***************************************************************** 06/03/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.140 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: Vote doesn't clear up Cooper's future NUCLEAR REACTORS 2 US: NRC Commissioner to Visit Turkey Point Nuclear Plant June 6 3 Japan: Fugen's lights to go out in '03 4 US: Some in Seabrook still worried about nuke plant safety, despite 5 US: *The heat's on inside a nuclear power plant* NUCLEAR SAFETY 6 US: Study: Cancer rates higher NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 7 US: Violations haunt Colorado mill 8 US: Plans call for nuclear waste to be trucked through Colorado 9 US: Nuclear waste routes opposed Shipments to Yucca risky, Stricklan 10 US: NRC Renews Charter of Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste 11 US: For some, dirt represents jobs 12 US: Reid wants probe of Abraham Yucca aide 13 US: Nebraska: Showdown in 5-state waste case 14 US: Senator Asks for Probe of Energy Official 15 US: Transporting nuclear waste to national site a thorny issue 16 US: Nuclear waste awaits decision 17 US: Nuclear waste next door 18 US: State nuclear plants await Senate’s decision on sending spent 19 Russia, Nordic govts agree to build 80 mln usd nuclear waste 20 US: Vermont Yankee will run out of storage for waste 21 US: Maine: State agency clears way for CY waste site 22 US: Officers face discipline over uranium protest. NUCLEAR WEAPONS 23 The Sunflower No. 61, June 2002 24 US: Senate reject nuclear funds 25 US: FCNL: AMENDED June 2002 Letter-Writing Project 26 US: Peace Action: Right Steps Up Push for Usable Nuke 27 Nuclear Free Seas Flotilla Spreads Around The World 28 Musharraf Pins Hopes on Putin 29 Nuclear Arms Concern Wolfowitz 30 India Seeks to Ease Nuclear Fears 31 Officials Convene for Asian Security 32 Mind play matters in nuclear politics 33 Japan: Nuclear remarks may spark Diet disorder 34 US: Complete Text of Bush's West Point Address 35 India categorically rules out use of nuclear weapons 36 Koizumi under renewed pressure for reports of switch on Japan's 37 Risks seen reducing nuclear forces 38 Russia alarmed by reports Japan ready to build nuclear weapons US DEPT. OF ENERGY 40 DOE defies Congress 41 The big con: Cleanup vs. B Reactor museum 42 U.S. Orders Design of New Weapons Plant OTHER NUCLEAR 43 Irradiated beef goes mainsream ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Vote doesn't clear up Cooper's future Omaha.com June 1, 2002 *BY NANCY GAARDER* WORLD-HERALD BUREAU OPPD gets OK to build new plant LINCOLN - The uncertainty surrounding the Cooper Nuclear Power Plant was made no more or less uncertain by a state board's decision to permit a new plant about 20 miles away, officials said Friday. "I don't think it has any impact," said Beth Boesch, senior manager for corporate communications at the Nebraska Public Power District, owner of Cooper. NPPD has said that Cooper will remain open until September 2004, when a contract with a major partner expires. At that time, about half of Cooper's power will become excess, which means the loss of half the revenue needed to fund its $150 million operating costs. NPPD has not committed to keeping the plant open past 2004. Cooper, near Brownville, employs about 760 and generates a payroll of about $56 million. More relevant to Cooper's future are actions taking place outside the Power Review Board room, Boesch said. The board Friday approved the Omaha Public Power District's bid to build what could end up being a $1 billion coal-fired plant at Nebraska City. The decision closes a door for the Cooper Coalition, which had lobbied for OPPD to tap into the excess power at Cooper. "We're disappointed," said Jed Wagner, spokesman for the coalition. "Basically, this means that one opportunity for the marketing of Cooper has now vanished." Boesch said the future of Cooper hinges on a combination of factors: Results of an intensive federal review this summer of Cooper's operations. Efforts to lower Cooper's production costs. The ability to attract customers for the excess power. Bill Fehrman, vice president of energy supply for NPPD, said a number of Nebraska and regional utilities have expressed interest in buying Cooper's excess power. OPPD and NPPD are negotiating a five-year contract for as much as 25 percent of Cooper's excess power, but that doesn't solve the nuclear plant's need for long-term commitments, Fehrman said. The contract would run from 2004, when Cooper's contract with MidAmerican Energy expires, until 2009, when OPPD hopes its new plant comes on line. The NPPD board has committed to making a decision on Cooper's future this year. Wagner said he was pleased that the Power Review Board asked for an updated review of Nebraska's power needs. A number of major power plant expansions are in the works. "It's too bad that a comprehensive review was not allowed to happen before this decision," he said. The key now, Wagner said, is that the review include a discussion of Cooper. Mark Hunzeker, chairman of the Power Review Board, said that the board doesn't have jurisdiction over NPPD's decision on Cooper's future. The board's mandate does require it to make decisions that are in the public's "convenience and necessity" and that avoid duplication. The board stated in its resolution approving OPPD's new plant that the expansion is not duplicative. Hunzeker said the board could not ask OPPD to postpone its plans to expand on the possibility that excess power might be available from Cooper. Because NPPD has not committed to keeping Cooper open past 2004, there is "considerable uncertainty," he said. And 2004 is just one hurdle, he said, because Cooper's federal license expires in 2014. The plant, which has had a number of operational problems, would have to succeed in getting the license extended for there to be a long-term guarantee of power. "Cooper may be open way past 2014," he said, "but we don't know that." ©2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved. Copyright ***************************************************************** 2 NRC Commissioner to Visit Turkey Point Nuclear Plant June 6 NRC: Press Release Region II - 2002 - 31 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov No. II-02-031 May 31, 2002 CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov [opa2@nrc.gov] U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dr. Nils J. Diaz will visit Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point nuclear power plant on Thursday, June 6, to tour the facility and discuss its operation with company officials. Commissioner Diaz will be available to meet with interested news media representatives at 2:00 p.m. in the plant training center, located at the plant site near Florida City south of Miami. Because of potential security delays, media representatives are encouraged to arrive early and will be directed by security personnel to the meeting location. Commissioner Diaz was first sworn in as a commissioner of the NRC on August 23, 1996 for a five-year term and nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate on October 4 last year for a second five-year term. Before joining the NRC, Dr. Diaz was a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Florida and director of the Innovative Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute, a national consortium of universities and industry, which he founded. He also was president of Florida Nuclear Associates, Inc., a high technology research and consulting firm. Dr. Diaz received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Villanova, in Cuba, and both Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Florida in nuclear sciences. ***************************************************************** 3 Japan: Fugen's lights to go out in '03 Daily Yomiuri On-Line By Isamu Mishima Fugen, a nuclear convertor reactor operated by the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, will close down in March, ending nearly a quarter-century of operation. The institute's predecessor organization, the Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (Donen), developed Fugen as an efficient new type of convertor reactor that could use the same uranium fuel as ordinary light-water reactors and also plutonium extracted from used uranium fuel. Fugen, which can generate up to 165,000 kilowatts, is the only nuclear reactor of its type in Japan. "I regret the closure because Fugen could work for at least another 10 years," said Naoto Sakurai, deputy chief of the power generation section at Fugen Nuclear Power Station. When Sakurai joined the institute in the early 1980s, the workplace was full of energy as workers made it their goal to create practical technology to operate convertor reactors. In light of Japan's limited natural resources, the government decided to establish a nuclear fuel cycle using plutonium extracted from spent uranium fuel for power generation. Fugen was the first major step toward that goal. The final goal was to have been development of a fast breeder-reactor to efficiently produce plutonium while generating power. However, the development of a fast breeder-reactor takes a long time because such a reactor uses hard-to-handle liquid sodium as coolant to extract heat from the reactor core. A Fugen-type convertor reactor uses heavy water as the moderator to control nuclear reactions. Like ordinary water molecules, those of heavy water consist of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, but the hydrogen in heavy water is an isotope with twice the atomic weight of ordinary hydrogen. However, aside from the use of heavy water, other Fugen technologies are the same as those of conventional light-water (ordinary water) reactors, as the convertor reactor also uses light water as coolant. Fugen has the merits of being able to burn fuel efficiently and at the same time produce a sizable amount of plutonium for its own subsequent use. Therefore, when Fugen's development began, it carried high expectations as a bridge between light-water reactors and fast breeder-reactors. In some ways, Fugen lived up to the hopes placed on it. Since Fugen started operating in 1979, it has steadily accumulated precious data about the safety of fuel and other elements. However, Fugen needs specially designed fuel and has higher maintenance costs as it is only reactor of its type in the nation. Electric power companies, which were to have built their own converter reactors in the final stage of the government's plan, began feeling that operating Fugen was too burdensome. The negative feelings clearly surfaced in July 1995, when power companies asked the government to cancel planned construction of a second demonstration convertor reactor in Omamachi, Aomori Prefecture. Toshio Okazaki, deputy director of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, who was then chief of the then Science and Technology Agency's Atomic Energy Bureau, recalled the day, saying, "The request to halt the plan was made suddenly." But there were prior signs. Parts of the plan had been delayed for nearly 10 years due to difficulty in purchasing land and other problems. Also, experience with the use of plutonium in Fugen and similar reactors overseas led to the discovery that it is sufficiently safe and practical to use mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which is mixture of uranium and plutonium, in light-water reactors. Also, Electric Power Development Co., which was to construct the demonstration reactor, revised the estimate of the construction costs upward from 396 billion yen to 580 billion yen. The company also announced an estimate that the power generation cost of the demonstration reactor would be about three times higher than that of light-water reactors. In the end, the government decided to halt development of convertor reactors. Sakae Muto, chief of the atomic energy division of the Federation of Electric Power Companies, pointed out that development of nuclear power reactors needs to proceed flexibly, adapting to changes in economy and technology. The Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute said that about 350 billion yen has been invested in Fugen. Also, the costs of dismantling Fugen--a process that will take 30 years and cannot begin until 10 years after the plant stops operation--are estimated at about 70 billion yen. Because Fugen's cumulative revenue from sales of electric power is about 200 billion yen, the project is in the red. Therefore, the final judgment of Fugen's value must be decided on whether Japan can utilize the technologies obtained from Fugen's operation. Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 4 Some in Seabrook still worried about nuke plant safety, despite assurances Monday, June 3, 2002 SEABROOK (AP) — Residents in Seabrook want to believe they are safe if their nuclear power plant is attacked, but some are still concerned. In the eight months following the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, the 103 nuclear power plants in the United States have remained on the highest level of alert. Seabrook Station has beefed up its security and closed its perimeter gates to traffic. Spokesman Alan Griffith says the plant is a fortress and would be safe if attacked. But he understands residents’ concerns. Griffith admits the plant and its security is not foolproof. At the same time, he says employees at the plant are not worried about coming to work, and compared to anything else, the security there is very strong. Donna Smith can see the plant across the water from her home, where she has lived on and off for the past 53 years. "From everything I’ve heard, the plant is very safe," Smith said. "When you look out your front door and see it, you really want to believe that." But David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists, said nuclear plants around the country are not protected well enough from a terrorist attack. "Seabrook and other plants tout the strength of the double-domed structure," Lochbaum said. "But that’s a bit of a magician’s trick." For Smith, there are concerns, but she believes dwelling on disaster isn’t the way she wants to live her life. "We kind of go with the flow," she told The Eagle-Tribune. "You kind of bite the bullet. You’re hoping everything is OK because they say it is. When the plant was first built, we were all scared and shocked. But they’ve been a good neighbor. I sure hope it stays that way." 2002 Geo. J. Foster Co. ***************************************************************** 5 *The heat's on inside a nuclear power plant* Abram Katz, Register Science Editor June 02, 2002 *Powerful forces are at work in the heart of a nuclear power plant.