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03/01/02 ****     RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL)       **** VOL 10.53
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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 US: Nuclear Terrorism and US Nuclear Policy
2 US: Criticism in Cheney Energy Case
3 US: Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel
4 US: Bush: Not Concerned by Energy Dispute
5 US: Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel
6 Radioactive attack still seen as threat
7 Australias New Nuclear Reactor: Do We Need It ? 
8 US: NRC Proposes $6,000 Fine For Decisive Testing, Inc.
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
9 US: AEP Completes Cook Nuclear Unit 2 Refueling in Record Time 
10 Russia: Bogus nuclear power plants taking shape  
11 Russia offers to export nuclear plant technology to Romania 
12 US: NRC Issues "Yellow" Finding on Indian Point 2 Operator Training 
13 US: NRC to Meet with Public on Maine Yankee License Termination Plan
14 US: WPPSS, there they go again
15 US: Nuclear power plant’s safety rating falls 
16 US: NRC Proposes $3,000 Fine Against N.J. Firm over Loss of Nuclear 
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
17 US: Cancer linked to cold war bomb tests
18 US: Demand Rising for Potassium Iodide
19 US: Study says fallout from nuclear tests killed 11,000
20 US: Almost All in U.S. Have Been Exposed to Fallout, Study Finds
21 US: Fallout Hit N. Utah In the '50s
22 US: Global nuclear fallout hits Idaho
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
23 US: Nuclear Waste Should Be Stored on the Moon         
24 US: Army to Remove Radioactive Sludge
25 US: Hydrologist says Nevada needs more water in exchange for dump
26 US: Yucca: Possible conflict probed
27 US: Expert: Nevada's best bargaining chip is water
28 US: Editorial: Nuke fight needs all pitching in
29 US: Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository Approved
30 US: NRC says nuke plant's missing fuel rods no threat
31 Enriched uranium tax exemption bill faltering 
32 US: Utah Senators Urged to Oppose Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump
33 US: Connecticut Activists' lawsuit targets CY nuke waste site plan 
 
                         NUCLEAR WEAPONS
 
34 NZ: Arrogant French nuclear firm trying to polish grubby image 
35 North Korea calls on US to avoid repetition of Bikini Atoll 
36 US: Let's nuke Vietnam, suggested Nixon 
37 Old Russian Nuclear Subs Pose Risk
38 London was target of four nuclear rockets in 1959
39 US: Anti-nuclear advocate Kelley wins award from Hall of Fame 
40 US: Asia Derided Nixon Suggestion
41 US: Vietnam: Nixon 'Cruel' to Suggest Bomb
42 US: Washington sets up shadow government
43 US: Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret 
44 AU: Nuclear Terror: The Next Step? 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
45 Money for cleanup of toxic waste at Lab facing cutbacks 
46 DOE delays UF6 plants again - 
47 EEOICP Report Card on DOE safety
 
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 Nuclear Terrorism and US Nuclear Policy

by David Krieger, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation president
 
As bad as September 11th may have been, it could have been far 
worse. Had terrorists attacked with nuclear weapons, the death 
toll could have risen into the millions. It is likely that even 
one crude nuclear weapon would have left Manhattan utterly 
destroyed, and with it the financial and communications center of 
the country. Were terrorists to obtain one or more nuclear 
weapons and use them on New York, Washington or other cities, the 
United States could cease to exist as a functioning country. The 
stakes are very high, and yet the US is creating new nuclear 
policies that increase the likelihood that terrorists will 
ultimately obtain nuclear weapons.
 
A bipartisan commission, headed by Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler, 
concluded that the United States should be spending some $3 
billion per year over the next ten years to help Russia control 
its nuclear weapons and weapon-grade nuclear materials. Rather 
than spend less than one percent of the current defense budget on 
dramatically curtailing the potential spread of nuclear weapons 
and materials to terrorists or unfriendly regimes, the Bush 
administration is trying to save money in this area. It is 
spending only one-third of the proposed amount to help Russia 
safeguard its nuclear weapons and materials and find alternative 
work for nuclear physicists a woefully inadequate amount if we 
are truly attempting to quell nuclear proliferation.
 
The administration's frugality with regard to protecting 
potential "loose nukes" in Russia should be compared with its 
generosity for defense spending in general and for missile 
defenses in particular. The president has recently asked for 
another $48 billion for defense for fiscal 2003, following an 
increase of $33.5 billion this year. The annual budget for 
ballistic missile defense exceeds $8.5 billion. Since the 
likelihood of a terrorist using a missile to launch a nuclear 
attack against the United States or any other country is 
virtually zero, it would appear that the administration's budget 
priorities are way out of line in terms of offering real security 
and protecting the US and other countries from the threat of 
nuclear terrorism.
 
The administration's approach to nuclear disarmament with the 
Russians is to place warheads taken off active deployment onto 
the shelf so that they can later be reactivated should our 
current president or a future president decide to do so. While 
the Russians have made it clear that they would prefer to destroy 
the weapons and make nuclear disarmament irreversible, they will 
certainly follow the US lead in also shelving their deactivated 
weapons. This will, of course, create even greater security 
concerns in Russia and make it more likely that these weapons 
will find their way into terrorist hands.
 
So what is to be done? The United States must change its nuclear 
policies and make good on its promise to the other 186 parties to 
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to accomplish the 
total elimination of nuclear weapons in the world. This goal can 
only be achieved with US leadership, and it is a goal that is 
absolutely in the interests of the people of the United States. 
When the parties to the NPT meet again this April, the US is sure 
to come under heavy criticism for its notice of withdrawal from 
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, its failure to ratify the 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, its new strategy to make nuclear 
disarmament reversible, and its recent announcement that it is 
rescinding its security assurances to non-nuclear weapons states.
 
In the end, the country that faces the greatest threat from 
nuclear terrorism is the United States, and it is a threat that 
cannot be counteracted by missile defenses or threats of 
retaliation. Terrorists, who cannot be easily located and who may 
be suicidal anyway, will simply not be deterred by nuclear 
threat.
 
If the Bush administration truly wants to reduce the possibility 
of nuclear terrorism against US cities and abroad, it must 
reverse its current policy of systematically dismantling the arms 
control agreements established over the past four decades. It 
must instead become a leader in the global effort to urgently and 
dramatically reduce the level of nuclear weapons throughout the 
world and bring the remaining small arsenals of nuclear weapons 
and nuclear materials under effective international controls.
 
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 
(www.wagingpeace.org). He can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org 
[dkrieger@napf.org] 

  Related links • Letter to California Governor Gray Davis from 
David Krieger • Nuclear Disarmament Resolutions at the 2001 UN 
General Assembly • Depleted uranium: devastation at home and 
abroad, by Leuren Moret • US Nuclear Weapons Policy After 
September 11th, by David Krieger • Archives • Sunflower 
newsletter • Book Reviews • Wagingpeace Resources 
  
  © 2002 by Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Reproduction encouraged. Please
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 2 Criticism in Cheney Energy Case
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
March 01, 2002 
 
WASHINGTON- The White House is getting a cool reception in court 
as it fights to avoid identifying business executives who met 
with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force. 

"I assume the government is stalling," U.S. District Judge Emmet 
Sullivan said Thursday at a hearing on a lawsuit pushing for the 
release of task force documents. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge 
Paul Friedman scoffed at the administration's argument that 
another case should be thrown out of court. Both suits were filed 
by Judicial Watch, a conservative group. 

The Bush administration is trying to avoid having to identify 
business executives and lobbyists the Cheney task force met with 
as the administration formulated its energy plan a year ago. 

The New York Times, citing interviews and election records, 
reported in its Friday edition that 18 of the energy industry's 
top 25 financial contributors to the Republican Party advised 
Cheney's task force. The newspaper quoted Cheney counselor Mary 
Matalin as saying the task force also consulted with trade groups 
and other organizations, including labor unions, that did not 
give money to the Republican Party. 

The judges' comments Thursday came a day after criticism of the 
Bush administration by a third judge, U.S. District Judge Gladys 
Kessler. 

Ruling on a lawsuit filed by an environmental group, Kessler 
ordered the department to release documents starting March 25. 
Documents the department withholds must be identified 
individually in a list to be made public by April 25, which would 
set the stage for a next round in the court battle. 

At a court hearing Thursday, Justice Department lawyer Dan 
Bensing said Friedman should dismiss the Judicial Watch lawsuit 
seeking documents from all federal agencies that were members of 
Cheney's task force. Bensing said Judicial Watch should have 
waited 12 more days before suing. 

"So what! ... This is just gamesmanship," Friedman replied. Nine 
months later, he said, the Bush administration's Cabinet agencies 
have turned over almost no documents and are withholding tens of 
thousands of pages from public scrutiny. 

In another court session, Sullivan reluctantly gave the 
government seven additional days to file written arguments on why 
the Cheney task force should be allowed to withhold all 
documents. The government had asked for 17 extra days. Sullivan's 
brief extension means that he could rule as early as the second 
week of April on releasing material. 

A fourth lawsuit also is pending for the task force records, the 
case filed last week by the General Accounting Office, the 
investigative arm of Congress. 

On the Net: Democrats' Cheney documents site: 
http://www.DiscloseTheDocuments.org 
[http://www.DiscloseTheDocuments.org] 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 3 Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel
       
March 1, 2002

By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Eighteen of the energy industry's top 25 
financial contributors to the Republican Party advised Vice 
President Dick Cheney's national energy task force last year, 
according to interviews and election records. 

Critics of the Bush administration's energy policy have long 
suspected that many of the corporations that were invited to 
advise the White House were large energy concerns that had 
contributed heavily to President Bush's campaign and the 
Republican Party in 2000. The White House has refused to release 
the names of the companies and individuals consulted during the 
formulation of the administration's energy policy last spring. It 
has been sued for the information.

But interviews and task force correspondence demonstrate an 
apparent correlation between large campaign contributions and 
access to Mr. Cheney's task force. Of the top 25 energy industry 
donors to the Republican Party before the November 2000 election, 
18 corporations sent executives or representatives to meet with 
Mr. Cheney, the task force chairman, or members of the task force 
and its staff. The companies include the Enron Corporation 
(news/quote), the Southern Company, the Exelon Corporation 
(news/quote), BP, the TXU Corporation (news/quote), FirstEnergy 
(news/quote) and Anadarko Petroleum (news/quote).

Critics of the process said that President Bush and Mr. Cheney 
were quick to respond to executives from the energy sector not 
only because of campaign contributions but also because they 
share the philosophy of the oil patch, where both made fortunes.

"It's this bunch of guys in energy who say, `Boo! We don't like 
this,' and the Bush administration says, `Well, they elected us,' 
" said Eric Schaeffer, who was chief of regulatory enforcement 
for the Environmental Protection Agency until his resignation on 
Wednesday. "This is a natural alliance. The administration didn't 
need a lot of persuading."

Mr. Schaeffer, who worked at the E.P.A. for 12 years, resigned 
over what he called lax enforcement of clean air laws. 

The energy task force produced a report on May 17, 2001, that 
sketched out a national energy policy that was largely favorable 
to the energy industry. The report recommended additional oil and 
gas drilling and made note of the nation's need to build 1,300 to 
1,900 electric plants to meet the projected demand over the next 
two decades. Next week, the Senate begins deliberations on the 
Bush administration's energy bill, which has already been passed 
by the House.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, 
sued Mr. Cheney last week to force him to turn over lists of the 
executives who had advised the task force. A federal judge has 
ordered the Energy Department to release 7,500 pages of documents 
related to the task force under a Freedom of Information Act 
request by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The government sought to dismiss another suit today from Judicial 
Watch, a legal watchdog group here, which had requested thousands 
of pages of documents relating to the task force from federal 
agencies. A federal judge allowed the suit to go forward, and the 
group said it has received some of the documents.

Two Congressional Democrats are trying to learn the level of 
influence that industry executives may have had on the White 
House's national energy policy.

Mary Matalin, counselor to Mr. Cheney, said the task force also 
consulted with trade groups and other organizations, including 
labor unions, that did not give money to the Republican Party.

"Not everyone who got access were contributors or supporters," 
Ms. Matalin said. "No one ever got on the schedule for any other 
reason than their expertise in the field of energy."

But energy industry officials expressed some wonderment at Mr. 
Cheney's adamant refusal to release the list of executives he met 
with. They said meetings between industry officials and the White 
House have long been routine, even in Democratic administrations, 
and that the list of corporations that advised the task force was 
hardly an industry secret. Several said a list of the top 
financial supporters of the Bush-Cheney ticket would reveal some, 
if not all, of the most influential voices on energy policy.

An oil industry executive suggested that as long as the White 
House withheld the list of those who talked to the task force, 
suspicion about secret agendas would tar the energy industry 
itself. "I understand philosophically why the vice president may 
be doing this," the executive said, "but this sure puts us in a 
pickle."

Mr. Cheney has argued that releasing the identities of outside 
advisers on energy policy would make it impossible to have 
confidential conversations and receive unvarnished advice from 
those outside the government.

More than 400 corporations and groups sought meetings with the 
energy task force last spring. About half that number were 
granted access, a group that included 158 energy companies and 
corporate trade associations, 22 labor unions, 13 environmental 
groups and a consumer organization, task force staff members have 
said.

Some environmental groups have complained that the process was 
tilted toward industry. The leaders of many groups have said Mr. 
Cheney's office turned down their requests to meet with him. 
Instead, midlevel staff members from the groups met with energy 
task force staff members. 

The Sierra Club met with the task force before the report was 
released on May 17. Two weeks later, Carl Pope, the group's 
executive director, met again at the White House for 30 minutes 
with Mr. Cheney. 

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information  
*****************************************************************
 4 Bush: Not Concerned by Energy Dispute
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
March 01, 2002 

WASHINGTON- President Bush said Friday he is "not concerned at 
all" that the Energy Department is being forced to release some 
documents related to Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task 
force - work that the White House is fighting in court to keep 
secret. 

In two cases Thursday, judges thwarted the administration's 
attempts to avoid identifying business executives who met with 
Cheney's group. 

Bush was asked on a trip to Iowa if he had any concern that 
records the Energy Department will have to reveal - in response 
to a private lawsuit - will raise doubts about the 
administration's energy policies. 

"Not at all, no. I'm not concerned at all," Bush replied. "As a 
matter of fact, I hope the Energy Department gets the documents 
out there as quickly as they possibly can." 

He continued, "We received interesting advice from a lot of 
people on our energy plan ... and the end result was a plan that 
is now public and every American has got the capacity to pick it 
up and read it and decide whether they think it makes sense or 
not." 

Even as he said his administration would release Energy 
Department documents sought in a lawsuit by an environmental 
group, Bush was unyielding in his determination to fight the 
General Accounting Office in its demands for extensive energy 
task force records. 

Bush repeated his opposition to the Congress' investigative arm 
trying to pry into "the private conversations the president or 
the vice president has." 

"When the GAO overstepped its bounds to try to get advice given 
to the vice president and me, we resisted," Bush said. 

"I assume the government is stalling," U.S. District Judge Emmet 
Sullivan said Thursday at a hearing on a lawsuit pushing for the 
release of task force documents. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge 
Paul Friedman scoffed at the administration's argument that 
another case should be thrown out of court. Both suits were filed 
by Judicial Watch, a conservative group. 

The New York Times, citing interviews and election records, 
reported in its Friday edition that 18 of the energy industry's 
top 25 financial contributors to the Republican Party advised 
Cheney's task force. The newspaper quoted Cheney counselor Mary 
Matalin as saying the task force also consulted with trade groups 
and other organizations, including labor unions, that did not 
give money to the Republican Party. 

The judges' comments Thursday came a day after criticism of the 
Bush administration by a third judge, U.S. District Judge Gladys 
Kessler. 

Ruling on a lawsuit filed by an environmental group, Kessler 
ordered the Energy Department to release documents starting March 
25. Documents the department withholds must be identified 
individually in a list to be made public by April 25, which would 
set the stage for a next round in the court battle. 

At a court hearing Thursday, Justice Department lawyer Dan 
Bensing said Friedman should dismiss the Judicial Watch lawsuit 
seeking documents from all federal agencies that were members of 
Cheney's task force. Bensing said Judicial Watch should have 
waited 12 more days before suing. 

"So what! ... This is just gamesmanship," Friedman replied. Nine 
months later, he said, the Bush administration's Cabinet agencies 
have turned over almost no documents and are withholding tens of 
thousands of pages from public scrutiny. 

In another court session, Sullivan reluctantly gave the 
government seven additional days to file written arguments on why 
the Cheney task force should be allowed to withhold all 
documents. The government had asked for 17 extra days. Sullivan's 
brief extension means that he could rule as early as the second 
week of April on releasing material. 

A fourth lawsuit also is pending for the task force records, the 
case filed last week by the General Accounting Office, the 
investigative arm of Congress. 

On the Net: Democrats' Cheney documents site: 
http://www.DiscloseTheDocuments.org 
[http://www.DiscloseTheDocuments.org] 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 5 Top G.O.P. Donors in Energy Industry Met Cheney Panel
       
March 1, 2002
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and NEELA BANERJEE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — Eighteen of the energy industry's top 25 
financial contributors to the Republican Party advised Vice 
President Dick Cheney's national energy task force last year, 
according to interviews and election records. 

Critics of the Bush administration's energy policy have long 
suspected that many of the corporations that were invited to 
advise the White House were large energy concerns that had 
contributed heavily to President Bush's campaign and the 
Republican Party in 2000. The White House has refused to release 
the names of the companies and individuals consulted during the 
formulation of the administration's energy policy last spring. It 
has been sued for the information.

But interviews and task force correspondence demonstrate an 
apparent correlation between large campaign contributions and 
access to Mr. Cheney's task force. Of the top 25 energy industry 
donors to the Republican Party before the November 2000 election, 
18 corporations sent executives or representatives to meet with 
Mr. Cheney, the task force chairman, or members of the task force 
and its staff. The companies include the Enron Corporation 
(news/quote), the Southern Company, the Exelon Corporation 
(news/quote), BP, the TXU Corporation (news/quote), FirstEnergy 
(news/quote) and Anadarko Petroleum (news/quote).

Critics of the process said that President Bush and Mr. Cheney 
were quick to respond to executives from the energy sector not 
only because of campaign contributions but also because they 
share the philosophy of the oil patch, where both made fortunes.

"It's this bunch of guys in energy who say, `Boo! We don't like 
this,' and the Bush administration says, `Well, they elected us,' 
" said Eric Schaeffer, who was chief of regulatory enforcement 
for the Environmental Protection Agency until his resignation on 
Wednesday. 

"This is a natural alliance. The administration didn't need a lot 
of persuading."

Mr. Schaeffer, who worked at the E.P.A. for 12 years, resigned 
over what he called lax enforcement of clean air laws. 

The energy task force produced a report on May 17, 2001, that 
sketched out a national energy policy that was largely favorable 
to the energy industry. The report recommended additional oil and 
gas drilling and made note of the nation's need to build 1,300 to 
1,900 electric plants to meet the projected demand over the next 
two decades. Next week, the Senate begins deliberations on the 
Bush administration's energy bill, which has already been passed 
by the House.

The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, 
sued Mr. Cheney last week to force him to turn over lists of the 
executives who had advised the task force. A federal judge has 
ordered the Energy Department to release 7,500 pages of documents 
related to the task force under a Freedom of Information Act 
request by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The government sought to dismiss another suit today from Judicial 
Watch, a legal watchdog group here, which had requested thousands 
of pages of documents relating to the task force from federal 
agencies. A federal judge allowed the suit to go forward, and the 
group said it has received some of the documents.

Two Congressional Democrats are trying to learn the level of 
influence that industry executives may have had on the White 
House's national energy policy.

Mary Matalin, counselor to Mr. Cheney, said the task force also 
consulted with trade groups and other organizations, including 
labor unions, that did not give money to the Republican Party.

"Not everyone who got access were contributors or supporters," 
Ms. Matalin said. "No one ever got on the schedule for any other 
reason than their expertise in the field of energy."

But energy industry officials expressed some wonderment at Mr. 
Cheney's adamant refusal to release the list of executives he met 
with. They said meetings between industry officials and the White 
House have long been routine, even in Democratic administrations, 
and that the list of corporations that advised the task force was 
hardly an industry secret. Several said a list of the top 
financial supporters of the Bush-Cheney ticket would reveal some, 
if not all, of the most influential voices on energy policy.

An oil industry executive suggested that as long as the White 
House withheld the list of those who talked to the task force, 
suspicion about secret agendas would tar the energy industry 
itself. "I understand philosophically why the vice president may 
be doing this," the executive said, "but this sure puts us in a 
pickle." Mr. Cheney has argued that releasing the identities of 
outside advisers on energy policy would make it impossible to 
have confidential conversations and receive unvarnished advice 
from those outside the government.

More than 400 corporations and groups sought meetings with the 
energy task force last spring. About half that number were 
granted access, a group that included 158 energy companies and 
corporate trade associations, 22 labor unions, 13 environmental 
groups and a consumer organization, task force staff members have 
said.

Some environmental groups have complained that the process was 
tilted toward industry. The leaders of many groups have said Mr. 
Cheney's office turned down their requests to meet with him. 
Instead, midlevel staff members from the groups met with energy 
task force staff members. 

The Sierra Club met with the task force before the report was 
released on May 17. Two weeks later, Carl Pope, the group's 
executive director, met again at the White House for 30 minutes 
with Mr. Cheney.

"After we met with the vice president that time, they just 
waltzed us out on the White House lawn and put us in front of the 
TV cameras," Mr. Pope said. There were no cameras waiting when 
corporate chief executives and senior vice presidents met with 
the task force, he said.

In interviews this week, most of the Republicans' top 25 
corporate contributors from the energy sector confirmed their 
contacts with the administration, and in many cases, executives 
even provided details of the issues they discussed with task 
force members or the vice president. Many pointed out that 
companies' opinions on most regulatory and environmental issues 
can be found on their Web sites. Three of the companies would not 
comment and four said they did not meet with Mr. Cheney or his 
staff.

The Exelon Corporation, one of the nation's largest electric 
utility companies, said its co-chief executive officers, Corbin 
A. McNeill Jr. and John W. Rowe, were among a group of about 75 
energy executives who met with Mr. Cheney in the Old Executive 
Office Building in March. Along with other Nuclear Energy 
Institute participants, Mr. McNeill also met later in the month 
with Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, and Lawrence 
B. Lindsey, the president's lead economic adviser, a company 
spokesman said.

The chairman of Ashland Petroleum, a major oil refining company, 
met with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham last spring to argue 
the arcana of increasing pipeline capacity. The chairman of BP, 
Lord John Browne, and other executives from the company, the 10th 
largest contributor to the Republican Party, met with Mr. Cheney 
and other administration officials in late February of 2001 to 
discuss international issues.

As part of a series of meetings organized by oil industry trade 
groups, the chairman of Anadarko Petroleum, Robert Allison, along 
with a handful of other executives, saw Mr. Cheney on Feb. 8, 
2001. The 14th biggest donor to the Republican Party, Anadarko 
called for opening federal lands to greater oil and gas 
exploration and production, a cause it has championed for years.

"It's our job to meet with people, and it's the job of the 
administration to gather ideas," said Teresa Wong, a spokeswoman 
for Anadarko. "Bob Allison has been meeting with presidential 
administrations, with the Clinton administration and others, for 
years."

The Marathon Oil Corporation, among other oil companies, chose to 
have a trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, speak for 
it. "Our interests were represented by A.P.I. before the task 
force," a Marathon spokesman, Paul Weeditz, said.

No energy company contributed more to the Republican Party than 
Enron: $1.7 million in individuals' contributions, soft money 
donations and contributions from its political action committee. 
Enron appeared to have the most access to the task force. David 
S. Addington, counsel to Mr. Cheney, said in January that Enron 
executives had six meetings with the task force in 2001. Five 
were with staff members, on Feb. 22, March 7, April 9, Aug. 7 and 
Oct. 10. In the sixth meeting, on April 17, Kenneth L. Lay, the 
former Enron chairman, met with Mr. Cheney to discuss energy 
policy and the California energy crisis.

Discussions with the White House are nothing new to many 
executives in the energy industry, and companies' opinions on 
most regulatory and environmental issues are widely known. All of 
which has left the energy industry perplexed by the tug-of- war 
between Mr. Cheney and the Congressional accounting office.

"When I talk to people in the industry or in Congress, the sense 
is, What are we going to find out, that the energy industry was 
in there talking to the task force?' " said an executive from one 
large contributor to the Republican Party. "I don't think there's 
a list out there that could be far afield from any list of major 
companies. Within the industry, there's this feeling like, `Don't 
we already know who was there?' "

A handful of the most sizable energy industry donors to the 
Republican Party said their officers did not meet with the vice 
president or with task force staff members. Some executives 
pointed out that with an administration led by a former oilman 
that shares the priorities of the rest of the energy industry, 
there is little need for dogged lobbying.

Lehman Brothers (news/quote) ranked as the sixth largest energy 
industry contributor to the Republican Party during the 1999-2000 
election cycle. Lehman owned Peabody Energy (news/quote), the 
world's largest coal mining company, and its subsidiary, Black 
Beauty Coal, until its initial public offering last year. Peabody 
executives were among 30 or 40 industry officials briefed by 
members of the energy task force in meetings set up last spring 
by the Edison Electric Institute, the power industry's primary 
lobbying group.

Frederick D. Palmer, the chief lobbyist for Peabody, said the 
company met more often with the Clinton administration than it 
does with the Bush White House because it needed to argue its 
case more often. "We're all on the supply side — the electric 
utilities, the coal companies — and the energy plan is basically 
a supply side plan, but that's not the result of back room deals 
or lobbying the vice president of the United States," Mr. Palmer 
said. "People running the United States government now are from 
the energy industry, and they understand it and believe in 
increasing the energy supply, and contribution money has nothing 
do with it."

The largest Republican donors maintain that their contributions 
did not buy them access. But they did pave the way for the rise 
of an administration that ultimately supported much of the agenda 
of the energy industry. "We give money to these people to have a 
business environment we want to work in," Ms. Wong of Anadarko 
said. "And the thing we're proposing is to have an increase in 
the domestic energy supply."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy 
*****************************************************************
 6 Radioactive attack still seen as threat
 
Washington team is trained for such emergencies
 
Thursday, February 28, 2002
 
By DAVID FISHER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
 
A decade after the breakup of the Soviet Union, emergency 
planners in Seattle and around the nation are once again worrying 
about what seemed a Cold War relic -- the threat of a radioactive 
attack.
 
Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet 
have since Sept. 11 repeatedly warned that Osama bin Laden's 
al-Qaida network is trying to build a new weapon of mass 
destruction, possibly one that would use radioactive substances 
wrapped around a conventional explosive -- a so-called "dirty 
bomb."
 
The evidence is cryptic, but omnipresent.
 
Just this week, Bush administration officials told The New York 
Times that Special Forces troops found canisters crudely marked 
with a skull and crossbones in three locations in Afghanistan 
after al-Qaida fighters were routed out of their lairs.
 
The canisters were only faintly radioactive, just enough to trip 
a Geiger counter -- a sign, perhaps, that bin Laden's terrorists 
were flimflammed by a con artist who promised them more potent 
material.
 
In a more ominous report the same day, the National Intelligence 
Council, an analytical group that advises the CIA, flatly stated 
that "weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have 
been stolen from some Russian institutes." No one knows how much 
or where it has gone.
 
The 'dirty bomb'

 
Despite discovery of diagrams for nuclear devices in Afghan 
caves, few believe al-Qaida has the sophisticated technology or 
weapons-grade fuel needed to achieve its decade-old goal of 
making a full-scale, fission-driven nuclear explosive. Its 
attempts to buy technology in the black market have been 
amateurish at best, said Nikolai Sokov, a senior research 
associate with the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the 
Monterey Institute of International Studies.
 
