Nions is, on the other hand, a geo-physicist. It is obvious from his pronouncements that he himself just takes advice from the usual suspects and recycles it. The bottom line is that he is years out of date. ICRP's model is in error by a factor of at least 100 times. Busby et al have examined (Busby, C. Scott Cato, M. 1998 Increases in Leukemia in Infants in Wales and Scotland Following Chernobyl: Evidence for Errors in Statutory Risk Estimates. Energy and Environment Vol. 11 2000, No. 2 127 - 139) the sharp and temporally well defined increase in infant leukaemia reported from five countries in the 18 months following the Chernobyl accident and compared NRPB's prediction of the leukaemia yield (which NRPB based on their own dose assessment) with the cases actually observed. The authors of this paper point out that the data suggest an error in the presently accepted risk factors for radiation induced leukaemia of about 100-fold or more. Since the leukaemia was reported for infants aged 0 - 1 year, and since the population at risk was extremely large, it is difficult to argue that factors like population mixing confound the idea that the disease was caused by radioactive fallout. Other studies which purport to show no association between leukaemia and contamination are either demonstrably flawed or actually show a positive effect. The Low Level Radiation Campaign has published a substantial critique LLRC has been working on these issues since 1992. We issued warnings about DU particles in lymph nodes in 1999. It's a relief to see that the rest of the world is now catching up. Press release: immediate use: 13 January 2001 LLRC office 'phone: +44 (0)1597 824771 (United Kingdom) Depleted Uranium arms: LLRC adviser to address MEPs ˙˙˙ ˙Dr Chris Busby, scientific adviser to the Low Level Radiation ˙Campaign, is to speak to MEPs at an open hearing in Strasbourg ˙on Tuesday (16 January). The meeting has been called by the Green ˙group in the Parliament. He will speak about ˙˙˙fundamental flaws in the science underlying radiation risk factors; ˙˙˙ research published in the scientific literature showing that increases in infant leukaemia following Chernobyl were 100 times higher than predicted by the National Radiological Protection Board; the precise type of hazard arising from inhalation of insoluble Uranium Oxide particles; the need for monitoring DU in the lymph nodes of veterans and civilians in exposed areas; the need for international co-operation to develop and deploy suitable instruments for detecting internal DU; the need for good quality epidemiological studies based on health records of veterans who served in the Gulf War and Balkans. Green MEP Jean Lambert said: Dr Busby’s work shows that NRPB predictions greatly underestimate the number of actual cases and deaths caused by Depleted Uranium. We are sure that when MEPs meeting in Strasbourg hear the results of his research they will want to put pressure on NATO members to ban these shells. Other speakers due to address the hearing are Pekka Haavisto, head of the UNEP team investigating DU in Kosova, and Professor Asaf Durakovitch, who has developed a technique for analysing DU in the urine of veterans. Since 1999 LLRC has warned that official agencies were underestimating the danger of inhaling ceramic dust from DU weapons. The Campaign made a presentation to the Royal Society’s panel on DU in July 2000. This weekend one of the UK’s most influential radiation biologists has echoed LLRC’s concerns:- Professor Dudley Goodhead, head of the British Medical Research Council’s radiation and genome stability unit at Harwell, and a member of the Royal Society panel, is quoted in New Scientist (13 January, p. 5) extract from New Scientist article ˙˙˙ BURNING URANIUM FORMS SMALL PARTICLES OF URANIUM OXIDES, BETWEEN ˙˙˙0.1 AND 10 MICRONS WIDE, WHICH CAN BE INHALED. WHITE BLOOD CELLS ˙˙˙SCAVENGE THE PARTICLES IN THE LUNGS AND DEPOSIT THEM IN THE TRACHEOBRONCHIAL ˙˙˙LYMPH NODES. THEY ARE HIGHLY INSOLUBLE, AND MIGHT NOT SHOW UP ˙˙˙AT ALL IN URINE, WHILE STILL EMITTING INTENSE LOCAL ALPHA AND ˙˙˙BETA RADIATION, SAYS GOODHEAD. THAT COULD DAMAGE BLOOD STEM CELLS, ˙˙˙ CAUSING LEUKAEMIA. "IF THE URINE TESTS SHOW NORMAL LEVELS [OF ˙˙˙URANIUM] THAT DOES NOT MEAN THERE IS NO DANGER", HE WARNS. NOTES: Dr Busby will be speaking at a press conference on Tuesday 16 January at 3pm in the Strasbourg Parliament in Room 2.2 (Alexander Langer Room); and to MEPs in the same room at 4.30pm. He may be contacted via 01970 639315 or by mobile telephone 07989 428833, which should also work while he is travelling and in Strasbourg. Richard Bramhall, co-ordinator of the Low Level Radiation Campaign has a good understanding of Dr Busby's work and can be contacted on 01597 824771 GREEN PARTY CONTACTS: Peter Lang (UK Green MEPs Press Officer) 0207 407 6280 / 01531 670 298 / 0776 997 0691 Jean Lambert MEP (Strasbourg) 0033 3881 75507 Caroline Lucas MEP (Strasbourg) 0033 3881 75153 Eluned Haf: (European Parliament Green Group Press Officer) 0032 49748 0255 / 0033 38817 2936 LOW LEVEL RADIATION CAMPAIGN The Knoll, Montpellier Park, Llandrindod Wells, Powys LD1 5LW U.K. (+44)(0) 1597 824771 Press release: immediate use: 9 January 2001 LLRC office 'phone: +44 (0)1597 824771 (United Kingdom) Campaign condemns Royal Society Depleted Uranium weapons investigation and warns