* Kept under control, the fissioning atoms are a clean source of electricity. Unleashed the reactions can become dangerous. Most of the 103 nuclear power plants in the U.S. and the two working units in Connecticut are pressurized water reactors. Bundles of zirconium-clad fuel rods contain pellets of uranium. The 12-foot rods are held in a matrix in the reactor core. Uranium spontaneously emits neutrons because it is radioactive. The pellets in a reactor are close enough to each other to allow neutrons to hit and split other uranium nuclei, which split other uranium nuclei. This controlled chain reaction releases heat. The assembly is suspended in water for two reasons. Without water the neutrons would travel too fast and a chain reaction could not be sustained. Water also acts as a coolant, carrying away the tremendous energy given off by the fissioning uranium. Hot coolant travels through steam generators, which heat a separate water system. Steam turns a generating turbine, condenses and returns to the steam generator. Coolant is pumped back into the reactor vessel. The rate of the reaction is controlled by lowering neutron-absorbing rods into the reactor core. The reactor is contained in a steel pressure vessel about eight inches thick. The reactor vessel, steam generators, pumps and other equipment is housed in a domed containment structure. The containment is steel-reinforced concrete an average of four feet thick and lined with steel. Over time radioactive fission products build up in the fuel rods, so even when control rods are inserted and the nuclear reaction is stopped, the rods remain hot enough to melt. Loss of coolant water could lead to the core melting, which would release radioactivity and could generate explosive hydrogen gas. This is why commercial reactors are equipped with several redundant systems and emergency systems to either prevent coolant loss, or add water. Used or spent fuel rods are stored in pools of water at reactor sites. This water also cools the rods and contains radiation. If the water were removed the rods might melt and burn. The fuel assembly rods become less radioactive and thermally hot over time, reducing the risk of fire. The federal government plans to eventually transport spent fuel and other highly radioactive waste to the repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. /Abram Katz can be reached at akatz@nhregister.com or 789-5719/ /©New Haven Register 2002/ ***************************************************************** 6 Study: Cancer rates higher The Hawk Eye Special: IAAP Friday, May 31, 2002 [Unknown dangers at IAAP] Health Registry's study looked at incidents of cancer in IAAP workers, W.B. and Middletown. By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye MIDDLETOWN — A study of cancer among former Iowa Army Ammunition Plant workers shows a pattern of lung and some other cancer several times higher than that found in the rest of the state. In addition, patterns for some forms of cancer, including cancer of the liver, mouth and eye areas, are higher among some residents of Middletown and West Burlington, excluding IAAP workers, than they are for the rest of the state, according to a study by the State Health Registry of Iowa. For instance, data shows that leukemia is above the statewide incident rate for women under 65, but not men under 65. However, the study said the overall rate of various cancers in the two communities are similar to those in other parts of the state. The study, which collected data on cancer cases from 1969 to 1999, was presented Wednesday to the citizen panel that monitors the activity of University of Iowa health researchers surveying health conditions of former IAAP nuclear–weapons workers. Dr. Lar Fuortes, leader of the U of I survey team, also said his team's research has shown that lung problems, many that could be associated with exposure to asbestos, are not unusual among either the nuclear workers or the Army workers. He said that is confirmed by an examination of lung X–rays of deceased plant workers. Fuortes did note, however, that many plant workers were heavy smokers or tobacco chewers, and that would increase the risk of cancer. Fuortes said the Health Registry study showed that higher incidents of cancer of the lining of the mouth, nasal cavity and middle ear areas were found among both former Atomic Energy Commission workers and Department of Defense employees. "There was an increase of cancer in cells that line the respiratory tract of people who worked in this plant," Fuortes said. "That's the strongest pattern that emerged." However, he said further study will be needed "to show that that pattern is true by looking at rates, whether there are actually increased numbers of cancers." The AEC built, disassembled and in later years test fired components of nuclear weapons at IAAP from the late 1940s to the mid–1970s. The study by the registry, one of the most respected cancer–data gathering agencies in the country, categorized its IAAP study into three groups of people: West Burlington and Middletown, minus AEC and Army workers; AEC workers; and Department of Defense employees. Among the non–IAAP workers in the two communities, the following cancer rates exceeded percentage ratios for the rest of the state: In males up to age 64, liver cancer occurred at a percentage ratio nearly 14 times higher than the rest of Iowa. However, Fuortes noted that even though the percentage ratio was high, it consisted only of two actual cases, which may or may not mean much statistically. It could be a statistical fluke, because the cancer incidents are not occurring "in patterns across age and genders," Fuortes said. Among males 64 or under, eye area cancers occurred at seven times the state rate, but again there were only two actual cases. Also of note in the study of the two communities, percentages of incidents of tongue, rectum and leukemia cancers were elevated above state levels for females under age 65. In addition, for males 65 or older, there were higher ratios of lip cancer and multiple myeloma; and higher ratios for females in other cancers of the genitalia. Fuortes stressed the study is statistically complicated to interpret. What the study does show, Fuortes said, "is that there is a pattern of increased proportion of lung cancers among all cancers occurring in the IAAP population." What the study does not show, he said, is that the number of cancers has increased. "That would be an assumption ... but we don't know that for a fact," he said. Another way to put it, he said, is "that of all the cancers occurring in the IAAP population, the fraction of that number that was lung cancer was higher in IAAP than in the cancers occurring in the rest of Iowa." "We think that there may be a higher rate of cancer, but we haven't answered that question yet," Fuortes said. Fuortes said another aspect of the study is that "it adds to the suspicion" that there may have been or still is increased rates of certain types of cancer among IAAP workers. He said the study does not show a pattern of community health risks among the West Burlington and Middletown nonworker population. Authors of the study, including the Health Registry's medical director, Dr. Charles F. Lynch, could not be reached for comment Thursday. The Hawk Eye 800 S. Main St., Burlington Iowa 52601 319-754-8461 Front Desk · 319-754-6824 FAX · 1-800-397-1708 ***************************************************************** 7 Violations haunt Colorado mill Sunday, June 02, 2002 By TOM DAVIS Staff Writer CANON CITY, Colo. - In 1958, the Cotter Corp. opened a uranium mill two miles south of the Canon City line, with great fanfare. The company's vice president, Dave Marcott, was quoted in the local newspaper as saying: "We've received every possible kind of cooperation we could ask for - and more." But with a 44-year history of environmental violations, lawsuits, and several business disappointments, Cotter has long struggled to coexist with its surroundings. Cotter was originally incorporated in 1956 in New Mexico as a uranium production company, and ran into obstacles almost immediately after beginning operations in Colorado. Patrick Mutz, Cotter's mill manager, said the company originally located near Canon City because thorium mines were common in the area. The company hoped the federal government would choose thorium as the principal material that would help energize the fledging nuclear power industry. Instead, the government chose uranium. Once the region's few uranium mines tapped out in the 1950s and 1960s, Cotter was forced to purchase mines in the Denver area about 110 miles away and elsewhere and bring in the material either by train or by truck, Mutz said. Besides uranium, Cotter has processed vanadium, molybdenum, silver, lead, zinc, copper, selenium, nickel, cobalt, tungsten, and limestone. The Canon City area facility, which dumps its own waste materials in a 90-acre pond at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, also receives material for disposal from several other Colorado sites. They include mining operations owned by Cotter, which the company is now cleaning up. One is the Schwartzwalder mine near Denver, which Cotter acquired in 1965. Last year, the company received about 40,000 tons total for straight disposal. Thorium-tainted soil from the Maywood Superfund site in Bergen County would be the first out-of-state disposable material received by Cotter in at least four years, Mutz said. Cotter says the soil from Maywood, while contaminated with thorium, would act as a protective cover for higher-level radioactive material that's already stored at the site. Cotter's history with waste disposal has not always been good. Until the 1970s, radioactive materials were dumped on the property without the safeguards that would have prevented it from contaminating the soil and groundwater. After several floods in the late 1960s sent contaminated soil pouring toward residential areas, residents began to pack local public meetings to complain that the company's materials were making them sick. Mutz said he sympathizes with residents who blame the company for poisoning the groundwater. "If I was a neighbor down there, I'd probably do the same thing," he said. He said that the company's practices 40 years ago were in compliance with the much more permissible laws of the time. In every industry, he said, there's a "learning curve." And Cotter learned about environmental protection the hard way. The company's practices prompted a flurry of lawsuits filed by cancer victims. In 1984, the federal Environmental Protection Agency designated property contaminated by Cotter as a Superfund site. Just last November, a federal judge awarded $43.3 million to people exposed to radiation and other contamination from Cotter. Ex-employees have battled with the company to receive workman's compensation, while others left with bitter feelings about their experiences. Around the time of its Superfund designation, Cotter saw its workforce dip from around 250 employees to about 30. It's now around 75, although Mutz noted there were more than 100 employees before the postponement of the Maywood soil's delivery this year caused layoffs. "When we don't have revenue, we have to adjust," said Phil Krauth, Cotter's lab manager who has worked there since 1968. Cotter, which was purchased by Consolidated Edison in 1975, was in what Mutz called a "stand-down" from 1987 to 1998, operating only limited activities as it worked to clean up its own property and the surrounding area. The company's original mills in the Canon City area, which were contaminated, were destroyed. Cotter also built a dam and established filtering mechanisms to prevent the plant's toxic materials from reaching residential areas. Since 1999, the company has tried to regain its momentum and test new markets. Two years ago, it was purchased by General Atomics of San Diego. About that time, it stopped taking uranium ore for processing because of a depressed market, and brought in zirconium - a mineral used in everything from heavy industry to household products. But Cotter's new zirconium processing system has some kinks that have prevented that operation from starting up. Now the company is banking its hopes for short-term success on the Maywood soil, but a lot may depend on whether residents are successful in blocking the shipments. Just last month, the state cited the company for violations involving airborne radioactivity. Urine tests also showed higher-than-acceptable levels of radiation in an employee. To this day, many - including some ex-employees - believe the company has been slow to react to the community's concerns. Deyon Boughton, whose husband worked for Cotter from 1958 to 1979, said she can understand the frustrations of both sides. Her husband, Lynn, was gung-ho about the company when he started there as a chemist. When he retired, he was sick with cancer, and he succumbed to the disease last year. By that point, he had become Cotter's chief critic, she said, and he died while trying to get the company to change its ways. "You don't go out starting a business intending for this to happen," she said. "But they'll do whatever they can to survive." Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 8 Plans call for nuclear waste to be trucked through Colorado Rocky Mountain News: State Strickland opposes shipments By Lynn Bartels, News Staff Writer June 3, 2002 U.S. Senate candidate Tom Strickland appealed to Coloradans on Sunday to voice their opposition to loads of nuclear waste passing through the state on the way to Nevada. Strickland said various routes suggested by the Department of Energy show the waste headed for Nevada going through Colorado by rail or by truck, including along Interstate 70. "After Sept. 11, we know that terrorists are capable of committing previously unthinkable heinous acts," Strickland said. "Each one of the (truck or train) shipments could be turned into a 'dirty bomb' creating unspeakable devastation." To emphasize the risk, the Democratic candidate, who is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, stood outside his headquarters at Interstate 25 and East 58th Avenue as traffic whizzed by. He was joined by U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and an 18-wheel truck carrying a model of a cask that would carry nuclear waste. The U.S. Senate this summer is expected to vote on whether to permanently store spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste in a tomb under Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., has joined with Democrats in opposing the opening of the facility. Allard has sided with Republicans by supporting it. Allard believes the waste belongs in a permanent storage facility built for that purpose instead of in temporary tanks around the country, said his spokesman, Sean Conway. "Some of these temporary facilities are close to high-population, high-density areas. It doesn't make sense," Conway said, adding that one temporary facility is located 40 miles north of Denver. Conway said the DOE was required to put major interstates on the map for potential routes, but it is unlikely anyone would want nuclear waste going through mountain passes on I-70. Strickland's not so sure. He pointed out the Senate vote is scheduled before final routes will be selected. Several environmental groups cheered as Strickland voiced his opposition. "We're concerned about the unintended consequences of the Yucca Mountain site," said Carmi McLean, Colorado director of Clean Water Action. "The geology is unstable and the water table is only 300 meters below the repository site." McLean and Reid said the nuclear lobby has been successful in pushing for the opening of Yucca Mountain. Nuclear producers are worried about liability, McLean said. As long as the waste remains in temporary sites, the producers are liable should something happen. Once that waste is moved to trucks or to a permanent site, then taxpayers are liable. Contact Lynn Bartels at (303) 892-5327 or bartels@RockyMountainNews.com. 2002 © The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 9 Nuclear waste routes opposed Shipments to Yucca risky, Strickland says By Brad Turner Special to The Denver Post Denver Post.com Monday, June 03, 2002 - Coloradans would be at greater risk of radioactive contamination if nuclear waste is shipped on the state's highways and rails, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tom Strickland said Sunday. Strickland, a former U.S. attorney, blasted plans for shipping the waste through Colorado to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste storage facility in Nevada. Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev. - one of the most vocal critics of Yucca Mountain - joined Strickland at the Denver news conference. "We're between Yucca Mountain and Strickland most of the nuclear waste in America," Strickland said. The proposed storage facility, about 90 miles north of Las Vegas, has been approved by both President Bush and the House of Representatives. The Senate is expected to vote on the facility in July. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., has expressed concerns similar to Strickland's about transporting waste bound for Yucca Mountain through Colorado. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. - Strickland's November opponent - has supported plans for Yucca Mountain. But Allard's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, called Strickland's anti-Yucca Mountain stance a "head-in-the-sand position." Wadhams said it was better to store all the nuclear waste in the U.S. in one "safe, secure facility" than to store nuclear waste on site at the nation's 103 nuclear reactors. He added that the final routes for shipping the nuclear waste have not been finalized by the Department of Energy. Strickland said much of the defense waste and spent commercial fuel rods headed for Yucca Mountain would be shipped on Colorado highways, according to preliminary plans. That includes the entire Colorado stretch of I-70 and I-25 from Wyoming to Denver. Wadhams said I-70 through Colorado was no longer being considered. If Yucca Mountain is approved, the federal Department of Energy could decide to make I-70 a shipping route over any state protest, Strickland said. Eighty percent of all waste shipped to the facility by train would move through Colorado, primarily along routes from Pueblo to Denver and then to Grand Junction, and from Cheyenne to Denver. With trucks carrying nuclear waste through Colorado's mountain passes and interstate highways, Strickland said, an accident is not only likely, but inevitable. He said each truck headed to Yucca Mountain would contain 240 times as much radioactivity as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He said any of those shipments could be hijacked by terrorists and turned into a "dirty bomb" - a device that would release radioactive material into the air without the explosion of a conventional nuclear bomb. Sen. Reid said there was no reason to rush the shipment of nuclear waste from the nation's 103 nuclear reactors to a larger, nationwide facility. Both Strickland and Reid criticized the Bush administration and the House of Representatives for approving the facility before plans for transporting the waste had been finalized. "There's too much we don't know," Strickland said. "There's only a preliminary map (of waste disposal routes), and only estimates of how much waste would come through the state." Wadhams also criticized Strickland for supporting the shipment through Colorado of nuclear waste from Rocky Flats while opposing Yucca Mountain shipments through the state. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 10 NRC Renews Charter of Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste NRC: Press Release - 2002 - 68 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] No. 02-068 June 3, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a two-year renewal of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste's charter. The Commission is required by law to renew the charter, which it found to be in the public interest. The committee, which works to protect the public health and safety, was established by the NRC in 1988 to provide independent technical review of and advice on the disposal of nuclear waste, including all aspects of nuclear waste disposal facilities, as directed by the NRC. This encompasses activities related to both high- and low-level radioactive waste disposal facilities, including the licensing, operation and closure of the facilities, rulemakings, and associated regulatory guides and technical positions developed to clarify the intent of NRC regulations. As part of these activities, the committee reviews performance assessments of such facilities. The charter was revised to also include matters relating to nuclear materials. In addition, the committee works with members of the public, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, other Federal agencies, State and local agencies, Indian Tribes, as well as private and international organizations. The committee's membership includes individuals who possess specific technical expertise, along with a broad perspective in addressing safety concerns. Committee members are selected from a variety of engineering and scientific disciplines, such as risk assessment, chemistry, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, materials sciences, and earth sciences. A copy of the notice renewal will appear in an upcoming edition of The Federal Register. ***************************************************************** 11 For some, dirt represents jobs Sunday, June 02, 2002 By TOM DAVIS Staff Writer FLORENCE, Colo. - If New Jersey's radioactive soil is ever sent to Colorado for permanent disposal, a lot of things in Mike Maltbie's life could improve. For one thing, the Florence resident could get his $9.96-an-hour job back. He could also fix his house. He could get the health benefits that would pay for his 18-year-old wife's aftercare once she delivers the family's second child in July. And his marriage could get better because, Maltbie's wife says, the loss of income has created some tension. Maltbie was among 45 people laid off by Cotter Corp. last month when local opposition prompted Colorado lawmakers to postpone the delivery of contaminated soil from New Jersey. The state wants additional review of Cotter's plan to dump thorium-laced dirt from Bergen County at the company's Fremont County uranium mill. Cotter representatives say the loss of anticipated revenue forced the company to cut jobs. But if the state ultimately gives the go-head for the soil transaction, the company says, the laid-off employees could get their jobs back. So if there's any group rooting for the deal to go through, it's Maltbie and his fellow laborers. "We just had a 'Blossom' week," the 23-year-old said, referring to the annual spring-time festival in neighboring Canon City. "There were people asking us to sign petitions against the soil. We told them, 'Thanks to you, I lost my job.''' For years, the 44-year-old uranium mill has struggled to overcome its reputation as a toxic polluter. Some would be glad if it shut down entirely. "The minute you say you work at Cotter, people take a step back," said Kerry Smith, who heads the employees' union. Some cancer-stricken employees have left the company in a bitter mood, believing they had been exposed to radiation. Still, others say the company has been good to them, providing some of the higher-paying jobs in an area that lacks economic opportunity beyond jobs at state and federal prisons. "It does bother me that some people [opposed to Cotter] are making snap decisions without knowing the facts," Smith said. "When you look at all the people's salaries, and what we spend downtown on such things as equipment - that's a lot of money that goes to the community." Maltbie took the Cotter job a year ago, with high expectations. He got a 50 percent salary increase from the $6.50-an-hour job he had in the Canon City Daily Record's mail room. He also got to work with his dad. He moved to a house in Florence, where he keeps a Mercury Bobcat from the 1970s that could use a paint job. A small American flag hangs over his porch. His front lawn is full of overgrown weeds. Behind his back yard are the railroad tracks on which contaminated soil would be shipped if the plan is approved. Just before he lost his job, everything started to go wrong with the house. Maltbie sunk $5,000 to fix his kitchen and other problems. "The bathroom just flooded, but we can't do anything about it," said his wife, Kaysee. Maltbie could get another job, but there aren't many in Fremont County. He got one offer that would require him to be gone from home all but eight days each month. And he doesn't have the law enforcement experience that helps when applying for a prison job. "Forty-five families are fighting for their jobs. Now they have nothing," said Kaysee Maltbie, who may put off her plans for attending nursing school. "People here complain about the taxes. Well, if these companies close down, they're going to have to pay for that." Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 Reid wants probe of Abraham Yucca aide Las Vegas SUN June 03, 2002 By Benjamin Grove Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is asking for a conflict-of-interest investigation of Department of Energy Undersecretary Robert Card, who formerly worked for two companies that the DOE employs to lead nuclear waste clean-up projects. Card is also Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's top aide on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, and has publicly urged Congress to approve the dump. That has put him in Nevada's cross hairs. "As a senator who is particularly concerned about the stewardship, integrity and objectivity of the nation's nuclear policy decision-making process, I am troubled by the unanswered ethical questions relating to a central figure in this important process, Undersecretary Robert Card," Reid wrote in a letter Friday to Government Ethics Director Amy Comstock. Card worked for 20 years at CH2M Hill Co. In 1996, he became president and chief executive of Kaiser-Hill Co. The two firms have six contracts with the Energy Department. Card and Abraham have denied that Card, who has recused himself from decisions involving the two companies, has a conflict of interest. Card follows strict ethics rules, Energy spokesman Joe Davis said. Card sold his CH2M Hill stock, but received severance pay and initially kept some pension benefits. He has since backed out of the pension plan, Davis said. Nevada officials have failed to make persuasive arguments that Yucca Mountain is a scientifically suitable site to bury waste, so Reid is making an effort to attack the department on another front, Davis said. "This is a rehashing of an old and unfounded allegation and a desperate attempt to justify their last-minute character assassination in the hope that they can influence the vote somehow," Davis said today. The Senate is expected to vote on Yucca Mountain in July. Davis noted that Energy Department lawyers said there is no merit to arguments against Card. But Reid argued that Card is apparently violating federal law and President Bush's own official conduct standards, which state that government employees "shall endeavor to avoid any actions creating the appearance that they are violating applicable law or the ethical standards in applicable regulations." Among its contracts, CH2M Hill is in charge of the massive cleanup at the Energy Department's Hanford, Wash. site, where nuclear waste is stored in underground tanks. Kaiser-Hill has a contract to clean up the closed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. Card landed the Kaiser-Hill contract, which includes benefits for the company if certain deadlines were met. That creates a conflict of interest for Card now that he is the Energy Department's top manager of nuclear waste and environmental projects, Reid said. Card was involved in decisions on fines levied against CH2M Hill on the Hanford project, Reid said in his letter, citing a February Wall Street Journal investigation. Reid said the independent ethics probe is needed to determine if Card's ties to the companies compromise his position. "If they determine that he has been doing things that are unethical, (the Energy Department) should get rid of him," Reid said today. Controversy surrounding Card's connection to the two companies has dogged him since he took the Energy job a year ago. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., sent a letter to Abraham in January asking for documents relating to Card's involvement with the companies. The Energy Department sent Berkley's office "reams" of documents that her overwhelmed staffers forwarded to the House Committee on Government Reform to investigate. South Carolina officials also have criticized Card. Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges in December suggested that Card was motivated to speed up the waste shipments of waste from Colorado to South Carolina so that Kaiser-Hill could meet deadlines and win financial bonuses in its contract. Hodges asked Abraham to remove Card from the plan to ship waste to South Carolina. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 13 Nebraska: Showdown in 5-state waste case Omaha.com June 2, 2002 *BY ROBYNN TYSVER* WORLD-HERALD BUREAU LINCOLN - Politically sensitive e-mails. Power brokers grilled on the witness stand. And $100 million in taxpayer dollars hanging in the balance. The nuclear-waste lawsuit against Nebraska promises it all, including 11 attorneys, 50 witnesses and 5,000 exhibits. Four years developing, the legal showdown that pits four states against Nebraska will start Monday in a federal courtroom here. The lawsuit grew out of the state's refusal in 1998 to license a regional dump in Boyd County to store low-level nuclear waste generated by Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas and Oklahoma. The question is whether the state's denial of the license was based on politics or science. Compact history # 1983: Five states - Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kansas - form the Central Interstate Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact. # 1987: Nebraska is chosen as the host state for a facility to store low-level radioactive waste such as tools and clothing from nuclear power plants and hospitals. # 1989: An area near Butte, Neb., in Boyd County is the chosen as the site for the facility. # 1998: Nebraska denies a license for the facility. # 1998: The compact sues, saying Nebraska should honor its contractual commitments. # 2002: Trial is to begin. Besides the possible $100 million in damages, at stake is the future of the proposed facility in Nebraska, which generated years of controversy and protest until the license was denied. So far, the state has budgeted $17.5 million in lawyers' fees to defend itself in what appears to be an uphill battle. In a 1999 order granting a temporary injunction halting the licensing process, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Lincoln said there was strong evidence that Nebraska had acted in bad faith. The trial, expected to last four to six weeks, will have a star witness - Ben Nelson, Nebraska's former governor who is now a U.S. senator. Nelson campaigned against the waste dump in his successful run for governor in 1990, but he has said he never interfered in the licensing process. He is scheduled to testify June 10. The trial also will have a surprise witness of sorts - Kate Allen, a little-known policy researcher for Nelson. Allen was assigned by Nelson to the nuclear-waste issue, serving as an administrative liaison with the Department of Environmental Quality. She had worked against the waste facility before joining the Nelson administration. She apparently kept e-mails and extensive notes of meetings. About 100 of her notes and e- mails are expected to be introduced as evidence. One of her notes, filed last year in court, recounted a strategy meeting in 1992 between Nelson and opponents of the waste site. According to the note, Nelson outlined his desire to "stop" the dump and keep the public on his side. He also allegedly said: "Our best bet is to be the underdog who has been taken advantage of by the bad power companies." And in one e-mail, the company overseeing the licensing process reportedly asked some of its staff members to "spin" the documents that would accompany the state's official denial of the license. Allen, who now works for State Sen. Don Preister of Omaha, declined to comment. State attorneys are expected to argue that Allen became too emotionally involved in the issue and acted outside the scope of Nelson's authority. They also will argue that she was quickly removed from her job when officials in the Nelson administration realized she had become an advocate against the dump. Alan Peterson, the attorney for the waste compact, declined to discuss Allen's paperwork or upcoming testimony. A Washington, D.C., attorney representing Nebraska, John Wittenborn, said the state will work to put the notes and e-mails into context. He said the notes will show that Nelson did nothing more than take a stand against the facility. "This is the governor doing his job. This is not the governor intruding in the licensing decision," Wittenborn said. "The governor has a job to do, and that involved taking public policy stands." The lawsuit stems from a 1980 federal law that promoted the formation of regional compacts to dispose of low-level nuclear waste generated by hospitals, utility companies and others. In 1983, with little debate, Nebraska joined the five-state compact. Four years later, a fight erupted when Nebraska was tabbed by the compact to host the waste facility. In December 1989, a site was chosen near Butte, Neb., in Boyd County, and people there took sides between "economic development" and "nuclear pollution." Protests and turmoil followed. Shots were fired at a private residence; friends and neighbors were split; and there were verbal threats and boycotts of area businesses. Lowell Fisher, a Spencer, Neb., farmer, conducted a hunger strike to protest the project in 1990. Fisher, who made 60 trips to Lincoln, hung up his protest signs after the license was denied in 1998. He said he is only mildly interested in the trial. His objective was to get the dump out of Boyd County - nothing more, nothing less. Fisher doesn't feel much sympathy for Nebraska, although he believes the state was right. The state attempted to use Boyd County for its own political ends, he said, and violated its commitment to require a community to give its consent before a waste site was chosen. "The trial is not my problem," Fisher said. "I won't be surprised in any way if the state loses, even though I feel the state is right." Ken Reiser of Butte is Fisher's polar opposite. Reiser supported the waste facility as an economic boost for a rural area in need. Reiser said it is a shame that the state may now be required to shell out $100million, the equivalent of a half-cent sales-tax increase for one year. "It would be a disaster if we have to pay for this," he said. "We had the opportunity to turn this into a financial asset rather than a burden." Reiser and others who want the facility near Butte could still get their wish. The compact continues to argue that the facility meets Nebraska's licensing requirements. Kopf, who will preside at the trial, could take steps toward licensing the facility, including appointing an independent entity to review the case. The state will oppose any effort to bypass its licensing process. "This license was denied primarily on environmental grounds and a financial basis," Wittenborn said. He said the state will prove that the site chosen for the facility was a wetlands and that the company hired to build the facility, US Ecology, had financial problems. The trial will likely not be the end of the matter. Any decision, including an award of damages, probably will be appealed. That's good news for the cash-strapped state, which has cut spending in the past year and raised taxes to help balance the budget. ©2002 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved. Copyright ***************************************************************** 14 Senator Asks for Probe of Energy Official (washingtonpost.com) Senator Asks for Probe of Energy Official Reid Says Undersecretary's Former Companies May Have Benefited From Nuclear Waste Moves Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) says Undersecretary of Energy Robert G. Card may have violated conflict-of-interest rules. (Gerald Martineau - The Washington Post) By Eric Pianin Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 3, 2002; Page A02 The Senate's second-ranking Democratic leader has called for an ethics investigation to determine whether Undersecretary of Energy Robert G. Card violated conflict-of-interest rules by acting to benefit two nuclear-waste companies where he once was a high-ranking official. Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said in a letter to the Office of Government Ethics last week that Card's "escalating public activities" affecting his former companies -- Kaiser-Hill Co. and CH2M Hill Cos. -- appear to violate the Bush administration's conflict-of-interest guidelines and a federal criminal statute. Reid, a sharp critic of the Energy Department's plans to build a nuclear waste repository beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain, wrote: "As a senator who is particularly concerned about the stewardship, integrity and objectivity of the nation's nuclear policy decision-making process, I am troubled by the unanswered ethical questions relating to a central figure in this important process." On Friday, Energy Department officials called Reid's letter part of a "desperate" political effort to derail the Yucca Mountain project, which faces a key Senate vote this summer. "The opponents of Yucca Mountain have failed on the science and they have failed with their fear-mongering," said Joe Davis, a department spokesman. "Now they are trying to rehash old and unfounded allegations to justify their last-minute character assassination in the desperate hope that they can influence" the upcoming vote. Card was out of town Friday and could not be reached. Card, a former corporate executive and Republican Party contributor, has been at the center of a government ethics controversy since taking charge of the Energy Department's nuclear waste cleanup operations and environmental programs last June. As part of his transition to government, Card sold his stock in CH2M Hill, a Denver-based engineering and construction firm, but retained a vested interest in a company pension plan. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges (D), Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and other officials have raised concerns that Card may be trying to shape policy to benefit his former companies -- a charge that Card and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham deny. Card, 49, spent 20 years as an executive of CH2M Hill until 1996, when he took over as president and chief executive of Kaiser-Hill, a joint venture with a Fairfax engineering firm. At Kaiser-Hill, Card negotiated a multibillion-dollar Energy Department contract to decontaminate the old Rocky Flats nuclear weapons factory near Denver by 2006. The contract includes substantial financial incentives for finishing the job on time. Since Card joined the Bush administration, his government subordinates have been involved in plans to ship Rocky Flats radioactive waste to the Energy Department's Savannah River processing facility in South Carolina. South Carolina officials want legal guarantees that the waste will not stay there indefinitely. One of Card's top aides, Troy Timmons, simultaneously worked for five months last year as a paid consultant to the department and as a Kaiser-Hill project official at Rocky Flats before becoming a full-time federal employee. In December, Hodges asked Abraham to remove Card from the cleanup project. He said Card's service at Kaiser-Hill "at a minimum constitutes an appearance of a conflict of interest" and suggested that Card might try to step up the pace of shipments to enhance his former company's profits. Department officials said last week that Card and Timmons recused themselves last year from decision-making affecting the planned shipments of nuclear waste from Colorado to South Carolina, and other matters affecting Kaiser-Hill and CH2M Hill. "The department's legal counsel has reviewed all [of Card's] critics' charges and has found no basis to them," Abraham said Friday. In all, Card's two former companies hold six contracts with the Energy Department, including one involving a major cleanup of nuclear waste in Hanford, Wash. Although the demand for cleanup funds is great nationwide, the department has agreed to use more than half of an $800 million discretionary environmental cleanup fund for CH2M Hill's plutonium cleanup activities in Hanford. Officials say the decision was made by Jessie Hill Roberson, the assistant secretary for environmental management, and not by Card. "Undersecretary Card has not been involved in any fashion directing work or contract actions involving CH2M Hill's contract at Hanford . . . or any other work by the company that they are performing for DOE," said Davis, the department spokesman. "He has recused himself and remains recused from any of those actions." However, Reid, citing a Feb. 28 Wall Street Journal report, said Card was involved "in numerous decisions relating to the CH2M Hill Hanford project, including the settlement of fines relating to prior poor performance under the contract." Card says he has maintained social contact with employees of CH2M Hill and Kaiser-Hill and has attended meetings of the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management that included officials of his former companies as well as of other major contractors, according to Susan F. Beard, a department lawyer. As a condition of being confirmed by the Senate, Card signed an agreement recusing himself permanently from specific issues he "personally and substantially" had worked on for the two companies and, for two years, from "any particular matter" involving either company in which his participation "would raise a question in the mind of a reasonable person" about his impartiality. In his letter Tuesday to Office of Government Ethics Director Amy Comstock, Reid sought a list of meetings held by Card from the day he took office, as well as copies of financial disclosure statements, certificates of divestiture and copies of department contracts with Card's former companies. Responding to department charges that his letter was designed to try to derail the Yucca Mountain project, Reid said Friday: "This administration has a penchant for secrecy, hiding things." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 15 Transporting nuclear waste to national site a thorny issue Green Bay Press-Gazette - Posted June 03, 2002 By Peter Rebhahn [prebhahn@greenbaypressgazette.com] To contact lawmakers To tell your senators how you’d like them to vote on the Yucca Mountain issue: • U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., can be reached at his Washington office by phone, (202) 224-5653; e-mail, senator_kohl@kohl.senate.gov; or mailing address, 330 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 20510-4903. • U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., can be reached at his Washington office by phone, (202) 224-5323; or online through his Web site at feingold.senate.gov; or mailing address, 506 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510-4904. There are many unknowns about the logistics of a proposal to move spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s nuclear plants — including two in eastern Wisconsin — to a disposal site in Nevada. “There’s good reason for that,” said Doug Day, spokesman for Nuclear Management Co., which operates the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant. “There is no transportation plan.” The lack of an official plan is fueling speculation about how the 1,300 tons of waste stored in Wisconsin, mostly at the Kewaunee plant and at Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant north of Two Rivers, would move west. “There doesn’t seem to be a preferable option,” said Rich Bogovich, climate change specialist for Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade. “It seems to be a choice of the lesser among three different evils.” Each transportation choice — road, rail or water — carries its own set of advantages and disadvantages. But the same safety concerns hover over all three: • Environmental contamination in the event of a breach in one or more of the specially designed waste containers. • Terrorist threats. • Radiation exposure to people working with or passing near shipments. The U.S. Department of Energy will oversee the project, including security measures. The department will consult with states to arrive at preferred transportation alternatives but hasn’t done that yet. “We analyzed potential transportation routes in the final environmental impact statement,” said Gayle Fisher, a Las Vegas-based spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. The department based its computer-aided analysis on a system that took into account road quality, population centers, proximity of rail lines and other factors. The likely land routes for transport from Wisconsin’s Kewaunee and Point Beach plants include Interstate 43 and the rail line paralleling Wisconsin 57. “That doesn’t mean that those are the routes,” Fisher said. The environmental impact statement targets rail transportation, where possible, as the preferred alternative, Fisher said, because it’s viewed as a more efficient and, generally speaking, a safer choice. Some combination of highway and rail is almost a certainty — a fact not lost on residents. “I know people don’t want to see the stuff going on the roads, but what are you going to do?” asked Kewaunee resident Michael Budysz, whose home on Wisconsin 42 would almost certainly be passed by waste trucks en route to railheads in Green Bay or Milwaukee. Waste trucks would be required to display hazardous waste placards and meet size and weight restrictions, but wouldn’t otherwise be regulated by the state, said Mike Goetzman, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. “Unless the load exceeds any size or weight restrictions, they wouldn’t have to get any special permit to travel on state highways,” Goetzman said. “Whatever is federal law is also state law with regard to hauling these materials.” The Energy Department’s environmental impact statement also considers the option of moving the waste by barge from Kewaunee and Point Beach to the Port of Milwaukee for connection to a railhead for shipment west — a notion that scares some. “We’re calling that the Edmund Fitzgerald plan,” said environmentalist John LaForge, referring to the freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975. LaForge is co-director of Nukewatch, a national organization with headquarters in the Northwestern Wisconsin hamlet of Luck. LaForge’s organization opposes the Yucca Mountain proposal, in part because of the transportation risk. “It’s much harder to protect a moving truck going through 43 states than it is to protect stable sites where it is right now,” he said. Bogovich’s group has raised concerns about the project but hasn’t officially opposed it. “The environmental community isn’t necessarily of like mind on this issue,” he said. Bogovich said he’d like to see the project, including the transportation issue, get more study. “It seems like all the scientific information points to not making a final decision on Yucca for perhaps three or four more years,” Bogovich said. Day said safety concerns are warranted, but critics ignore the everyday reality of hazardous waste handling. “There are 1.2 million shipments of hazardous materials every day in this country,” he said. But environmentalists point out that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will allow the nuclear waste containers to emit radiation equal to a chest X-ray at a distance of 6.5 feet. “There’s a worldwide controversy whether low-level radiation like that is a hazard or not,” LaForge said. Rep. Frank Lasee, R-Bellevue, who visited the Yucca Mountain site in April, said he supports the proposal. The Point Beach plant is in Lasee’s 2nd Assembly District. He said critics are right to raise transportation issues. “But to use that as a reason to say we shouldn’t do this — I disagree with that completely,” he said. Kewaunee resident Budysz probably spoke for many when he said he could back a long-term nuclear waste storage plan that included highway transport. “If we’re going to have nuclear plants, yes,” he said. “I know a lot of people don’t want that, but they don’t want to live without energy either.” [http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com ***************************************************************** 16 Nuclear waste awaits decision Green Bay Press-Gazette - Posted June 03, 2002 Ratepayers have picked up costs of research By Richard Ryman [rryman@greenbaypressgazette.com] Replacing nukes an expensive option It would cost more than $100 billion to replace all the nation’s nuclear power plants with coal-fired plants, or $50 billion to replace them with gas-fired plants, according to Larry Weyers, chairman, president and chief executive officer of WPS Resources Corp. At that rate, it would cost $545 million to replace the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant with an equal amount of coal-fired generation, and twice that amount to do the same for Point Beach Nuclear Plant. The cost of the Yucca Mountain repository is estimated at $58 billion through 2119. U.S. nuclear power plants produce 98,000 megawatts of electricity, or about 20 percent of the nation’s power supply. Wisconsin gets roughly the same percentage of its power from nuclear sources. Kewaunee has a 535-megawatt reactor and Point Beach two 500-megawatt reactors. Weyers said nuclear plants have lower production costs and higher capital costs than coal plants. Gas-fired plants are cheaper than both, but the price of gas is more volatile. “Coal and nuclear are probably close to each other in terms of total cost,” he said. Nuclear is less polluting and needs to be refueled less often, but its used fuel remains dangerous for 10,000 years. Wisconsin utility ratepayers have paid more than $300 million since 1983 for the storage of used nuclear fuel. The federal government began collecting money for a consolidated storage site in 1983 with a view to begin storing spent fuel assemblies in 1998. There still is no storage facility, though Congress is considering giving approval to the Yucca Mountain project. Nationwide, the Department of Energy has collected $17.4 billion for the consolidation project, said Gayle Fisher, a DOE spokesman. Most of that money is from utility assessments, though some is from the Department of Defense, which will also store nuclear material at the site. The Energy Department estimates the project will cost $58 billion through 2119. It has spent about $6 billion on studies and site preparation, Fisher said. Yucca Mountain is designed to store up to 77,000 tons of used assemblies. The Nuclear Energy Institute says there are 40,000 tons in storage at sites across the country. The Department of Energy assesses utilities $1 per net megawatt hour produced by nuclear plants for the program, said AnneMarie Newman, a spokesman for the state Public Service Commission. (One megawatt hour can power 10,000 100-watt light bulbs for one hour.) “That cost is embedded in (utility) rates along with other fuel costs. Within nuclear fuel costs, that is an item,” Newman said. John Bartel, a spokesman for We Energies, formerly Wisconsin Electric, said that on individual monthly bills “it gets down to be cents or mils of cents.” A rough calculation, based on 19 years of collections and a state population of 4.5 million, would put the average yearly cost at about $3.20 per person. That does not take into account electrical usage or rate classifications. The owners of the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant — Wisconsin Public Service Corp. and Alliant Energy — have paid $90 million to the fund, which they collected from ratepayers. We Energies, owner of Point Beach Nuclear Plant, has paid more than $180 million, Bartel said. Newman said $275 million has been collected statewide. With interest, that