Production of a dirty bomb, the nuclear weapon's less-lethal 
cousin, is more possible, but still a daunting task. Compared to 
most chemical and biological agents, radioactivity is an 
ineffective killer. Massive amounts of radioactive materials 
would have to be packed into a bomb to register any immediate 
health effects, requiring a bomb that would be difficult to 
assemble, difficult to smuggle and dangerous to handle.
 
Still, to a terrorist, a radioactive attack would have its 
attractions.
 
Unlike most biological and chemical agents, radioactivity can 
linger for days, weeks, months or years in a blast zone, 
depending on the materials used.
 
Emergency workers are better prepared for chemical and biological 
spills than for radioactive dangers, even in Washington state, 
where a federal pilot program in 1998 helped create one of the 
nation's first teams designed to deal with all weapons of mass 
destruction.
 
And the specter of a radioactive bomb evokes one of the deepest 
emotions that Americans fostered during the long years of the 
Cold War -- the intense, and in some cases irrational, fear of 
radiation.
 
The country is well-stocked with experts who could quickly assess 
the true short-term dangers in the aftermath of a radiological 
explosion, said John Poston, a Texas A professor who chaired a 
committee that studied the potential of terrorist bombs for the 
National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements last 
fall.
 
Whether they would be heeded in the atmosphere of fear that would 
likely follow a radioactive event is another question.
 
"I know that we would try to communicate, and we would give 
information to the news media," Poston said. "But what they would 
do with it just scares the hell out of me."
 
The Defense Department offers no estimate of likely casualties in 
the event of a radiological attack, but Bruce Blair, president of 
the Center for Defense Information, a Washington, D.C., think 
tank, estimates the potential deaths from a large, noon-time 
dirty bomb blast in Manhattan at around 2,000 -- bad, but far 
fewer than the 100,000 that even a small nuclear blast would 
kill.
 
Others suspect lighter casualties -- most of the damage would be 
from the blast, not radiation.
 
"You must realize that it is not a Chernobyl situation. It will 
not be a World Trade Center-sized disaster," Sokov said. "Most 
likely, you will have contamination of several blocks, so it is 
not unmanageable."Potential sources for radioactive materials are 
not difficult to find. Hospitals use iodine-125, cobalt-60 and 
cesium-137 in therapy. 

Spent fuel rods stored in nuclear power plants would be a more 
potent source of radioactivity, but they are hot, heavy and 
difficult to handle without significant modification. None of 
that has stopped people from trying to create radiological 
weapons.
 
Iraq tested a 12-foot bomb in 1987, hoping to spread enough 
radiation over a battlefield to cause vomiting, cancer, birth 
defects and slow death, according to the Wisconsin Project on 
Nuclear Arms Control. The Iraqis scrapped the idea because even a 
one-ton bomb couldn't spew enough radiation to produce the deadly 
effects.
 
That, in a nutshell, is the problem with most radiological 
devices.
 
"The amount of radioactive material it would take to kill people 
in a matter of days or weeks is so high as to be insurmountable," 
said Poston.
 
Nevertheless, government agencies at all levels say they are 
gearing up to counter the threat.
 
The U.S. Customs Service has dispersed 4,000 radiation-detection 
devices among its border inspectors to check for nuclear weapons 
and weapons-grade materials, Commissioner of Customs Joseph 
Bonner said last month. It plans to install additional X-ray and 
gamma-ray inspection technology, along with radiation detectors, 
to the northern border and at seaports in the coming year.
 
The Defense Department in 1998 started training National Guard 
teams to respond to nuclear, biological or chemical incidents 
with sophisticated detection equipment and communications 
systems. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams are 
to determine the extent of damage or danger, then help gather 
expert information for emergency workers. Washington's team, 
based at Camp Murray near Tacoma, was the nation's third to 
complete training and achieve certification. Twenty-four are now 
certified nationwide.
 
Washington also received about $1 million from a federal program 
that provides first responders with detection equipment and 
protective clothing, said Seattle Assistant Fire Chief A.D. 
Vickery. Vickery's Unit 77 has radiation detectors, as do several 
other hazmat teams in the state. 

But it would cost at least $22 million to equip every police and 
fire unit statewide, he said, and until that happens, most first 
responders will be at risk in a large incident. Also, in the 
traffic logjam that would likely follow a radiological attack in 
downtown Seattle, or any other city, it's difficult to say how 
quickly a National Guard team could make its way to the scene. 
New York's team took 12 hours to reach the scene of the World 
Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, hampered by traffic and the 
deaths of some of its commanders in the initial attacks.
 
Information the key

 
Problems such as those are crucial, because information will be 
the key to minimizing the damage if a radiological attack does 
occur, Poston said.
 
How long an area would have to be cordoned off would depend on 
the amount of material used and its half-life. But radiation 
would dissipate at a logarithmic rate, dropping 90 percent in the 
first hour after a blast and to only 1 percent of the original 
level after two days, according to a Center for Strategic and 
International Studies report.
 
It takes a great deal of radiation to cause death or even serious 
radiation sickness in a short time, Poston said. But the effects 
of long-term exposures, particularly if they are complicated by 
traumatic injuries, are less understood. Fear of the unknown -- 
and how the public would react -- remains a serious concern.
 
If a trained military overreacts to insignificant amounts of 
radiation, what would the public do?
 
The answer could be more encouraging than many suspect, said Phil 
Anderson, a senior fellow in the International Security Program 
at Washington, D.C.'s Center for Strategic and International 
Studies. He notes there was little panic in New York even as the 
attacks unfolded.
 
"I want to believe, that 9-11 is a good example of the idea that 
there isn't going to be mass hysteria," Anderson said. "The 
American people are, by and large, pretty tough, and they are 
going to stand up to this."
 
P-I reporter David Fisher can be reached at 425-252-2215 or 
davidfisher@seattlepi.com
 
[Seattle Post-Intelligencer] 
101 Elliott Ave. W.
 Seattle, WA 98119
 (206) 448-8000

©1999-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
*****************************************************************
 7 Australias New Nuclear Reactor: Do We Need It ? 

Earthbeat - 23/02/2002: 

Summary:

 Next month we’ll know if Sydney is to get a new nuclear research 
reactor at Lucas Heights. At $300 million it’s the largest 
investment in science and technology ever made in Australia. 
Earthbeat asks do we need it? Are there adequate solutions for 
waste storage and can we rely on an Argentinian company to build 
it when the political and economic situation in that country is 
so unstable? 

Transcript:

 Alexandra de Blas: Hallo, welcome to Earthbeat, I’m Alexandra de 
Blas.

Coming up today: A decision is soon to be made about a new 
nuclear reactor in Sydney; Do we need it? Have we got the 
solutions to handle the waste? And is an Argentinean company in a 
position to build it?

Announcer: News Review. Presenter: Tonight: Australia’s first 
atomic reactor opens at Lucas Heights near Sydney. This 
afternoon, the Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, officially declared 
open, HIFAR, which stands for High Flux Reactor, a research 
reactor for the Australian Atomic Energy Commission. 

Today’s event marks the first major step in Australia’s progress 
towards the production of nuclear power for commercial use.

Bob Menzies: This is really an epoch, it’s a dramatic occasion.

Presenter: The Prime Minister pressed a button to start the 
reactor and this is the sound that HIFAR made:

SFX

Alexandra de Blas: That was in 1958, but the technology is still 
in use today, producing isotopes for medicine, and 10% of the 
world’s treated silicon used for computer chips.

The old reactor retires in three years. So supporters say it’s 
time for a new one. The Federal Government plans a new 
state-of-the-art research reactor. At around $300-million, it 
will be the largest investment in science and technology ever in 
Australia.

Within weeks, a decision will be made about whether a 
construction licence will be issued by ARPANSA, the independent 
nuclear regulator. Despite this, neither John Loy, the man 
responsible for issuing that licence, nor Helen Garnett, the Head 
of the Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation,        ANSTO, 
were available to speak to Earthbeat.

So to explain what’s being proposed, Dr Clarence Hardy, the 
Secretary of the Australian Nuclear Association.

Clarence Hardy: The HIFAR reactor was designed, you have to 
remember this, in the 1950s. It is a very compact core and it is 
initially designed for highly enriched uranium, the sort of 
uranium that was originally used in atomic weapons, but made into 
a form in which it is complete safe and produces heat and 
neutrons. The object of the reactor is to produce neutrons as 
tools for scientists, and also has the means to produce to radio 
isotopes for medicine. So those neutrons are produced in this 
compact core, and that’s shielded with concrete and then around 
it you have what looks like a can, which is a protective cover 
over the reactor, so that if anything escaped from the reactor, 
it should be contained inside that can.

Now because it’s so compact, there isn’t much room around the 
centre. Now the new reactor is planned to be a different design, 
literally like a swimming pool in which you have a big pool of 
water and right in the bottom of it is this little core where the 
fuel is placed and where the neutrons are generated. The purpose 
of the pool is for shielding of the operators, so that there’s 
very little radiation that comes out of the reactor core. And 
then the neutrons are fed in beams into this big new building 
where all the scientists put their equipment. It enables you to 
access the core of the reactor far more easily to put in things 
to make isotopes. It’ll also be slightly bigger in power, instead 
of 10 megawatts, it’ll be 20 megawatts. Now this is still very 
small compared to a nuclear power station, but it is a doubling 
of the power, because it’s not going to use this highly enriched 
fuel in the future, it’s going to use what’s called low enriched 
fuel, very low enriched fuel, so there’s not the slightest 
possibility that anybody could make it into a bomb even if they 
stole the whole lot, they couldn’t make a bomb with it.

Alexandra de Blas: Clarence Hardy.

Peter McGauran, the then Minister for Science, was responsible 
for giving the new nuclear reactor the nod in 1997. Now Minister 
again, he gets the chance to see it get off the ground.

Peter McGauran: The research reactor produces neutrons which are 
the basis of radio isotopes, which is used in nuclear medicine 
and hundreds of thousands of Australians depend on nuclear 
medicine for both diagnostic and treatment reasons throughout the 
course of any year, particularly in the treatment of cancer. At 
the same time, these neutrons are used in industrial applications 
and in scientific research, especially in regard to the 
environment.

Alexandra de Blas: Well medical specialists like Dr Barry Allen, 
from St George’s Hospital in Sydney, say that we don’t need a 
reactor for medical reasons, we can use synchrotrons and 
cyclotrons here, and source the other medical isotopes that we 
need from overseas, and this would free us up to spend our money 
on other higher priority forms of research.

Peter McGauran: These were options the Cabinet very carefully 
considered in 1997 before committing several hundreds of millions 
of dollars on the replacement reactor. On all of the advice then, 
and since, particularly from the majority of nuclear physicians 
and practitioners, the cyclotrons cannot produce the same number 
and types of medial radio isotopes that we need. They are 
short-lived, they cannot be imported with any reliability. 
Moreover, it is the technology needed for the types of radio 
isotopes most commonly used in nuclear medicine.

Alexandra de Blas: The Senate inquiry last year concluded that 
there hasn’t been adequate public debate about whether we should 
have this reactor or not. When it’s the largest investment in 
science and technology ever in this country, doesn’t the 
Australian public have a right to have their say?

Peter McGauran: Yes, and there has been a continuing debate about 
this matter since the early 1990s. We have consulted on the 
replacement reactor, the merits of the decision one way or 
another, to the point of exhaustion. It was time for a decision. 
And remember the current research reactor’s life finishes in 
2005. We had simply run out of time. It was the first thing on 
becoming Minister for Science on the change of government in 
March 1996 that officials from the Department briefed me on. 
There was no possibility of further delays. A decision had to be 
made, and there was sufficient evidence of community input to 
make such a decision.

Jim Green: If there was a report which clearly identified the 
superior benefits of a reactor, well that would be another 
matter, but there’s no such report; the government hasn’t done 
that research. We learnt in 1997 that the government have not 
even consulted its own science advisers before taking a Cabinet 
level decision to build a new reactor, which is an extraordinary 
admission from the government, given that this is such an 
expensive facility, the government did not consult the Office of 
the Chief Scientist, they did not consult the Australian Science, 
Technology and Engineering Council, ASTEC, and they did not 
consult the CSIRO. The government didn’t consult these science 
bodies because they were afraid of the sort of advice they might 
get, and we can go back to 1993 where the CSIRO said 
unequivocally that more productive research could be funded for 
the cost of a new reactor.

Alexandra de Blas: Dr Jim Green. He wrote a PhD thesis on the 
nuclear reactor debates while at Wollongong University. And 
before that, we heard from Peter McGauran.

Dr Green has been calling for an independent inquiry to look at 
whether a new reactor is necessary at all, as well as other 
issues, like its location. He doesn’t buy the Minister’s argument 
for a replacement reactor.

Jim Green: Well Mr McGauren knows as well as everyone else that 
that’s simply not true. In fact one of the senior bureaucrats 
involved in pushing this debate admitted that this was a beat-up 
on Radio National’s Background Briefing program way back in 1998, 
and many other people have said the same thing, experienced 
nuclear medicine researchers, such as Professor Barry Allen, 
current and former ANSTO staff members, pretty well everyone in 
the know understands that Australia doesn’t need a reactor to 
produce medical isotopes. We can simply do what so many other 
countries do, which is to rely on cyclotrons and other particle 
accelerators, and also import some isotopes, at least as an 
interim measure; and then you’ve also got the plethora of 
alternative clinical technologies in the hospitals. You can use 
Magnetic Resonance Imaging, CAT scans, ultrasound and so on, so 
there’s a range of options and all these options are pursued 
internationally, these are tried and tested methods.

Alexandra de Blas: If you think there are easy medical 
alternatives, why do you think the government really wants it?

Jim Green: Well there’s the three angles: there’s medicine, and 
there’s also scientific research, and again that’s a bit of a 
furphy. You can certainly use a reactor for scientific research, 
but you can use plenty of other instruments in similar fields of 
research for less money and less radioactive waste production. So 
once we’ve got past medicine and science, we do get to the core 
of this whole issue, which is foreign policy, or as the 
government likes to phrase it, ‘a national interest agenda’. And 
it’s been quite interesting in a couple of government reports 
they’ve acknowledged openly that the foreign policy agenda is the 
primary motivating factor behind this reactor. The Parliamentary 
Public Works Committee report of 1999 and also the Federal 
Department of the Environment’s 1999 report, both say quite 
openly that foreign policy is driving this reactor plan.

Clarence Hardy: You’ve got to really understand what this 
technology’s all about, and I think to train people to understand 
it, and to be useful in the general community, and also giving 
advice to government in this area, is an important role, if you 
like, the education and training role. Now you could of course do 
all of these things overseas. I mean you could say, ‘Don’t let’s 
have a reactor’, send all your scientists overseas for their 
training, and then bring them back and use them in this country 
for the practical applications, import all the radio isotopes 
that you need, and that’s what people like to see. They say, 
‘Let’s have all the benefits and the applications in this 
country, but don’t let’s take any of the risks, any of the costs 
of making them ourselves.’ It’s almost like should we have a 
manufacturing industry in this country? Should we buy all our 
cars? It might be cheaper if we didn’t build a single car in 
Australia, but imported them all. But there are problems with 
that, and I’d say there are problems with not having that 
expertise in the country.

Alexandra de Blas: Dr Clarence Hardy from the Australian Nuclear 
Association.

Lorraine Dixon: As the crow flies, it’s 4 kilometres from the top 
of the hill nearby to my place, you can actually see the reactor 
building. So I see it every day, I see it from the top of my 
driveway every day.

Alexandra de Blas: Anti-reactor activist, Lorraine Dixon who has 
lived near Lucas Heights for the last decade. Her concern has 
increased since the proposal to build the second reactor on the 
same site. She’s speaking to Jackie May.

Lorraine Dixon: When I moved here, I understood that HIFAR, the 
reactor that’s currently there, was obsolete, and that since 1975 
the government of the day had to make decisions about whether it 
would keep going or whether it would be closed down. So it was my 
understanding that it would actually be closed down. And in ’97, 
the end of ’97, when it was decided that a new reactor was to be 
built, that’s when I thought Well, I think enough is enough in a 
very highly urbanised area. Currently there’s 30,000 people 
living in the Greater Menai area, and it’s not somewhere that you 
put the largest nuclear reactor in the Southern Hemisphere, that 
close to that many people and the wider Sydney area of over 
4-million people.

Jackie May: How easy has it been for you to find out things about 
one of your nearest neighbours?

Lorraine Dixon: It’s been incredibly difficult to find factual 
information about what goes on at the Lucas Heights site. There 
is an annual report that you can have fairly limited access to, 
and basically, unless you go really digging in libraries or 
request information from ARPANSA, the Australian Radiation 
Protection and Nuclear Science Authority, it’s really hard to get 
information.

Jackie May: Tell me, are you aware of what to do in case of any 
emergency at the Lucas Heights reactor?

Lorraine Dixon: I have a fair idea of what I should be doing if a 
worst-case scenario occurred and the reactor exploded, or there 
was a spill of some sort, and radiation was in the atmosphere. 
But I’m one of very, very few in this very large urban area that 
knows that. I know plans are afoot for more community information 
to be made available, but there is so much argument over what the 
public should be told that I doubt very much if that’ll actually 
get off the ground.

Jackie May: So what’s your worst-case scenario? The replacement 
reactor goes ahead?

Lorraine Dixon: Well construction might occur, but the thing 
might not yet be turned on. It’s not the end of protests and 
actions and calls to not go ahead.

Alexandra de Blas: Waste is one of the most difficult technical 
and public relations problems the nuclear industry faces. And 
it’s a key point of disagreement in the new reactor debate.

Before a construction licence can be issued, a waste management 
plan must be finalised. And in Senate Estimates in Canberra this 
week, Senator Hill, former Federal Environment Minister, admitted 
that this has not been completed yet.

I asked Science Minister Peter McGauran how the government will 
deal with waste from the replacement reactor.

Peter McGauran: There’s two levels of waste: low level waste and 
then there’s the medium level waste. It’s in the medium-level 
waste category that you have the spent fuel rods from the 
existing research reactor and the replacement research reactor. 
Now in regard to low-level waste, there’s 3-1/2-thousand cubic 
metres accumulated throughout Australia and stored in a hundred 
different sites, and that’s from soil, medical, garments and the 
like. Now the search for a site began in 1992. We have settled on 
three possible sites in outback South Australia, with one 
preferred site near Woomera. An Environmental Impact Statement 
will shortly be submitted to the Minister for Environment, the 
Minister for Environment puts it out for public comment so the 
community will have every opportunity to again have input on the 
final site, and it will be in the year 2003 that construction of 
the repository can take place. It’s a deep trench construction, 
and in regard to the medium intermediate level waste, what we 
need is an above-ground store. It is just a strongly reinforced 
construction, and there’s 500 cubic metres already accumulated in 
regard to intermediate waste. Here, Senator Minchin, my 
predecessor, established an expert advisory panel to look at 
possible sites. That panel, towards the end of this calendar 
year, will make a recommendation as to a possible site.

Alexandra de Blas: Well South Australia has legislation ruling 
out a medium to high-level waste dump, and the likely Labor 
government says they won’t accept a low-level waste dump either. 
How will you get around that when South Australia is your 
preferred location?

Peter McGauran: It’s a pity that the South Australian government 
would take that point of view. We have a responsibility to 
collect and safely store our radioactive waste, whether it’s 
low-level or intermediate. I think it’s cowardly not to face up 
to this and if the Environmental Impact Statement finds that 
Woomera is the best place for the low level waste and there’s 
another site, a different process altogether to determine the 
store for the intermediate waste, then we have to accept the 
responsibility. What’s the alternative to allow this waste to be 
stored in basements of hospitals and public buildings and public 
security demands a central location. Now in regard to the South 
Australian government, we seek a co-operative relationship, but 
in the end the Commonwealth’s legislation will override the State 
legislation.

Alexandra de Blas: So you’d force it on South Australia?

Peter McGauran: Yes.

Alexandra de Blas: How strongly do the people of South Australia 
feel about nuclear issues and not having a waste dump in their 
State?

John Hill: Well I think South Australians have had a long history 
of knowledge of nuclear issues, and it goes right back to the 
Maralinga tests, and we have three uranium mines in this State, 
as well as proposals for dumps. So South Australians are very 
conscious of nuclear issues, and I would say that there’s very, 
very strong opinion in our community in opposition to nuclear 
dumps being placed in this State.

Alexandra de Blas: John Hill, the ALP’s South Australian 
spokesperson on the environment.

Labor went to the election on an anti-nuclear waste platform. 
They promised to pass legislation banning a national low-level 
waste dump in their State the day they entered parliament. 
Legislation to prevent medium to high-level waste dump was passed 
just over a year ago.

John Hill believes a low-level dump is the thin edge of the wedge 
for a national repository for medium-level long-lived waste as 
well.

John Hill: What we would do is if they announced that they were 
going to go down that track, we would have a referendum in this 
State on that issue, and the results of that referendum would, I 
hope, guide the Federal government, and I think we’d win that 
referendum overwhelmingly. I think 80% or 90% of public opinion 
shows people in South Australia are opposed to that dump going 
in. So we would use that referendum as a way of putting enormous 
pressure on the Federal government. If they decided to still 
continue, then we would campaign on it in the political sense. We 
would use whatever legal means we have, but we acknowledge that 
ultimately the Commonwealth has the power to override the South 
Australian Parliament in regard to these matter. But there are 
things that we could do, and ways I guess that we could slow down 
the process, and try and put as much political pressure, because 
after all this is going to be a political discussion, a political 
debate, not one that will end up in the courts.

Alexandra de Blas: Well, it sound like it’s going to be a 
bunfight in Australia, but what about the waste we send overseas 
to be reprocessed in France? Steven Campbell is a nuclear 
campaigner with Greenpeace.

Steven Campbell: We transport nuclear waste from Lucas Heights 
all the way to France for reprocessing. The deal is, of course, 
that that has to come back again once it’s undergone this 
unnecessary contaminating, costly and unsafe process. So it’s 
going to come back to Australia, and then what do we do with it? 
Now nobody wants nuclear waste, and when it returns from France, 
we will still have this long-term management problem.

Alexandra de Blas: Is there a possibility that the Cogema plant 
itself in France could be under threat?

Steven Campbell: Well there’s several problems with reprocessing. 
The Cogema plant in France doesn’t have in place the correct 
licences to reprocess the Australian waste they’ve got there 
currently. There’s been two shipments to Le Havre they’ve never 
been reprocessed. In fact they haven’t established the 
technology, the facilities, at La Havre in order to deal with the 
particular kind of fuel that’s coming out of Lucas Heights. In 
addition, there’s political pressure in Europe to close the 
reprocessing industry because even countries with big nuclear 
programs like Germany, have seen that reprocessing is a bad 
strategy that solves nothing and creates more problems. There is 
an overarching commission in Europe called the Ozpar??? 
Commission which has voted last year to move towards ending the 
reprocessing industry in Europe, and so it may be that by the 
time waste is produced at Lucas Heights too, that there will be 
no reprocessing in Europe at all.

Alexandra de Blas: Well if there is a problem in Europe, there’s 
always Argentina and that’s the government’s fallback position.

Steven Campbell: The promise that Argentina has made to Australia 
about being able to condition waste from Lucas Heights is a wish 
and a prayer, because all they have, well they have no facilities 
for conditioning waste in Argentina. Even if they had them, 
obviously they wouldn’t be licensed, and the importation of 
radioactive waste into Argentina is indeed prohibited by their 
Constitution. There are huge issues in Argentina with even the 
possibility of Australian waste being shipped there for 
conditioning. And certainly the Argentinean community is up in 
arms about the idea of taking Australian waste. So the Australian 
government has a very major problem with that option as well.

Alexandra de Blas: Steven Campbell. He was one of the 46 
Greenpeace protesters who faced court this week over a December 
break-in at Lucas Heights, to show that security post-September 
11 is woefully inadequate.

But on the issue of waste, how confident is Science Minister 
McGauran that it will be processed overseas?

Peter McGauran: Very confident. We have contractual arrangements 
with the French that they will take back the spent fuel rods from 
HIFAR and from the year 2015 we will take back the reprocessed 
spent fuel rods which are then intermediate-level waste. By the 
same token, we have an agreement for the return of the spent fuel 
rods in the form of intermediate-level waste from the new 
replacement reactor from the year 2035. There has been always a 
diplomatic and political will on the part of the French 
government to honour these agreements.

Alexandra de Blas: But the licence to reprocess the Australian 
waste has been delayed because of the Greens, and they are in the 
parliament in France.

Peter McGauran: We’ll watch that with interest, but it’s an 
economical benefit to the French government to reprocess the 
spent fuel rods. We will watch it, but every time there has been 
a challenge or a threat because of domestic politics in France or 
Europe, led usually by the Greens, the French government, despite 
its political make-up, has been resolute in honouring not just 
the commitments to Australia, but to other suppliers from 
throughout the world.

Alexandra de Blas: The OSPAR Commission has said that Europe 
should move towards the non-reprocessing option as a matter of 
urgency, so if that option closes in France, what will you do?

Peter McGauran: It could not close until all commitments were 
honoured, so that you would have to have a phase-down period. 
There is no possibility that any French government would renege 
on long-standing contractual arrangements underpinned by a 
diplomatic and political will.

Alexandra de Blas: If something does go wrong, and France does 
change its policy and doesn’t honour its agreement, apparently 
according to ANSTO, the fallback position is Argentina. But it’s 
against the Argentinean constitution to accept radioactive waste 
from another country, and they’re not conditioning waste at the 
moment, so isn’t Argentina an unrealistic fallback option?

Peter McGauran: Not unrealistic in regard to the spent fuel rods 
from the replacement reactor, which will be constructed and 
designed by an Argentinean firm, because there is no need for us 
to take back the spent fuel rods until the year 2035. If there is 
a fallback position in regard to the new reactor, we have more 
than 30 years to plan for it.

Alexandra de Blas: We expected a decision on the construction 
licence for the replacement nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights to 
be announced in March. If it gets the green light, the 
Argentinean company, INVAP, will begin building the reactor 
shortly after that. How confident are you that INVAP can deliver 
when Argentina is in political and economic chaos?

Peter McGauran: Still very confident. Two major reasons why: 
firstly, the contract is in Australian dollars, so it is of 
enormous importance to INVAP, it’s not as if we’re paying in the 
Argentinean peso. Secondly, INVAP is a State agency, it is the 
flagship of Argentinean research and development, and scientific 
effort. The government, nor the community at large in Argentina, 
will allow it to fail. We are constantly monitoring the situation 
through our Ambassador specifically, ANSTO officials are based at 
INVAP full time and the senior members of the ANSTO organisation, 
including the Executive Director, travel to Argentina on a 
regular basis. We are alert to any flow-on effects from the 
difficulties of the Argentinean economy, but INVAP is insulated, 
to all intents and purposes, from those problems.

Alexandra de Blas: Well I believe the President of Argentina 
guaranteed the project last year, but there have been another 
three Presidents since then, so who will pay if there are time 
and cost over-runs?

Peter McGauran: They will be a matter of contractual application. 
I don’t believe there will be over-runs. The very important 
project is on schedule, it’s on budget, the Argentinean 
government has successively guaranteed its conclusion. We have 
had written assurances as to that from the permanent bureaucracy, 
and I don’t believe for a moment that the Argentinean government 
will renege on any of its contractual obligations.

Alexandra de Blas: The reference reactor built by INVAP in Egypt 
hasn’t run at full power in the four years since it was 
completed; how can we have confidence in this technology, 
particularly now that the country is in such strife and things 
are so uncertain?

Peter McGauran: We have investigated INVAP’s performance in other 
countries and other localities. We are advised that the problems 
in Egypt are more to do with the running of the reactor than any 
design or construction issues. We remain confident on the best 
technical examination of INVAP’s performances elsewhere, and as 
applied to the replacement reactor project, that they will 
complete it in both technical and economic sense.