that European Union and United Nations investigations are heading for a dead end "Exposure route and biological mechanism must be considered" ˙˙˙ The Low Level Radiation Campaign has condemned the Royal Society ˙˙˙panel on depleted Uranium as a sham following comments by its ˙˙˙chairman Professor Brian Spratt ("Today" BBC Radio 4, 9th January). ˙˙˙ Campaign co-ordinator Richard Bramhall said ˙"Professor Spratt’s statement that depleted Uranium weapons are ˙"here to stay because they are very successful" reveals a bias ˙that is inappropriate in a supposedly independent investigation. ˙Further, he has pre-empted the panel’s report by saying that any ˙increased risk of leukaemia in exposed troops would be slight. ˙In fact preliminary analysis of the leukaemia deaths among Italian ˙calculation) It is wrong to reach any conclusions about the health ˙effects of DU in veterans before a thorough epidemiological investigation ˙has been carried out." LLRC warns that inquiries into the possible links between exposure to depleted Uranium (DU) and leukaemia are likely to be frustrated. It is reasonable to assume that the method the Italian and other governments are using to monitor troops is urine analysis. This method cannot reveal the extent to which their lymph nodes contain insoluble Uranium particles - the exposure route which is now widely admitted to be the most hazardous. Chronic internal irradiation of lymph tissues provides a mechanism for genetic mutation even though amounts of Uranium in the body would be far below the threshold for chemical toxicity and consequent kidney disfunction. LLRC also warns against relying on advisers such as the International Commission on Radiological Protection or the European Commission’s ˙"These people are biased and embedded in the pro-nuclear culture. ˙They have a long track record of failing to take account of shortcomings ˙in the establishment model of radiation risk. We can safely predict ˙that, in their opinion, any likely level of radiation from DU ˙was too low to explain the leukaemias. A similar fate befell official ˙investigation of the Seascale (Sellafield, Cumbria, UK) cluster ˙of childhood leukaemia, which can be linked to high lymphatic ˙doses from plutonium particles. In this instance, following "independent" ˙investigations by both NRPB and COMARE (Committee on Medical Aspects ˙of Radiation in the Environment), inappropriate models and inaccurate ˙or missing calculations resulted in the conclusion that the plutonium ˙FACTORS: THE FATAL FLAW IN HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI STUDIES Conventional risk estimates are based on disease rates in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors. The UK’s National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) says these studies are "pivotal". They are, however, useless to predict risk from DU dust as they are exclusively concerned with external irradiation. They are completely silent on the effects of internal radiation from fallout isotopes which have been ingested, inhaled, or absorbed. The "study" group was exposed to the single flash of acute, high dose, high dose rate gamma irradiation from the bomb blast; the "control" group was the population of the cities who had been shielded or were elsewhere at the time. Both groups were thus equally exposed to internal contamination. Official risk factors at very low dose assume that it is valid to make a straight line extrapolation from the high dose data derived from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki "exposed" groups. This extrapolation is now seen as rat4211.htm), and data from Chernobyl shows a more complex relationship with far larger effects per unit dose in the very low dose region. A further flaw in NRPB’s view is their use of average dose. Energy from radioactive decay events is averaged, as units of energy divided into units of mass of tissue, across large volumes of tissue, or even across the entire human body. In reality, the alpha decays from particles of DU travel only 30 microns, or about 5 cell diameters. All the energy is deposited in a microscopic sphere of living cells. ASIMPLE BUT VALID ANALOGY: a gunman shoots at a football crowd; the conventional NRPB view divides the kinetic energy of the six bullets into the thousands of people in the stadium, but in the real world six people are dead while the rest are unscathed. The MoD claims that there is no evidence of a link between DU and leukaemia, but the most hazardous exposure route - inhalation of created only in the Gulf War and the Balkans. It is easy to cite confounding factors such as civil disruption, discontinuity in health records, sanctions, and other pollutants which would make epidemiological studies unreliable. Nevertheless, Dr Busby has found that since the Gulf War, childhood leukaemia is most prevalent in those areas of Iraq where DU was used. OUR RECORD ON DU LLRC predicted in 1999 that health problems would emerge from NATO’s use of DU in Kosovo. In October 1999 LLRC attended a seminar organised by MEDACT (Medical and, having objected to misleading and irrelevant presentations by the main speakers, was invited to make a submission. This can be In January 2000 LLRC criticised the composition of the Royal Society panel on DU (i.e. the Spratt panel whose findings the MoD is awaiting). Professor Spratt