has grown to $385 million. Because a storage site was not ready by 1998, utilities nationwide have had to provide more on-site storage than was expected, also at a cost to ratepayers. Bartel said We Energies spent $35 million so far for its dry storage casks at Point Beach. Utilities and utility groups have filed a number of lawsuits against the Department of Energy for its failure to begin collecting used assemblies in 1998. Wisconsin Public Service is a party to some of those suits, said Larry Weyers, chairman, president and chief executive officer. The suits seek a variety of remedies, including reimbursement or damage payments. “One of the options we have is to work with the Department of Energy to take title to spent fuel and have them store it at Point Beach,” Bartel said. “They will pay us for storage at Point Beach.” “If Yucca Mountain isn’t built and the government never consolidates nuclear fuel, there will have to be a facility set up at each site to monitor the environment and address the security,” Weyers said. Fisher said it is not clear what will happen to the already-collected money if the Yucca Mountain project is not approved. Some countries such as France allow the reprocessing of nuclear fuel, which allows it to be essentially recharged and used again. The U.S. government under the Carter administration made it illegal for U.S. utilities to reprocess nuclear fuel in an attempt to discourage nuclear proliferation. Doug Day, a spokesman for the Nuclear Management Co., which operates Wisconsin’s nuclear plants, said reprocessing would reduce spent fuel volume “about 99 percent.” Weyers said it’s too late now to switch to reprocessing because there is no infrastructure for it. “I think that would have been perhaps a better option for the United States to make 30 or 40 years ago. We’ve already gone down the path of storage,” he said. [http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/forums/] ***************************************************************** 17 Nuclear waste next door Green Bay Press-Gazette - Posted June 02, 2002 Northeastern Wisconsin’s plants forced to store spent fuel on-site By Richard Ryman rryman@greenbaypressgazette.com Wisconsin nuclear power There are two operating nuclear power plants in Wisconsin: the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant in Carlton and the Point Beach plant, four miles south, in Two Creeks; An inactive plant owned by Dairyland Power Cooperative is near La Crosse. The Kewaunee and Point Beach plants are operated by Nuclear Management Co., Hudson, which was formed by a number of utilities that own nuclear power plants in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, including Wisconsin Public Service Corp. NMC began operating the plants in August 2000. Kewaunee Nuclear Plant Location: Carlton, nine miles south of Kewaunee. Generation: One reactor unit — 535 megawatts Reactor type: Pressurized water Date of commercial operation: June 16, 1974 License expires: 2013 Ownership: Jointly owned by Wisconsin Public Service (principal owner) and Alliant Energy-WP&L Point Beach Nuclear Plant Location: Two Creeks,18 miles north of Manitowoc Generation: Two reactor units — 1,022 megawatts total Reactor type: Pressurized water Date of commercial operation: Unit 1— Dec. 21, 1970; Unit 2 — Oct. 1, 1972 License expires: Unit 1 — 2010; Unit 2 — 2013 Ownership: Wisconsin Electric Power Co. doing business as We Energy. Source: Nuclear Management Co. Nuclear fuel assemblies Nuclear fuel is made of solid ceramic pellets containing uranium-235 and uranium-238. To make nuclear fuel, the pellets are enriched, or made to have a higher concentration of U-235 than is found in nature, and sealed in corrosion-resistant metal tubes. The tubes are bundled together to form a fuel assembly. The energy released from the uranium pellets produces heat, which makes steam for turning turbines that are connected to electrical generators. When the fuel is no longer efficient at generating heat, it is considered spent or used. Source: U.S. Department of Energy Spent fuel assemblies Spent fuel assemblies taken from a reactor core are highly radioactive and give off a lot of heat. They are stored in special pools, which are usually located at the reactor site, to allow both their heat and radioactivity to decrease. The water in the pools serves the dual purpose of acting as a barrier against radiation and dispersing the heat from the spent fuel. Spent fuel can be stored safely in these pools for long periods. It takes five years in a pool before an assembly is cool enough to be moved. Assemblies can also be dry-stored in engineered containers. Both kinds of storage are intended as an interim step before the spent fuel is either reprocessed or sent to final disposal. The longer it is stored, the easier it is to handle, because of decay of radioactivity. There are two alternatives for spent fuel: • Reprocessing to recover the usable portion of it. Reprocessing is currently prohibited in the United States, though it is used in other countries, such as France. • Long-term storage and final disposal without reprocessing. This is the Yucca Mountain option. Source: Uranium Information Centre, and We Energy About 1,200 metric tons of used nuclear fuel assemblies are stored in Wisconsin, most of them at the Kewaunee and Point Beach nuclear plants. Wisconsin’s two operating nuclear plants have enough space to store spent fuel assemblies, weighing about 1,000 pounds each, for another decade, by which time they will have produced about 700 additional used assemblies. The plants’ owners are hoping the federal government will be transporting at least some of that stockpile to a consolidated storage site by the time the plants begin to run out of space. At Kewaunee, which has one reactor, the fuel rods are stored in a spent fuel pool. Capacity there was increased by re-racking, or changing the configuration of, the pool so it could hold more assemblies. “We have adequate stores for the spent fuel through the end of our existing operating license, which is 2013,” said Larry Weyers, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Wisconsin Public Service Corp., part owner of the Kewaunee plant. At Point Beach, which has two reactors, the spent fuel pool was reconfigured as well, but it still is not sufficient for storage. The plant has 14 dry-cask storage units and permission from the state Public Service Commission to add 34 more as needed. The casks, which are stored above ground, hold 24 assemblies each and new casks are loaded once or twice a year, depending on the refueling cycle for the reactors, said Doug Day, a spokesman for Nuclear Management Co., which operates the two plants and four others in the Midwest. Each of the three reactors operate with 121 assemblies. Day said that when the units are shut down for refueling, about every 18 months on a staggered schedule, 35 to 40 assemblies are replaced. The Kewaunee plant is storing 800 fuel assemblies in the spent fuel pool. There are 1,258 assemblies in the Point Beach pool and 336 more in the dry cask storage containers. The assemblies in the 14 casks at Point Beach will have to be repacked for transportation, Day said. Future storage will be in dual-purpose containers, which until recently had not been approved by federal regulators. The fuel assemblies will not be leaving Wisconsin anytime soon. The Yucca Mountain storage facility, if approved by the Senate this month, is not expected to be ready for use until 2010. Even then, it will take 38 years to move all the used fuel in the nation to the Nevada site, said Rich Bogovich of Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade. When Wisconsin’s nuclear waste would be moved is uncertain. “It will depend on where we are in the queue,” said John Bartel, a spokesman for We Energy, which owns Point Beach. If the Kewaunee and Point Beach owners seek to extend their licenses, they might have to address onsite storage problems. Kewaunee’s license expires in 2013, Point Beach’s licenses expire in 2010 and 2013. “If the license is extended beyond 2013, then we will have to incur additional costs to provide more spent fuel storage, either by expanding the pool or going to dry cask,” Weyers said. “I think (the Department of Energy) would take enough of our stuff to provide for the first batch.” Weyers said it is too soon to know if WPS will seek to re-license Kewaunee. “That’s attractive because that may be the cheapest source of additional capacity, but that’s a long time away,” he said. “Technology may provide a number of other options that are more attractive.” [http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/forums/] ***************************************************************** 18 State nuclear plants await Senate’s decision on sending spent fuel to Nevada Green Bay Press-Gazette - Posted June 02, 2002 By Richard Ryman rryman@greenbaypressgazette.com Yucca Mountain vote The Wisconsin delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives supported the creation of the Yucca Mountain storage facility. • Voting for Yucca Mountain: Rep. Mark Green, R-Green Bay; Rep. Tom Barrett, D-Milwaukee; Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville; Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Menomonee Falls; Rep. David Obey, D-Wausau. Voting against: Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Madison; Rep. Jerry Kleczka, D-Milwaukee. Not voting: Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse. Sen. Herb Kohl “The federal government must act to fulfill its legal responsibility to store used fuel from more than 100 nuclear power plants across America. More than a decade ago, the federal government promised the ratepayers of Wisconsin that it would take possession of all the spent nuclear waste in the state by 1998 and send it to ... Nevada for long-term storage. “That said, there have been serious concerns raised about moving something as dangerous as nuclear waste through our state, and the administration must work to make this process as safe as possible. There have already been more than 1,000 shipments of nuclear waste around our country without a release of radiation. And there must continue to be extensive testing of transportation cask technology so that safety is ensured.” Sen. Russ Feingold “I understand that both the Point Beach and Kewaunee nuclear power plants have nuclear waste on site that could eventually be moved for permanent storage at Yucca Mountain. As the Senate moves closer to consideration of this issue, I have been hearing more about it from constituents on both sides — those who want the waste to go to Yucca Mountain and those who feel that the Yucca site is not suitable. “As I am considering my vote on Yucca Mountain, I am weighing whether the transportation is safe, whether we will only be moving the material to one permanent location, and whether we are preventing the construction of a permanent Yucca-type site in Wisconsin. These questions and more will have to be debated when the Senate brings this serious piece of legislation to the floor.” To contact lawmakers To tell your senators how you’d like them to vote: • U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., can be reached at his Washington office by phone, (202) 224-5653; e-mail, senator_kohl@kohl.senate.gov; or mail, 330 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 20510-4903. • U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., can be reached at his Washington office by phone, (202) 224-5323; online through his Web site at feingold. senate.gov; or mail, 506 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510-4904. The U.S. Senate will decide this month whether used nuclear fuel can someday be moved from Wisconsin to Nevada. The U.S. Department of Energy proposes to store used fuel from the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant, the Point Beach Nuclear Plant and 129 other sites in 39 states deep in Yucca Mountain, Nev. Actual storage would not begin until 2010. Together, Kewaunee and Point Beach, about four miles apart on the Lake Michigan shore between Kewaunee and Manitowoc, hold 97 percent of the 2.6 million pounds of used fuel stored in Wisconsin. The other 3 percent is in an idle nuclear plant near La Crosse and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has a research reactor, according to the Department of Energy. “I wish there was something else that could be done with it,” said Michelle Konop of De Pere. “It would be good to put it where it’s not near anybody.” “Where” has been under debate since 1982, when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act saying the federal government would take possession of used nuclear fuel. The Department of Energy, on its Yucca Mountain Web site, www.ymp.gov, says experts throughout the world agree that the most feasible and safe method for disposing of highly radioactive materials is to store them deep underground. The federal government has moved in that direction since early in the nuclear program. In 1987, Congress chose Yucca Mountain as the only site to be studied for the repository, and in February, President Bush approved the site. Wisconsin residents have paid hundreds of millions of dollars as part of their electric bills since 1983 for storage of used nuclear fuel, though individually the fee amounts to only dollars per year. Those costs include more than $275 million ($385 million with interest) to the federal government for creation of a consolidated storage site and more than $35 million to utilities for on-site storage at nuclear plants. More than $17 billion has been collected nationwide for the consolidated storage project. State residents will continue to pay for storage, whether in Wisconsin or Nevada and whether through taxes or utility bills. At issue is where it will be kept. Meanwhile, the state of Nevada and a coterie of environmental groups vehemently oppose the plan to put the waste in Yucca Mountain. Objections range from the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site to potential dangers of cross-country transportation to opposition to anything nuclear. Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed Bush’s decision, sending the issue to Congress, where the House gave its approval last month. If the Senate approves the plan, then the question of where will be answered. Chris McDonough of Green Bay said the nuclear power issue doesn’t come up often in his life, and he’s glad he isn’t among those voting on where to put used fuel. “I’d rather see it there than here, but then again that’s going to create a problem for somebody else,” he said. “It’s good to get rid of it, to put it out in a desolate spot, but it’s probably bad for something out there.” Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl seems to favor Yucca Mountain, though he is concerned about the safety of transporting used nuclear fuel across the country. U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold has not taken a position. “I believe the Senate is going to pass this by a fairly wide margin, actually,” said Larry Weyers, chairman, president and chief executive officer of WPS Resources Corp., which is the majority owner of the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant. “It’s the best thing for the nation to get this spent fuel storage into one place rather than having it strewn all about the country,” Opposition as well as support for the plan is bipartisan. “We definitely have some concerns about the federal government seemingly rushing to a decision,” said Rich Bogovich of Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade. “A couple of scientific bodies say there are still hundreds of questions that need to be answered.” [http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/forums/] ***************************************************************** 19 Russia, Nordic govts agree to build 80 mln usd nuclear waste storage facility [AFX News - Europe] Date: 06/03/2002 10:12 MOSCOW (AFX) - Russia has agreed with the governments of Norway, Finland and Sweden on the construction of an 80 mln usd nuclear waste storage facility on the island of Novaya Zemlya off Russia's Arctic coast, Interfax reported citing Anatoly Yefremov, the governor of Russia's northern Arkhangelsk region. The storage facility will be used only for storing low and medium-radioactivity wastes currently located in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, Yefremov said. He said the design of the storage facility, which should be completed within the next 33 months, would take into account considerations such as global warming. The Nordic governments have expressed serious misgivings about the accumulation of nuclear materials in the Barents Sea, which Novaya Zemlya borders. They are also concerned about Russia's decision to import other countries' atomic wastes for storing or processing, which they believe could see Russia become a nuclear dumping ground for the rich nations. Environmentalists have warned that the area around Novaya Zemlya is already heavily radioactively polluted, in particular with the dumping of reactors from nuclear vessels, some of them still containing spent fuel. bb/sas/ak NNN © Copyright AFX 2002, All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 Vermont Yankee will run out of storage for waste By Associated Press, 6/2/2002 11:33 MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant will run out space to store its radioactive waste at least two years before a proposed national nuclear waste dump is to be built. The Vernon plant will run out of room by 2008 in the pool it uses to cool and store its spent fuel rods, said spokesman Rob Williams. But the earliest date that a proposed national nuclear waste dump could open at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is 2010, Department of Energy officials say. And most experts predict the project approved by the House and expected to be approved this summer in the Senate will take far longer. That means Vermont Yankee's new owner Entergy Nuclear could have to build costly new storage facilities at the plant. Among the possibilities: building storage casks that house radioactive waste inside a steel canister placed inside a vault of steel-reinforced concrete. Vermont Yankee is not alone. From New York to Arizona, nuclear power plants are running out of room in their storage pools. By 2004, about 30 power plants across the nation will run out of storage space, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. And the vast majority of the nation's 104 commercial atomic reactors including Vermont Yankee will face the same problem by 2010. Plant officials say they are angry that the federal government has not lived up to a commitment to create a national nuclear waste repository and start taking waste away from plants by 1998. Vermont ratepayers have paid more than $170 million since the early 1980s to help fund the national repository, Williams said. Williams said the federal government should start taking the waste to Nevada for temporary storage even before Yucca Mountain is built as a permanent repository. He acknowledged that the plant's owners may have to build dry storage facilities on site, but said local officials hope it won't come to that. ''All of those issues (of on-site disposal) could be avoided if the Department of Energy lives up to its obligation, as charged by Congress, to begin removing fuel from the country's nuclear power plants,'' Williams said. ''If they don't, it puts a burden on the utilities whose main focus is producing electricity.'' Most U.S. power plants already are busy planning and building aboveground storage next to their nuclear plants to keep radioactive material for decades. Vermont Yankee's license expires in 2012, and its new owners have not yet decided whether to seek a license renewal. ***************************************************************** 21 Maine: State agency clears way for CY waste site Geoff Hausman /Heirs argued site had archaeological significance / By Paul Choiniere Published on 06/01/2002 *East Haddam* ? Efforts to block construction of a nuclear waste storage site on land near the closed Connecticut Yankee have been dealt another blow with the Connecticut Historical Commission's conclusion that the property has no archaeological value. A historian and an eighth-generation descendant of 18th century slave-turned-businessman Venture Smith have filed a lawsuit seeking to block construction of the nuclear waste storage facility, claiming it would defile Smith's ancestral home. Smith descendant David Warmsley of Middletown and Douglas R. Jones of Essex, a self-taught historian, note in legal papers that the site for the project is either the same place Smith once operated as a 100-acre family farm, or close to it. Historical researchers have not pinpointed the exact boundaries. Smith died in 1805 and the property passed from the family in 1843. The Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. now owns it. z A Superior Court judge has refused to block construction of the nuclear waste storage project, already under way. Now the state's top agency for assessing the historical significance of property has concluded there is no reason to stop it. While ?a diffuse scatter of prehistoric and historic archaeological artifacts have been found? the site ?lacks ... scientific integrity and represents isolated finds that will not provide substantive information ... on the project area. ?We expect that the proposed undertaking will have no effect upon the state's archaeological heritage,? states the letter, signed by John Shannahan, director and state historic preservation officer. The letter, sent to Connecticut Yankee officials and released by the company, reaches the same conclusion as a private archaeological review paid for by the company. Attorney Nancy Burton, who represents the plaintiffs, said local historians will present their case for protecting the site to the Haddam Board of Selectmen at 7 p.m. on Wednesday. It was that same board that approved a court settlement, clearing the way for construction of the facility. Called an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation, the fenced-in concrete pad about the size of a football field would serve as the resting place for 43 steel and concrete casks filled with highly radioactive nuclear waste. The waste is now contained in a storage pool within the plant, which is being slowly dismantled. The project has generated much controversy in Haddam and surrounding towns. It was cleared for construction in January when the Haddam selectmen, on a 2-1 vote, agreed to settle a dispute over its location. Opponents have challenged the settlement in federal court, so far unsuccessfully. The latest lawsuit, filed in state Superior Court in Middletown, seeks a temporary and permanent injunction to prevent further construction activities pending completion of a ?satisfactory archeological survey? of the property. Smith was an African prince who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. He eventually bought his freedom and that of his wife and three children. Despite the lack of a formal education, Smith prospered by farming the land and trading, and he eventually acquired a fleet of 20 ships and boats, according to historians. /p.choiniere@theday.com/ * * * * 1998-2002 The Day Publishing Co. FAQs ***************************************************************** 22 Officers face discipline over uranium protest. 3/6/2002. ABC News Online Two police officers are facing disciplinary charges over a protest at the Beverley Uranium Mine in northern South Australia more than two years ago. South Australia's Police Commissioner Mal Hyde has released the findings of a Police Complaints Authority investigation. The action involving anti-uranium protesters in May 2000 saw more than 40 arrests as the protests outside the gates of the Beverley mine turned violent. Releasing the police complaints authority report, Commissioner Hy de said it had been thorough. One-hundred-and-sixty-four statements had been taken from witnesses, many residing interstate and overseas. As well as the announcement of charges against the two officers, the report recommends training for police on legal and management issues concerning breaches of the peace, and on the use of operational policing equipment. Australian Broadcasting Corporation ***************************************************************** 23 [sunflower] The Sunflower No. 61, June 2002 Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 16:15:29 -0500 (CDT) The Sunflower Online monthly newsletter of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation June 2002 (No. 61) The Sunflower is a monthly e-newsletter providing educational information on nuclear weapons abolition and other issues relating to global security. Back issues are available at http://www.wagingpeace.org/sf/backissues.html I N T H I S I S S U E PERSPECTIVE NUCLEAR SOUTH ASIA NUCLEAR MATTERS MISSILES & MISSILE DEFENSE NUCLEAR WASTE NUCLEAR INSANITY NUCLEAR ENERGY NAPF HAPPENINGS ACTION RESOURCES ************ PERSPECTIVE ************ Stopping a Nuclear War in South Asia By David Krieger Two nuclear-armed countries stand on the brink of war and the world seems paralyzed as it watches events unfolding in what seems like slow motion. It is a war that could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust taking millions or tens of millions of lives, and virtually nothing is being done to end the standoff. The US and the UK have advised their citizens to leave the region and the UN is pulling out the families of UN workers in the region, but the UN Security Council has not yet even put the matter on its agenda let alone put forward any constructive solution. The US has sent its Secretary of Defense to the region, but has lifted sanctions on the sale of military equipment to both countries that it imposed after they conducted nuclear tests in 1998. At the same time, the US continues to demonstrate its own reliance on nuclear weaponry, announcing on June 1st that it will resume production of plutonium "pits" used to trigger nuclear warheads. Here is what Indian novelist Arundhati Roy has to say about the situation: "Terrorists have the power to trigger nuclear war. Non-violence is treated with contempt. Displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, these are all just funny comic strip items now. Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition against terror come and go preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives to preach peace and on the side, to sell weapons to both India and Pakistan. The last question every visiting journalist asks me: 'Are you writing another book?' "That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilization means nothing to the monsters who run the world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That's what nuclear bombs do, whether they're used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they alter the meaning of life. "Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?" Arundhati Roy is absolutely right. It is because we tolerate these men and their dangerous, inhumane and genocidal policies whether they be in the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India or Pakistan -- that nuclear war is possible and increasingly likely. But what should we do now, while these men remain in control of the future of the fate of the people of India, Pakistan and the rest of the world? Here are a few modest suggestions: Call for the UN Security Council to take charge of the situation as a matter of highest priority, require Indian and Pakistani forces to stand down their nuclear forces, move back from their front line positions, interpose UN Peacekeeping forces between them and require mediated talks between the leaders of the two countries. Call for the permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, UK, France and China) to immediately cancel the sale and delivery of all military equipment to both India and Pakistan. To deal with the continuing dangers of nuclear war, so easy to visualize in the India-Pakistan standoff, we should also call for all nuclear weapons states to immediately commence good faith negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear weapons as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Court of Justice. Forty years ago, the world stood by helplessly as the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled into nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We obviously failed to learn the lesson then that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to be left in the hands of any military force. Now we run the risk that acts of terrorists in the Kashmir conflict could trigger a war in South Asia that could quickly escalate to nuclear war. Similar conditions exist in the Middle East. The potential for war in South Asia must be defused now before it erupts into large-scale conflict that could go nuclear. But it is not enough to only defuse the present crisis. The world must also become deadly serious about putting away forever these dangerous instruments of annihilation and genocide, before these instruments become seriously and massively deadly in wars that no one can truly desire or in the hands of terrorists. ********************* NUCLEAR SOUTH ASIA ********************* India and Pakistan: The Crisis Casts A Nuclear Shadow India and Pakistan are moving dangerously toward war. On 22 May, Indian Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee told troops "to be ready for sacrifice...It's time to fight a decisive battle." The Pakistani government responded by saying they would use "full force" if India is to strike. The greatest concern not only to the region, but to the world is whether or not either country will resort to using nuclear weapons in order to "win" a war. Tensions have been mounting between South Asian nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, particularly since the 13 December terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament. On 12 January, Pakistani President General Musharraf made a landmark speech condemning terrorism, promising internal reform and calling for a peaceful resolution with India over the disputed Kashmir region--the issue at the center of the standoff between the two nations. However, in India's view, Musharraf has done substantively little to stop Islamic militants and Indian officials have charged Musharraf with continuing to support them. Both India and Pakistan must show restraint and resolve the current crisis before the conflict escalates any further, making the use of nuclear weapons in a war between the two countries even more likely. Neither country will win a war in which nuclear weapons are used. The situation in India and Pakistan evidences that the use, let alone the existence, of nuclear weapons is completely irrational because they do the exactly opposite of what they purport to do. Nuclear weapons do not provide security. Neither India, nor Pakistan, nor anyone in this world is more secure because of the existence of nuclear weapons. In fact, at this moment India, Pakistan and indeed the whole world sit on the precipice of nuclear annihilation. It is time for global leadership, particularly from the nuclear weapons states, to rid the planet of these completely irrational weapons. Pakistan Threatens Using Nukes On 30 May, Pakistan threatened to use nuclear weapons even if India only used conventional weapons in a conflict. Pakistani Ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram stated, "India should not have license to kill with conventional weapons while Pakistan's hands are tied regarding others means to defend itself." He also asserted that Pakistan has never subscribed to a "no-first-use policy" of nuclear weapons. Akram told diplomats and officials at the UN that Pakistan would rely on the "means it possessed to deter Indian aggression" and would not "neutralize" that deterrence by any doctrine of "no-first-use." Furthermore, Akram defined what Pakistan viewed an "aggression" by India as any action by India across the border, any aerial attack on Pakistani territory and its assets, and any action to economically strangle it. He claimed that Pakistan believes in "no-first-use of force" and that is why Pakistan has offered a non-aggression pact to India, a pact that was rejected. Akram said that the Security Council should address the issue of tensions between India and Pakistan that "constitutes a threat to international peace and security." However, there has previously been no support among the Security Council's 15 members who stressed after a meeting on 10 January that this is a bilateral issue and should be resolved between the two countries. According to diplomats on the council, the immediate issue is for Pakistan to crackdown on terrorist groups that are operating in Kashmir. In related news, Bruce Riedel, an adviser to former US President Bill Clinton on India and Pakistan, reveals in a new report that the Pakistani Army mobilized its nuclear force against India in 1999 without the knowledge of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. A recent report by the US Central Intelligence Agency entitled, "Global Trends 2015," predicts that the threat of nuclear war will remain a serious regional issue for the next fifteen years. (sources: Times of India, 10 January 2002; PTI, 30 May 2002) Pakistan May Have More Nuclear Weapons Than Previously Thought According to Pervez Hoodboy, a leading Pakistani nuclear physicist, the country has been secretly working over the past three years to accelerate production of weapons-grade uranium for nuclear warheads. Hoodboy