Steven Campbell: There’s a range of concerns about INVAP. INVAP 
are a company that have been involved in the nuclear industry in 
Argentina for over 20 years. They have a very long history of 
dodgy dealings with countries who have been thought to be 
following clandestine weapons programs. Indeed, Argentina itself 
was pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program up until the 
late ‘80s when it abandoned it, and it finally signed the Non 
Proliferation Treaty in 1995. So it’s only really been a member 
of the so-called good, clean nuclear club for the last five 
years.

On the economic side, INVAP clearly have no means of obtaining 
government funding at this stage, because the government in 
Argentina is in economic meltdown, and they’ve just defaulted on 
over $200-billion worth of debt. So the government has no 
capacity to fund INVAP. Essentially the only thing that is 
propping INVAP up at the moment is the ANSTO contract. They don’t 
have any other deals. I believe they’re shedding workers at the 
moment. But the really confusing and problematic thing is that 
the Argentinean government has promised Australia that if there 
is any cost over-run on Lucas Heights 2, if it goes over budget 
$5 that the Argentinean government will back that up and it will 
bail INVAP out. But of course the Argentinean government has 
absolutely no capacity to bail INVAP out at this stage. And 
probably will not do in the near future. So if the project runs 
into problems, Argentina is not going to have the capacity to 
solve those problems financially and I’ll bet you 20-1 that the 
problem will have to be solved once again by the Australian 
taxpayer, if we get that far.

TANGO MUSIC

Alexandra de Blas: Steven Campbell from Greenpeace.

Well that’s the program for today. It was produced by Jackie May 
with technical production by Janita Palmer. I’m Alexandra de 
Blas. 

Guests on this program: 
      
Dr Clarence Hardy Secretary Australian Nuclear Association Fax: 
02 95706473 
      
Peter McGauran Federal Minister for Science 
      
Dr Jim Green Member Sutherland Council Reactor Taskforce

PhD thesis July 1997 "Reactors, Radioisotopes &the HIFAR 
Controversy" Science and Technology Studies University of 
Wollongong, NSW, Australia 

jimgreen3@ozemail.com.au [jimgreen3@ozemail.com.au] 
      
Lorraine Dixon Anti-reactor Spokesperson 
      
John Hill ALP Environment Spokesman South Australia 
      
Stephen Campbell Nuclear Campaigner Greenpeace Australia 
stephen.campbell@au.greenpeace.org 
[stephen.campbell@au.greenpeace.org] 
      
Further information: 
      
Australian Nuclear Association 
http://www.nuclearaustralia.org.au/ 
[http://www.nuclearaustralia.org.au/]       

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation 
http://www.ansto.gov.au/ [http://www.ansto.gov.au/]       

Peter McGauran 
http://www.dcita.gov.au/mcgauran/bio.html
[http://www.dcita.gov.au/mcgauran/bio.html]       

Dr Jim Green 
http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/ [http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/]       

Sydney People Against a New Nuclear Reactor 
http://www.cat.org.au/spannr/ [http://www.cat.org.au/spannr/]       
      
Australian Labor Party 
South Australian Branch 
http://www.sa.alp.org.au/policy/environment/
[http://www.sa.alp.org.au/policy/environment/]       

Greenpeace 
Nuclear Campaign 
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/nuclear/ [http://www.greenpeace.org.au/nuclear/]  
    
2002 ABC [http://www.abc.net.au
*****************************************************************
 8 NRC Proposes $6,000 Fine For Decisive Testing, Inc.
 
NRC: Press Release Region IV - 2002 - 6 - 

U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 
www.nrc.gov
  
  No. IV-02-006     
February 28, 2002   

  CONTACT:     

  Breck Henderson
 Phone: 817-860-8128
 Cellular: 817-917-1227     E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov [opa4@nrc.gov]   

  The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has proposed a 
fine of $6,000 against Decisive Testing, Inc., of San Diego, 
Calif., for failure to notify the NRC and pay fees prior to 
conducting radiography work on U.S. Naval vessels as required by 
federal regulations. Decisive Testing is licensed by the state of 
California, but radiography work on U.S. Naval vessels falls 
under the jurisdiction of the NRC. The NRC requires the filing of 
an advance notice of work involving radiation sources in federal 
jurisdiction to allow it to perform safety inspections of the 
planned activities. A fee applies to this situation. At an 
enforcement conference held January 9, the NRC was told that the 
assistant Radiation Safety Officer for Decisive Testing intended 
to notify the NRC and pay the reciprocity fee some time after the 
work was performed, which is clearly not allowed under NRC rules.
 
Michael R. May, Decisive Testing's president, informed the NRC 
that he has taken corrective action to assure that Decisive 
Testing complies with this notification requirement in the 
future.
 
The violation has been categorized at Severity Level III, which 
carries a civil penalty of $6,000. The NRC uses a four-level 
scale to rate the seriousness of violations, with Severity Level 
I being the most serious.
 
Decisive Testing is required to respond to the letter and Notice 
of Violation with actions the company is taking to assure future 
compliance with regulatory and license requirements. The company 
has 30 days to pay the fine or protest it. If the protest is 
denied, the company may request a hearing by the NRC.
   


*****************************************************************
 9 AEP Completes Cook Nuclear Unit 2 Refueling in Record Time 

PR Newswire - USA; Feb 28, 2002

American Electric Power's Cook Nuclear Plant Unit 2 resumed 
production of electricity this morning following a scheduled 
refueling and maintenance outage. Workers completed the outage in 
40 days, the shortest refueling in the plant's 27-year history. 
Site-best performance was also realized in occupational radiation 
dose.

"These site records represent a lot of hard work by employees and 
sacrifices from our families," said A. Christopher Bakken III, 
senior vice president. "A shorter refueling outage, coming on the 
heels of a good year for generation, shows the Cook team has made 
a full recovery from the extended shutdown. I'm confident we can 
expect more performance improvements in the future."

The shortest refueling outage at Cook previously was 47 days in 
1996. The nuclear industry average in 2000 was 40 days. Radiation 
dose is projected to be 130 rem, 55 rem less than the 1996 
refueling. Radiation dose is measured in rem, which is based on 
the effect of radiation on the human body. Cook plans a plant 
modification for the 2003 refueling outage for both units that 
should considerably reduce radiation exposure in future outages. 
This should bring Cook more in line with the industry average 
dose of about 120 rem for each refueling of similar reactors.

During the outage, workers performed more than 4,700 work tasks 
on a variety of plant components and systems. Specific major 
projects included: * Overhauling and inspecting the high-pressure 
turbine; * Completing reactor head penetration inspections; * 
Replacing 80 of the reactor's 193 fuel assemblies with new 
assemblies.

Reactor head inspections were among the most extensive performed 
in the industry. One hundred percent of the 78 penetrations were 
inspected visually as well as with non-destructive examination 
techniques. No reportable indications were detected, and no 
repairs were required. Cook Unit 1, a 1,020-megawatt unit that 
started operation in 1975, remained at 100 percent power 
throughout the Unit 2 refueling. Unit 2, rated at 1,090 
megawatts, started operation in 1978.

American Electric Power is a multinational energy company based 
in Columbus, Ohio. AEP owns and operates more than 38,000 
megawatts of generating capacity, making it America's largest 
generator of electricity. The company is also a leading wholesale 
energy marketer and trader, ranking second in North America in 
wholesale electricity and wholesale natural gas volume. AEP 
provides retail electricity to more than 7 million customers 
worldwide and has holdings in the U.S. and select international 
markets. Wholly owned subsidiaries are involved in power 
engineering and construction services.

News releases and other information about AEP can be found on the 
World Wide Web at http://www.aep.com/ . Nuclear Plant, 
+1-616-465-6101 Website: http://www.aep.com/ Company News 
On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/gh/cnoc/comp/042050.html
*****************************************************************
 10 Bogus nuclear power plants taking shape  

Russia has 10 nuclear power plants (NPPs) in operation. The 
safety standards of the Soviet designed reactors have been highly 
questioned by international experts. During the last decade, the 
social issues at the Russian NPPs have become of major concern in 
line with the technical flaws. 

(St Petersburg:) The example of Balakovo shows that Federal 
Program &#8220;Energy Efficient Economics&#8221; comprises not 
only inaccuracies and unintended mistakes. It is possible that 
Minatom launches building of Karelian and Primorye NPPs soon.

Balakovo nuclear power plant photo: www.ecoline.ru 

Rashid Alimov, 2002-03-01 06:57

Russian government issued a decree No 923 &#8220;On changes and 
additions in the federal Program Energy Efficient Economics for 
the Years 2002-2005 and till 2010 in the Long-range 
Outlook&#8221; on December 29th 2001. 

This document is remarkable not only for its sophisticated title, 
the Program is a huge volume on 230 sheets. For Balakovo, 
situated by the river Volga, with a nuclear power plant with four 
VVER-1000 reactor units, this Program stipulates launching of a 
VVER-1000 power unit No 5 in the year 2006. Another 1000 MW unit 
is to be put in operation after 2010. 

But the provisions of the Program do not seem to be taken 
seriously by anybody. In the beginning of February, the head of 
Karelian Republic, Sergey Katanandov, found in the Program that a 
new power plant would be built in Karelia and launched in 2007. 
Mr Katanandov made a harsh public statement, because these plans 
were not discussed with the government of the Republic. But from 
the Ministry for Nuclear Energy, Minatom, the following answer 
came: it seems that there is a mistake in the Program, but we 
have no relation to it. 

Later spokesman for the President&#8217;s representative in the 
Far Eastern Federal District, Evgeny Anoshin, claimed that no new 
nuclear power plants would be built in the Russian Far East, at 
least until the year 2015. That way he turned down the necessity 
to carry out the Program, which contains plans to put into 
operation in the district two new NPPs: Primorye NPP (four 640 MW 
power units, to be launched in 2005) and Far Eastern NPP (the 
first unit 640 or 1000 MW to be started in 2009). 

It seems the Federal Program comprises the maximum of the new 
NPPs to be built possible. In addition to the plants mentioned 
above, it stipulates building of Kostroma NPP, Leningrad-2 NPP, 
Northern Caucasian NPP, Bashkir NPP, Tatar NPP and Seversk NPP. 
On the other hand, representatives of the nuclear industry say, 
no one is going to implement either the Program, or the 
governmental decree, which supplemented it. And that is wise 
&#8212; who would start today building of a NPP in the Northern 
Caucasus these days? 

Expectancies declaration

In 1993, a referendum was held in Balakovo. More than 70% of its 
participants opposed to new units of Balakovo NPP (BNPP). The 
nuclear plant representatives claim, this question could not be 
decided by a local referendum, because development of nuclear 
industry is a federal scale issue. 

But in local environmentalists&#8217; opinion, this statement is 
an evident slyness. &#8220;In 1993 there was no such limitation 
in the law, and it is obvious that the law has no retroactive 
force,&#8221; they say. It means that legally the fifth power 
unit cannot be even designed, until the next referendum is held. 
And this can happen, according to Russian legislation, not 
earlier than in 2003. Balakovo NPP is located in Saratov County 
south of Moscow. 

But all of a sudden on January 29th minister for nuclear energy, 
Alexander Rumyantsev, and Saratov County governor, Dmitry 
Ayatskov, signed &#8220;Expectancies Declaration for design and 
putting into operation of the fifth and the sixth power units of 
Balakovo NPP, with the total capacity of two million kW.&#8221; 
The launching time frames are the same as in the Federal Program. 
The Declaration stipulates, among other things, start of the 
design works. 

Earlier industry minister of Saratov County, Sergey Lisovsky, 
claimed that to re-start building of the fifth unit 1.2bn rubles 
(about $40mn) were allocated. He also said, $80mn more were 
assigned from the both power units building cost, for social 
needs. When Russian citizens, living at the territories, 
mentioned in the Federal Program, heard about the Saratov 
Declaration, they thought: &#8220;God forbid! Maybe, all the 
other provisions of the Program are also to be carried 
out?&#8221; 

Saratov inhabitants indignant

And when Saratov inhabitants learned about the Declaration, they 
simply became outraged. Olga Pitsunova of Saratov Center for 
Assistance on Environmental Initiatives (CAEI) told Bellona Web 
about the list of organisations objected to the possible 
building: CAEI, the Public Ecological Council, Citizens&#8217; 
Action Union, Balakovo branch of the all-Russian Enviroprotection 
Organisation For Survival, and association of people, living in 
the 100-km radius of BNPP. 

Also Balakovo Association of Businessmen and local office of the 
Union of Righteous Forces party disputed the plans of building 
new units. 

The citizens also recalled a recent statement of the BNPP 
director Pavel Ipatov that seismic stability of the existing 
units is six points, while official documents of federal building 
authority, Gosstroy, in its decree No 91 from December 27th 1999 
require seven points. Also several economists said, electricity 
might rise in price in the region, because of expenditures for 
new reactors. 

&#8220;We are going to go to court and to file actions, because 
citizens&#8217; rights were violated, while the Declaration was 
signed in spite of the referendum results, and because BNPP 
didn&#8217;t meet the conditions of launching the fourth 
unit,&#8221; &#8212; Olga Pitsunova said to Bellona Web. 

Those future legal actions may become not less noted, than the 
inspection of BNPP activities that was carried out by the 
Prosecutor Office. Yesterday, representatives of Saratov County 
Prosecutor Office told Bellona Web, the inspection was finished. 
In the nearest future Bellona Web is going to inform, how turbine 
of the fourth reactor unit of BNPP became private in the country, 
where all the objects of nuclear industry are state-owned.

Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge 
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact: 
webmaster@bellona.no Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 
38 38 62  * P.O.Box 2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 11 Russia offers to export nuclear plant technology to Romania 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 28, 2002

Text of report in English by Romanian news agency Rompres 
Bucharest, 28 February: 

The prospects for the construction of a new unit on Russian 
technology at Romania's nuclear plant at Cernavoda were sketched 
out in Moscow during a visit by Romania's Prime Minister Adrian 
Nastase on 21 February.

Head of International Cooperation Department of Romania's 
Nuclearelectrica Teodor Chirica says that the VVER-1000 
technology to be contributed by Russian experts is accepted in 
the world because is coated for protection and built on US and 
German supervision and automation systems. "The Russians have 
just concluded contracts for the export of four similar reactors, 
two each to China and India," Chirica told daily Ziarul Financiar 
on Thursday [28 February].

Romania has built the first reactor at the Cernavoda N-plant on 
Canadian technology, having opted for a CANDU type of reactor 
instead of Russia's VVER-4000. The second reactor, which is to be 
commissioned in 2005, is also built on CANDU technology and 
estimated to cost 700m dollars to complete. According to Russian 
specialists, the VVER-1000 type of reactor would cost some 800m 
dollars to commission, while Western technology, equipment, and 
services would cost Romania more than 1bn dollars.

Given the stake at play, namely electricity exports, other 
countries have also voiced interest in contributing to the 
finalization of works on reactor III and IV at Cernavoda. One of 
these countries is Turkey, a net importer of energy. On a recent 
visit to Turkey, Romania's Prime Minister Adrian Nastase 
presented his Turkish counterpart Bulent Ecevit the advantages of 
investments in the plant at Cernavoda, which include a generation 
price of 12 dollars/MWh.

The price for the energy generated at Cernavoda is some 6 dollars 
higher than the cheapest energy generated by the water power 
plants, yet some 20 dollars lower than the energy generated by 
the thermal plants.

Source: Rompres news agency, Bucharest, in English 1401 gmt 28 
Feb 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.
*****************************************************************
 12 NRC Issues "Yellow" Finding on Indian Point 2 Operator Training 
Issue
 
NRC: Press Release Region I - 2002 - 10 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 
www.nrc.gov
  
  No. I-02-010     
February 28, 2002                            

  CONTACT:     		 
Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331                     
E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov [opa1@nrc.gov]  
 
  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has completed its final 
significance determination of an inspection finding at Entergy 
Northeast's Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant, related to the 
failure of crews during a facility-administered annual licensed 
operator requalification exam last Fall. The staff has determined 
that this finding should be characterized as "yellow," meaning it 
is an issue that, when it occurred, was of substantial importance 
to safety and will result in additional NRC inspection. The 
finding stems from an NRC inspection conducted between October 22 
and October 26 regarding the facility-administered annual 
licensed operator requalification examinations in which four of 
seven crews failed. 

Under the NRC's new reactor oversight process, inspection 
findings are evaluated under a significance determination process 
and assigned a color that indicates safety significance. Findings 
with very low safety significance are labeled "green." "White" 
findings have low to moderate importance to safety and may 
require additional NRC inspection. "Yellow" findings have 
substantial safety significance, and "red" findings high safety 
significance. 

A preliminary "yellow" finding was described in an inspection 
report dated December 5 of last year. The letter transmitting the 
report provided the company with an opportunity to either request 
a regulatory conference to discuss this issue or to respond in 
writing. The company declined the conference but did respond by 
letter.
 
Although the company did not agree with the preliminary NRC 
finding, the NRC reviewed Entergy's response and concluded it was 
appropriate to characterize the finding as yellow. 

No violations of NRC requirements were identified because the 
operators were removed from shift following the failures and were 
retrained as required. The NRC also acknowledged the company has 
taken corrective actions to address the finding, including 
performing a root cause investigation and initiating a four-week 
intensive training and evaluation program for all operators. 

Entergy has 10 days to appeal the NRC's significance 
determination. 
*****************************************************************
 13 NRC to Meet with Public on Maine Yankee License Termination Plan 
And Partial Site Release Request
 
   NRC: Press Release Region I - 2002 - 11 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 
www.nrc.gov
  
  No. I-02-011     
        March 1, 2002   

  CONTACT:     

  Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330
 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331     E-mail:  [opa1@nrc.gov]   

  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will meet with the public on 
Monday evening, March 11, to solicit comments on the license 
termination plan for the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station. The 
plant, in Wiscasset, Maine, permanently ceased operations on 
August 7, 1997. In accordance with NRC regulations, when a 
company licensed to operate a nuclear power reactor shuts down 
the facility permanently, it must submit an application to 
terminate the license. A license termination plan (LTP) also must 
be submitted for NRC approval. Maine Yankee submitted the 
proposed license termination plan on January 13, 2000. The NRC 
accepted comments on that plan and held a meeting in Wiscasset in 
May 2000 to discuss the plan with the public. The company 
submitted a revision to its LTP in August of last year. Because 
of the extensive changes incorporated into "Revision 2," the NRC 
is again accepting comments from affected parties. 

The NRC will also accept comments on Maine Yankee's August 16, 
2001, request to release portions of the site from NRC license 
jurisdiction before the license is terminated. In part, the 
release of these lands will facilitate the donation of a portion 
of this property to an environmental organization as part of a 
settlement approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 
between Maine Yankee and its ratepayers. 

The meeting will be held at the Wiscasset Middle School, 83 
Federal Street, beginning at 7:00 p.m. 

Electronic versions of the license termination plan and the 
partial site release request can be viewed through the NRC 
Agency-wide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), 
accession numbers ML012320365 and ML012340447, respectively. Help 
in using ADAMS is available through the NRC Public Document Room 
at 301-415-4737 or 1-800-397-4209.
 
Written comments on the LTP may be submitted to Michael Webb, 
Mail Stop O-7 D1. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, 
D.C. 20555-0001, or e-mail [mkw@nrc.gov] .
*****************************************************************
 14 WPPSS, there they go again

The Seattle Times: 

Editorials &Opinion 

Friday, March 01, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific 
Guest columnists
 WPPSS, there they go again 
By Judy Hedden, Sara Patton and Steve Zemke 

The Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) is back and 
wants a return to blank-check spending of ratepayer dollars. 
After staggering cost overruns finally brought down four out of 
the agency's five proposed nuclear plants, Washington voters 
responded by passing the Don't Bankrupt Washington initiative 
(Initiative 394) in 1981, which requires voter approval before 
any public agency can embark on building a large power plant in 
the state. 

WPPSS, now called Energy Northwest, has joined forces with a 
group of public utilities to gut Initiative 394. The law created 
important checks and balances intended to protect ratepayers from 
a repeat of the now-infamous nuclear debacle — a mistake that 
boosted the Bonneville Power Administration's rates by 600 
percent. 

Since 1981 when the Don't Bankrupt Washington initiative was 
passed, there has been little need for new, large energy 
projects, so the law has never been tested. Now, with pressure 
building to add new power resources in Washington, I-394 is being 
challenged. The risks and uncertainties inherent in today's 
topsy-turvy energy market, however, are precisely the chaotic 
circumstances the state's citizens feared when they voted for the 
initiative. Don't Bankrupt Washington should be tested by 
allowing it to do the job it was intended to do, not by 
attempting to repeal it. 

Legislation (SSB 5292) is moving in Olympia that would amend 
I-394 so voter approval would be required only for public 
financing of nuclear power plants. Current law includes natural 
gas-fired generation, the predominant technology used in new 
power plant construction. The House version of the bill (SHB 
1221) goes further, stripping out a requirement that 
ratepayer-funded power plants undergo an independent 
cost-effectiveness test. This common-sense review is intended to 
ensure proposed plants, which cost hundreds of millions of 
dollars to build, are on sound financial footing. 

Backers of I-394 repeal are sounding the alarm over the need for 
new energy resources in Washington. Their urgent pleas echo those 
made by WPPSS backers in the late '70s before their campaign to 
build five nuclear power plants collapsed under the weight of the 
largest municipal bond default in U.S. history. 

It's true that Washington and the Northwest need additional 
energy resources. And we're going to get them. Enough new 
gas-burning power plants are in the construction phase in 
Washington state alone to power more than 1.5 million homes. And 
many more privately financed projects are in the planning stages. 

Proponents argue that publicly built energy projects are 
essential as an alternative to the kind of cut-throat, 
sell-to-the-highest-bidder energy merchants who reaped windfall 
profits during last year's energy crisis. They might be right, 
although state and federal officials took major steps last spring 
to repair the worst flaws in California's failed deregulation 
experiment. Power prices dropped to pre-crisis levels almost 
immediately as a result and have remained relatively stable 
since. 

Because ratepayers are taking the risk, publicly financed power 
plants should be subject to a cost-effectiveness review. This 
would ensure a proposed energy project is sound financially, and 
it would provide an important economic stamp of approval for its 
public-agency proponents. A well-designed test would compare 
proposed plants to reasonable alternatives, including energy 
efficiency and renewable energy investments. State regulators 
require private, or investor-owned, utilities to undergo an 
equivalent process. 

Whether additional publicly owned power plants are needed as 
insurance against future price gouging is a difficult question. 
The answer to whether Washington citizens should retain the right 
to vote on new power plants they're expected to pay for, however, 
is an emphatic yes. 

Judy Hedden is president of the League of Women Voters of 
Washington. Sara Patton directs the NW Energy Coalition, an 
alliance of utilities and community organizations. Steve Zemke 
was chair of the Don't Bankrupt Washington Campaign, which 
sponsored Initiative 394. 

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
*****************************************************************
 15 Nuclear power plant’s safety rating falls 

NRC pans AmerenUE’s response to pump glitch.
 
LIZ VAN HOOSER of the Tribune’s staff Published Thursday, 
February 28, 2002

 Workers at the Callaway Nuclear Plant failed to act quickly 
enough in correcting a December cooling-pump malfunction, 
investigators from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found.

 NRC officials discussed the problem yesterday with 
representatives of AmerenUE, which owns and operates the plant. 
    
  Jenna Isaacson photo   

  Shut down for repairs, the Callaway Nuclear Plant on Feb. 4 
lacks the usual plume of steam emanating from its cooling tower. 
The plant has since resumed operation, but federal officials 
yesterday scolded AmerenUE for its handling of a cooling-pump 
problem and reduced the plant’s safety rating.   

The broken pump is one of three used to usher hot water from the 
plant’s reactor core when the facility shuts down for repair or 
refueling. While only one of three pumps is needed for the 
function, NRC Regional Administrator Ellis Merschoff said the 
company’s response to the problem was troublesome.

 "It shouldn’t have happened in the first place," he said. "And 
when it did, they were slow to react."

 Merschoff said that while the NRC won’t fine AmerenUE, it is 
reducing its safety rating one level, from green to white. 
Nuclear plants can receive ratings of green, white, yellow and 
red.

 If the NRC determines in a year that the Callaway plant has 
corrected its problems, the rating will return to green, 
Merschoff said.

 Garry Randolph, AmerenUE’s chief nuclear officer and vice 
president, "concurred" with the findings. "I think we learned 
some lessons here," he said. "We should have looked at the 
problem more broadly than we did. We needed to think outside the 
box."

 The pump clogged in early December, but plant workers did not 
determine the cause of the malfunction until the end of January. 
Eventually, workers found that a piece of foam similar to that 
found in a seat cushion had been lodged in the pump. Apparently, 
the foam fell off the rim of a large cover that keeps air from 
touching the 500,000-gallon condensate storage tank, which 
contains non-radioactive water. "In fairness, many things could 
have caused the pump to stop working," Merschoff said. "It seems 
very simple in hindsight."

 Still, Merschoff criticized AmerenUE for failing to detect the 
problem sooner. Randolph said investigators at his company 
followed a number of false leads before discovering the actual 
cause of the problem. "This is very similar to a 1991 incident at 
a nuclear reactor in North Carolina," Merschoff said, adding the 
potential for foam to break from pool covers is a known problem 
in the industry. Merschoff also said government investigators 
found that at least one low-level employee at the Callaway plant 
knew about the problem but did not report it to superiors.

 Randolph stood by his workers yesterday and said no one would be 
punished.

 "Our people were trying to do the right thing," he said. "I 
don’t think they fully realized the importance of the issues."

 The NRC is a federal agency that regulates the nuclear power 
industry. Merschoff said findings in the Callaway case were 
serious. Still, he said, "There’s no reason for concern or alarm 
here for members of the general public. These pumps are one of 
many safety mechanisms in place."

 It’s not uncommon for the NRC to reduce safety ratings, 
according to data on the agency’s Web site. Of the 103 plants 
operating in the United States, 21 are rated white, two are rated 
yellow and one - the Indian Point plant in Buchanan, N.Y. - is 
rated red.

 Randolph conceded the incident has probably tarnished AmerenUE’s 
reputation. Still, he said, "I believe the Callaway plant is very 
safe."
 
Reach Liz Van Hooser at (573) 815-1715 or 
lvanhooser@tribmail.com.
 
Copyright © 2002 The Columbia Daily Tribune. All Rights Reserved. 
*****************************************************************
 16 NRC Proposes $3,000 Fine Against N.J. Firm over Loss of Nuclear 
Gauge
 
 NRC: Press Release Region I - 2002 - 9 - 

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, 
Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 
www.nrc.gov
  
  No. I-02-009     
February 28, 2002                            

  CONTACT:     		 

Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330
Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331                     E-mail: 
opa1@nrc.gov [opa1@nrc.gov]  
		 		
  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has proposed a $3,000 
civil penalty against a New Jersey company for a violation of NRC 
requirements associated with the apparent theft of a nuclear 
gauge last fall. The gauge, which contains radioactive material, 
is used for industrial purposes such as measuring soil density. 
Trap Rock Industries Inc. of Kingston, N.J., reported to the NRC 
that on the evening of October 24, 2001, the gauge was left 
unattended by its user for approximately a half-hour at a 
temporary job site in Ewing, N.J. When the user returned, the 
gauge and a cart on which it was resting were missing.
 
At the time, the device's cesium-137 radioactive source was in 
the shielded position. As long as the source is shielded, there 
is no radiation hazard to gauge users or members of the public. 
However, the NRC is concerned about the incident because 1.) the 
failure to adequately control radioactive material resulted in 
the subsequent loss of the source; and 2.) such sources can 
result in substantial unintended radiation dose to an individual 
if the source is removed from the shielded position. The fine has 
been proposed because of the company's failure to secure the 
gauge from unauthorized removal or access.
 