admitted that the panel lacked biologists and asked LLRC for recommendations. LLRC nominated Professor Dudley Goodhead, who is now a panellist. LLRC was invited to give evidence to the RS panel. Dr Chris Busby of Green Audit, scientific adviser to LLRC, presented a paper - "Science on Trial" - in July 2000. This was also given to the international conference organised by the Campaign Against Depleted Uranium in - MAIN POINTS: ˙˙˙ ·crisis of confidence in scientific model used by official risk ˙˙˙agencies (NRPB/ICRP) error in NRPB/ICRP risk factors at a minimum of 100-fold. ·existence of novel exposure route for microscopic ceramic DU particles in lymph nodes; ·known persistence of insoluble Uranium and Plutonium in lymph nodes; ·calculation of radiation dose from insoluble Uranium particles to local tissue - doses from particles in the size range admitted to result in battlefield conditions are significant proportion of Natural Background. In Autumn of 2000 Dr Busby visited Iraq. Accompanied by senior military staff he examined burnt out tanks, visited hospitals and interviewed He found that radioactivity in air was far higher in the battlefields than in the cities, supporting the hypothesis that inhalation of resuspended DU dust is a persistent hazard. Dr Busby is the UK representative on the European Committee on Radiation Risk and has been invited to advise the European Parliament on DU sp;Study of returning peacekeepers and aid workers is a vital indicator of likely effects in civilian populations in battle zones where direct epidemiology may be problematic. The health of the soldiers and aid workers can be closely monitored and matched with an unexposed population in ideal conditions for comparison. ;In order to inform epidemiological studies of returned troops and aid workers, direct measurement of Uranium in their lungs and tracheobronchial lymph nodes should be carried out. NRPB has confirmed (in personal correspondence with LLRC) that, though difficult, this is possible in principle, by means of detecting the gamma signal from daughter isotopes of Uranium (i.e. those to which U. decays). Insufficient equipment exists even in UK. LLRC recommends that NATO governments should provide substantial resources for rapid development and deployment of dedicated monitoring equipment. ; Post mortem and post operative body tissues of at risk people must be retained and analysed for radioactive content, especially the tracheobronchial lymph nodes. ;Although urine analysis is not likely to inform directly on lymph node burden it should be carried out on all returning troops and aid workers. Results should be analysed by reference to clinical symtoms to see if there is a relationship. Results from different countries should be pooled. NOTES 1 The natural rate of leukaemia in various age groups is known. We can assume that there were 15000 Italian soldiers in Kosova and or Bosnia; 5 have died of leukaemia. At a known general incidence to mortality ratio of 1.58, this means that in the one effective year since the exposure there have probably been 8 cases (i.e. including the 5 dead). (This is calculated by 5 x 1.58 = 7.9) It is 16.7 times the 0.48 cases expected in a population of 15000 men of average age 35. If the average age is lower, as it may be, then the relative risk is greater. If there were fewer than 15000 at risk, then the relative risk is again greater. These calculations do not support Pr. Spratt’s claim that risks are slight. 2 a group appointed by the Scientific and Technical Committee of the EC under article 31 of the Euratom Treaty 1957 4 Robert Fisk reports in the Independent "Review" (UK) (8 January 2001) that in Cumbria shells were test fired into tunnels, and the resulting dust sealed into concrete containers and buried. This woul not have been done if the authorities believed their own "No risk" rhetoric. Dan Kenny made similar claims about tests in Dumfies and Galloway in 1999. 5 Busby, C. Scott Cato, M. 2000 Increases in Leukemia in Infants in Wales and Scotland Following Chernobyl: Evidence for Errors in Statutory Risk Estimates in Energy and Environment Vol. 11 2000, FINDINGS: A sharp and temporally well defined increase in infant leukaemia was reported from five countries in the 18 months following the Chernobyl accident. Comparison of NRPB’s prediction of the leukaemia yield (which NRPB based on their own dose assessment) with the cases actually observed reveals a minimum 100-fold error in NRPB / ICRP risk factors. Since the leukaemia was reported for infants aged 0 - 1 year, and since the population at risk was extremely large, it cannot be argued that factors like population mixing confound the hypothesis that the radioactivity caused the disease. This study is relevant to DU because a large quantity of particulate radioactivity was transported around the world by the Chernobyl fire. The Low Level Radiation Campaign is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales Reg. No. 3821690 ***************************************************************** 12 PLUTONIUM TABLETS IN THESSALONIKI Macedonian Press Agency: News in English, 01-01-30 //www.hri.org/MPA. Thessaloniki, 30 January 2001 (20:05 UTC+2) Economic Crime Enforcement Agents watching Bulgarians, who were suspects of illegal cigarettes trade, located radioactive tiles buried at the Kouri