stated in an interview, "The scientists have been working in three shifts over the past three years since the Kargil conflict." He also said that there were clear indications that the warheads were already in place on missiles. Hoodboy's statement means that Pakistan could have more warheads than the estimated 30 to 50. Each warhead is estimated to have the same explosive power as the US nuclear weapon that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Hoodboy stated, "We are much closer to a nuclear confrontation with India than at any other time." (source: The Times, UK; 27 May 2002) Pakistan Conducts Missiles Tests As tensions continued to escalate with India, Pakistan test fired three missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads into India between 25 and 28 May. The final missile test coincided with the fourth anniversary of Pakistan's underground nuclear test in 1998, which took place just two weeks after India tested its own nuclear weapons. Pakistan insisted that the missile tests were routine. However, some say the tests were clearly meant to send a message to India that Pakistan could meet any attack with massive retaliation and has the capability to send nuclear weapons to Indian cities. (sources: AP Asia, 28 May 2002; Reuters, 28 May 2002) US and UK Aiding and Abetting India On 11 May, US and Indian Armies launched a two-week joint military exercise, the biggest in 40 years. Exercise Balance Iroquois took place in the northern Indian tourist town of Agra, some 400 miles from the Pakistan border. While Pakistan has been a US ally for much longer, India has been building up relations with the US in recent months. The US has agreed to resume sales of defense equipment to India that were banned under sanctions imposed after the country tested nuclear weapons in 1998. On 11 May, also the fourth anniversary of India's nuclear tests, the ruling National Democratic Alliance stated India's esteem in the world has grown after it conducted the nuclear tests. The UK is also trying to profit from the Indian arms market, despite the government's 1997 policy to "not issue an export license if there is a clearly identifiable risk that the intended recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country." British ministers have been pushing the sale of 60 Hawk jets worth some $1.5 billion. Additionally, with official blessing, British companies offered howitzers, anti-aircraft guns, missiles and tanks at a major arms fair in India earlier this year. The British Foreign Office stated on 23 May that arms sales were considered "carefully" and were "under constant review." (sources: Reuters, 11 May 2002; The Guardian, 24 May 2002) NATO Leaders Urge De-escalation During a NATO summit at which Russia was recognized as a junior partner on 28 May, leaders of the countries expressed concern over the escalating crisis between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, speaking in the name of the 19 NATO allies and Putin, urged both countries to take urgent steps to draw back from the brink of war, "to de-escalate and resume talking together." (source: AP World Politics; 28 May 2002) Individuals Can Take Action on India-Pakistan Crisis Individuals can access the URL's below to contact their UN mission and urge their Ambassadors to invoke Article 8 of the 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes to allow Pakistan and India a 30-day cooling off period. http://www.unsystem.org/ http://www.un.org/Overview/missions.htm#usa http://www.unsystem.org/en/permanent.missions.en.htm Sign an online petition calling on Pakistani President Musharraf and India Prime Minister Vajpayee to disavow the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, reestablish diplomatic ties, and engage in a comprehensive peace agreement on the future of Kashmir, to be enforced by international bodies. http://www.moveon.org/nonukesoverkashmir/ Write to the Indian and Pakistani governments, their embassies, consulates or High Commissions (in Commonwealth countries). The fax numbers of the Prime Minister of India, the President of Pakistan, other government ministers, and the UN representatives of those countries are listed below. Organize demonstrations or vigils outside Indian or Pakistani embassies, consulates, high commissions, or travel offices. Persuade parliamentarians to put forward urgent resolutions urging restraint on both parties and calling for an end to arms sales. Limited resolutions have already been passed by the British, Canadian, and European parliaments. For more information, please contact: Parliamentarians Network for Nuclear Disarmament: alynw@ibm.net PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA A.B. VAJPAYEE, SOUTH BLOCK, NEW DELHI, 110-004 +91-11-301-6857 +91-11-301-9545, +91-11-972-2-664-838 MINISTER OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS INDIA +91-11-301-0700 PRESIDENT MUSHARRAF OF PAKISTAN,+92-51-920-3938, +92-51-920-1968 +92-51-811390 FOREIGN MINISTER OF PAKISTAN +92-51-920-7217 +92-51-920 0420 or 820-420 ******************* NUCLEAR MATTERS ******************* Significant Nuclear Reductions or Maximum Nuclear Flexibility? Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty between the US and the Russia during a summit in Moscow on 23 May. The treaty calls for the reduction of strategic forces of each country's arsenal to 1,700 to 2,000 by 2012, the year in which the treaty expires. It also does not require the destruction of a single missile launcher or warhead and each side can carry out the reductions at its own pace and even reverse them to temporarily build up its forces. In other words, the treaty allows either side to worry more about protecting their own nuclear options than constraining the options of the other country. A senior US administration official stated, "What we have now agreed to do under the treaty is what we wanted to do anyway. That's our kind of treaty." Under the terms of the treaty, either side can temporarily suspend reductions or even build up forces without violating the treaty. This will allow maximum flexibility to the US, which insists on continuing to rely on nuclear weapons in its national security policy. The US Nuclear Posture Review, released in January 2002, stated, "In the event that US relations with Russia significantly worsen in the future, the US may need to revise its nuclear force level and posture." The new treaty will allow the US to do so. Rather than completely destroying the strategic weapons, the US has repeatedly stated that it will shelve or stockpile the warheads. Although previously adamantly opposed to US plans to store warheads, Russia announced on 15 May that it will also store some of the warheads. A Russian diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, stated, "Each one will do what it wants: a part of them will be stored, a part will be recycled and part will be destroyed. We will do the same as they [the Americans] will." China welcomed the treaty between the US and Russia. Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan stated that China "hoped that the two countries will continue their efforts to reduce their arsenals in this manner, so as to further advance the process of international disarmament." (sources: AP World, 16 May 2002; NY Times, 13 May 2002) Text of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty: http://www.nuclearfiles.org/issues/nuclearweapons/sortreaty.htm "Nuclear Dangers Remain After Bush-Putin Summit" by David Krieger: http://www.napf.org/articles/02.05/0515kriegerbushputin.htm "Still Missing: A Nuclear Strategy" by Nuclear Threat Initiative Board Members Sam Nunn, William Perry & Eugene Habiger is available to download in pdf format at: http://www.nti.org/c_press/c_index.html#opeds US To Construct New Plutonium Pit Production Plant The US Department of Energy (DoE) announced on 31 May that it will resume production of plutonium pits, which are used to trigger nuclear warheads. Plutonium pits were last produced at the Rocky Flats Facility in Colorado, but the DoE halted production in 1989. A statement from the National Nuclear Security Administration stated that design work is beginning for a manufacturing plant, which is expected to cost between $2.2 billion and $4.4 billion, depending on production capacity. The plant will be built at a weapons facility and is anticipated to begin production by 2020. According to the DoE, the site selection process will begin in September. US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham stated, "We need to have the capacity to manufacture certified pits to maintain the safety, security and reliability of the US nuclear deterrent into the future." According to the New York Times, a recent study by the Bush administration urged that a pit production plant be constructed. Some members of Congress have also expressed concern that the lack of a plutonium pit production plant could jeopardize the future readiness of the US nuclear arsenal. (source: New York Times, 1 June 2002) Report Calls for Better Security at Research Reactors A report released on 20 May raises concerns about inadequate safeguards on uranium used at some 345 civilian research reactors in 58 countries. The report was produced by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and urges the US and Russia to launch a global effort to end the use of highly enriched (also called weapons grade) uranium (HEU) at these research facilities. HEU could be converted for use in a weapon by terrorists if they were to obtain the material. According to the report, "Security at these hundreds of buildings varies widely from excellent to appalling. In some cases, security is provided by a single sleepy watchman and a chain-link fence." The report urges US President George W. Bush and Russia President Vladimir Putin to accelerate efforts to secure and account for nuclear materials worldwide. Former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative that helped produce the report, stated, "Terrorists are racing to get weapons of mass destruction. We should be racing to stop them." The report specifically sites three "impoverished" reactors with no money to tighten security including: a closed reactor near Belgrade; a reactor in Ukraine that has 165 pounds of HEU; and a reactor in Belarus with 660 of HEU. The report calls for a $50 million-per-year-program to fund uranium "take-back" and get research institutions to use low-enriched uranium. (source: AP World Politics, 20 May 2002; http://www.nti.org) Putin Calls for Proposals to Destroy Aging Weapons President Vladimir Putin urged the Russian government on 20 May to draft proposals to dispose of aging weapons stockpiles inherited from the Soviet Union. Putin stated at a meeting with Cabinet officials, "We must think about financing the destruction of excessive stockpiles of aging weapons which have become a liability and, sometimes, an environmental hazard." Putin also pointed out the need to deal with the country's chemical weapons arsenal. Russia has the world's largest arsenal with some 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, which the country pledged to destroy when it signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Last year, the Russian government approved a program to allow the country to destroy its arsenal by 2012 without having to seek international help beyond what has already been pledged. The program is estimated to cost some $3.5 billion. (source: AP, 20 May 2002) Kazakh Upper Parliament Ratifies US Agreement Extension The upper house of Kazakhstan's parliament ratified an agreement with the US on 16 May, extending an earlier agreement that provides US assistance in destroying leftover Soviet missile and infrastructure. Kazakhstan surrendered all former Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia after 1991. In 1993, the US and Kazakhstan signed a seven-year agreement that provided funds to the ex-Soviet state to help it destroy missile silos and nuclear infrastructure. After the agreement expired in 2000, the US and Kazakhstan agreed to extend it, but the Kazakh parliament just ratified it in May. To date, the US has made $183 million available to Kazakhstan under the original 1993 agreement. Kazakhstan still must destroy six intercontinental ballistic missile silos at its southern launchpad, Leninsk. (source: Interfax News Agency, 16 May 2002) Russia Passes Law to Punish Theft of Weapons of Mass Destruction Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on 9 May that will make the theft of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction or the theft of the material to produce them punishable by a five to ten year jail sentence. The law will also make failure to ensure that weapons of mass destruction are safely guarded punishable by a sentence of three to seven years. The law comes amid concern of terrorists being able to obtain such material and at the fact that weapons-grade nuclear material has been stolen from Russian facilities on several instances. The Duma, Russia's parliament, passed the law in April. (source: RIA Novosti News, 9 May 2002) ************************** MISSILES & MISSILE DEFENSE ************************** Conservative Think Tank to Hold Cheerful Wake for ABM Treaty The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., will be holding a "cheerful wake for a flawed treaty" on 12 June 2002. The invitation-only event is being held at the Russell Caucus Room in Washington, D.C. The event is entitled "ABM: RIP [Rest In Peace]" and will feature, among other guests, The Honorable [sic] John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, Senator Trent Lott (R-Missouri), Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), The Honorable [sic] Frank Gaffney, Jr., and Lt. General James A. Abrahamson. The event will celebrate the "lapse" of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which the US is set to withdraw from on 13 June. The Heritage Foundation and those attending the event consider withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and "important step forward for national interest." They have praised the decision of the Bush administration saying that it will serve "to bolster the national security by allowing the unfettered development and deployment of missile defenses." (source: The Heritage Foundation; http://www.heritage.org) Iran Confirms Missile Test On 26 May, Iran Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani confirmed US reports that his country had conducted a successful test flight of Shahab-3, a ballistic missile, earlier in the month. The Shahab-3, which means shooting star in Farsi, is based on North Korea's No Dong missile. The current test is believed to be the fifth test of the missile, which has a range of some 800 miles. Shamkhani stated that the test "should not be considered a new production or a new step to increase the missile's range," but rather the tests were meant to "enhance the power and accuracy of Shahab-3 missile." (source: AP Middle East, 26 May 2002) Army National Guard Tests PAC-2 Missile According to the Pentagon, the US Army National Guard successfully shot down a drone aircraft on 15 May using a Patriot PAC-2 missile at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The intercept is part of a series of tests to familiarize part-time National Guard soldiers with the Patriot system. The PAC-2 is made by Raytheon Co. and is scheduled to be replaced by a more advanced PAC-3 that is being developed and tested by Lockheed Martin Corp. Unlike the PAC-3, which is designed to track and collide with a target, the PAC-2 carries an explosive warhead which blows up nears a target and spreads a cloud of debris in its path. (source: Reuters, 15 May 2002) Russia To Develop New Generation of Interceptor Missiles According to a Russian military newspaper, the country is developing a new generation of light missiles designed to intercept enemy cruise missiles and aircraft. The Igla-S will be capable of carrying more explosives than current similar weapons and will also have a new guidance system. According to the KBM Company developing the new missile, the Igla-S will also be cheaper and lighter than current interceptor missiles. (source: Voyenny Parad, 14 May 2002) Taiwan Test-Fires New Missile On 10 May, Taiwan successfully test-fired the locally-made Sky Bow II, a surface-to-air missile that some Taiwanese experts hope will eventually replace the US-made Patriot missiles. It was the first missile test open to media. Three US short-range, surface-to-air Hawk missiles were also successfully test-fired. The Sky Bow II, Taiwan's version of the US Patriot missile, has a range of some 120 miles and the country's experts claim is better than the Patriot at hitting fighter jets and bombers. Continuing to develop its own missiles may prove difficult for Taiwan as its weapons program has a limited budget and many