It should be noted that Trap Rock has taken steps in response to 
the loss, including immediately contacting the state police and 
conducting a search for the device; advertising the loss of the 
gauge in local newspapers and offering a reward for its return; 
counseling and taking disciplinary action against the gauge user; 
and providing refresher training to all gauge users.
 
The company is required to provide the NRC with a written reply 
to the violation within 30 days.
   


*****************************************************************
 17 Cancer linked to cold war bomb tests

    Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 

US accused of withholding report on fallout deaths             
 		
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday March 1, 2002
The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk]  		
 		
A US government study says that the fallout from cold war nuclear 
tests carried out by the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union 
has caused the death of an estimated 15,000 Americans. 

The study was conducted by the National Cancer Institute and the 
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, but its publication 
has been delayed by the US government. However, excerpts of the 
report were obtained by Tom Harkin, Democratic senator for Iowa, 
and have been published on a website run by a watchdog group, the 
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (www.ieer.org 
[http://www.ieer.org] ). 

The study estimates that an estimated 80,000 people who lived or 
who were born in the US in the past 50 years have contracted or 
will contract cancer as a result of American nuclear tests 
conducted in Nevada and the Pacific ocean, Soviet tests in 
Kazakhstan and eastern Russia, French tests in the Pacific and 
British tests on Christmas Island. 

Of that number, 15,000 cases are estimated to be fatal. The study 
reported that everyone living on the US mainland has been exposed 
to fallout. 

"The message is we are all downwinders," said Bob Schaeffer, of 
the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a coalition of pressure 
groups. He said the report summary obtained by Mr Harkin was 
dated August 2001, but claimed it had not been made public 
because of unwillingness by governments to acknowledge the impact 
of past nuclear testing programmes. 

"There is a pattern of denial by both the US and UK governments 
about the damage done to non-combatants by the nuclear weapons 
programme," he said. "We want to get this information out so 
people who live in the areas most affected can get screened and 
treated." 

The IEER's president, Arjun Makhijani, said: "This report and 
other official data show that hot spots occurred thousands of 
miles away from the test sites. "Hot spots due to testing in 
Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine. Hot spots from 
US Pacific area testing and also Soviet testing were scattered 
across the United States, from California, Oregon, Washington, 
and in the west to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina in 
the east." 

The $1.85m (£1.3m) study took two years and measured radioactive 
isotopes across the US. Lisa Ledwidge, an IEER biologist 
commended the US government for carrying out an epidemiological 
study. "It is the only nuclear weapon state to have done so," she 
said. "But it is not enough to estimate numbers or say you're 
sorry. The harm is still occurring." 

The tests sent plumes of debris into the upper atmosphere where 
it was swirled around the Earth, depositing highly radioactive 
isotopes in the form of rain. "Any person living in the 
contiguous United States since 1951 has been exposed to 
radioactive fallout", the study found, "and all organs and 
tissues of the body have received some radiation exposure." 

In the areas worst hit by the fallout, the impact would have been 
equivalent to receiving one chest X-ray a year, higher than the 
total recommended for infants or pregnant women. The death toll 
from the fallout was estimated by comparing the actual incidence 
of cancer in badly affected areas with national norms. 

In the early days of nuclear weapons testing, very little or no 
notice was given to people living or working nearby. It has long 
been speculated that the legendary actor, John Wayne, contracted 
cancer and died as a result of the fallout from a bomb test in 
Nevada, 100 miles downwind from where he was making a film about 
Genghis Khan, The Conqueror, in 1954. 

By 1980, 91 of the 220-strong cast and crew had contracted or 
died of cancer. However, the connection between the deaths and 
the Nevada test was never proven in court. 

The latest study was ordered by Congress in 1998 after an earlier 
study, examining only the dispersal of iodine-131, found that 
exposure had been considerable across the US. The new study was 
designed to look into the dispersal of other radioactive elements 
and to estimate their impact on public health. 

"The 1997 report indicates that some farm children - those who 
drank goat's milk in the 1950s in high fallout areas - were as 
severely exposed as the worst exposed children after the 1986 
Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Such exposure creates a 
high probability of a variety of illnesses," Dr Makhijani said. 
"Yet the government did nothing to inform the people in these 
affected areas." 
	
Useful links British Nuclear Fuels Ltd 
[http://www.bnfl.co.uk/website.nsf/default.htm] Campaign for 
Nuclear Disarmament [http://www.cnduk.org/] HSE nuclear glossary 
[http://www.hse.gov.uk/nsd/ilrwglos.htm] UK atomic energy 
authority [http://www.ukaea.org.uk/] National Radiological 
Protection Board [http://www.nrpb.org.uk/] World Nuclear 
Association [http://www.uilondon.org/] 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****************************************************************
 18 Demand Rising for Potassium Iodide
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
March 01, 2002 
 
BUCHANAN, N.Y. (AP) - All this talk of nuclear doom in the New 
York City suburbs is putting money in Troy Jones' pocket. 

Jones, president of NukePills.com, is selling thousands of 
potassium iodide tablets a day in recent weeks, many to people 
near the Indian Point nuclear plant 35 miles north of Manhattan. 

The pill, better known by its chemical symbol KI, is meant to 
prevent thyroid cancer, one of the most common radiation-caused 
illnesses. 

Since Sept. 11, when an airborne terrorist attack on nuclear 
plants suddenly seemed possible, the widespread distribution of 
KI has gained credibility here and across the country as a means 
of protecting the public. 

Nine states - Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, 
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont - have 
requested a total of 3.7 million tablets from the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, which is offering states enough pills to 
treat everyone within 10 miles of a nuclear reactor. 

KI was proven effective, especially in children, after the 1986 
accident at Chernobyl. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the 
commission still believes "sheltering and evacuations would be 
the best way to go in the event of a serious nuclear accident, 
but potassium iodide is another tool." 

Some states are skeptical, saying distribution of KI distracts 
the public from the more vital issues of plant safety and 
evacuation. 

Mike Sinclair, planning chief for the Illinois Nuclear Safety 
Department, said KI "doesn't add anything in terms of public 
health." And Mel Fry, North Carolina's director of radiation 
protection, worries that using KI pills would delay an 
evacuation. 

"I'd just as soon they don't stop and pop pills," he said. "I 
just want them to get out of harm's way." 

Potassium iodide is available without a prescription at a cost of 
about $1 a pill. KI works by filling the thyroid gland, which 
absorbs iodine, with harmless iodine before radioactive iodine 
can get in. 

Dr. Donald Margouleff, chief of nuclear medicine at North Shore 
University Hospital in Manhasset, cautioned that potassium iodine 
offers no protection against any form of radiation illness other 
than thyroid cancer. 

Still, Margouleff said, "It's not expensive, it doesn't have a 
short shelf life, large amounts are not required, the side 
effects are going to be minimal, if any, in most people, and the 
protection far outweighs the risk." 

Roseanne Pawelec, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of 
Health, said officials from five adjoining states met this week 
to consider a coordinated New England-wide approach to 
distribution. 

Tentative plans call for drugstores to distribute pills in 
advance to households, with separate stockpiles maintained at 
schools in case of an accident or attack during the school day, 
she said. 

In Arizona, pills would be distributed only after exposure, at 
reception areas outside the danger zone. "We don't want people 
taking time to hunt down their pills. The best thing to do is get 
out of there," said Aubrey Godwin, director of the state's 
Radiation Regulatory Agency. 

The size of the distribution zone is also at issue. A lawyer for 
an anti-nuclear group in Connecticut said it "borders on criminal 
negligence" not to make pills available within 50 miles of a 
reactor - not the 10 miles prescribed by the NRC. 

New York, which requested 1.2 million pills, is leaving the 
planning to counties around its three nuclear stations. 

Westchester County, home of Indian Point, is asking schools, 
hospitals and other institutions to draft a distribution strategy 
that will not interfere with evacuation. 

"We're looking to make KI so widely available that it becomes the 
last thing the public has to worry about or think about," County 
Health Commissioner Joshua Lipsman said. 

Robin Tinkhauser of nearby Chappaqua is ahead of the government, 
having bought tablets from her pharmacy. A mother of two, she 
keeps the pills in her medicine cabinet, her car and at her 
8-year-old son's school, where she persuaded reluctant officials 
to administer it in case of radioactive fallout. 

"If it's out there and it's available to protect us, especially 
the children, who are most vulnerable, I want to take advantage 
of that," she said. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 19 Study says fallout from nuclear tests killed 11,000

Friday, March 01, 2002
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 

REVIEW-JOURNAL 

An estimated 11,000 people living in the United States after 1951 
have died from cancer caused by radioactive fallout from nuclear 
weapons tests in Nevada and elsewhere, according to a study being 
prepared by the government. 

The largest number of those deaths was among the 3.8 million 
people born in the United States in 1951 -- the year the first 
nuclear test was conducted at the Nevada Test Site -- because 
this group received higher doses at a younger age than groups 
born earlier or later, the study concludes. 

Coupled with previous studies, the number of people in the 
country whose fatal cancers could be linked to atmospheric 
nuclear blasts detonated during the Cold War could now total more 
than 15,000, experts said. 

"It's a further admission by the government of what most Nevadans 
and Utahns have known all along, that fallout caused a legacy of 
illness and death downwind, followed by government lies and 
cover-ups," said Steve Erikson, a consultant with a nonprofit 
watchdog group, Downwinders Inc. 

"The death estimates keep incrementally increasing as the 
government slowly fesses up. First no one was hurt, then a 
handful, then a few thousand and now maybe tens of thousands," 
said Erikson, director of Citizens Education Project, a nonprofit 
Utah environmental justice organization. 

But Nevada Test Site officials questioned the accuracy of the 
study, saying it appears to be based on scant data from fallout 
measurements that were taken in the 1950s and 1960s over a few 
locations scattered around the country. Translating the data into 
the number of expected deaths from fallout carries a significant 
margin of error, they said. 

"People see a report like that and they think the numbers are 
absolute," said David Wheeler, a National Nuclear Security 
Administration health physicist at the test site, 65 miles 
northwest of Las Vegas. 

"We really don't know any more now about how much actually fell 
out in the 1950s and 1960s than we know now," Wheeler said. He 
explained that the numbers of fallout-related deaths is really a 
guess about the effects of small doses from radioactivity 
factored into a large number of people. 

But a Pahrump woman, whose husband worked at the test site for 
about 30 years beginning in 1953, collecting soil samples as the 
dust from mushroom clouds settled and later driving trucks 
hauling radioactive cargo, said the study heightens her concerns 
that his death from an invasive type of cancer was linked to 
fallout. 

"We need to let the people working for our country be aware and 
let them decide whether to go out there or not," said Dorothy 
Houser-Hilton, whose husband, Melvin Houser, died in 1984. She 
said as a contract worker he was often dispatched into so-called 
"hot" fallout areas but was unaware of how much exposure he 
received. 

Prepared by scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the fallout study 
still is being reviewed by officials in the Department of Health 
and Human Services, an HHS spokesman said Thursday. 

A 10-page "progress report" prepared in August for Congress was 
made public this week by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, where counties 
were mapped as "hot spots" for cesium-137, a radionuclide traced 
to atmospheric tests conducted outside the United States. 

The latest study, based on global fallout estimates, builds on a 
1997 National Cancer Institute report that reconstructed doses to 
the thyroid gland from the radionuclide iodine-131 emanating from 
blasts at the test site, where atmospheric testing was conducted 
from January 1951 through July 1962. 

Regarding the latest study, Wheeler said the 100 atmospheric 
tests conducted at the test site account for less than 10 percent 
of the global fallout contribution from cesium that scientists 
measure in the environment today, including fallout from tests 
conducted by the Soviet Union and other countries during the Cold 
War. 

In all, 210 atmospheric tests were conducted by the United 
States. Of those, the largest detonations were the 106 shots in 
the South Pacific. Three atmospheric tests were conducted over 
the Atlantic Ocean and one, the Trinity shot, the nation's first, 
was at Alamogordo, N.M., in 1945. 

The 1997 study estimated between 11,300 and 212,000 thyroid 
cancers would be expected to occur from fallout exposure, with 
deaths estimated at about 2,500. 

The new report expands to tests conducted in the Pacific islands 
and Russia, and seeks to map possible exposures from 18 other 
radionuclides besides Iodine-131 that could be linked to cases of 
leukemia as well as thyroid cancer. 

The study for the first time also mapped preliminary dose 
estimates for all counties in the contiguous states. Maps show 
fallout from global tests blanketed most of the country, 
including pockets of California and the Pacific Northwest that 
were generally not exposed to radioactive particles that blew 
downwind from atmospheric tests in Nevada. 

It also identified counties in Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, 
Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee and North Carolina as among those having 
estimated high levels of cesium-137. In the most affected 
counties, exposure would have been equivalent to an annual chest 
X-ray 

"What this tells me is that we're all downwinders," said Bob 
Schaeffer, spokesman for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, 
a network of groups representing communities near nuclear weapons 
sites. 

"Any person living in the contiguous United States since 1951 has 
been exposed to radioactive fallout, and all organs and tissues 
of the body have received some radiation exposure," the report 
said.
 
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
 20 Almost All in U.S. Have Been Exposed to Fallout, Study Finds
       
March 1, 2002

By JAMES GLANZ

n a preliminary study that takes into account not only nuclear tests 
in Nevada but also nearly all American and Soviet nuclear tests 
conducted overseas until they were banned in 1963, the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention has found that virtually every person 
who has lived in the United States since 1951 has been exposed to 
radioactive fallout.
These new findings expand on those from five years ago by the 
National Cancer Institute that showed that people living in a long, 
plume-shaped region stretching from Idaho and Montana to the 
Mississippi River and beyond had a slightly higher risk of 
developing thyroid cancer because of the Nevada tests.
The new study, which was completed in August 2001 and was first 
revealed yesterday in USA Today, suggests that for all Americans 
born after 1951 "all organs and tissues of the body have received 
some radiation exposure." The study says in highly guarded terms 
that the global fallout could eventually be responsible for more 
than 11,000 cancer deaths in the United States.
But the study said any medical implications were uncertain because 
the average American had received almost 20 times as much radiation 
from medical procedures like chest X-rays as from fallout of all 
kinds over the same period. 
Dr. Charles Miller, chief of the radiation studies branch at the 
agency's National Center for Environmental Health, said the report 
was merely a "feasibility study" that showed it was possible — 
should Congress request it — to carry out a full analysis of the 
health risks of above- ground nuclear testing. 
"We were trying to illustrate what could be done," Dr. Miller said, 
adding that "it would be irresponsible for me to speculate" on how 
accurate the estimate of 11,000 deaths might be.
Still, given the widespread exposures indicated by the study, its 
tentative conclusions show that the government has inadequately 
explained the cancer risks from nuclear tests, said Senator Tom 
Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who says the follow-up research must be 
carried out.
"If the threat of exposure had been related to Americans sooner, 
early diagnosis and treatment may have saved many of these lives," 
said Mr. Harkin, who has seen four siblings die of cancer. "The 
release of this report is long overdue."
The United States conducted more than 200 above-ground, or 
atmospheric, tests of nuclear weapons from 1951 to 1963, about half 
of those at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, 
and the others in the Marshall Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific 
Ocean. Over the same period, the Soviet Union exploded some 200 
nuclear weapons in tests on its own territory. 
Such tests release radioactive iodine, which decays away in a matter 
of days, as well as longer-lived isotopes like radioactive cesium 
and strontium, which take many decades to disappear. The previous 
study, by the National Cancer Institute, examined fallout patterns 
and cancer risks caused by the release of iodine from the Nevada 
tests.
"Their report, as far as determining the fallout levels, was 
probably as good as could be done," said David Wheeler, a health 
physicist at the Nevada Test Site.
But he said that deriving cancer rates was a highly uncertain 
process at best. Accordingly, the cancer institute estimated that 
from 11,300 to 212,000 thyroid cancers would result from this 
exposure. Most thyroid cancers are treatable, but a small percentage 
result in death.
The Centers for Disease Control study also looks at exposures to the 
long-lived radioactive elements, which can be carried thousands of 
miles, potentially causing leukemia, breast cancer, liver cancer and 
other types of cancer. The study estimated the exposure patterns by 
taking into account the winds after tests, the amount of fallout 
created in each type of explosion and the rates at which different 
kinds of radioactive particles fall from the sky.
While the average exposure of an American because of the fallout is 
low, it increases each person's chance of developing cancer by a 
tiny amount, potentially leading to a larger number of deaths by 
cancer.
The study finds that nearly all cancers caused by tests at the 
Nevada site are likely to be related to the iodine that was the 
focus of the earlier work. The overseas tests could cause cancer 
only through the long- lived elements. The United States is not 
special in this regard; all nations will have received the 
long-lived radioactivity, but the Centers for Disease Control did 
not estimate cancer rates elsewhere.
Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and 
Environmental Research, an organization dedicated to nuclear 
disarmament, said that while the average exposures indicated by the 
C.D.C. study were low, concentrations in specific areas — which 
still have not been determined — are likely to have been far above 
those values.
"There are people in these high fallout areas who are seriously 
affected," Dr. Makhijani said. "There is no cause for alarm, but 
there is a public health issue, and the government is not facing up 
to it."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information 
*****************************************************************
 21 Fallout Hit N. Utah In the '50s

The Salt Lake Tribune -- 

     Friday, March 1, 2002   

BY TROY GOODMAN

    Salt Lake and Weber counties were among U.S. counties 
receiving the nation's highest doses of radioactive fallout from 
nuclear tests, according to a not-yet-released government study 
of nuclear testing and its public health toll. 

    The mountain-bordering Utah counties are part of a patchwork 
of contaminated Western and Midwestern U.S communities -- 
including counties in Idaho, Wyoming, California, South Dakota 
and Nebraska -- that received the highest levels of fallout, 
according to USA Today, which obtained a copy of the report. 

    These areas likely received cancerous fallout levels from 
scores of Cold War-era nuclear bombs set off at the Nevada Test 
Site, according to the study. The fallout also comes from 
offshore nuclear test explosions and tests on other continents by 
the old Soviet Union and European nations. These tests occurred 
in the 1950s and 1960s, since such above-ground blasts ceased 
decades ago. 

    "This is the first time the government ever has acknowledged 
a substantial number of cancers resulting from exposure to 
fallout beyond the so-called 'downwinder' areas immediately 
adjacent to the Nevada Test Site," said USA Today reporter Peter 
Eisler, who wrote Thursday's article. 

    Chuck Wiggins, director of the Utah Cancer Registry, said 
discerning opinion from concrete analysis would be a challenge 
once the report is released to the public. The cancer figures are 
only a general estimate of the disease's spread nationwide; there 
is no way to link any specific cancer case to fallout. 

    "In terms of cancers, we really don't know what causes them," 
Wiggins said. He expected to analyze the report as soon as it 
is's available. 

    The report -- citing Cold War nuclear weapons tests across 
the globe, including those in Nevada -- said those tests probably 
caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths in residents living in the 
United States after 1951. Exposure dropped off gradually after 
1963, the date tests were banned. 

    Coupled with findings from previous government 
investigations, estimates that 20,000 nonfatal cancers -- and 
possibly many more -- also can be tied to fallout from 
above-ground weapons tests. 

    The estimates are based on computer analyses of fallout 
patterns, population trends and other data that can help gauge 
public exposure to fallout from hundreds of blasts. The study 
accounts for scores of tests at the Nevada Test Site, as well as 
tests in the Soviet Union and on several Pacific islands used for 
testing of British, French and U.S. weapons. 

    The data show that global fallout blanketed much of the 
United States, mainly in the Farm Belt, the East and parts of 
California and the Pacific Northwest. 

    In the case of Utah and other mountain states, the report 
said, the fallout appears to have happened after clouds or rain 
carried the radioactive dust over those counties. Other exposure 
patterns could come from how popular farm-fresh dairy products 
were among certain populations. 

    The types of cancers outlined in the study include 22,000 
cases, half of them fatal, of thyroid, breast, skin, lung and 
brain cancers, and also leukemias. 

    The study is the government's first effort to assess the 
nationwide effects of all forms of radiation from aboveground 
nuclear tests worldwide, according to the USA Today report. Death 
and disease estimates raise public policy questions, including 
whether the government should do cancer screenings in 
high-fallout areas. 

    It also highlights the fact that an earlier study of exposure 
to iodine-131 focused on just one of the many radioactive 
elements in bomb-testing fallout. The recent data measures 
radioactive Cesium-137. 

    Wiggins said the findings on Weber and Salt Lake counties 
were surprising considering the President's Cancer Panel recently 
listed Utah with the lowest overall cancer deaths among the 50 
states and the District of Columbia. 

    Utah ranked 51st in cancer mortality, with Hawaii and 
Colorado sharing the next lowest slots. The panel ranks 
Washington, D.C., at first place for having the highest cancer 
mortality. 
   
  © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune 
*****************************************************************
 22 Global nuclear fallout hits Idaho

News | KTVB.COM | Idaho News

FEBRUARY 28, 2002, 10:00 PM 
                                 
Nuclear study

More than 15,000 cancer deaths in America may be linked to cold 
war nuclear weapons testing. And Idaho was a hotspot for fallout. 
That's according to a new study by the Centers for Disease 
Control. 

In 1997 - half a century after atmospheric nuclear tests were 
done in Nevada - the government first admitted that fallout 
directly impacted surrounding states, including Idaho. A new 
study has even more bad news. 

Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Institute for Energy and Environmental 
Research: "Idaho seems to have been one of those unfortunate 
states that has areas of high fallout both from testing in Nevada 
and testing in other parts of the world." 


Dr. Arjun Makhijani is with the Institute for Energy and 
Environmental Research. He says the Centers for Disease Control 
is dragging its feet on releasing results of a two-year study on 
global fallout. But, Makhijani has the results. 

Makhijani: "So what's new about this study is it shows that tests 
done outside the United States, in the Pacific and Soviet Union 
affected the Continental US in some cases as severely as tests or 
more severely as tests in the US." 

Gary Richardson, Snake River Alliance: "It really adds insult to 
injury." 

Gary Richardson is with the Snake River Alliance - Idaho&#8217;s 
nuclear watchdog. 

Richardson: "We've already had previous evidence of fallout 
exposure now this study adds more information about other sources 
of fallout, other types of radioactive substances. But it just 
piles on the dangers we've known in the past." 

Dr. Makhijani applauds the government for finally doing the study 
- but after decades of research, he's ready for action. 

Makhijani: "But, it's really no longer enough to just publish 
numbers and say well, we've done the job. These numbers have 
serious public health implications and the government needs to 
acknowledge that with some practical action." 

KTVB.COM | Weather | Zidaho | Directory | Twin Falls | 
*****************************************************************
 23 Nuclear Waste Should Be Stored on the Moon         

FOXNews.com
  
Thursday, February 28, 2002
 			 				 				By Rand Simberg
Editor's Note: Beginning this week, Fox News brings some of the 
web's newest voices under its wing with the addition of the Fox 
Weblog. With it, we hope to bring the far-flung corners of the 
Internet to your desktop, with a little commentary on the side. 
For those who don't know, a weblog is a tour of the Net guided by 
a pilot you will come to know over time. We hope you enjoy the 
tour.

 		 	 	 	 		 			 				
Nevada Says Yuck to Yucca Mountain 
 			 				
I've been spending a few days up in the Reno area, and since the 
President's decision to go ahead with the Yucca Mountain nuclear 
waste repository, it seems to have moved up in the local 
political agenda. 
			 				
Senator Reid is accusing Bush of "lying" and breaking his 
campaign promise, but of course, this is just demagoguery — Bush 
promised nothing except to make a decision based on "sound 
science." Since most politicians wouldn't know sound science if 
it came up and yelled in their ears, I'm not inclined to grant 
the Senator much credibility here — it's really a judgment call. 
Mr. Bush may be mistaken, but he can't be objectively accused of 
promise-breaking. 
			 				
The Democrats are trying to leverage it as a campaign issue 
against Republicans, but the consensus seems to be that this 
won't have much traction, because the local Republicans are 
opposed to the decision as well. It doesn't seem to be a partisan 
issue here — it's viewed more as Nevada against the rest of the 
country. It's just the latest manifestation of the Sagebrush 
Rebellion, with which I am normally sympathetic.
 			 				
Unfortunately, nuclear energy and nuclear waste are not issues 
amenable to decisions based on sound science — people tend to get 
too emotional about things that they don't understand. 
			 				
There aren't any simple solutions to this policy problem. Nuclear 
energy is potentially the most environmentally benign source 
available in the near term (though the federal policy on it has 
been idiotic since the inception of the industry, making it much 
more hazardous and expensive than it need be, by mandating 
intrinsically bad plant designs). 
			 				
But waste disposal is probably the most pressing problem, and 
it's one that's independent of plant design. And even if we were 
to renounce nuclear power today (with the attendant economic and 
environmental damage as we either destroy local economies from 
energy shortages, or increase production from much dirtier coal 
plants which produce the evil CO2, and actually put out more 
radiation than properly-operating nukes), we still have tens of 
thousands of tons of waste sitting in unsafe conditions at 
existing plants.
 			 				
Every criticism of Yucca Mountain applies in spades to the 
available alternative — continuing to accumulate it at the plants 
in a wide range of conditions, few of them good. If Nevada wants 
to fight this decision, they'll have to do more than simply 
naysay it and declare that, after over two decades and billions 
of dollars, it needs more study. They have to offer a viable 
alternative.
 			 				
And any alternative should consider the following: one 
generation's waste is another's commodity. Before the invention 
of the internal combustion engine, gasoline was a waste byproduct 
of cracking oil for other purposes. Thus, one of the features of 
the Yucca Mountain solution is that the waste will be available 
to us in the future when we may find it useful, and any 
alternative should ideally have that feature as well.
 			 				
But on the bright side, another feature (well, actually, it's a 
bug) of the Yucca Mountain plan is that it will cost billions of 
dollars and take several years to implement. This effectively 
lowers the evaluation bar for competing concepts — they don't 
have to be either cheap or fast, as long as they're better.
 			 				
Those of you who read my ravings regularly probably know where 
I'm going with this. Many eons ago, when I was an undergraduate, 
I took a course in aerospace systems design. The class project 
was to come up with a way to dispose of nuclear waste — in space. 
While it was (of course) a brilliant study, it has also been more 
recently analyzed by people who both knew what they were doing 
and got paid for it. It turns out to be (at least technically — 
politics are another matter) a non-ridiculous idea. 
			 				
These are the basic options: 
 			 				
— dropping it into good ol' Sol, which is really really 
expensive, and puts it totally out of the reach of our smarter 
descendents; 
 			 				
— lofting it out of Sol's system completely, which is cheaper 
than putting it in the Sun, but still expensive, and practically 
if not theoretically out of reach of future recyclers; 
 			 				
— a long-term orbit, which is accessible, but long term can't be 
guaranteed to be long-enough term; and finally, 
 			 				
— on some planetary surface, most likely the Moon because it's 
the most convenient. 
 			 				
Lunar storage sounds like a winner to me. There's no ecology to 
mess up there, the existing natural radiation environment will 
put that particular grade of nuclear waste to shame when it comes 
to particle dispensing, and we can retrieve it any time we want, 
while making it hard (at least right now) for terrorists to get 
their hands on it. 
 			 				
So, great storage location. Now, how do we get it there? Aye, 
there's the rub.
 			 				
The two problems, of course, are cost and safety. It turns out 
that both are tractable, as long as one doesn't use Shuttle, or 
any existing launcher, as a paradigm for the achievable. The key 
to both reducing cost and increasing reliability is high flight 
rate of reusable systems — what I call space transports. 
			 				