forest, 10 kilometers outside Thessaloniki. According to Thessaloniki's police authorities, the trafficking of plutonium and americium radioactive tiles was conducted by members of the Bulgarian Mafia, who brought them to the country in order to find buyers in Greece or another European country. No further details are available by the authorities while it was not made known if there were any arrests made. According to an announcement made by the Greek Atomic Energy Committee, the high toxicity radiation tiles were located on Friday, January 26 and members of the committee as well as scientists from the "Dimokritos" research center removed them from the area and they are currently kept at a safe place in a scientifically appropriate way. Greek Atomic Energy Committee president Leonidas Kamarinopoulos stated to MPA that the radioactive material is kept in a safe place, while the International Organization of Atomic Energy in Vienna has already been informed. Mr. Kamarinopoulos did not rule out the likelihood for the radioactive material to be sent abroad to be examined, while in case it is declared as "lost" by any country it will be returned to it. From his side, nuclear physics professor Kostas Papastefanou, in charge of Aristotle University Nuclear Physics Laboratory, stated to MPA that the quantity located (3 grams) is very small and does not cause concern. The trafficking of plutonium is illegal and it is sold at a very high price. It can be used as a nuclear fuel as well as in nuclear weapons, while americium is used mainly in lighting rods. An HRI Project. HTML by the HR-Net Group / Hellenic Resources Institute, Inc. mpab2html v1.01d run on Tuesday, 30 January 2001 - 19:14:26 UTC ***************************************************************** 13 Health scares hit Europe 31/01/2001 09:05 - (SA) Grafenwoehr, Germany - No one in this town of 7 000 people next door to the US Army's largest training area in Europe knows whom to believe anymore. Even Mayor Helmuth Wachter is unsure. Wachter says he only learned less than three weeks ago - from the media - that depleted-uranium ammunition was ever in the Grafenwoehr training area, and that one round was fired there in 1987, while he was mayor. Wachter's feeling of powerlessness is shared by many Europeans confronted with increasingly shrill reports on two unrelated but major issues of public safety: depleted uranium munitions and mad cow disease. Depleted uranium is a slightly radioactive heavy metal used in armour- piercing munitions. Although no sickness in Grafenwoehr - or anywhere else - has been traced back to it, the public suspects that it isn' t getting the whole story. Too often, Europeans have seen their leaders issue assurances, only to backtrack later. Now, facing dual public health scares, they are looking to their leaders for assurances they can't seem to provide, said Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England. "Safety has emerged as the defining means of a political system, " Furedi said. "The idea of safety has acquired a moral quality." After Italian peacekeepers serving in the Balkans claimed that exposure to the munitions may have caused serious illnesses, people began demanding more information from politicians. The overall scepticism results from media coverage and the secretiveness of European governments, said Howard Fienberg, an analyst with the Statistical Assessment Service, a Washington DC-based non-partisan group that studies scientific and statistical data. He cites coverage of mad cow disease as a large factor in fomenting German public outcry, even though the disease has been found in two dozen German cows - a fraction of the tens of thousands found infected in Britain. "It was not that the public was presented with evidence that there was an epidemic of mad cow-related disease in humans. The public outcry was manufactured in news headlines and tabloid journalism, " Fienberg said. Gero von Randow, a journalist with Germany's leading weekly Die Zeit, blames the politicians. "There have been many crises where politicians rule out every possibility of it being dangerous and then the media take a hold of it and they are forced to back-pedal," he said. In Remscheid, northwest Germany, a town council group is looking back 12 years to the crash of an American Thunderbolt A-10 warplane. Remembering that official reports said it posed no health threat, the town is demanding the government look again. "It can be that we are all on the wrong path - but people' s worries are only increasing," said Thomas von Aachen, a group spokesman. The handling of mad cow disease has caused widespread alarm. At first, despite warnings from European Union officials, officials stubbornly denied it had spread to German-born cattle. Now that it has, two German government ministers have had to resign. Not to be wrongfooted on depleted uranium as well, Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping summoned the U.S. charge d'affaires to demand details of the use of the ammunition in Germany. After receiving a report from U.S. military officials in Germany, Scharping suggested in parliament that the previous government of Helmut Kohl was to blame for telling the public of incidents it knew about. The military report listed four known cases involving depleted uranium across Germany, including at Grafenwoehr, where a soldier defied orders and fired a depleted-uranium round instead of a practice round in 1987. It cited another five suspected incidents between 1981 and 1990. The 35-hectare base employs 1 500 people from the Grafenwoehr area, so the town is reluctant to alienate its American neighbours. Hilda M., who wouldn't allow her full name published, works in a bakery near the base and says she is scared. "You don' t really know what goes on there," she said. Depleted uranium rounds were loaded on tanks during the Cold War but have never been used in training, said Jim Boyle, spokesman for the US Army in Europe. They have been stored in Germany since 1990 at an undisclosed place for use in missions abroad. Capt. Jeff Settle, public affairs officer at Grafenwoehr, said the 1987 incident never became an issue since no one was injured and tests found no radiation in the dirt where the live round landed. He said the Army follows strict German environmental standards and lists accident control procedures on its website. "We are not trying to hide anything on this," Settle said. "We need to live and work here, too." In 1999, the area Greens party asked the Bavarian state government whether depleted-uranium munitions were being used at Grafenwoehr. The reply quoted US military officials as saying: "The US military neither carries nor fires munitions with depleted uranium in Grafenwoehr or in other training areas." Still, Mayor Wachter wants a thorough investigation into radiation levels and cancer rates in the Grafenwoehr area. "It has made the community uneasy," said Wachter. " We want to know." ***************************************************************** 14 U.S. expert says use of DU munitions a "war crime" TUESDAY JANUARY 30, 03:58 PM By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - The man who led the U.S. army's depleted uranium (DU) assessment team in the 1991 Gulf War said on Tuesday that the continued use of such weapons was a "war crime" which should be stopped immediately. Speaking at a news conference in Parliament Dr Doug Rokke, a major in the U.S. army reserves, said he told his government as far back as 1991 of the health hazards of depleted uranium but his warnings had been consistently ignored. Rokke, 51, worked in the Gulf from November 1990 to June 1991, leading the U.S. Defence Department's DU assessment team responsible for implementing a clean-up and advising on medical care for any U.S. personnel who had been exposed to DU. "What we learned during the Gulf War and what we learned during the research scared us," Rokke said. He said that his full recommendations, detailed in a November 1995 U.S. army pamphlet entitled "handling procedures for equipment contaminated with depleted uranium or other radioactive commodities" had not been passed on to troops or civilians on the ground during NATO's 1999 war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo. An international storm broke over the use of DU munitions in January after Italy reported that six of its soldiers who served in the Balkans had died of leukaemia. But NATO chiefs have consistently denied that there is any proof that DU munitions carry any serious health risk and have rejected calls for a moratorium on their use. Rokke said it was an "absolute lie" that troops and civilians who had been exposed to DU in the Gulf and in the Balkans had not suffered health problems. "We do have birth defects, we do have tumours," he said. Rokke himself was diagnosed with reactive airway disease due to uranium poisoning. He accused the NATO governments of covering up health warnings about DU, and said their insistence that the weapons would continue to be used raised serious "moral and ethical" as well as medical issues. "When you deliberately and wilfully take radioactive waste... and throw it down in place in the world where children can pick it up and be exposed to it... that's a crime against humanity and it is a war crime," he said. He also reacted angrily to comments by German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping, who said on Saturday that fears about radiation from DU weapons were being whipped up by opponents of the Kosovo war. "I'm going to make this loud and clear," Rokke said. "The individuals who started the warnings on depleted uranium hazards... were the U.S. army's experts--myself and my team members who were tasked with cleaning up after the Gulf War." MP Alice Mahon, speaking at the same news conference, called on the British government to ban the use of DU munitions and fund a full and independent study into the risks. "An epidemiological study and urine analysis for depleted uranium will take some time," she said. "Meanwhile the government should impose a complete moratorium on the production and use of DU shells." Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 15 UN agencies are assisting a cover-up by Najib Saab The United Nations has always been exploited by superpowers as a cover-up for political schemes. While this obvious statement is not news, we have been witnessing another form of abuse, using certain United Nations specialized agencies as accomplices to environmental extermination. Afew weeks ago, NATO Secretary-General George Robertson announced that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have both confirmed that there was no proven connection between leukemia and depleted uranium (DU), thus the shells used by NATO in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999, and earlier in Iraq, were not particularly hazardous and did not represent an actual health threat. The UN has not, as yet, denied Robertson's statements, even though it is clear that at least a part of what he said was not true. UNEP had published a report in 1999 in which it requested that "highest priority should be given to finding pieces of depleted uranium and heavily contaminated surfaces, and measures should be taken for the secure storage of any contaminated material recovered." The report urged that measures be taken to prevent access to contaminated sites, and "local authorities and people concerned should be informed of the possible risks and precautionary measures." Early laboratory results from 340 samples of DU found at sites targeted by NATO during the 1999 Kosovo conflict contain Uranium 236, which indicates that at least part of the material comes from reprocessed uranium. It is hoped that the findings won't be watered down by the time the final report is published in March. However, how could NATO interpret UNEP' s reports on the issue since 1999 as indicating that the remains of DU shells are not a health hazard? The case of the World Health Organization, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. The media quoted "experts affiliated with the WHO in Geneva" as being skeptical regarding whether or not DU shells used in the Balkans had actually caused cases of leukemia among NATO forces. However, those same experts had warned in an earlier and less publicized report that children playing in war zones where bombing had occurred could be in danger. Yet for years the children of Bosnia and Kosovo, and the children of Iraq before them, have been using the remains of tanks and military vehicles destroyed by DU shells as toys, and demolished factories as playgrounds, while those are the most hazardous sites according to UNEP. The dubious silence of WHO over NATO's statements was interrupted by another ambiguous announcement from WHO headquarters in Geneva, saying that it was "unlikely that depleted-uranium ammunition used by NATO troops could have caused cancer." It further concluded that it was "unlikely" that exposure to NATO weapons containing DU "could have led to a higher risk of cancer among military personnel who served in the Balkan conflict." After this conclusion, which sounds like a bill of clean health to NATO, absolving it of responsibility for health hazards associated with DU, WHO announced that it was "planning a study to assess whether there has been an increased rate of cancer amongst military personnel who served in the Gulf War or Balkans." It also called for the cordoning off and cleaning of sites in Kosovo where depleted-uranium ammunition landed during the NATO air campaign. WHO's ambiguous position on DU, however, seems to be typical for that organization. When Environment & Development magazine launched a campaign three years ago to ban the use of asbestos, some of those benefiting from the hazardous trade relied on a 1993 WHO report which stated that there was no proof that asbestos in drinking-water constitutes a health hazard to the digestive system, in order to justify using it in public water networks. Again, no one in the organization objected to this selective use of the report. The organization's report had refrained from saying that there was proof that asbestos does not harm the digestive system either, but purposely used ambiguity in the negative form. Those relying on WHO's report to promote asbestos ignore the fact that the problem is not restricted to manufacturing, but also includes moving, cutting and then disposing of the pipes years later. All asbestos products, including asbestos cement, that are considered safe unless fibers are produced as a result of friction from drilling, scratching or breaking, will eventually reach the end of their life cycle. Despite a pictures of children playing with fragments of asbestos pipes near water network construction sites, which Environment & Development published, no explanation was forthcoming from the WHO. Do they want to apply their assumption that asbestos is safe in drinking water by asking people to stop breathing and dilute asbestos fiber in water whenever they come across its remains in construction and dumping sites? Do we blame NATO, which is a military organization with no claim to humanitarian interests, or an international organization, whose existence revolves around people' s health, when it provides, through its silence or intentional ambiguity of its reports, a suspicious cover-up for killing human beings? Could the health authorities of the US Army have been more concerned for health than WHO, when it warned in 1992 of the possibility of being more susceptible to cancer after being exposed to DU shells? Another report by a medical specialist in the British Army had warned in 1996 that soldiers who had been exposed to dust from depleted-uranium shells may be susceptible to cancer, as the percentage of radiation around bombed vehicles could exceed, by eight times, the allowed average, which makes soldiers susceptible to lung cancer, brain cancer and leukemia. Ironically, the recently leaked reports only warn of