Fortunately, like space tourism, hazardous waste disposal may be 
a large enough market to allow such a system to be developed. A 
thousand tons is a thousand flights of a vehicle with a one-ton 
payload. And there are many thousands of tons of nuclear waste in 
storage. And the tonnage will only increase if it's further 
processed for safe handling and storage (such as vitrification, 
in which it is encased in glass). 
			 				
Preliminary estimates indicate that it can in fact be done 
economically in the context of the current nuclear industry 
operating costs; the major issue is safety. This issue has been 
addressed as well, and it's something that Nevada (a state that 
also offers high potential as a home for rocket racing and the 
space tourism industry) should take seriously as a possible 
alternative to terrestrial storage. It might allow them to make 
the lemon that they've been stuck with into the lemonade of a 
whole new 21st-century industry.
 			 				
Email
 			 				
I received very little email last week in response to last week's 
column. Apparently it was insufficiently controversial. I suspect 
that I rectified that problem this week. However, I did get a 
nice email from a Don Davis: 
			 				
Mr. Simberg
 			 				
You might be interested in taking a look at some of my writings. 
I touch on Glenn, Apollo, the V-2 and other topics.
 			 				
I like your space-related writing and I will check in on it from 
time to time.
 			 				
While it seems like a typical polite encouragement, I include it 
here because the writer is too modest; Don Davis is one of the 
finest space artists living. He is known for a fanatical (in the 
good sense) attention to scientific detail, and I own one of his 
limited edition prints. I suggest that you check out his site and 
work. 
			 				
<EM>Rand Simberg</EM> [simberg@interglobal.org]  is a recovering 
aerospace engineer and a consultant in space commercialization, 
space tourism and Internet security. He offers 
occasionally-biting commentary about infinity, and beyond at his 
webblog, Transterrestrial Musings.
 			 				
Fox News Network, LLC 2002. 
*****************************************************************
 24 Army to Remove Radioactive Sludge
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
February 28, 2002 
 
FREDERICK, Md.- Army officials have agreed to remove 140 tons of 
radioactive sludge stored in shipping containers across the road 
from a middle school. Fort Detrick officials said the 
radioactivity is harmlessly low but plan to remove the material 
to satisfy worried parents and city officials. 

The nine shipping containers will be sent to a Utah disposal site 
starting Monday, Fort Detrick spokeswoman Eileen Mitchell said. 

Gwen Dorsey, a vice principal at Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle 
School, said school officials were nervous about having the 
containers so close to their 920 students. 

The sludge is a byproduct of the Army post's wastewater treatment 
plant, which operates separately from the city wastewater system. 

The radioactivity comes from materials that scientists in the 
Fort Detrick infectious disease laboratories use to mark DNA for 
studies, Lt. Col. Donald Archibald said. 

He said similar contamination can occur in municipal wastewater 
sludge, which is routinely sent to landfills or spread on farm 
fields. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 25 Hydrologist says Nevada needs more water in exchange for dump
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
February 28, 2002 
 
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A hydrologist who has studied water issues at 
the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain for more than two decades 
says the federal government owes the state more of what some 
consider the most valuable commodity in the West: water. 

Tom Buqo, a Nye County water consultant, estimates that at least 
4.8 million acre feet of groundwater on the former nuclear 
weapons proving ground has been contaminated by testing since the 
1950s. 

"The groundwater is contaminated beyond any remediation," he said 
of the Department of Energy-managed site some 65 miles northwest 
of Las Vegas. "And the DOE plans to monitor in perpetuity, not 
clean it up." 

Earlier this month, President Bush selected Yucca Mountain as the 
storage site for the nation's nuclear waste. Buqo said Nevada 
officials, who have vowed to fight Bush's decision, should use 
water as a bargaining chip. 

"Water is the one thing Nevada needs to be demanding," he said, 
adding he believes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain will 
contaminate even more groundwater. DOE studies say that's not the 
case. 

Bob Bangerter, DOE project manager for Yucca Mountain's 
underground testing areas, said federal officials are still 
studying the extent of the pollution at Yucca Mountain. 

"I can't say whether that's an accurate number because right now 
we don't know how much water is contaminated," he said of Buqo's 
figure of 4.8 million acre feet. 

Meanwhile, an independent review of the DOE's solution to 
groundwater pollution has found it scientifically defensible, 
although it could be improved, Bangerter said. 

"Technologically and economically we can't clean up the 
groundwater," he added. "Our proposal is that we will find what 
the maximum extent is that the contamination will move and will 
establish a long-term monitoring network to ensure the public is 
safe." 

If the contamination ever threatens public safety, the DOE will 
consider alternatives including replacement water, Bangerter 
said. 

"We have had a groundwater monitoring program both on and off the 
test site for the past 50 years and so far we have never detected 
any contamination off the test site," he said. 

The indirect impact of the groundwater contamination includes 
loss of productivity and tax revenues, Buqo said during a panel 
discussion at Thursday's Nevada Water Resources Association 
conference in Las Vegas. 

He said the federal government should replace the lost water, 
adding that would cost less than the DOE's current groundwater 
studies, and clean up the contamination before Yucca Mountain is 
allowed to accept any nuclear waste. 

Buqo, who conducts independent tests on water running south of 
the Test Site for the county, has been studying water issues 
there for more than two decades. He estimates that five times the 
amount of radioactivity present in the test site's soil and 
groundwater could eventually be entombed in Yucca Mountain. 

"The big difference is that it's not on the ground or in the 
groundwater, it will be stored in containers," Buqo said about 
the long-term storage of the nation's estimated 77,000 tons of 
highly toxic nuclear waste. 

A DOE spokeswoman for the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage project 
declined to comment on Buqo's estimates. 

The DOE has spent roughly $8 billion to study Yucca Mountain 
since 1987 as the nation's sole repository for nuclear waste. 

Under federal plans, the site wouldn't begin accepting nuclear 
waste for at least another eight years. 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 26 Yucca: Possible conflict probed


Friday, March 01, 2002
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 

STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU 

WASHINGTON -- Aides to Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., are 
examining Energy Department documents in search of possible 
evidence that a top adviser to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham 
may have a conflict of interest on the Yucca Mountain Project. 

Berkley in January asked Abraham for schedules, letters, 
contracts and other documents on Robert Card, the department's 
undersecretary and a point man on nuclear waste. 

A box containing "several reams" of material arrived from the 
department last week and is being examined, Berkley spokesman 
Michael O'Donovan said. 

Before joining the government, Card was senior vice president of 
CH2M Hill, a Colorado-based engineering firm. He also was 
president and chief executive of Kaiser-Hill, a joint venture 
between Kaiser Group Holdings and CH2M Hill that held a 
multibillion-dollar contract to clean up and close down the Rocky 
Flats nuclear weapons plant outside Denver. 

Critics have complained that Card has conflicts as a top Energy 
Department official now overseeing the Rocky Flats project and 
cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, 
where CH2M Hill holds a government contract. 

Abraham has defended Card, saying Energy Department lawyers have 
reviewed the charges and found no basis for them.
 
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002
*****************************************************************
 27 Expert: Nevada's best bargaining chip is water

Friday, March 01, 2002
 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal 
 
Government should clean up contamination before Yucca proceeds 
By LISA SNEDEKER 
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

A hydrologist who has studied water issues at the Nevada Test 
Site and Yucca Mountain for more than two decades says the 
federal government owes the state more of what some consider the 
most valuable commodity in the West: water. 

Tom Buqo, a Nye County water consultant, estimates that at least 
4.8 million acre-feet of groundwater on the former nuclear 
weapons proving ground has been contaminated by testing since the 
1950s. 

"The groundwater is contaminated beyond any remediation," he said 
of the Department of Energy-managed site some 65 miles northwest 
of Las Vegas. "And the DOE plans to monitor in perpetuity, not 
clean it up." 

President Bush in February selected Yucca Mountain as the storage 
site for the nation's nuclear waste. Buqo said Nevada officials, 
who have vowed to fight Bush's decision, should use water as a 
bargaining chip. 

"Water is the one thing Nevada needs to be demanding," he said, 
adding he believes storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain will 
contaminate even more groundwater. DOE studies say that's not the 
case. 

Bob Bangerter, DOE project manager for Yucca Mountain's 
underground testing areas, said federal officials still are 
studying the extent of the pollution at Yucca Mountain. 

"I can't say whether that's an accurate number because right now 
we don't know how much water is contaminated," he said of Buqo's 
figure of 4.8 million acre-feet. 

Meanwhile, an independent review of the DOE's solution to 
groundwater pollution has found it scientifically defensible, 
although it could be improved, Bangerter said. 

"Technologically and economically we can't clean up the 
groundwater," he added. "Our proposal is that we will find what 
the maximum extent is that the contamination will move and will 
establish a long-term monitoring network to ensure the public is 
safe." 

If the contamination ever threatens public safety, the DOE will 
consider alternatives including replacement water, Bangerter 
said. 

The indirect impact of the groundwater contamination includes 
loss of productivity and tax revenues, Buqo said during a panel 
discussion at Thursday's Nevada Water Resources Association 
conference in Las Vegas. 

He said the federal government should replace the lost water, 
adding that would cost less than the DOE's current groundwater 
studies, and clean up the contamination before Yucca Mountain is 
allowed to accept any nuclear waste. 

Buqo estimates that five times the amount of radioactivity 
present in the test site's soil and groundwater eventually could 
be entombed in Yucca Mountain. 

"The big difference is that it's not on the ground or in the 
groundwater, it will be stored in containers," Buqo said about 
the long-term storage of the nation's estimated 77,000 tons of 
high-level nuclear waste. 

A DOE spokeswoman for the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage project 
declined to comment on Buqo's estimates. 

webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 
*****************************************************************
 28 Editorial: Nuke fight needs all pitching in
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
March 01, 2002 
 
For too long now the state government of Nevada and the four 
members of the state's congressional delegation have had the 
fight against nuclear waste burial at Yucca Mountain mostly all 
to themselves. Local governments also have done their part in 
raising their voices against the federal government's plan to 
forever despoil Nevada by burying deadly nuclear waste underneath 
Yucca Mountain, just 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. But with 
President Bush's decision to accept the Department of Energy's 
recommendation that Yucca is suitable for the highly radioactive 
waste, the time has come for the state to present a truly united 
front. That means it's time for the captains of Nevada industry 
to declare themselves as solid allies of the state government and 
congressional delegation in the fight to protect the state's 
right to stand up for itself and say no to al lowing such poison 
within its borders.

 We need this support now more than ever. That's why the overall 
results of a survey of major non-gaming businesses, reported 
Thursday by three Las Vegas Sun reporters, are worrisome. While 
some businesses spoke encouragingly about joining the fight, most 
expressed nonchalance. The Sun has already reported the 
lackluster support offered by the gaming industry -- $250,000 
from the Nevada Resort Association and $500,000 by the American 
Gaming Association. Station Casinos showed more of the type of 
commitment needed when, on its own, it donated $50,000.

 There is still time, however, for Nevada's industries -- gaming 
and non-gaming alike -- to coalesce and show the federal 
government that they stand shoulder to shoulder with the state 
government, the congressional delegation, and our citizens. Two 
polls so far this year -- one in Clark County and one statewide 
-- show that citizen opposition to Yucca Mountain remains 
overwhelming. The state Agency for Nuclear Projects, which heads 
Nevada's efforts to prove why Yucca Mountain is unsafe for 
storing nuclear waste, will be soliciting business and industry 
leaders in the near future. A strong response will keep Nevada's 
efforts alive. While powerful forces in Washington are determined 
to roll over any opposition from Nevada, they have not succeeded 
in the 20 years this has been an issue. Now, as we approach the 
endgame, we need to remain strong and not give any perception 
that our resolve has weakened. Nevada can yet win this battle, 
but it needs all hands on deck.
 
All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 29 Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository Approved
 
  Spencer Abraham, secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), 
has formally recommended to President George Bush that Yucca 
Mountain in Nevada be developed as the nation's first long-term 
geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. 

Currently, this nuclear waste is stored in temporary surface 
storage facilities located at 131 sites, mostly at commercial 
nuclear power plants, in 39 states. 

Secretary Abraham says that 20 years and $4 billion in scientific 
study demonstrate that Yucca Mountain is scientifically and 
technically suitable for development. Yet local opponents claim 
that serious issues, such as long-term earthquake risks and 
movement of the waste into the groundwater, require more detailed 
investigation. 

Congress can override the secretary’s decision. And to put 
pressure on Congress to reverse Abraham’s plan and further study 
the site’s geology, local opposition groups plan to take their 
case to voters in the thousands of small communities through 
which the lethally dangerous waste would pass on trucks and rail 
cars.

Learn more about the Yucca debate from PM’s original story, 
"Plutonium Peril," from the January 1999 issue.

Click for  [http://www.ymp.gov/] .

Click for a viewpoint from  [http://www.yuccamountain.org] .
         
  Opponents will focus on stressing the dangers of transporting 
nuclear waste through communites between the current waste sites 
and Yucca Mountain.   

popularmechanics

*****************************************************************
 30 NRC says nuke plant's missing fuel rods no threat

Yahoo - 

Thursday February 28, 1:55 pm Eastern Time
 
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - U.S. regulators said Thursday that 
two spent fuel rods missing from the Millstone nuclear power 
plant in Connecticut were most likely sent to a licensed waste 
site and posed no danger to the public.

For years, the U.S. government has been worried that terror 
groups would try to obtain spent nuclear fuel to build so- called 
``dirty'' bombs that would spread radioactive material.

But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said there was no evidence 
the rods were stolen from Millstone's Unit 1 reactor and has 
accepted the conclusion of the plant's operators that the missing 
fuel rods were likely located in a licensed low- level 
radioactive waste facility.

Inspectors from the NRC have been looking into the fuel rods 
since Millstone's operators told the agency in December 2000 that 
the rods were missing.

Northeast Utilities (NYSE:NU 
[http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=nu&d=t]  - news) operated the plant 
at the time, but the facility is now owned by Dominion Resources 
Inc.(NYSE:D [http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=d&d=t]  - news). The 
660-megawatt Millstone Unit 1 reactor, located in Waterford, 
Connecticut, went online in 1970, but is now shut down.

NRC inspectors also concluded it was highly unlikely that the 
rods remained in the pool that stores Millstone's spent fuel. 
Company records indicate the rods were last verified to be in the 
pool in 1980.

``Because of the radiological controls in place at any of the 
possible locations of the missing rods, the NRC believes there is 
no threat to public health,'' the agency said in a statement.

Still, NRC said it will announce an enforcement action at a later 
date in connection with the missing fuel rods, because several 
agency regulations were violated. 

   Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy 
*****************************************************************
 31 Enriched uranium tax exemption bill faltering 

The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Friday, March 01, 2002

The bill was reassigned to the House Appropriations and Revenue 
Committee. Bills reassigned this late in a session usually die. 

By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
 
FRANKFORT, Ky.--Legislation exempting enriched uranium produced 
at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant from the state sales tax 
may have been hung out to dry this week when it was reassigned to 
the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee. 

"Usually, when a bill is reassigned to a committee this late in 
the session it kills the bill," said John Cooper, a lobbyist 
whose clients include the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce. 

USEC Inc., which operates the plant, sought the exemption amid 
preparation to move final shipping operations from its closed 
plant in Portsmouth, Ohio, to Paducah. The company originally 
planned to move the operation in 2004 but decided doing it this 
year would save money. 

Kentucky lawmakers from the Ashland area, across the Ohio River 
from Portsmouth, are against the bill because moving the shipping 
operation would eliminate 440 jobs. Some of the workers live in 
Kentucky, according to Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook. 

The opposition persisted despite USEC's announcement two weeks 
ago that the move and the job losses were definite. 

Adkins said he and others from that region don't want to do 
anything to hurt Paducah, but he questioned whether USEC needs 
the incentive. Enriched uranium is exempt from the sales tax in 
Ohio. 

Exemption from the 6 percent tax would save USEC and its 
customers at least $5 million a year, according to USEC. 

"They've already announced they are moving without the incentive, 
so we wonder if it really is needed," Adkins said. 

The bill introduced by Rep. Charles Geveden, D-Wickliffe, 
received initial approval by the Appropriations and Revenue 
Committee on Jan. 22. It was posted for House consideration Jan. 
31 but was never called for a vote. Without discussion, the Rules 
Committee this week sent the bill back to the committee. 

House Majority Leader Greg Stumbo cited concern about a net loss 
of jobs for Kentuckians as his reason for not setting up a House 
vote. Officials said moving the operation to Paducah would create 
only 35 to 50 new jobs because of the number of employees already 
involved in shipping the unfinished uranium. 

USEC officials said fewer than 40 Portsmouth workers live in 
Kentucky, and that some probably would not be affected by the 
change. Also, the company said, Portsmouth workers will be 
offered jobs in Paducah. 

Geveden said he had not been told why the bill was sent back to 
committee, but wasn't ready to declare it dead. "We'll work on it 
and see what we can do," he said. "Nothing is ever dead until the 
end of the session." 

Asked what he would do to revive the bill, Geveden said, "We'll 
talk to people." 

He was told the measure was opposed by the AFL-CIO, an effort to 
protect union workers in Ohio who will lose their jobs when the 
shipping operation is moved. 

USEC confirmed on Feb. 14 that steps will begin in April to move 
the final shipping to Paducah to make sure the process is 
completed by summer. The estimated $29 million cost includes $13 
million to upgrade the Paducah plant. 

USEC's annual savings of $40 million will be realized gradually 
over three or four years through job cuts and lower overhead, the 
company said. 

Geveden and Cooper say if the bill doesn't pass, they probably 
could get it through in 2003 as opposition subsides in the months 
after the transfer is completed. 

Failure of the bill could lead USEC to change shipping procedures 
and avoid the tax, but company officials said they'd rather not 
do that. They could opt to ship the final product in bulk to 
processors, and by doing so change the ownership transfer point 
from Kentucky to the state where the processing plant is located. 

The enriched uranium is made into fuel for nuclear power plants. 
*****************************************************************
 32 Utah Senators Urged to Oppose Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump

Public Citizen 

Feb. 28, 2002

Nuclear Waste Shipments through Utah Pose Unacceptable Risks

SALT LAKE CITY – Utah’s state Senate should oppose plans for a 
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, public 
interest, consumer advocacy and environmental groups said today. 
Senate Joint Resolution 14, introduced by state Sen. Gene Davis, 
would urge Utah’s U.S. congressional delegation to oppose the 
repository project; a final vote in Congress is expected this 
spring.

The Yucca Mountain Project would introduce new risks along 
proposed nuclear waste transportation routes and play into the 
hands of the Private Fuel Storage consortium, which is proposing 
a parallel project for high-level nuclear waste storage in Utah, 
the groups said.

"Federal government rejection of the Yucca Mountain Project would 
undermine Private Fuel Storage’s efforts to bring nuclear waste 
to Utah," said Lisa Gue, a policy analyst with Public Citizen, a 
consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. "Without 
a Yucca Mountain repository on the horizon, PFS can’t claim that 
a nuclear waste storage in Utah would be temporary. And even if a 
repository opens, it won’t be able to contain all the waste 
projected to be generated by U.S. nuclear reactors."

Yucca Mountain, located approximately 80 miles northwest of Las 
Vegas, is the only site being considered as the permanent dumping 
ground for 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste from 
commercial nuclear power plants and U.S. Department of Energy 
(DOE) weapons facilities. On Feb. 14, Energy Secretary Spencer 
Abraham officially recommended that the repository be developed, 
but scientific review panels have cautioned that the DOE’s data 
is incomplete. According to the presidentially appointed Nuclear 
Waste Technical Review Board, "the technical basis for the DOE’s 
repository performance estimates is weak to moderate."

Yucca Mountain is in an earthquake zone, and critics fear that 
radiation from the proposed repository would contaminate drinking 
water and the surrounding environment. Last month, a coalition of 
232 environmental and public interest organizations from 50 
states and the District of Columbia delivered a letter to 
Congress urging lawmakers to reject the Yucca Mountain Project.

"Utahns should know better than to trust the assurances of the 
Department of Energy when it says that the job has been done 
properly, the program is safe and there is no danger," said Steve 
Erickson of the Citizens Education Project. "After all, these are 
the same people who gave us the fallout from above-ground atomic 
tests."

The DOE’s preliminary route maps show that if the repository 
project is approved, more than 90 percent of nuclear transports 
would pass through Utah - totaling nearly 46,000 truck shipments 
along I-80, I-84 and I-15 if the waste is sent mostly by truck, 
and up to 9,000 train shipments if the waste is shipped mostly by 
rail. An accident involving a nuclear waste shipment could cause 
billions of dollars of damage and threaten the environment and 
public health, according to experts hired by the states of Utah 
and Nevada.

Nuclear shipments also would pose a security risk, since moving 
targets are harder to protect than stationary ones. Following the 
terrorist attacks last fall, at least 10 people were arrested on 
charges of possessing fraudulent permits to haul hazardous 
materials and radioactive waste.

Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt has sponsored at least two resolutions 
adopted by the Western Governors Association, expressing concern 
about the security and safety of transporting high-level 
radioactive waste.

"Utah has already been forced to shoulder more than its fair 
share of this country’s nuclear burden," said HEAL Utah 
Spokesman, Jason Groenewold. 

"Our politicians must take a clear stance against this disastrous 
proposal that would jeopardize our health, safety and environment 
for the special interests of the nuclear industry."

###

*****************************************************************
 33 Connecticut Activists' lawsuit targets CY nuke waste site plan 

TheDay.com: 

By Bethe Dufresne - More Articles 
Published on 02/28/2002 

Haddam — Is it beyond imagining that the gentle earthen hills of 
the Connecticut River Valley could one day become Yucca Mountain 
East?

Warning that Haddam might become a dumping ground for the East 
Coast's high-level radioactive waste, and a prime target for 
terrorists, Neighbors Opposed to Residential Atomic Dumps (NORAD) 
filed suit Wednesday to overturn a court settlement allowing 
Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. to build a spent-nuclear-fuel 
storage complex.

The new complex would be built on about 15 acres within CY's 
500-acre wooded property, all of which is zoned residential. 
Under a chilly drizzle at Haddam Meadows State Park, with the 
domed sarcophagus of the CY plant as a backdrop, NORAD announced 
to about a dozen listeners that it had filed suit against 
Haddam's Board of Selectmen. It will also fight to nullify the 
building permit granted to CY on Jan. 29.

The permit was issued after CY sued Haddam and its selectmen for 
monetary damages over the planning and zoning board's refusal to 
rezone its targeted parcel for industrial use. U.S. District 
Judge Alan Nevas approved a settlement between CY and the Board 
of Selectmen that NORAD claims should have been put to a town 
vote.

“A precedent doesn't exist anywhere in the country that I know 
of,” said NORAD's Ed Munster, a former state senator, for a 
federal court to override local zoning officials and allow 
nuclear plant operations outside the area licensed for that 
purpose.

CY spokesman Kelley Smith said something had to be done to 
safeguard the nuclear waste, since no one knows when the federal 
government's permanent national repository at Yucca Mountain in 
Nevada will be ready.

Politics and logistics, most people agree, could stall that 
solution for decades. Meanwhile, radioactive waste is piling up 
around the country.

NORAD and Munster are co-plaintiffs with Andrew J. Egri, who owns 
a home on land abutting the disputed site, in the suit filed at 
Superior Court in Middletown. NORAD is not seeking any money, 
just to overturn the settlement.

“There was something very offensive about this deal,” said Nancy 
Burton, NORAD's attorney. The federal court settlement includes a 
permanent injunction that prohibits anyone involved from saying 
or doing anything that could be construed as blocking or delaying 
the new storage complex.

Egri accused CY of first “threatening to bankrupt our town” and 
then “muzzling our freedom of speech,” vowing, “We're not going 
to let them get away with it.”

Fifteen town selectmen from throughout the river valley have 
asked State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to investigate 
the legality of the settlement, said Munster.

“Who knows?” if Blumenthal will take up this fight, he said 
later. But the formation of a coalition is “very encouraging. 
It's not like we're a small group of people who in effect are 
being radical about this.”

The CY plant was decommissioned in 1996, but CY has about 30 
years worth of accumulated radioactive nuclear waste currently 
stored in steel-lined concrete spent fuel pools inside the 
building. The new complex would provide long-term dry storage.

The site CY chose, said CY spokesman Smith, was the best 
available, hidden from view of the river and therefore even less 
inviting to a terrorist attack than the building where the waste 
is now stored.

Although the terms of the settlement permit CY to store only its 
own waste at the new complex, the federal government could 
conceivably order it to accept waste from the Millstone power 
station in Waterford, and beyond.

But Smith points out that other nuclear plants in New England are 
building new dry storage facilities, including Maine Yankee and 
the shutdown Yankee Rowe in Massachusetts. So CY is not the only 
option out there.

Susan Merrow, East Haddam's first selectman, is not reassured. 
“We are the closest downwind neighbors,” she said. The new 
storage facility would make it even closer. Since 9-11, she said, 
that's an even greater worry.

“I'm also concerned that an issue of such great concern was 
decided without regional input, and that it came out of a 
settlement that appears to have overridden local laws about 
zoning and building,” she said.

Merrow is a member of the Connecticut River Valley Council of 
Elected Officials, the group seeking Blumenthal's intervention.

NORAD and Attorney Burton hope Blumenthal will be as offended as 
they are by what they call the federal judge's “gag order,” and 
take up their cause to protect the constitutional right to free 
speech.

CY spokesman Kelley said public hearings were held before the 
settlement was reached, so people had ample opportunity to voice 
their opinions. But NORAD isn't finished talking.

“It's ridiculous,” summed up NORAD member Ed Schwing as the 
drizzle turned to rain Wednesday morning, “for a judge to order 
us not to talk about this.” 

b.dufresne@theday.com  

© 1998-2002 The Day Publishing Co. 
*****************************************************************
 34 NZ: Arrogant French nuclear firm trying to polish grubby image 

New Zealand News - 

01.03.2002

Sponsorship of an America's Cup boat by a French nuclear energy 
company is just a cynical bid for acceptance, writes BUNNY 
McDIARMID*. 

As far back as I can remember, someone has climbed into a boat or 
on to a surfboard to promote the idea of New Zealand being 
nuclear free. 

Sailors, kayakers and surfers of the 1970s and 80s protesting 
against visits by nuclear-armed and powered ships entering our 
harbours were instrumental in gaining our nuclear-free 
legislation in 1986. 

And it was intrepid New Zealanders time and again sailing halfway 
across the Pacific in the middle of winter to protest against the 
French nuclear testing programme at Mururoa that contributed to 
its end in 1996. 

As recently as last year, a flotilla of New Zealand and 
Australian boats took to sea again to protest against the 
transport of plutonium through the Tasman Sea and the Pacific. 

You would be forgiven for thinking that sailing and being 
anti-nuclear go together in Godzone. 

So you have to wonder why the French nuclear company Areva would 
think that sponsoring the French entry into the America's Cup 
would go unnoticed or unchallenged. And this is not just any old 
nuclear company. Sure, Areva is a new name but it is still the 
same dirty nuclear business. 

This is the company that is majority owned by the French Atomic 
Energy Commission, which oversaw Mururoa and continues to develop 
France's nuclear weapons today. 

An Areva company produces plutonium - the deadly part of nuclear 
weapons - which is then shipped from France to Japan, past our 
shores despite opposition and concern from many countries, 
including New Zealand. 

And it is that same industry that pumps millions of litres of 
radioactive discharge into the sea off France every year. 

Areva says it is just a power company and that the answer to the 
world's climate change problem is nuclear energy because nuclear 
reactors don't produce carbon dioxide like a coal-fired power 
plant does. 

Dr Ron Smith, of Waikato University, is quick to add that using 
nuclear power in north-east Asia would also avoid burning up to 
100 million tonnes of oil a year. 

But replacing one set of problems with another does not solve the 
problem; it just replaces it. 

And this is well recognised internationally. In the Climate 
Treaty itself, despite furious lobbying by the nuclear industry, 
nuclear power is not part of the clean development mechanism - 
the means by which developing countries can gain access to 
non-polluting technologies. 

Well, guess why their technology did not make the grade? It's 
because it is so polluting. The long-lived, often highly 
radioactive waste produced at every stage of the nuclear fuel 
cycle makes nuclear power unsustainable. 

Every country that has nuclear power has a nuclear waste problem 
for which it has been unable to find an acceptable solution. Even 
those countries considered to be technologically advanced, such 
as the United States, face billions of dollars in clean-ups for 
dumpsites inadequately designed or monitored. 

Asia, it is true, is seen by the nuclear industry as its growth 
market as there have been next to no new reactors built in Europe 
or the US for the past 20 years. Why? Probably because of the 
growing public unease with safety issues, the increasing piles of 
nuclear waste and a growing sense of awareness that energy needs 
to be renewable and environmentally sustainable. 

So why is Areva choosing the America's Cup for its sponsorship 
deal? Why take the risk that people will blow your cover and 
expose you as polluters of the oceans? It smacks of the same 
arrogance with which the French secret service in 1985 came to 
this little backwater in the Pacific and sank a peaceful protest 
boat thinking we wouldn't find them out. 

But mainly, the answer lies in the hard times the plutonium 
reprocessing industry is experiencing worldwide and the growing 
international unease with the plutonium transport and stockpiles 
around the world. 

A major sailing event must have looked like the ideal chance to 
spruce up a tarnished image and promote the business as clean by 
association. 

Well, we say no way. By all means we welcome a French entry, but 
certainly not at the cost of allowing one of the dirtiest and 
most dangerous industries to promote its business. 

From the sound of it a good part of the sailing community in 
France is none too happy about Areva's sponsorship of the 
America's Cup either. 

The sailing community has just lost one of its great ocean and 
racing skippers in Sir Peter Blake, a man who in his later life 
redirected his sailing to advance the cause of protecting the 
oceans. 

Early last year, when the New Zealand flotilla of boats was 
preparing to head out to the Tasman to protest the plutonium 
shipment by an Areva company, we approached Sir Peter for a 
message of support. 

He said: "You have my full support in principle and I thoroughly 
agree with a stand being made to protect the oceans from what 
will, given time, cause a catastrophe of unheard of proportions. 

"There is no doubt in my mind that it will only be a case of time 
before one of these vessels has a problem [as with oil tankers] 
and dumps a load into the sea." 

Sailors here and in France are clearly telling Areva to keep our 
oceans and the America's Cup nuclear free. But are they 
listening? 

* Bunny McDiarmid is a spokeswoman for Greenpeace. 
nzherald.co.nz/americascup 

©Copyright 2002, New Zealand Herald        
*****************************************************************
 35 North Korea calls on US to avoid repetition of Bikini Atoll 
nuclear disaster 

BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 1, 2002


Text of unattributed talk entitled: "Bikini disaster is a 
historic tragedy", broadcast by North Korean radio on 1 March 
Although the human race has entered a new century, they have not 
forgotten the Bikini disaster that occurred 48 years ago. On 1 
March 1954, the US imperialists conducted a hydrogen bomb test 
aimed at the mass destruction of life on Bikini Island in the 
Marshall Islands of the western Pacific. The ashes of death from 
the test covered the island and its surrounding areas and 
disaster afflicted the fishermen who were fishing around the 
area. This was another nuclear crime committed by the US 
imperialists.

Great leader [Korean: suryong] Comrade Kim Il-sung taught: 
Preventing nuclear war and defending global peace and security 
are a pressing issue for mankind at present.

It is an unchanging aspiration of mankind to live in a peaceful 
world, without nuclear weapons and war. However, acts of pouring 
cold water on mankind's given aspiration have occurred in the 
21st century as well, which have created concern in international 
social circles.

The Bush bellicose forces, which came into power in the new 
century, considerably increased defence budgets and are running 
amok to build up forces of aggression, such as weapons of mass 
destruction [WMD], while stressing a slogan of building a 
powerful United States.

Today, the United States is running amok to achieve world 
domination with its nuclear strategy. The US blatancy can be well 
recognized through the issue of reducing strategic weapons that 
the United States and Russia had agreed on some time ago. The 
United States is trying to [preserve the ability] to reuse most 
of the nuclear warheads, which will be decreased at this time, in 
(?darker) days by storing them. The United States has continued 
with its subcritical nuclear tests and is trying to resume 
underground nuclear tests as well. The problem is that the United 
States is recklessly attaching the nuclear suspicion label on 
other countries while it keeps its criminal nuclear policy 
hidden.

The United States has openly raised a threat of aggression while 
babbling about a threat to the United States by someone else's 
WMD. [Passage unmonitorable for 30 seconds] vividly shows that 
the United States is the ringleader of nuclear threats to mankind 
and a nuclear maniac.

Bikini Island remains as historic proof that indicts the US 
imperialists' nuclear crimes. The United States should not forget 
today what happened 48 years ago. The following words are 
engraved on the headstone of Mujonsi of the Japanese fishing boat 
the Fifth Fukuryu Maru Mujonsi, who narrowly escaped immediate 
death but died six months later from the radioactive rays 
[Japanese victim's name and boat name as heard; the chief radio 
operator of Fukuryu Maru No 5, Aikichi Kuboyama, died from 
radiation sickness on 23 September 1954]: I hope I will be the 
last one to die from nuclear bombs.

This was an anxious cry by people who died from the US 
imperialists' nuclear tests and a condemnation of the US 
imperialists' nuclear crimes. Not only them but also the world's 
peace-loving people are strongly condemning the US imperialists, 
who have kept the Bikini disaster hidden and are recklessly 
running amok to cause another nuclear disaster for mankind. The 
US imperialists should listen to the cries of the souls who were 
victims of the Bikini disaster and the denouncing voices of the 
world's peace-loving people today and should not repeat the 
Bikini tragedy.

Source: Central Broadcasting Station, Pyongyang, in Korean 0856 
gmt 1 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC.
*****************************************************************
 36 Let's nuke Vietnam, suggested Nixon 

online.ie : News

The Irish Examiner 01 Mar 2002 

HENRY KISSINGER shot down a suggestion by President Richard Nixon 
that the US could use a nuclear bomb on Vietnam in 1972. A few 
weeks before ordering an escalation of the war there, Nixon 
matter-of-factly raised the idea of using a nuclear bomb with 
national security adviser, Kissinger. The notion was quickly 
vetoed.

Nixon's abrupt suggestion, buried in 500 hours of tapes released 
yesterday at the National Archives, came after Kissinger laid out 
a variety of options for stepping up the war, such as attacking 
power plants and docks, in an April 1972, conversation in the 
executive office building.

"I'd rather use the nuclear bomb," Nixon responded.

"That, I think, would just be too much," Kissinger replied.

"The nuclear bomb. Does that bother you?" Nixon asked. "I just 
want you to think big."

The following month, Nixon ordered the biggest escalation of the 
war since 1968.

In a 1985 interview, Nixon acknowledged that he had considered 
"the nuclear option". He told Time magazine then: "I rejected the 
bombing of the dykes, which would have drowned one million 
people, for the same reason that I rejected the nuclear option.

Nixon showed less regard for the North Vietnamese in his 1972 
taped conversations.

In a conversation from June, he told domestic adviser Charles 
Colson, "We want to decimate that goddamned place".

He added: "North Vietnam is going to get reordered. It's about 
time, it's what should have been done long ago."

The conversations were in the archives' largest-ever release of 
Nixon tapes. The material covers mostly the first six months of 
1972, including everything from Nixon's groundbreaking trip to 
China to the early days after the Watergate break-in.

With this release, historians and researchers for the first time 
are being allowed to use their own recording equipment to copy 
the Nixon tapes.

"The sheer volume and contents of the tapes will give historians 
and others plenty of research opportunities," said Karl 
Weissenbach, director of the Nixon Presidential Materials staff 
at the archives.

*****************************************************************
 37 Old Russian Nuclear Subs Pose Risk

March 1, 2002

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSCOW (AP) -- More than half of the Russian Pacific Fleet's 75 
decommissioned nuclear submarines are stranded in harbors waiting 
for nuclear fuel to be unloaded from their reactors, raising the 
risk of a nuclear accident, a Russian lawmaker said in an 
interview published Friday.

``The Russian Far East and bordering states are under threat of a 
nuclear catastrophe every minute,'' Boris Reznik, a State Duma 
member, was quoted as saying in a front-page interview in the 
Russian daily Izvestia. ``But the military doesn't let in the 
inspectors under the guise of military secrecy.''

According to Reznik, who said he did his own research, the 
greatest source of danger is from the decommissioned submarine 
PM-32, which he said was used as a provisional storage facility 
for spent nuclear fuel from other submarines.

``It has 126 defect channels through which radiation is 
continually leaking into the sea,'' he was quoted as saying.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied such allegations and 
contend that the risk of a nuclear accident is extremely slight. 
``We are doing everything to minimize the possibility of 
radiation accidents, such as leaks,'' Viktor Akhunov, an Atomic 
Energy official in charge of submarine disposal, was quoted as 
telling Izvestia.

Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry said in December that the Russian 
Navy had decommissioned a total of 189 nuclear submarines but 126 
were still waiting to be scrapped. Reznik told Izvestia that the 
Pacific Fleet decommissioned 75 submarines but 45 still had fuel 
in their reactors.

Environmental groups have repeatedly criticized the deteriorating 
condition of the decommissioned submarines, some of which have 
sat dockside for as long as 15 years with fuel aboard and their 
hulls rusting through.

Some European Union nations have offered to help Russia build 
waste storage facilities to speed up the dismantling, but Russian 
officials bristle at giving European experts unlimited access to 
naval facilities.

Akhunov acknowledged that if more money was available, the 
decommissioning work, which is expected to be completed in about 
six years, could be done sooner.

This year, navy experts are expected to unload spent nuclear fuel 
from 20 nuclear submarines and completely dismantle 17. The 
wrecked Kursk submarine is to be among those dismantled this 
year. The Kursk sank during naval maneuvers in August 2000, 
killing its entire 118-man crew, and was hoisted from the Barents 
Sea bottom last October.

Russian officials said it takes about two years to completely 
dispose of a nuclear submarine, cutting its hull and removing the 
nuclear reactor.

Russian military journalist Grigory Pasko had frequently reported 
on the Pacific Fleet's decommissioned submarines and the navy's 
alleged dumping of radioactive waste. He was convicted of treason 
in December for possessing information on the fleet that 
prosecutors said he planned to hand over to Japanese media.

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press | Privacy Information 
*****************************************************************
 38 London was target of four nuclear rockets in 1959

Times Online

March 01, 2002

From Allan Hall in Berlin
 		   		 		
BRITAIN was targeted with four nuclear rockets based in East 
Germany as early as 1959, three years before the Cuban missile 
crisis that was understood to be the first Soviet attempt to 
position atomic weapons outside the USSR. 

A documentary broadcast in Germany last night disclosed the 
secrets of two bunker complexes at Fürstenberg and Vogelsang, 50 
miles from Berlin and then deep inside the German Democratic 
Republic (GDR). There, for four months, R5M rockets with nuclear 
warheads were pointed westwards. Four were aimed at London and 
another eight were intended for Paris, the Ruhr, the West German 
capital, Bonn, and Brussels. 

Researchers discovered in former GDR archives that, on the word 
from Moscow, the East German military would have had the rockets 
ready for launch within five hours. 

The R5M, the first Soviet missile with a nuclear delivery 
capacity, was designed to travel up to 745 miles. Two divisions 
of the 72nd Brigade were detached for a test German deployment 
under the Second Guard Tank Army at Fürstenberg. The PRO 7 TV 
channel revealed in The Atom Project how, under Order 589-365, 
signed by Nikita Khrushchev, then the Soviet Union leader, the 
command was given to position the doomsday weapons. 

Details of the secret movement of the missiles were found in 
former Stasi secret police files. Khrushchev was informed by the 
military in May 1959: “Units ready for action.” 

It ended suddenly after a few months. Khrushchev recalled the 
72nd Brigade, which was gone by early September. Today the 
bunkers are the home of wild animals.
   	 		
Copyright 2002  
[http://www.thetimes.co.uk/section/0,,549,00.html]              
Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 39 Anti-nuclear advocate Kelley wins award from Hall of Fame 

Tri-Valley Herald
 	 	 	 
 Friday, March 01, 2002 - 3:13:06 AM MST 
By Glenn Roberts Jr.
STAFF WRITER 		
 	 
Friday, March 01, 2002 - -->LIVERMORE -- Marylia Kelley, a 
longtime Livermore resident and an unwavering advocate of nuclear 
disarmament and environmental cleanup, said she read a letter 
about the 2002 Alameda County Women's Hall of Fame Awards with no 
expectations. 

The letter mentioned that she had been nominated, and she thought 
that was as far as it went. But as she read on, she learned that 
she had been selected for an award that recognized her 
contributions to the environment. 

Three Alameda County agencies -- the Board of Supervisors, 
Commission on the Status of Women, and Health Care Foundation -- 
are presenting the ninth annual Hall of Fame Awards. 

The awards, handed out Saturday in a ceremony at the Pleasanton 
Hilton, recognize county women's accomplishments in the following 
categories: community service, education, health, sports and 
athletics, youth, culture and arts, business and professions, 
justice and environment. 

Kelley, 50, executive director and co-founder of Livermore-based 
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, a 
nuclear watchdog group, said she appreciates the recognition, 
both for her own efforts and the group's efforts. 

"I'm really gratified and really excited for myself personally 
and for Tri-Valley CAREs and all the work we do collectively to 
safeguard the environment here," Kelley said. 

A Livermore resident since 1976, Kelley formed Tri-Valley CAREs 
with a small group of local residents in 1983. She has served as 
the group's executive director for 15 years. 

While other Bay Area groups had previously organized massive 
anti-nuclear protests centered around Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory, a nuclear weapons research lab, the founders' idea 
was to establish a local face for the anti-nuclear movement. 

Now the membership of the group hovers around 3,000 members, 
Kelley said, with most members residing in the Livermore area. 
Other members are concentrated in the East Bay and in the San 
Joaquin Valley. 

"I've seen over the years that our watchdog activities have 
actually created changes in the way Livermore Lab operates," 
Kelley said. 

"I hope that by receiving this award the community gets the 
message that creating change is possible, and that citizens' 
groups and community groups can make a difference -- even if the 
facility where they're trying to create change is a federal 
facility."
 
©1999-2001 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
 40 Asia Derided Nixon Suggestion
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
March 01, 2002 
 
HANOI, Vietnam- Richard Nixon's suggestion that the United States 
drop a nuclear bomb on North Vietnam in 1972 was derided 
throughout Asia on grounds that such a bombing would have 
triggered universal condemnation and maybe even World War III. 

In tapes released Thursday, Nixon's suggestion was opposed by 
national security adviser Henry Kissinger, who said, "That, I 
think, would just be too much." Nixon responded, "I just want you 
to think big." A few weeks later, he ordered a major escalation 
of the Vietnam War. 

Nixon's suggestion was contained in a conversation uncovered 
among 500 hours of tapes released Thursday. 

Vietnam's government had no immediate reaction, but people 
throughout the region condemned Nixon's proposal. 

The North Vietnamese soldier who raised his country's flag over 
South Vietnam's presidential palace in 1975, signaling the end of 
the war, said world condemnation of nuclear warfare could have 
forced the United States to withdraw from the war sooner, leading 
to an earlier North Vietnamese victory. 

"It's difficult to know, but peace-loving people around the world 
would have opposed the use of nuclear bombs, so maybe the war 
would have ended sooner," Bui Quang Than told The Associated 
Press. 

Seo Byung-chul, president of the Korea Institute of National 
Unification, a South Korean government-funded think-tank, said 
the use of a nuclear bomb in Vietnam "could have escalated the 
conflict and touched off another world war." 

"Nuclear weapons are a tool to prevent a war, not a tool to start 
or escalate a war," he said. 

South Korea sent thousands of soldiers to fight alongside U.S. 
troops in the Vietnam War, and received economic aid from the 
United States in return. 

Makoto Saito, professor emeritus of American history and 
government at Tokyo University, said Japan would have been 
outraged by the use of nuclear weapons and the government may 
have reviewed its military alliance with the United States, which 
allowed U.S. forces to use Okinawa as a staging ground for the 
Vietnam War. 

"Japan has firsthand experience with the effects of an atomic 
bomb, so the reaction from the Japanese people would have been 
severe," he said. 

Prof. Khoo Khay Kim in the Department of History at the 
University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said it was not 
surprising that Nixon would make such a suggestion because he 
"was the kind of person who would stop at nothing to achieve his 
own end." 

"Asians in general would say, `Thank God Nixon did not get his 
way,'" he said. Relations between the United States and Vietnam 
have changed markedly in the past 27 years. Diplomatic ties were 
established in 1995 and trade ties normalized this past December. 

On Friday, a museum in Hanoi commemorating anti-aircraft 
battalions that shot down American B-52 bombers - the same planes 
that probably would have dropped nuclear weapons - was being used 
for a wedding reception. 

"It's in the past, so I think it's better not to talk about the 
sad history between our two countries," said wedding guest Nguyen 
Dang Khoa. "The people in both countries want to have better 
relations now." 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 41 Vietnam: Nixon 'Cruel' to Suggest Bomb
 
Las Vegas SUN
 
March 01, 2002 

HANOI, Vietnam- A suggestion by President Nixon that a nuclear 
bomb be dropped on North Vietnam in 1972 shows the "formidable 
cruelty" felt by his administration toward the Vietnamese, the 
government said Friday. 

The taped comment brought revulsion from many in Asia, and 
Vietnamese veterans said that if Nixon had gone through with the 
idea - which was quickly rejected by Henry Kissinger - world 
outrage would have actually hastened a communist victory in the 
Vietnam War. 

Nixon made the suggestion in an April 25, 1972 conversation with 
Kissinger, his national security adviser, that was among some 500 
hours of his tapes released Thursday. 

"This is new evidence showing the formidable cruelty of some 
hawkish forces within the then-U.S. administration against the 
Vietnamese people during the U.S. war of aggression against 
Vietnam," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in a 
statement Friday. 

The North Vietnamese tank commander who raised his country's flag 
over South Vietnam's presidential palace in 1975, signaling the 
end of the war, said a nuclear attack would have turned world 
opinion strongly against the United States. 

"It's difficult to know, but peace-loving people around the world 
would have opposed the use of nuclear bombs, so maybe the war 
would have ended sooner," Bui Quang Than told The Associated 
Press. 

Relations between Vietnam and the United States, although still 
uneasy, have changed markedly in the past 27 years. Diplomatic 
ties were established in 1995 and trade ties normalized in 
December. 

On Friday, a museum in Hanoi commemorating anti-aircraft 
battalions that shot down American B-52 bombers - the same planes 
that would have dropped any nuclear weapons - was being used for 
a wedding reception. 

"It's in the past, so I think it's better not to talk about the 
sad history between our two countries," Nguyen Dang Khoa, a 
veteran at the reception, said of Nixon's comments. "The people 
in both countries want to have better relations now." 

In the taped exchange with Kissinger, Nixon was examining ways to 
step up the war in Vietnam and said, "I'd rather use the nuclear 
bomb." 

"That, I think, would just be too much," Kissinger said. 

Nixon responded that he just wanted Kissinger to "think big" - 
though some American historians say they doubt Nixon was serious 
about the suggestion, pointing out that the tapes are full of 
extreme remarks blurted out by the president. 

"Asians in general would say, `Thank God Nixon did not get his 
way,'" said Khoo Khay Kim, a history professor at the University 
of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. 

Japan would have been outraged and may have reviewed permission 
for U.S. forces to use Okinawa as a staging ground, said Makoto 
Saito, professor emeritus of American history and government at 
Tokyo University. 

"Japan has firsthand experience with the effects of an atomic 
bomb, so the reaction from the Japanese people would have been 
severe," he said. 

Sunao Tsuboi, director-general of the Hiroshima survivors group, 
called Nixon's statements "the epitome of arrogance." 

A Thai general who fought alongside Americans in Vietnam from 
1967 to 1969 said he was shocked by Nixon's apparent inability to 
think of the consequences. 

"This proves that Americans care nothing about other human 
lives," Sanan Khajornklamhe said. 

Seo Byung-chul, president a South Korean government-funded think 
tank, said use of a nuclear bomb in Vietnam could have touched 
off another world war. "Nuclear weapons are a tool to prevent a 
war, not a tool to start or escalate a war." 

Matt Robson, New Zealand's arms control minister, said he felt 
"quite sick" about Nixon's comments, adding that it "shows that 
the decision-makers were not only callous, but racist as well." 

All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc.
*****************************************************************
 42 Washington sets up shadow government

BBC News | AMERICAS | 

Friday, 1 March, 2002, 

Contingency plan was originated by Bush's predecessors

An emergency parallel government has been set up in the United 
States to try to ensure that federal rule could continue in the 
event of a catastrophic attack on Washington, US officials say. 

The operation was activated after the 11 September attacks but 
planning dates back to the Cold War era.       

 We take this issue extraordinarily seriously... In the case of 
the use of a weapon of mass destruction, the federal government 
would be able to do its job and continue to provide key services 
and respond        
   	
   White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph W Hagin 	  

 
It is reported to involve 70 or more officials drawn from all 
departments, depending on the perceived level of threat. 

Those taking part live and work underground for long spells at 
secret fortified locations on the East Coast. 

The core group of federal managers would put into effect orders 
from the president or his constitutional successor. 

"Bunker duty" 

The plan for a shadow government has been implemented now because 
of heightened fears that Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network might 
obtain a portable nuclear weapon. 

An unnamed senior official told Associated Press news agency that 
while US intelligence had no specific knowledge of such a weapon, 
the risk was great enough to warrant activation of the plan. 
  
 Dick Cheney's survival ensures constitutional succession, but he 
can't run the country by himself      
   	
   US official 	  

 He said President George W Bush did not foresee ever needing to 
turn over government functions to the secret operation, but 
believed it was prudent to put the plan into action in the light 
of the war against terrorism and persistent threats of future 
attacks. 

Other officials, who spoke to the Washington Post newspaper, said 
the back-up government consisted of anything from 70 to 150 
people at two principal locations on the East Coast. 

Once activated for what some call "bunker duty", they live and 
work underground 24 hours a day, away from their families. 

Those deployed for the operation are not allowed to tell anyone 
where they are going or why. "They're on a 'business trip', 
that's all," one official was quoted as saying. 

Out of touch 

Although it does not identify the sites, the Washington Post says 
they make use of geological features to render them highly 
secure. They are well stocked with food, water, medicine and 
other supplies and are capable of generating their own power. 
		 			
Officials fear Bin Laden's network may have nuclear weapons 
                 
However, in their first significant operational use, managers 
discovered that computers were "several generations" behind 
current models and could not link to government databases. 

There were also too few telephone lines and secure audio and 
video links to the rest of government. 

The newspaper said that only the executive branch is represented 
in the full-time shadow administration. Other branches - such as 
Congress and the judiciary - have separate continuity plans but 
do not maintain a 24-hour presence in fortified facilities. 

The secret operation complements the absence of Vice President 
Dick Cheney for much of the last five months. One official said 
Mr Cheney's survival ensures constitutional succession "but he 
can't run the country by himself". 

"We take this issue extraordinarily seriously, and are committed 
to doing as thorough a job as possible to ensure the ongoing 
operations of the federal government," said Joseph W Hagin, White 
House deputy chief of staff. 

"In the case of the use of a weapon of mass destruction, the 
federal government would be able to do its job and continue to 
provide key services and respond," he said.                 
*****************************************************************
 43 Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret 

(washingtonpost.com)
 
By Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt
 Washington Post Staff Writers

 Friday, March 1, 2002; Page A01 

President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100 
senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside 
Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans to 
ensure survival of federal rule after catastrophic attack on the 
nation's capital.
 
Execution of the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" 
resulted not from the Cold War threat of intercontinental 
missiles, the scenario rehearsed for decades, but from heightened 
fears that the al Qaeda terrorist network might somehow obtain a 
portable nuclear weapon, according to three officials with 
firsthand knowledge. U.S. intelligence has no specific knowledge 
of such a weapon, they said, but the risk is thought great enough 
to justify the shadow government's disruption and expense.
 
Deployed "on the fly" in the first hours of turmoil on Sept. 11, 
one participant said, the shadow government has evolved into an 
indefinite precaution. For that reason, the high-ranking 
officials representing their departments have begun rotating in 
and out of the assignment at one of two fortified locations along 
the East Coast. Rotation is among several changes made in late 
October or early November, sources said, to the standing 
directive Bush inherited from a line of presidents reaching back 
to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
 
Officials who are activated for what some of them call "bunker 
duty" live and work underground 24 hours a day, away from their 
families. As it settles in for the long haul, the shadow 
government has sent home most of the first wave of deployed 
personnel, replacing them most commonly at 90-day intervals.
 
The civilian cadre present in the bunkers usually numbers 70 to 
150, and "fluctuates based on intelligence" about terrorist 
threats, according to a senior official involved in managing the 
program. It draws from every Cabinet department and some 
independent agencies. Its first mission, in the event of a 
disabling blow to Washington, would be to prevent collapse of 
essential government functions.
 
Assuming command of regional federal offices, officials said, the 
underground government would try to contain disruptions of the 
nation's food and water supplies, transportation links, energy 
and telecommunications networks, public health and civil order. 
Later it would begin to reconstitute the government.
 
Known internally as the COG, for "continuity of government," the 
administration-in-waiting is an unannounced complement to the 
acknowledged absence of Vice President Cheney from Washington for 
much of the pastfive months. Cheney's survival ensures 
constitutional succession, one official said, but "he can't run 
the country by himself." With a core group of federal managers 
alongside him, Cheney -- or President Bush, if available -- has 
the means to give effect to his orders.
 
While the damage of other terrorist weapons is potentially 
horrific, officials said, only an atomic device could threaten 
the nation's fundamental capacity to govern itself. Without an 
invulnerable backup command structure outside Washington, one 
official said, a nuclear detonation in the capital "would be 
'game over.' "
 
"We take this issue extraordinarily seriously, and are committed 
to doing as thorough a job as possible to ensure the ongoing 
operations of the federal government," said Joseph W. Hagin, 
White House deputy chief of staff, who declined to discuss 
details. "In the case of the use of a weapon of mass destruction, 
the federal government would be able to do its job and continue 
to provide key services and respond."
 
The Washington Post agreed to a White House request not to name 
any of those deployed or identify the two principal locations of 
the shadow government.
 
Only the executive branch is represented in the full-time shadow 
administration. The other branches of constitutional government, 
Congress and the judiciary, have separate continuity plans but do 
not maintain a 24-hour presence in fortified facilities.
 
The military chain of command has long maintained redundant 
centers of communication and control, hardened against 
thermonuclear blast and operating around the clock. The 
headquarters of U.S. Space Command, for example, is burrowed into 
Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colo., and the U.S. 
Strategic Command staffs a comparable facility under Offutt Air 
Force Base in Nebraska.
 
Civilian departments have had parallel continuity-of-government 
plans since the dawn of the nuclear age. But they never operated 
routinely, seldom exercised, and were permitted to atrophy with 
the end of the Cold War. Sept. 11 marked the first time, 
according to Bush administration officials, that the government 
activated such a plan.
 
Within hours of the synchronized attacks on the Pentagon and the 
World Trade Center, Military District of Washington helicopters 
lifted off with the first wave of evacuated officials. 