dangers to NATO soldiers! Is it a lucky strike to the environment and humanity that growing numbers of European soldiers are showing now what is being called "Balkan Syndrome," and some of them died of leukemia and other strange diseases? If it hadn't been for the attention given to those, the whole issue would have been swept under the ambiguous statements of WHO and NATO, similar to what happened after the outbreak of the "Gulf War Syndrome." What about thousands of children, and others in Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia, who died or are living ill with leukemia and a variety of cancers, assorted diseases and birth defects? What about the environmental destruction in these countries caused by depleted-uranium shells? The United Nations Environment Program should take the initiative to ensure that the role of international organizations is to protect people and the environment, at least through clear and honest statements that cannot be used as a cover for oppressive military superpowers. UN agencies will, otherwise, lose any remaining credibility. NAJIB SAAB, EDITOR IN CHIEF OF ENVIRONMENT & Copyright© 2001 The Daily Star. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 The day the dragon’s tail was tickled RGJ.com - Reno Gazette-Journal Monday January 29th, 2001 Bob Bennyhoff will never forget the phone call that awakened him 50 years ago today. On Jan. 27, 1951, Bennyhoff was the bureau chief of the Reno office of United Press International. At 5:30 a.m., his phone rang and on the other end was a very shaken E. L. Nores, justice of the peace in the southern Nevada city of Pioche. “All he could say was ‘b-b-b-big (expletive) f-f-f-flash in Las Vegas, ’”the 79-year-old Bennyhoff recalled this week from his home in Orange, Calif. “Nobody knew what the hell it was. Well, later that afternoon, they finally admitted that they had dropped one.” The “they” Bennyhoff referred to was the United States Atomic Energy Commission. The “one” was a one-kiloton atomic bomb, which was dropped from an Air Force plane onto the Nevada Proving Grounds north of Las Vegas. The test caught everyone by surprise, Bennyhoff said. “We knew they were going to start testing, but nobody knew when,” he said. “It was a complete surprise.” Newspaper reports said the blast was felt in four states — Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona — or roughly a 200-mile circle around Frenchman Flats, where the bomb was detonated. The Reno Evening Gazette dedicated the front of its local section to the test, carrying a banner headline reading “Nevada Feels Bomb Test” and subheads reading “Range Explosion Wakens Sleepers” and “Many Eyewitnesses Report Seeing Huge Glare.” While people knew the destructive force of atomic weapons from the two bombs dropped on Japan to end World War II, little was known of their long-term danger. The lead paragraphs in the Gazette’s story had almost a feature feel: Atomic scientists at the bombing range near Las Vegas tickled the dragon’s tail this morning. It was quite a tickle. The resulting explosion was heard by the residents of four states. Tickling the dragon’s tail is a term used by the scientists to describe their trick of producing low-order nuclear fission bursts without provoking the atomic blast into a full scale A-bomb explosion. Above-ground testing continued for years at the Nevada Test Site and Bennyhoff — an Army Air Corps veteran and seasoned war correspondent who also covered the nuclear tests at the Bikini Islands in the Pacific —covered most of them. “I must have covered 30 or 40 of the damned things,” he said. “Whenever they let the press in, I was down there. When they didn’t let us in, we used to have a spot on Mt. Charleston where we could watch.” Bennyhoff, who had news sources throughout the state, also was able to smuggle himself onto the test site “a couple of times” to see exactly what was being bombed. “They built portions of a city out there,” he said. “They had concrete buildings, warehouses, airplane runways. They were testing the impact on different types of materials. That was quite a scene.” Bennyhoff recalls seeing logging trucks coming off Mt. Charleston, north of Las Vegas, with loads of trees, roots and all. The trees were replanted at the test site to see the impacts of an atomic blast on a forest environment. After reporting what he saw during his undercover visits, Bennyhoff received a visit from federal agents. “I kept being hounded by FBI people asking how I got all this information, ”he said. “I just told them someone in their organization had a big mouth.” Several times, journalists were allowed to watch the tests at a site they dubbed “News Knob.” On one occasion, Bennyhoff also volunteered to join a tank crew, which was on the grounds during a blast. “When that thing went off, the tank bounced about 20 feet in the air, ”he said. Looking back, Bennyhoff said covering the tests was a terrific adventure. “At the time, for a reporter, it was almost a dream,” he said. “It wasn’t until later on I found out how foolish I’d been. I guess I’m lucky. I have diabetes, but I don’t think I can blame that on the bomb.” Still, it was an experience forever etched into his memory. “It makes me laugh to think the world found out about the first test over a civilized area from a very elegant justice of the peace