Witnesses near one of the two evacuation sites reported an influx 
of single- and twin-rotor transport helicopters, escorted by F-16 
fighters, and followed not long afterward by government buses.
 
According to officials with first-hand knowledge, the Bush 
administration conceived the move that morning as a temporary 
precaution, likely to last only days. But further assessment of 
terrorist risks persuaded the White House to remake the program 
as a permanent feature of "the new reality, based on what the 
threat looks like," a senior decisionmaker said.
 
Few Cabinet-rank principals or their immediate deputies left 
Washington on Sept. 11, and none remained at the bunkers. Those 
who form the backup government come generally from the top career 
ranks, from GS-14 and GS-15 to members of the Senior Executive 
Service. The White House is represented by a "senior-level 
presence," one official said, but well below such Cabinet-ranked 
advisers as Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and national 
security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
 
Many departments, including Justice and Treasury, have completed 
plans to delegate statutory powers to officials who would not 
normally exercise them. Others do not need to make such legal 
transfers, or are holding them in reserve.
 
Deployed civilians are not permitted to take their families, and 
under penalty of prosecution they may not tell anyone where they 
are going or why. "They're on a 'business trip,' that's all," 
said one official involved in the effort.
 
The two sites of the shadow government make use of local 
geological features to render them highly secure. They are well 
stocked with food, water, medicine and other consumable supplies, 
and are capable of generating their own power.
 
But with their first significant operational use, the facilities 
are showing their age. Top managers arrived at one of them to 
find computers "several generations" behind those now in use, 
incapable of connecting to current government databases. There 
were far too few phone lines. Not many work areas had secure 
audio and video links to the rest of government. Officials said 
Card, who runs the program from the White House, has been obliged 
to order substantial upgrades.
 
The modern era of continuity planning began under President 
Ronald Reagan.
 
On Sept. 16, 1985, Reagan signed National Security Decision 
Directive 188, "Government Coordination for National Security 
Emergency Preparedness," which assigned responsibility for 
continuity planning to an interagency panel from Defense, 
Treasury, Justice and the Office of Management and Budget. He 
signed additional directives, including Executive Order 12472, 
for more detailed aspects of the planning.
 
In Executive Order 12656, signed Nov. 18, 1988, Reagan ordered 
every Cabinet department to define in detail the "defense and 
civilian needs" that would be "essential to our national 
survival" in case of a nuclear attack on Washington. Included 
among them were legal instruments for "succession to office and 
emergency delegation of authority."
 
The military services put these directives in place long before 
their civilian counterparts. The Air Force, for example, relies 
on Air Force Instruction 10-208, revised most recently in 
September 2000.
 
Civilian agencies gradually developed contingency plans in 
comparable detail. The Agriculture Department, for example, has 
plans to ensure continued farm production, food processing, 
storage and distribution; emergency provision of seed, feed, 
water, fertilizer and equipment to farmers; and use of Commodity 
Credit Corp. inventories of food and fiber resources.
 
What was missing, until Sept. 11, was an invulnerable group of 
managers with the expertise and resources to administer these 
programs in a national emergency.
 
Last Oct. 8, the day after bombing began in Afghanistan, Bush 
created the Office of Homeland Security with Executive Order 
13228. Among the responsibilities he gave its first director, 
former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, was to "review plans and 
preparations for ensuring the continuity of the Federal 
Government in the event of a terrorist attack that threatens the 
safety and security of the United States Government or its 
leadership."
 
Staff researcher Mary Lou White contributed to this report. 


© 2002 The Washington Post Company
*****************************************************************
 44 AU: Nuclear Terror: The Next Step? 
 
Background Briefing - 24/02/2002: 

Radio National's Weekly Investigative
Documentary: 

Sundays at 9.10am , repeated Tuesdays at 7.10pm 
 
Produced by Chris Bullock 
Sunday 24/02/2002 

Summary:

“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that if they had been in 
possession of a nuclear weapon… there’s no doubt in my mind 
they’d use a weapon like that. The target? Who knows." There’s 
lots of nuclear material floating around the world - not 
accounted for, lost, stolen.   --> 

Chris Bullock: The threat of a nuclear weapon being used in war 
is today as great a threat as at any time during the Cold War. It 
is part of the post-September 11th political landscape. 

Two weeks ago, the British Medical Journal published a 
prediction, based on modelling done by emergency authorities in 
the United States, of what would happen if a Hiroshima-sized 
nuclear bomb exploded at ground level in New York City. It's not 
just the prediction, that a quarter of a million people would 
die, that's sobering, but that it was considered prudent to 
publish it now.
 
The modelling assumed terrorists could smuggle a nuclear bomb 
into the port of New York in a shipping container, and then 
detonate it.
 
It's hard to know if this is an exaggerated threat. After all, 
there's no proof Al Qaeda has a nuclear bomb. But one thing is 
certain, nothing is being discounted after September 11th.
 
Hello, I'm Chris Bullock and this is Background Briefing, on ABC 
Radio National.
 
Today the threat is not posed by enemy states with nuclear arms, 
it comes from people whose nuclear capability is unknown.
 
"If they'd had a nuclear explosive on September 11, we wouldn't 
be mourning the loss of two buildings, we'd be mourning the loss 
of the lower half of Manhattan."

Matthew Bunn: While it would be quite difficult for a non-State 
group like Al Qaeda to make a nuclear explosive, even if they got 
the nuclear material, it can't be ruled out. And I think 
September 11 shows us that they were trying to do as much damage 
as they could think of how to do. I believe that if they'd had a 
nuclear explosive on September 11, we wouldn't be mourning the 
loss of two buildings, we'd be mourning the loss of the lower 
half of Manhattan.
 
Chris Bullock: That's Matthew Bunn from Harvard University. He 
has been a key person in American efforts to try to keep weapons 
grade uranium and plutonium out of the hands of groups like Al 
Qaeda.
 
Matthew Bunn says there are really three kinds of nuclear 
terrorism to worry about.
 
Matthew Bunn: We need to worry about it in terms of theft of 
nuclear material and construction of a nuclear device; we need to 
worry about it in terms of sabotage of a major nuclear facility. 
Third, and much less devastating than either of the first two 
would be what is known as a 'dirty' bomb. Now you could fill a 
briefcase full of something radioactive and some explosives and 
you'd have essentially a dirty bomb.
 


Chris Bullock: Most experts agree that the 'dirty' radiation bomb 
is the most likely to be used, because it would be the easiest to 
construct, ahead of the sabotage of a nuclear power station, and 
the nuclear bomb is the least likely, because it is the most 
difficult to build.
 
The fact that all three are considered possible indicates the 
extent of the psychological war currently going on, especially in 
the United States. Nothing evokes a greater sense of death, 
disease and desolation than the idea of widespread nuclear 
fallout.
 
The 'dirty' bomb, which might contain highly radioactive 
by-products from nuclear plants, or parts from hospital X-ray 
equipment, could be built almost anywhere in the world, so common 
are the ingredients. Wrapped in high explosives, or crashed in a 
plane, it could spread radiation over a number of city blocks. 
The fear and panic, once the radiation detectors start going off, 
may cause bigger problems than the actual threat of radiation 
poisoning.
 
An attack on a nuclear power station raises the spectre of 
another Chernobyl.
 
At the moment, authorities in the US are treading a fine line 
between due warning and undue alarm. After the massive, 
unexpected shock of September 11th, they're much more inclined to 
issue warnings, just in case. This is from CNN, three weeks ago.
 
Newsreader: Good evening, everyone. Tonight, a new threat against 
the United States. Moneyline has learned through a Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission document that Islamic terrorists may be 
planning yet another attack against America. The target, one of 
the nation's nuclear power plants, or an energy department 
nuclear facility. Steve Young is here, and has the story for us. 
Steve.
 
Steve Young: Lou, the warning went out just a week ago from a 
nuclear regulatory …
 
Chris Bullock: The warning was sent to the owners of the 103 
nuclear power plants in the United States, and it contained a 
very specific threat scenario, written at FBI Headquarters.
 
Newsreader: Here's what it said: 'During debriefings of an Al 
Qaeda senior operative, he stated there would be a second 
airliner attack in the US. The attack was already planned and 
three individuals were on the ground in the States, recruiting 
non-Arabs to take part in the attack. The plan is to fly a 
commercial aircraft into a nuclear power plant to be chosen by 
the team on the ground. The plan included diverting the mission 
to any tall building if a military aircraft intercepts the plane. 
No specific time line or location was given for the attack.'
 
Chris Bullock: The document said the FBI couldn't assess the 
credibility of the information, but it issued the warning anyway. 

By far the most threatening of the nuclear terror scenarios is 
'the bomb'.
 
It's not a straightforward thing to acquire. A nuclear bomb needs 
to be made with highly enriched uranium or plutonium, weapons 
grade material, and although it only needs a minimum of a soft 
drink can full, to get that grade of enrichment requires a 
complex process. It's a process that wouldn't be easy to develop 
for a terrorist group, unless it was helped by a sympathetic 
nation that already has the technology and the know-how.
 
The quickest route for an aspiring nuclear terrorist would be to 
buy a ready-made bomb on the black market. There's no compelling 
evidence that any group, anywhere, has been able to do that, but 
there is ongoing conjecture about Russian nuclear 'suitcase 
bombs'.
 
In 1996, the Russian General, Alexander Lebed, first raised the 
possibility that a number of small portable Russian nuclear 
bombs, dubbed 'suitcase bombs', were missing, unaccounted for. 
Although General Lebed and the government in Moscow subsequently 
retracted the claim, the case of the missing nuclear suitcase 
bombs has never really been closed.
 
ABC Radio 'AM' Presenter: Concern about nuclear weapons falling 
into the hands of radicals, has long simmered, fuelled by the 
knowledge that Russia, for example, can't locate a number of its 
suitcase nuclear weapons and Iraq has courted former Eastern bloc 
nuclear specialists. Now as Matt Peacock reports, the 
international community has been cautioned that a nuclear 
terrorist attack is a serious possibility.
 
Matt Peacock: In the United States, no …
 
Chris Bullock: The concept of the suitcase bomb was ready-made 
for nuclear terrorists, and for the writers of paperback 
thrillers, like this one.
 
When a one-kiloton Russian nuclear bomb the size of a suitcase 
ends up in the hands of Saudi multimillionaire Osama bin Laden, 
the entire world sits up and takes notice.
 
It's a race against time to find out how the nuclear bomb will 
get to the United States, where it will be detonated and when 
this, the worst terrorist attack in US history, will take place.
 
Chris Bullock: About five years ago in Russia, General Lebed's 
claim about missing suitcase bombs caused a scramble to double 
check the record books.
 
Each Russian nuclear weapon has its own passport. A sheet of 
papers that record where it was made and when, how it's been 
maintained, and where it's been transported and stored. The paper 
records are kept at different places, and sometimes they're not 
fully updated when a weapon moves. These kinds of accounting 
oversights are not uncommon in the former Soviet countries, says 
Matthew Bunn.
 
Matthew Bunn: I could easily imagine a situation where Lebed 
decided to check on the accounting system, pulled out a piece of 
paper at headquarters that said there are so many nuclear weapons 
of this type at such-and-such a storage site. Send somebody out 
there. And Lebed's guy gets to the storage site, finds a 
surprised Captain and says, 'Captain, how many of such-and-such 
kind of nuclear weapons are in this storage site?' The Captain 
looks to his log, and says, 'There are 40', and the piece of 
paper from headquarters says there's supposed to be 140. And the 
reason is on page 47 of the log that the Captain has, it says 
that the other 100 got shipped off to dismantlement facility "Y" 
on such and such a date, and the record that Lebed was looking at 
headquarters hadn't been updated yet. This kind of thing happens 
when you've got a paper accounting system, as the Russians do for 
their nuclear warheads.
 
From discussions I've had with fairly senior Russian officials, 
I'm confident that they at least believe that every nuclear 
weapon is accounted for.
 
Chris Bullock: One of the key things the Americans have been 
doing with the Russians is implementing a real time computerised 
accounting system for the Russian weapons.
 
From Moscow, Background Briefing was given another, more 
colourful version of the Lebed suitcase nukes story. It involves 
a Hollywood nuclear age blockbuster, starring George Clooney and 
Nicole Kidman.
 
'The Peacemaker' is a movie about a highly organised nuclear 
sting in the Ural Mountains of Russia: the theft of nuclear 
weapons from a speeding train. All the bombs were taken off 
except one, which was left on the hapless train and detonated to 
destroy the evidence of the theft. Naturally, the Americans, 
Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, saw through the ruse and led 
the search for the stolen weapons.
 
Nicole Kidman: Oh, forget Chernobyl, this is huge.
 
Chris Bullock: The nuclear suitcase bombshell dropped by General 
Lebed coincided with the production of 'The Peacemaker', 
according to the head of the Russian Centre for Policy Studies, 
Vladimir Orlov, and we've used an actor to recount Mr Orlov's 
words, because of the poor quality phone line from Moscow.
 
Vladimir Orlov (revoiced): I know well the story of how Mr 
Lebed's statements appeared, and I remember it was exactly the 
time of the production of the movie named 'Peacemaker', with, as 
far as I remember, Nicole Kidman in one of the roles there. There 
was a need to promote that movie, and one of the US channels made 
an interview with General Lebed. General Lebed needed PR no less 
than that particular movie. He needed to be known in the West, 
because his political position in Russia was shaky. And how to be 
well-known in the West? To say something strong about nuclear 
security, because it was a topic of concern in the West. 

For that reason, he, without any significant analysis, took some 
of the documents about so-called nuclear suitcases. Yes, there 
were some small devices in Russia like that; yes, there were some 
similar in other nuclear weapon states. Do we have any evidence 
that any of them were missing? Absolutely not.
 
Chris Bullock: Vladimir Orlov, who is Editor-in-Chief of the 
Russian watchdog, 'Nuclear Control'.
 
Besides the so-called suitcase bombs, there are a number of other 
small, ready-made nuclear bombs stored in the former Soviet 
Union. And one of the most experienced people in the field warns 
some of these weapons may be open to theft.
 
Phone ringing
 
Bill Potter: Hi, Bill Potter speaking.
 
Chris Bullock: Professor Bill Potter is the Director of the 
Centre for Non Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute in 
California, and he's a specialist on Russia and the former Soviet 
Republics.
 
Bill Potter says in some cases retired or unemployed former 
military officers who may be in a position to help smugglers, 
have access to the weapons.
 
Bill Potter: We need to be I think particularly concerned about 
the risks posed at some of these sites where retired military 
officers who previously guarded nuclear weapons sites, continue 
to reside at these sites because by law, military officers are 
entitled to housing, even if they can't find work and so you 
actually have cases in which retirees have assisted local 
criminal elements to penetrate several layers of security at 
nuclear storage sites. Although it's not obvious that the targets 
of these activities have actually been nuclear arms, we know that 
they've been involved in stealing conventional arms and other 
materials from these sites, but it merely indicates the dangers 
that are posed by these relatively small nuclear weapons.
 
Chris Bullock: Professor Bill Potter, who is an advisor on 
disarmament to the United Nations Secretary-General.
 
While the Russians are adamant that none of their nuclear weapons 
are unaccounted for, the same can't be said for the stocks of 
weapons grade materials in the former Soviet Union. This is the 
plutonium and highly enriched uranium needed to build a bomb.
 
Making weapons grade material is difficult. Being able to buy it 
is one big step towards a bomb.
 
"Controlling this kind of material is absolutely crucial to the 
entire future of everything we do to stem the spread of nuclear 
weapons."

Matthew Bunn: When you start talking about the possibility that a 
group or a State might be able to beg, borrow or steal plutonium 
or highly enriched uranium on a nuclear black market, then it 
just blows the entire problem wide open. Some well organised 
terrorist group, such as Al Qaeda, might conceivably be able to 
make a nuclear explosive if they had this kind of material. So 
controlling this kind of material is absolutely crucial to the 
entire future of everything we do to stem the spread of nuclear 
weapons.
 
Chris Bullock: When you consider the tiny amount of weapons 
grade, or fissile material needed to make a small nuclear bomb, 
the total amount stockpiled around the world is astounding. And 
because of secrecy, and loose accounting in the past, the true 
size of the international stockpile can only be estimated. 
Conservative estimates put the total amount of highly enriched 
uranium and plutonium at over 2,000 metric tonnes. That's enough 
to build something like 50,000 nuclear weapons.
 
The majority is stockpiled in sites scattered across Russia and 
the former Soviet Republics.
 
At a number of former Soviet sites where there's been poor 
security, there has also been keen interest shown by two 
countries aspiring to be nuclear powers, two members of George W. 
Bush's 'axis of evil', Iran and Iraq. Bill Potter again.
 

Bill Potter: At a facility on the Caspian Sea, at Aktau, you have 
over three metric tonnes of low irradiated plutonium. The US has 
invested a lot in trying to safeguard that material, but it is 
useful to recall that Aktau was the site when after the collapse 
of the Soviet Union, the Iranians wanted to establish a 
consulate. There appeared to be no reason for a consular officer, 
other than the fact that it was near Iran, but more importantly 
it was the nuclear facility with a great deal of fissile 
material. You also have a considerable quantity of material in 
the Ukraine, in one instance at a location where there is known 
to have been a very significant Iraqi presence.
 
Chris Bullock: Outside of the former Soviet Union, there is also 
a considerable amount of poorly secured bomb grade material. In 
Serbia, for example, the US government is currently negotiating 
to move 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to a safer site. 
There are 43 countries with small research reactors, some holding 
weapons grade material, with little more than chain link fencing 
around the facilities.
 
But it is the former Soviet sites that provide the greatest 
security challenge. In the past few years the United States has 
actually transported some material from Kazakhstan and elsewhere 
to the US for safe storage.
 
Between them, Bill Potter and Matthew Bunn have been to many of 
the former Soviet nuclear sites, as part of American efforts to 
help with security upgrades. Still, only a small part of the job 
has been done.
 
Matthew Bunn: Only about 40% has had even the initial security 
and accounting upgrades put in place. By initial upgrades I mean 
just things like bricking over windows where people would have 
been able to pass material out the window, or putting that first 
detector at the door that would allow you to detect if somebody 
was carrying something out the door. The comprehensive upgrades 
have been done for an even smaller amount of the nuclear 
material. It's going to take years to get this job done but we 
should be very, very focused on trying to get it done as soon as 
humanly possible.
 
Chris Bullock: As an example of the security challenge at many 
Russian nuclear facilities, Matthew Bunn offered this 
illustration.
 
Matthew Bunn: I'd been at facilities in Russia for example where 
you had very large quantities of highly enriched uranium, tens of 
even hundreds of kilograms, enough for several bombs, where you 
had basically a chain link fence around an ordinary brick 
building. No guards actually at that particular building, guards 
within a sort of big university campus type arrangement, perhaps 
five or ten minutes away. And the outer perimeter of that campus 
literally has holes in the fence, so that if a well-trained 
terrorist group who knew where the material was, arrived at 2 
o'clock in the morning, they could easily go through one of those 
holes in the outer perimeter without being noticed, arrive at 
that building before the guards knew anything was happening, blow 
through that chain link fence and the brick wall of the building 
with explosives, and be out of there before the guards could 
arrive.
 
Chris Bullock: By way of contrast, Matthew Bunn described the 
security arrangements at the Pantex nuclear weapons site in 
Texas.
 
Matthew Bunn: The nuclear weapons at this facility are stored in 
bunkers. The bunkers have enormous steel gates with two locks on 
this enormous steel door. And the keys to one of those locks is 
held by the security people at the site, the key to the other is 
held by the operations people at the site. In front of the steel 
door is an enormous, several tonnes concrete block, so you can't 
open the door without moving the block out of the way. Well the 
machine that they use to lift the block out of the way, 
essentially a giant forklift, lives outside the security fence. 
They only bring it inside the security fence when they're going 
to open one of these doors and move one of these weapons, and 
when they're doing that, they have an armoured personnel carrier 
with a machine gun pointed at the poor guy driving the forklift, 
and they're watching while the two guys with the two different 
keys open the steel door. This is the kind of thing that is 
impressive because of its simplicity.
 
Chris Bullock: Matthew Bunn from Harvard University, a former 
adviser on nuclear security to the Clinton Administration.
 
It's impossible to get an accurate picture of how much weapons 
grade material has been smuggled out of the former Soviet sites, 
again because of a mixture of secrecy and poor accounting.
 
There have been hundreds of reports of theft, but only a handful 
of confirmed cases. 

"There are 14 confirmed cases of theft of weapons usable material 
from facilities in the former Soviet Union over the last ten 
years. The key word here is 'confirmed'."
   
Bill Potter: We know for example that there are 14 confirmed 
cases of theft, or attempted theft of weapons usable material 
from facilities in the former Soviet Union over the last ten 
years. The key word here is 'confirmed', there are hundreds and 
hundreds of reported cases, but if you actually focus on those 
instances in which there is more than miniscule quantities of 
highly enriched uranium or plutonium involved, the number is 
reduced considerably. There are those who are making the 
argument, and many have, that in fact we're really only talking 
about the tip of the iceberg and the comparison is often made 
with illicit trafficking in the narcotics area, in that there are 
dozens and dozens of cases which we simply haven't been able to 
identify.
 
Chris Bullock: In most of the confirmed cases of theft, the 
thieves were caught before the material was delivered to a buyer. 
Some attempted thefts by insiders were nipped in the bud, others 
beat the security and accounting systems, but were caught trying 
to sell the material.
 
In 1996 the American PBS television program, 'Frontline', went to 
Russia and interviewed Leonid Smirnov, who had worked as a lab 
engineer for 25 years at a nuclear facility in the city of 
Podolsk. Bit by bit, over many months, Smirnov stole tiny bits of 
weapons grade uranium, which he intended to sell.
 
Leonid Smirnov (through interpreter): Money lost its value. That 
was when I got this idea to siphon off uranium little by little. 
We had a highly enriched uranium, up to 90% enriched uranium 235.
 
Reporter: And did you ever have any close calls?
 
Leonid Smirnov (through interpreter): A situation where I could 
have been caught? No, there really weren't any. Because who would 
suspect me? Such an idea never occurred to any of our workers. 
Who would have thought of it? It was completely unexpected for 
everyone. The vial was so small, and no-one searched our bags, 
there were no detectives, so no, no such thing.
 
Chris Bullock: Leonid Smirnov wasn't caught by any nuclear 
security system. He was arrested with some drunken friends while 
he was carrying the uranium.
 
The black market for nuclear material is a shadowy world and the 
middle men are hard to track down. The Frontline program spent a 
year investigating nuclear smuggling, in Russia, some of the 
former Soviet Republics, and in Europe. One smuggler they spoke 
to had been caught in a sting by German police. He was a musician 
from Slovakia who moonlighted in the nuclear black market, Gustav 
Illich, and he'd told the undercover cop about his contacts.
 
Gustav Illich (through interpreter): When we were leaving, he 
leaned towards me and asked in a very low voice, if I would be 
able to obtain plutonium, or uranium for him. And I said, 'You 
know, that's the least problem because I have a friend who's a 
Director in Kazakhstan who's sitting on 2 tonnes of it.' One 
could get into these certain circles only through the 
intelligence services, those networks, and I hooked myself up 
through my friends, all of whom belonged to the KGB. And that's 
how it went, personal referrals.
 
Chris Bullock: Gustav Illich, speaking through an interpreter on 
the American PBS television program, Frontline, in 1996.
 
Most reports of nuclear theft occurred in the early to mid-1990s. 
The lower number of reports since then could have to do with some 
improved security, or because in 1996 the G8 countries held a 
nuclear security summit in Moscow, and at that summit the G8 
countries agreed to not publicise cases of nuclear trafficking.
 
Still, the vast majority of reported cases of nuclear trafficking 
involve small amounts of low grade material, by-products, or 
dirty products, or material that can't be used to make a nuclear 
bomb, but could be used in a 'dirty' radioactive bomb. But these 
are a distraction from the main game, says Vladimir Orlov. Orlov 
calls them 'junk stories', and again he's been voiced-over.
 
Vladimir Orlov (revoiced): I am absolutely not interested in 
analysing cases of stealing just radioactive material. There are 
many, some of them involving things that may be hazardous for 
someone's health, but they definitely have nothing to do with the 
proliferation threat, nothing to do with any attempt by any State 
or non-State actors outside Russia to steal materials for the 
purpose of their own nuclear weapons program. Many, many cases 
are reported of, you know, some uranium being stolen. It turns 
out just uranium ore was stolen, or cases where uranium of 2% 
enrichment was stolen, which I think may be fun for the 
front-page stories of some local newspapers, but for me, these 
are all junk stories, not of interest.
 
Chris Bullock: Once again, there is still no actual proof that 
weapons grade material has ended up in the hands of terrorists. 
But there are many reports that several radical groups have tried 
to get it.
 
Al Qaeda's former finance chief was arrested in Germany for 
trying to buy weapons components in 1998, the same year the group 
tried to set up a $30-million deal to buy nuclear warheads in 
Chechnya. A team of five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan was 
going to customise nuclear weapons for Al Qaeda's purposes. These 
stories appeared in reputable English and Arabic language 
newspapers.
 
In the 'dirty' bomb category, there was a shipment of highly 
radioactive material discovered by border guards in Uzbekistan, 
bound for an address in Quetta, Pakistan. Quetta is on the border 
with Afghanistan and was a major supply route for Al Qaeda. If 
this shipment was bound for Bin Laden's men, it could have been 
used in a large radioactive bomb, a 'dirty' bomb. 

The most direct testimony about Al Qaeda's nuclear ambitions came 
from a New York court, last year, where Osama Bin Laden was tried 
in absentia for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya 
and Tanzania. A former member of Al Qaeda, Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl 
testified that he was an intermediary in the purchase of uranium 
for Bin Laden, in Sudan, in 1993 or '94. But al-Fadl never saw 
the uranium, he only saw a large cylinder said to contain the 
uranium, and that's where his involvement in the deal ended.
 
Certainly the claims about Al Qaeda's nuclear intentions are 
persistent. And they're not the first group to embrace nuclear 
terrorism.
 
Documents found in the files of the East German security service, 
the Stasi, show that for many years in the 1970s and '80s, the 
Stasi used radioactive chemicals to identify and track dissidents 
n the community.
 
Geiger counter noises
 
In what was an act of radiological terror against opponents of 
the Communist government, the Stasi secretly spread a radioactive 
chemical on clothes, documents and even paper money belonging to 
dissidents, effectively tagging them so they could be tracked and 
spread the radioactivity within the dissident community. The 
chemical was spread on meeting room floors so that it got onto 
the shoes of government critics. It allowed the Stasi to 
simultaneously track and harm opponents. Several prominent 
dissidents have since died of cancer, and there's an inquiry into 
whether the Stasi radioactivity was to blame for at least one 
death.
 
We now know that in the early 1990s, the Japanese cult, Aum 
Shinrikyo, famous for the gas attack in the Tokyo subway, went to 
great lengths to purchase a nuclear weapon and weapons grade 
material. This would have given them the trifecta of weapons of 
mass destruction, having developed their own biological and 
chemical weapons. Aum tried to mine uranium ore at a property 
they bought in Western Australia, and the sect's chief scientist, 
Dr Hideo Murai, was a trained nuclear physicist.
 
According to the counter terrorism expert who warned of Aum's 
imminent madness back in 1995, the Japanese sect left detailed 
records of its nuclear wish list. 


Kyle Olson: We have a number of documents written by the cult 
themselves, including notebooks and other records, describing 
their efforts to use their rather extensive relations with the 
leadership of the former Soviet Union, in trying to acquire 
nuclear weapons, essentially trying to acquire a ready-made 
device. In fact we have Murai's own notebooks in which he talks 
about a price of approximately $3-million for a single weapon. 
And moreover, we have reason to believe that Murai had access to 
at least relatively credible people who gave him reason to 
believe he could access it.
 