from Lincoln County who was scared out of his wits.” Guy Clifton can be reached at (775)788-6337 or gclifton@rgj.com. ©2001 RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL ***************************************************************** 17 Amchitka cancer link explored Anchorage Daily News - STUDY: WORKERS WITH RADIATION-LINKED DISEASES FROM THE ATOMIC TESTING PROGRAM MAY GET BENEFITS. By Don Hunter (Published January 31, 2001) At least 20 people who worked on Amchitka Island during an atomic testing program three decades ago have developed types of cancers often associated with radiation, and a new health study is under way that could identify others. The first results of the health monitoring study of the Amchitka work force were discussed in a daylong meeting in Anchorage on Tuesday. So far, 1,060 former Amchitka workers have been identified, and medical screening exams have been conducted on 43. Results of those tests are back on 37 people, "and we have detected one compensable case through the screening program, of leukemia," said Dr. Knut Ringen, principal investigator for the Amchitka health study. About 20 workers already known to have radiation-related cancers are not included in the screening results, Ringen said. The health survey, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy, began last summer and is expected to continue for at least two more years. Ringen's group expects to complete exams on another 300 people by June 30, and on another 750 by June 30, 2002. The numbers of cancers detected so far, and the number of people examined, are too small to be statistically significant, medical experts said Tuesday. A federal law passed last year will provide $150,000 in compensation to Amchitka workers who have developed any of 21 types of cancers, beryllium disease or chronic silicosis believed to be related to their work in the atomic program. The compensation package was included in a defense spending bill passed by Congress last year. Survivors of workers who have died of those diseases may also be eligible. Workers who can demonstrate they have developed other illnesses related to their work on Amchitka may be eligible for a separate state workers' compensation program. The United States conducted three underground nuclear tests at Amchitka between 1965 and 1971. Hundreds of people worked on the island as employees of the Atomic Energy Commission or private contractors. The last explosion, a 5-megaton blast called Cannikin, was the largest underground nuclear test conducted by the United States. After the tests, the U.S. Navy operated a backscatter radar site there from the late 1980s until the early 1990s. A major multiagency cleanup project is planned for the island this summer. Crews hired by the Navy, the Energy Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will demolish buildings, remove PCB-contaminated sewage sludge, collect lost artillery shells and cap pits of drilling muds used in preparing for the atomic tests. In addition, the state Department of Environmental Conservation plans to test tissue samples from blue mussels for signs that radiation may be leaching from the blast pits into the ocean. The physicians working on the Amchitka employee health study will watch the results of the state's tests closely, said Dr. Tim Takaro, a medical consultant working on the project. If, as Greenpeace and other environmental groups have argued, radionuclides have migrated to the surface of the island or into the surrounding ocean, the chance of exposure for people who worked there are increased. "The connection between environmental exposure and radiation cancers is very important," Takaro said. Even miners who drilled blast pits or worked on nuclear devices spent only limited amounts of their time on those tasks. "More of their day was simply living on the island," he said. The Department of Energy has consistently said tests conducted on the island's surface have detected no radiation releases from the underground tests. The agency hasn't conducted offshore tests since the late 1970s. Newspapers [I] [*]McClatchy Company Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 18 TVA says uranium limited to lab at Muscle Shoals in 1950s - Wednesday, 01/31/01 MUSCLE SHOALS, ALA. (AP) — A Cold War-era nuclear project was conducted at a Tennessee Valley Authority site in Muscle Shoals, but TVA determined it was limited to lab research with uranium. A TVA official said no workers involved in the project have been located under the Department of Energy’s effort to find if employees were exposed to enough radiation to make them sick. "We’ve gone back in our records and done some research and determined that, while we did some work with uranium, it was on a laboratory scale," TVA spokesman Tim Meeks said. "There were never any uranium plants or any large-scale work conducted on the Muscle Shoals Reservation," Meeks told the Times Daily newspaper in Florence, Ala. The Department of Energy included TVA’s Muscle Shoals Reservation on a list of 317 sites where nuclear weapons work was conducted during the past 60 years and where workers might have been exposed to radiation. Former TVA employees who worked on the uranium project are asked to call 1-877-447-9756. cCopyright 2001 The Tennessean ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************