Chris Bullock: Can you just describe how far Aum Shinrikyo went 
to recruit nuclear expertise from the former Soviet Union?
 
Kyle Olson: They began to build influence in Moscow even before 
the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Best estimates I've seen 
are in the neighbourhood of $15-million or $16-million directed 
to essentially greasing palms in the Kremlin. And in fact the 
cult established an institution in Moscow known as the Moscow 
Japan University, it was essentially a recruiting organisation 
for them, and consider that the cult at its peak claimed as many 
as 35,000 followers in the former Soviet Union. The Moscow Japan 
University had prestigious offices down in the same neighbourhood 
as the Bolshoi, which means that it was a fairly short walk to 
the Kremlin, and in fact the President of the Moscow Japan 
University was a Russian, whose day job happened to be serving as 
Chairman of Boris Yeltsin's National Security Council. So they 
clearly had connections.
 
Chris Bullock: Despite Aum Shinrikyo's investments in Russia, it 
seems the sect came away with nothing. But if they had been able 
to buy or build the nuclear arsenal they wanted, Kyle Olson is 
convinced Aum Shinrikyo would have used it.
 
"There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if they had been in 
possession of a nuclear weapon in March of 1995, ... there's no 
doubt in my mind they would have chosen to use a weapon like 
that."

Kyle Olson: Oh there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that if 
they had been in possession of a nuclear weapon in March of 1995, 
or in the days immediately after as pressure was being ratcheted 
up upon them, there's no doubt in my mind they would have chosen 
to use a weapon like that. The target? Who knows? It could have 
been a US Naval base, it could have been the Japanese government, 
it could have been the Imperial Palace, but there's absolutely no 
reason to believe that they would have restrained themselves.
 
Chris Bullock: Aum Shinrikyo changed its name two years ago, to 
Aleph, which has connotations of rebirth in Japan. Aleph has 
publicly disowned and apologised for the past actions of Aum 
Shinrikyo, but some significant common traits remain, says Kyle 
Olson.
 
Kyle Olson: It remains a group that is adept at recruiting young 
people, recruiting talented individuals, they practice mind 
control both on a very wide scale and very effectively. The 
group-think, which was responsible for Aum Shinrikyo's descent 
into madness the first time, is still evident, and they are once 
again becoming rather resource-rich, at least in terms of having 
money available to do things. That was the prescription before 
that led them down the path that resulted in almost 4,000 people 
being injured and 12 people being killed in the subways. Is Aleph 
today Aum Shinrikyo from five or six years ago? I would probably 
choose to say not, but I think it continues to bear watching. In 
fact it's interesting that the United States in the days 
immediately after September 11th last year, identified Aum 
Shinrikyo and now its successor organisation, Aleph, as being one 
of the terrorist groups worth watching.
 
Chris Bullock: Six months after Aum used Sarin gas in the Tokyo 
subway, Chechen rebels threatened to turn Moscow into an 'eternal 
desert' with radioactive waste. As proof they could do it, they 
placed a container with a small amount of highly radioactive 
material in a Moscow park.
 
There was some speculation that Al Qaeda, through its strong 
links with Chechen rebels, may have been involved in this threat. 
But this is discounted by Vladimir Orlov. And again, he's been 
voiced over.
 
Vladimir Orlov (revoiced): No, I don't know any connection with 
that incident in the park, and that incident in the park had 
really a PR effect, it had really no effect related to 
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or things like that. 
It was a psychological effect. No-one attempted to kill 
Muscovites in that case. Their purpose was to invite one of the 
Russian TV channels and to make the case public, just to make 
people feel frightened and at the same time to remind about 
themselves.
 
Chris Bullock: Vladimir Orlov, who is Editor-in-chief of the 
Russian watchdog, 'Nuclear Control'.
 
As Vladimir Orlov predicted, the Chechen rebels did not follow 
through on their threat to turn Moscow into an 'eternal desert'.
 
Sirens and helicopters
 
Chris Bullock: In the United States, where nerves are jangled 
over the possible, even probable next terror strike, nuclear 
power stations are on high alert at the moment, following the 
recent FBI warning about the threat of another Al Qaeda plane 
attack. The safety and security of nuclear power stations is a 
hot topic in the US. This is from a recent debate on CNN, between 
Ralph Beedle, from the industry body, the Nuclear Energy 
Institute, and Paul Leventhal, head of the nuclear watchdog 
group, the Nuclear Control Institute. 

Paul Leventhal: Nuclear power plants today are not defended 
against an attack from the air. We have proposed that 
ground-to-air missile batteries be in place at each nuclear power 
station in the United States, that's some 63 stations having 103 
power plants. And we think this is feasible because we know of at 
least one country that has done this, South Korea. They have a 
special situation, they regard themselves in a state of war, and 
we think right now with the kind of threat that this advisory 
describes, that these plans could well be vulnerable to attack.
 
Host: Ralph, your view?
 
Ralph Beedle: I think that the nuclear power plants are safe 
today; I thought that they were safe on September 10th.We have 
increased our level of security at the nuclear facilities as a 
result of September 11th. We don't believe that this threat is 
real, this is not a credible threat, it's certainly some 
information that was provided through our national collection 
effort, and obviously came from somebody in the Al Qaeda 
organisation, but it hasn't been judged to be a credible threat 
by the FBI or the NRC, it's an advisory. We get a lot of 
information, and in this case it was another piece of information 
that the NRC thought that we ought to be aware of.
 
Chris Bullock: Australia has one significant nuclear facility, 
the aging nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights on the edge 
of Sydney. The reactor works with low enriched uranium, not 
weapons grade uranium, and it's a very small reactor compared to 
the big power plants of the US, Russia, France and the UK for 
example.
 
Next month a decision will be made on the construction of a 
replacement reactor, and the nuclear regulatory authority, 
ARPANSA, has asked the body that operates the Lucas Heights 
reactor, ANSTO, to provide a safety review. And that includes an 
assessment of the likely impact of a jet airliner crashing into 
the reactor.
 
Both ARPANSA and ANSTO refused our request for an interview about 
safety and security at the reactor.
 
The Federal Science Minister told Background Briefing the review 
is still being drafted. The Minister, Peter McGauran.
 
"We have to be sensible about this. It is far more likely in a 
risk assessment that entry would be at a ground level."
   
Peter McGauran: It's certainly sensible to take a precautionary 
approach of this kind, but how do you guard against a jumbo jet 
crashing into the ANSTO research reactor or a high rise building, 
or Parliament House? Do you set up a battery of surface-to-air 
missiles? Do you build some sort of structure into which an 
aircraft plunging from the sky would not penetrate? We have to be 
sensible about this. It is far more likely in a risk assessment 
that entry would be at a ground level.
 
Chris Bullock: Just before Christmas, Greenpeace demonstrated the 
ease with which the Lucas Heights reactor site could be breached. 
They entered at ground level, just as the Lucas Heights risk 
assessment had anticipated.
 
Activists dressed as barrels of waste, jogged through the front 
gate, catching the security guards by surprise.
 
Activist sounds
 
Using the demonstrators at the front gate as a diversion, 
separate teams of Greenpeace activists used ladders to climb the 
perimeter fence, and then they climbed on top of the reactor 
building, as well as the building holding the highly radioactive 
spent fuel, and a communications tower.
 
Greenpeace Man: At the moment we've got approximately 50 
activists that have invaded this plant. We've got activists on 
top of the reactor containment building. This is the ancient 
nuclear reactor that they have operating at the moment. The 
reactor is continuing to produce radioactive waste. To highlight 
that fact we have activists on the roof of Building No.27. 
Building No.27 is Australia's largest radioactive waste dump. 
ANSTO has no management plan, they do not know what to do with 
Australia's …
 
Chris Bullock: All the while a paraglider was buzzing the 
complex, in direct contravention of the air exclusion zone at 
Lucas Heights.
 
Steven Campbell of Greenpeace Australia. 


"ANSTO, after September 11th claimed they would maintain enhanced 
security vigilance at the facility at Lucas Heights. We went in 
on December 17th with ridiculous ease."
   
Steven Campbell: ANSTO, after September 11th claimed they would 
maintain enhanced security vigilance at the facility at Lucas 
Heights. We went in on December 17th with ridiculous ease. 
Secondly, even the International Atomic Energy Agency agrees that 
there is absolutely nothing you can do to protect a nuclear 
facility from the style of attack we saw in New York on September 
11th. So even if they say that they're maintaining an air 
exclusion zone, it doesn't make any difference. What sort of air 
exclusion zone? How are they going to defend it? It's right next 
to a major airport, so there's nothing that they can do, is 
really what we're saying.
 
Chris Bullock: The Science Minister has dismissed the Greenpeace 
action at Lucas Heights as a propaganda victory in a phoney 
debate, and he's suggested future demonstrations at the site may 
be met with greater force. But Peter McGauran did acknowledge 
that if people with serious weaponry and intent got in as easily, 
it would be a different story.
 
Peter McGauran: It would be a much more serious situation, 
agreed. So getting through the front gate is nothing but a 
propaganda victory. Landing -
 
Chris Bullock: But that was a distraction. That was the point.
 
Peter McGauran: That was a distraction for the climbing of the 
second fence that surrounds the reactor. OK.
 
Chris Bullock: Who were the critical people.
 
Peter McGauran: Correct. However they then have to access the 
building, there is no possibility of them getting into the 
reactor, they cannot get through the air lock that separates the 
outside entrance of the building into the reactor. It is purely a 
propaganda victory. Now if Greenpeace want us to have guard dogs 
and teargas and to wrestle to the ground their next 
demonstration, well maybe we'll look at that, maybe we need water 
hose canon, but it's a phoney debate, because it is only of 
propaganda value. There was no prospect of them gaining entry to 
the reactor itself.
 
Chris Bullock: The Minister's confidence isn't shared by a former 
manager at the Lucas Heights reactor. Tony Wood, by coincidence, 
gave a report to the nuclear regulator, ARPANSA, a week before 
September 11th, suggesting that a terrorist group could easily 
penetrate the defences at the reactor. And he's critical of the 
reactor's disaster emergency plan, which he says underestimates 
the likelihood of radiation affecting nearby suburbs in a worse 
case scenario, like September 11th.
 
He believes Greenpeace did ANSTO a favour by highlighting the 
weaknesses at the reactor. 

Tony Wood: Well my reaction was the very thing that I was saying 
could happen, and ANSTO said couldn't happen, did happen. And I 
think that Greenpeace, while I'm not a supporter of Greenpeace, I 
think Greenpeace really provided a great service to ANSTO this 
day, because they demonstrated that the defences weren't as good 
as ANSTO claimed. Now I would hope that the ANSTO management 
would say, 'Thank you very much, you've shown us where there's a 
weakness, so that we can improve it.' But instead of that, they 
tried to talk it down and say, 'Oh well, they penetrated those 
barriers but they couldn't penetrate the other.' 

Chris Bullock: But is it a big leap from standing on top of a 
building with a banner to actually doing some serious, dangerous 
damage?
 
"You must have a good emergency plan, and you must be properly 
equipped and you must be prepared to implement it. Now I don't 
believe that that situation exists at the moment."

Tony Wood: Well ANSTO is saying yes there is a big difference. 
I'm saying if you've got an AK47, it's not. It's foolish to 
pretend that people who are properly armed and trained and 
ruthless and prepared to kill people, which these terrorists are, 
they could. They could penetrate the building and they could 
place charges against the reactor and severely damage the reactor 
and the containment. But all is not lost, because if you have a 
good emergency plan, I believe you can prevent the members of the 
public, who are most threatened, that is the young people, you 
can prevent them from receiving damaging exposure. But you must 
have a good emergency plan, and you must be properly equipped and 
you must be prepared to implement it. Now I don't believe that 
that situation exists at the moment.
 
Chris Bullock: A former Manager at the Lucas Heights Nuclear 
Research Reactor, Tony Wood.
 
* * 

Chris Bullock: Now Background Briefing turns to something 
completely different. The regular spot when we join the world 
where everything is so serious, you really can't take it 
seriously.
 
Arafat and Sharon walk off set of 'Israel'- Temperamental stars 
say they're tired of playing dogmatic jerks.
 
Sources on the set of 'Israel', history's longest-running drama, 
say irascible stars Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian 
leader Yasser Arafat angrily walked off the set today, 
complaining that the show's scriptwriters continually make their 
characters say and do stupid things.
 
'I'm supposed to be the Prime Minister of a country that's 
embroiled in this terrible conflict where diplomacy and tact and 
wisdom should be important, but you people always have me playing 
this great, pompous prat', Sharon reportedly shouted before 
throwing his script on the ground and storming off to his 
trailer.
 
He added, 'I swear if you hacks have me bulldozing one more 
Palestinian village, or making one more asinine, inflammatory 
comment, I'm filing a complaint with Actors' Equity.'
 
Arafat was allegedly no less piqued at the way recent treatments 
have depicted the gruff, unlovable Palestinian chief he portrays. 
'A few seasons ago my character was an influential creep, but now 
the script calls for everyone, even my own people, to treat me 
like a neutered creep', grumbled Arafat as he sulked off to the 
small tent he's allowed to occupy on the remote outskirts of the 
set. He added, 'I'm starting to think they want to write me out 
of the series for next season.'
 
Los Angeles 'Times' TV critic James Baldini said, 'It's like in a 
horror movie when one of the characters is about to do something 
dumb, like open a closet door, or look under the bed, and you're 
watching, and you want to scream "No, don't do it!" Well, that's 
what they've done with the Sharon character: you're watching, and 
you say, "Oh God, don't say that", but he always does.
 
Baldini also said the writing on the show has definitely gone 
downhill, since the popular Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat were 
in the cast. He added, 'A perfect example is that episode a 
couple of weeks back when Sharon said he wished he had killed 
Arafat 20 years ago. I mean, come on, why would a Head of State 
publicly say something so incendiary and stupid?' 

Viewers also expressed disappointment: Peter Calimo of Chicago, 
rolled his eyes over a particularly absurd January instalment. He 
said, 'In previous episodes, they had set it up so Arafat has 
this great opportunity to make the world feel sorry for his 
people's cause, and maybe put pressure on Israel. But then they 
have his character blow it by secretly buying a big old arms 
shipment from Iran, so he comes off looking like a total lying 
conniving jerk. It's a basic rule of fiction.' Calimo added, 'you 
have to make at least one of the main characters, if not 
likeable, then at least a sympathetic figure. You'd think these 
writers would know that.'
 
According to agent Lennie Waldman, who represents both Sharon and 
Arafat, the show staff is also making a mistake by not letting 
the two characters evolve. 'Israel's' writers, Waldman said, 
should take their cue from 'America, the Series'. He said, 'The 
cool thing about 'America' is they let the actors grow into the 
roles, like the George W. Bush character. Remember how early in 
the season he started out really bumbling, but then they let his 
character develop until in that one climactic scene, the whole US 
Senate officially declares him no longer goofy. Now that is 
compelling television.'
 
'Israel's' head writer, Kent Loring, denied rumours that in the 
season finale, Sharon will turn out to be Arafat's long-lost 
brother. However he did say the final episode would be explosive.
 
Background Briefing theme music
 
Chris Bullock: Background Briefing's Co-ordinating Producer is 
Linda McGinness. Research, Paul Bolger. Technical Operator, Mark 
Don.
 
Readings were by Brendan Higgins and Patrick Dickson. Thanks to 
satirewire.com for the piece on Israel. Background Briefing's 
Executive Producer is Kirsten Garrett and I'm Chris Bullock. And 
this is ABC Radio National.

Further information: 
      
The Nuclear Control Institute, Washington "An independent 
research and advocacy center specializing in problems of nuclear 
proliferation." http://www.nci.org/ [http://www.nci.org/]       

© 2001 Australian Broadcasting Corporation 
*****************************************************************
 45 Money for cleanup of toxic waste at Lab facing cutbacks 

Tri-Valley Herald
 	 	 	 
 Friday, March 01, 2002 - 3:13:57 AM MST 
By Lisa Friedman
WASHINGTON BUREAU 		
 	 
Friday, March 01, 2002 - -->WASHINGTON -- Money to clean up toxic 
waste at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and another lab 
site in the Altamont Hills faces a 25 percent meltdown in 
President Bush's 2003 budget. 

The shortfall is so dire that unless about $10 million is added 
to the budget, work at the nuclear weapons design lab could shut 
down entirely, Livermore officials warned. 

"If you can't collect the garbage you can't do the work," lab 
spokesman Bert Heffner said. 

The White House has proposed that Livermore receive $29.8 million 
next year to clean groundwater contamination, dispose of 
thousands of drums of radioactive waste and rid itself of 
thousands more containers filled with non-hazardous garbage that 
lab workers generate each day. Last year the lab received $40.1 
million for the work. 

The job is substantial. 

The garbage Livermore Lab ships from its East Avenue site each 
year could fill more than 2,329 refrigerators. It includes 
everything from packing material to chemical runoff to dozens of 
toxic substances that are the by-product of maintaining nuclear 
warheads. 

Then there's another 10,462 cubic meters of garbage that can 
include laboratory clothing and rubber gloves or radioactive 
materials such as plutonium. Livermore considers such waste 
"inventory" which will someday be shipped to a repository, 
possibly in the Nevada desert. 

Finally, the lab is involved in a major groundwater cleanup 
project at its main facility as well as in an area called Site 
300 that encompasses 11 square miles between Livermore and Tracy 
off Interstate 580. Since 1990 lab officials have been covering 
landfills to prevent uranium contamination from leaking into the 
wells of nearby farmers. 

Ellen Rabert, who heads Livermore's environmental protection 
office, said the impact of Bush's funding cut will be "severe." 

Under state law, newly generated waste must be shipped within 90 
days. State and federal laws also limit the amount of waste that 
can build up at a facility. 

If there's not enough money to get rid of the toxic garbage, 
Rabert said, "We'd have to stop programmatic activity that 
generated new waste." 

Defense activities that are the lifeblood of Livermore, such as 
ensuring that the country's nuclear warheads are in good working 
order, "could slow or stop," Heffner added. 

Though both Livermore Lab and Site 300 are Superfund sites, 
meaning they're listed by the EPA as among the nation's most 
contaminated areas, the cut in cleanup funding is not related to 
a recent White House decision that targets fewer sites for 
restoration. Money to mop up Livermore does not come from the 
Superfund trust fund, which comes from industry taxes. Rather, it 
is all federal dollars from the Department of Energy budget. 

Local nuclear watchdogs dismiss the notion that Livermore is in 
danger of shutting down, but said they are deeply concerned about 
the cleanup fund. 

"You just can't get any adequate clean up done without stable and 
adequate funding," said Marylia Kelley, director of the 
Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment. But 
Kelley also worries that cleanup funding is not a priority for 
the lab. 

"When the Livermore director goes to Washington, he's usually 
asking for money for the weapons program," she said. 

Livermore officials, meanwhile, said they are confident that 
money will be added to the cleanup fund before Congress passes 
the budget -- something that isn't likely to happen before 
November. 

Said Rabert, "I don't believe the number will be able to stay 
this low."
 
©1999-2001 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
*****************************************************************
 46 DOE delays UF6 plants again - 

The Paducah Sun
Paducah, Kentucky
Friday, March 01, 2002

Now, bids are sought for only one site — Paducah or Portsmouth — 
to convert the cylinders, instead of two as had been sought 
earlier. 

By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
 
The U.S. Department of Energy has delayed a decision on two 
long-sought uranium waste-conversion facilities at least another 
year by asking the three finalists to submit cost estimates for 
only one plant at Paducah or Portsmouth, Ohio. 

DOE sent letters Thursday to the finalists saying it will amend 
bid requests seeking costs not only for two plants, which bidders 
had already submitted, but for one plant. The letters seek cost 
comparisons of building a plant at Paducah vs. Portsmouth, and 
ask bidders to attend a meeting Wednesday in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to 
talk further. 

"We plan to use this additional information to assist the 
department in making a decision on the number and location of 
plants to be procured," said the letter from Don Sloan, chairman 
of DOE's Source Evaluation Board. "We hope to make that decision 
by January 2003." 

After the decision, and once DOE decides on any changes to 
requirements, the agency plans to again amend the bid requests to 
"firms in the competitive range," the letter continues. Bidders 
would then be allowed to submit revised proposals. 

The letter marks the latest of repeated DOE delays since Congress 
passed a 1998 law mandating that construction of two plants, at 
Paducah and Portsmouth, start by Jan. 31, 2004, and requiring 
operation by 2007. Kentucky lawmakers who pushed the legislation 
took issue with DOE's tactics. 

"My goal has never changed — we need to move forward and 
eliminate the environmental hazards associated with continued 
storage of the hazardous cylinders," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, 
R-Louisville. "Building conversion plants in both Paducah and 
Portsmouth is the quickest way to accomplish this goal. 

"While I am disappointed with the continued delay which continues 
to surround this effort, I am committed to pursuing a plan which 
will allow Paducah to construct a conversion facility." 

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, said, "I still feel the plan 
to build two plants is the best approach in terms of protecting 
the environment, creating new jobs and saving taxpayers' dollars. 
This project must move forward." 

Dolline Hatchett, an Energy Department headquarters spokeswoman 
in Washington, D.C., did not return a telephone message Thursday 
afternoon. 

Finalist American Conversion Services — composed of USEC Inc., 
operator of the Paducah uranium enrichment plant, and 
environmental firm CH2M Hill — received the letter, said USEC 
spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle. "We're studying what's been 
required of us." 

Other finalists are Jacobs COGEMA, formed by Jacobs Engineering 
Group and COGEMA, and Uranium Disposition Services, formed by 
Framatome ANP (Advanced Nuclear Power) Richland, Duratek Federal 
Services and Burns and Roe Enterprises. 

Some DOE officials have argued the law merely requires the agency 
to prepare a plan for the facilities. But Whitfield and other 
lawmakers say it explicitly requires two plants to convert about 
60,000 cylinders of depleted uranium hexafluoride (UF6) into 
safer material for potential commercial use. Each plant is 
expected to create 150 to 200 jobs. 

After repeated delays over four years, DOE pledged to name the 
winning bidder Jan. 16, but abruptly asked bidders that day to 
extend their offers through the end of February. Congressional 
sources and energy workers' union officials said the stalling 
apparently stemmed from disagreements between DOE and the Office 
of Management and Budget over how many conversion plants should 
be built, despite the federal mandate. 

Phil Potter, Washington-based policy analyst for Paper, 
Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) 
International, said earlier that the delay apparently was largely 
due to disagreement over how many plants should be built. He said 
the OMB apparently favored no plants and DOE favored two, after 
which OMB responded it would back a one-plant plan. 

Potter also said Paducah was considered the favorite for a 
one-plant plan because it has about two-thirds of the cylinders. 
The rest are at closed enrichment plants at Portsmouth and Oak 
Ridge, Tenn. Potter said the Ohio delegation would continue 
fighting for two plants. 

In a visit to Paducah two weeks ago, U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, 
R-Southgate, said he favored two plants. But he warned economic 
development officials that if Paducah got the conversion facility 
in a one-plant scenario, it might lose demonstration gas 
centrifuge technology to Portsmouth as a trade-off. 

"If you’re concerned about not receiving new technology, you have 
reason to be concerned," he said. "Paducah needs to receive the 
new technology in order to remain competitive, and I have talked 
to USEC (the plant operator) about that." 
*****************************************************************
 47 EEOICP Report Card on DOE safety
 
Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security
 
PRESS RELEASE:
 Not to be released until Thursday Feb 28th 6:30 p.m.
 
For further information contact:

 Vina Colley 740-259-4688 or while in Washington call Hotel 
703-979-9799 Glenn Bell 865-482-7641, Harry Williams 
865-693-7249, Don Throgmorton 270-554-6638
 
EEOICP REPORT CARD
 
In 2000 the Department of Energy admitted placing workers in 
harm's way, and offered to rectify past sins.
 
The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act Plan 
(EEOCIPA) resulted from Congressional Hearings, National Economic 
Council Reports, Community meetings, and other sources. After 
strong bipartisan discussion, the Plan was passed. It was not 
what workers considered adequate justice, but was a start. Is it 
working? Here are some comments:
 
  + Not enough illnesses are covered. Health effects from 
exposure to FLORIDES, Depleted Uranium, UF6, chemical exposure, 
heavy metals, and other "toxic soups" encountered in the many 
sites should receive equal status with Chronic Beryllium Disease 
(CBD), cancers, and silica exposure.
 
Some materials, such as uranium, pose a heavy-metal risk in 
addition to the Radioactive risk. This is not necessarily a 
cancer risk but is a health risk That should be compensated. 
There is other hazard materials like fluorides, Beryllium, and 
silica; which can accumulate in the lymph nodes stimulation 
cytokine's from the foreign materials effect. Insoluble materials 
like Uranium oxides, fluoride compounds, and beryllium oxide 
concentrate in the Sentinel lymph node macrophages causing a 
foreign body response. The Macrophage cells emit inflammatory 
cytokines. Granoloma are formed and foreign Body response from 
macrophage cytokine's. Studies that show high concentrations into 
the lymph nodes via actions of Macrophages. REFERENCES ATTACHED:
 
  + The lump sum is inadequate, compare the $150K to the 
terrorist victims' fund.
 
  + Problems in acceptance of obvious qualifiers is a becoming 
common. Verified cases of CBD and Special Exposure Cohort (SEC) 
cancer victims have been denied or delayed by the Department of 
Labor final adjudication board. DOL appears to be finding 
loopholes to deny claims, due to semantics, poor records, and the 
discounting of expert diagnoses. This hurts the credibility of 
these experts in their field, as well as that of the labs 
performing the specialized testing.
 
  + The DOL implementation does not follow the Federal Register 
orders, or the intent of Congress, as stated in the introduction 
to the EEOCIPA. The DOL interpretation is inaccurate, and being 
applied haphazardly. The intent of Congress, as stated in the 
Act, is based on the premise that, if the illnesses were "as 
likely as not" work-related, the burden of proof would be on the 
government, not the claimant. The DOL appears to take an 
opposite, and more narrow approach, and is not responsive to the 
claimants, medical professionals, and other knowledgeable 
individuals who are working to see this imperfect plan work as 
well as possible.
 
  + As confusing and frustrating as these claims are, the cases 
which must go for dose reconstruction, or fall under States' 
Workers' Compensation programs, will be even more of a nightmare. 
Non-existent records and variations in state comp rules will 
assure confusion and unfair treatment of these qualifiers.
 
  + At present, the EEOCIPA implementation is dysfunctional, and 
not following the letter of the law or intent of Congress. As 
such, the implementation of the Act must receive a D-for efforts 
to date. Hopefully, communication will improve, and the plan 
becomes functional, as Congress intended. 2-20-02
 
References:
 
Harley, N. H., Foulkes, E. C., Hilborne, L. H., Hudson, A., 
Anthony, C. R., (1999). A Review of the Scientific Literature As 
It Pertains to Gulf War Illness, Volume 7, Depleted Uranium. RAND 
report.
 
Kniazhev, V. A., Umnikova, N. M., (1975), Toxicology of 
high-fired beryllium oxide inhaled by rodents. II. Metabolism and 
early effects, Arch Environ Health 30(11): 546-551.
 
Kathren, R. L., Strom, D.J., Sanders, C. L., Filipy, R. E., 
McInroy, J. F., Bistline, R. E., (1993) Distribution of Plutonium 
and Americium in Human Lungs and Lymph Nodes and Relationship to 
Smoking Status, Radiation Protection Dosimetry, Vol. 48(4): p 
307-315.
 
"Immunology", By Janis Kuby,ISBNO-7167-2643-2 1994 Ref on 
cytokines being generated by macrophages page 304 Lymphy nodes 
composed of macrohages page 74 Granuloma process page 495
    
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