engineers and scientists have taken higher-paying jobs in the computer industry. (source: AP Asia, 10 May 2002) **************** NUCLEAR WASTE **************** Taiwan Seeks Home for 100,000 Barrels of Nuclear Waste In a pledge that ended a four-day standoff between residents and the government, Taiwan agreed on 4 May to study ways to remove 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste from Orchid Island. For years, residents have demanded that the waste be removed, but the government ignored them. The Yamis, one of Taiwan's 10 major indigenous tribes, want the waste removed by the end of the year when a government contract to store the waste on the island runs out. However, Economics Minister Lin Yi-fu, who flew to the island to settle the dispute, would not give a timeline for when the waste will be removed. The Yamis were not consulted when the government began dumping waste on the island more than twenty years ago, during Taiwan's martial law era. After marital law ended in 1987, the government told protesters that it was unable to find another place to store the waste. Taiwan Power is currently considering moving the waste to another outlying island or possibly shipping the waste abroad. Russia is one foreign possibility because it passed a law earlier this year allowing it to receive foreign waste. China is also under consideration. (source: AP, 4 May 2002) Hot Waste, Cold Cash A new report from Public Citizen entitled, "Hot Waste, Cold Cash," reveals that US Senators and senatorial candidates have taken more than $5 million from the nuclear power industry in political action committee (PAC) contributions since 1997. The report found Ranking minority member of the Senate Energy Committee Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) the indisputable Nuclear PAC Man, with more than $143,582 received from nuclear PACs since 1997. PACs of corporations belonging to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry's most powerful lobby in Washington, have contributed $1.3 million to Senate campaigns from 1 January 2001 to 28 February 2002 alone. Among the report's other findings: -Of the Senate's 20 leading recipients of nuclear PAC money, eight serve on the Senate Energy Committee and six sit on the Environment and Public Works Committee, both of which are committees for legislation related to nuclear power. -All but seven current US senators have accepted nuclear PAC money. -The largest total contributions by an NEI member came from General Electric, which designs and services nuclear power plants. The full report is available online at http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=297 ******************* NUCLEAR INSANITY ******************* NASA to Purchase Russian Plutonium for Spacecraft US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that NASA will renew a contract to purchase plutonium-238 from Russia as part of US efforts to reduce Russia's stockpiles of the nuclear material, which the US government fears terrorists could get their hands on and use to build a "dirty bomb." According to Abraham, NASA will use the plutonium purchased from Russia to power spacecraft. Russian experts estimate a minimum cost of $10 million for 30 kilograms of the plutonium-238. The new deal revives the 1995 Voinoi agreement, potentially worth $12 billion for Russia. Plutonium deliveries were put on hold when George W. Bush took office in January 2001 and insisted that the plutonium was too expensive. In February 2002, Russia agreed to lower the price by about 15%. Officials have declined to reveal the value of the current deal or the amount of plutonium that will be purchased. (source: Moscow Times, 14 May 2002) UK MoD Abandons Construction of Nuclear Re-Arming Dock The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on 14 May that it will abandon construction on a dock for re-arming nuclear submarines. The concrete jetty was being built in the middle of the River Tamar at Plymouth in order to relocate the work of re-arming Britain's submarine fleet away from the heavily populated area around Devonport. However, a new MoD safety assessment concluded that the risk to people living near the existing submarine base is less than originally estimated. Environmentalists and anti-nuclear campaigners have always opposed the construction of the dock, but the MoD insisted that it was absolutely necessary. Some $21.8 million has already been spent and it will cost some additional $7.3 million to pay off contractors. Colin Breed, Member of Parliament (Liberal Democrat Party) for South East Cornwall, stated, "We asked whether it was absolutely necessary bearing in mind the environmental damage and we were told it was vital. Now they have suddenly decided it is not needed at all." (source: UK Times Online, 15 May 2002) **************** NUCLEAR ENERGY **************** Vietnam Studying Feasibility of Nuclear Power An official from the National Institute of Atomic Energy announced on 23 May that Vietnam is setting up a group to study the feasibility of building the country's first nuclear power plant. The group will be comprised of government representatives and scientists and is expected to submit its findings to Vietnam's National Assembly in late 2003. According to the official, Vietnam's energy consumption has increased by 12-15% in recent years. The country currently produces 5,500 to 6,000 megawatts a year, 55% of which is produced from hydropower plants. The official stated that Vietnam will need some 20,000 to 30,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020 and the nuclear power plant will help meet that demand. According to the official, Russia, China and South Korea have offered to sell Vietnam the technology to build the plant. (source: AP World Politics, 23 May 2002) Finland Approves Construction of New Nuclear Power Plant On 24 May, Finland's parliament approved the construction of the country's fifth nuclear reactor. It is the first such nuclear plant to be authorized in Western Europe or North America since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Currently some 70% of Finland's energy is imported from abroad. Some 28% of the country's energy comes from nuclear facilities and with the construction of the new reactor, this figure will rise to 35%. The decision comes at a time when other European countries, notably Germany and Sweden, plan to phase out their nuclear power. The new reactor is set to have an operating life of 60 years. In 2001, Finland became the first country in the world to decide on a permanent underground storage facility for its nuclear waste that will be situated by its nuclear power plant in the city of Eurajoki, 155 miles northwest of Helsinki. For information on the movement in Finland to oppose the construction of the reactor, please contact Ulla "Kltzer" ullaklotzer@yahoo.com, Women Against Nuclear Power - Finland. (source: AFP, 24 May 2002) Russia Will Help Myanmar Build a Research Nuclear Reactor The Russian government announced on 15 May that the country will help Myanmar, also called Burma, to construct a center for nuclear studies and a research nuclear reactor with a thermal capacity of 10 megawatts. The agreement will also include structures for the disposal of nuclear waste and a waste burial site. Under the agreement, Russia will deliver the fuel. Myanmar, one of the poorest Asian countries and which frequently suffers energy shortages, has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of its intention to acquire the research reactor. (source: AP World, 15 May 2002) *************** NAPF HAPPENINGS *************** Calling All Poets! In 1995 the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation established an annual series of awards to encourage poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit. The Barbara Mandigo Kelly Poetry Awards are offered in three categories: adults, youth 13 to 18, and children 12 and under. Each year a committee of talented poets meets to select the winning poems. The deadline to submit 2002 entries is July 1st. To find out more about the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest and to obtain the 2002 guidelines, please visit the website at: http://www.wagingpeace.org/awards/poetryaward.html New Security Challenges: Ten Themes By David Krieger The International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, in cooperation with Scientists for Global Responsibility and the University of Bradford Department of Peace Studies, held a seminar on "New Security Challenges: Global and Regional Priorities" at Bradford University on May 23-24, 2002. Ten themes emerged from the seminar. To read the full text of the article, please visit: http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.05/0531kriegernewsecurity.htm UC Nuclear Free Campaign: Nobel Peace Laureate Calls on University of California to Stop Making Nuclear Weapons For more than 50 years the Regents of the University of California have been responsible for management and oversight of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where most of the US nuclear arsenal has been researched, developed and tested. Sir Joseph Rotblat, a distinguished scientist and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, recently sent an Open Letter to the University of California Community. As Rotblat states in his letter, "For more than 50 years, the UC system has provided respectability to these laboratories that carry out research, develop and test nuclear weapons -weapons that could destroy civilization and probably the human species." In his letter, Rotblat asks the students, faculty and staff of the University to "raise your voices and demand that the University get out of the business of making weapons of mass destruction." Rotblat worked as a scientist on the Manhattan Project, but resigned in 1944 when he realized that the Germans would not succeed in creating their own atomic weapons and therefore the Allied powers would not need these weapons to deter the Germans. Since that time, Rotblat has worked for a world free of nuclear weapons. For information on how you can play a role in ending the University of California's oversight and management of the US nuclear weapons laboratories, visit the web site of the UC Nuclear Free Campaign sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at http://www.ucnuclearfree.org. To read the full text of the Open Letter from Sir Joseph Rotblat, please visit: http://www.ucnuclearfree.org/articles/020529rotblatletter.htm ******* ACTION ******* Tri-Valley CAREs Launches International Petition Tri-Valley CAREs has created an international petition to: o End funding for the development of nuclear earth-penetrating bombs and other new and modified nuclear weapons, o Bring US nuclear policy into compliance with the nation's Non-Proliferation Treaty obligation to eliminate nuclear weapons, and o Reject the Bush administration's "Nuclear Posture Review." The petition is an important way to make your voice heard. Please join in this international effort to restrain and reorient U.S. nuclear policy by signing and circulating the petition. Tri-Valley CAREs will collect the signed petitions and send copies of them to (1) President Bush, (2) the U.S. Congress and, (3) the United Nations. Download the petition from the website of Tri-Valley CAREs at http://www.trivalleycares.org. Send The Sunflower to Ten Friends A simple way to take action is to send this electronic newsletter to ten friends or even better, to your entire electronic address book. Help spread the message and help us to reach a wider audience with important news of nuclear dangers. ************ RESOURCES ************ Visit the ever-evolving website of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation at Http://www.wagingpeace.org Moving Beyond Missile Defense is a joint project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation. Visit the MBMD website at http://www.mbmd.org. Take a journey through the Nuclear Age. Visit the Nuclear Files at Http://www.nuclearfiles.org Apply now for the 2002 Brower Youth Awards! The Awards were established by Earth Island Institute to honor founder and lifelong environmentalist, David R. Brower. The Brower Youth Awards recognize young leaders age 13-22 who are working for Global Conservation, Preservation and Restoration (CPR). Each winner receives a cash award of $3,000 and is honored at a gala celebration in Berkeley on 26 September. Applications are available on the Earth Island web site at http://www.earthisland.org/bya. Or, request an application via e-mail . "Courting Nuclear Disaster (India-Pakistan)," an article by Praful Bidwai is available online at: http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/may2002-daily/16-05-2002/oped/o1.htm "Nuclear-tipped Foolishness," an article by Michael Kraig and Michael Roston is available online at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0205nuke.html The Reaching Critical Will website newly features a web-page on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) and the United Nations: http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/paros/parosindex.html Two experts deliver the low-down in plain English on the Bush administration's decision to study the possible use of nuclear-tipped interceptor missiles. Their message: What could they possibly be thinking? To read the report, visit: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/2002/0205nuke.html The Annual Report 2001 of INESAP is now available at the INESAP website at: http://www.inesap.org "Stop nuclear waste from travelling through your neighborhood!" http://nuclearneighborhoods.org/images/nn-pub.swf ********** EDITORS ********** Carah Ong David Krieger -- Carah Lynn Ong Director of Research and Publications The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1 Santa Barbara, California 93108-2794 USA Tel: +1 805-965-3443 Fax: +1 805-568-0466 Cell: +1 805-453-0255 Http://www.wagingpeace.org Http://www.nuclearfiles.org http://www.mbmd.org "He aha te nui mea o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata." (A Maori Saying) "What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, the people, the people." To become a free on-line participating member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, click here: https://www.sbwh.com/wagingpeace/mbrshp.html. ***************************************************************** 24 Senate reject nuclear funds Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 12:48:14 -0500 (CDT) Reply-To: Jim Harris Here is a new Progressive Secretary Letter. [ ] Send - Send this letter to congress people for zip code ________ [ ] Send - Send this letter to congress people for the state of ____ Sign my letter _____ [ ] No - Don't send this letter Note: This letter supports a campaign of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). It goes to the Senate. Further information: http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=154551&type=CO ****************************************** Written by PM 5/26/02 From: Your Name and eMail Address To: Your Senators Subject: Senate reject nuclear funds Dear Senator: The Senate Armed Services Committee has wisely eliminated funding for a new "useable" nuclear weapon, and has provided $812 million less than the Bush Administration requested for missile defense. While the Committee has still recommended far too much money for the bloated military and dangerous weapons, its Bill is a step in the right direction. I urge you to oppose any amendments that seek to add more funds or to develop a "useable" nuclear weapon. The American people are sick of massive military budgets and aggressive new weapons development. Sincerely, Your name Sincerely Jim Harris http://www.ProgressiveSecretary.Org. Make Your Voice Heard. Enroll in http://www.ProgressiveSecretary.Org. Progressives send far fewer letters than conservatives. This is an easy way to level this field. ( ~#\L=NuclearFunds1\P=22216\S=P) ***************************************************************** 25 FCNL: AMENDED June 2002 Letter-Writing Project Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 12:19:56 -0500 (CDT) FCNL - Letter-Writing Project June 2002 Dear Letter writing coordinator, President Bush plans to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty on June 13 of this year. He announced his decision in December, and there is a six-month waiting period before the U.S. involvement in the treaty is over. We hoped that during this waiting period the President would reverse his proposal to withdraw from the treaty. Now it is evident that he will not change this decision. Please send letters to your Senators this month asking them to speak out on the Senate floor in opposition to this withdrawal. This is an important action constituents can take now to ensure that future treaties will not be eliminated by this Administration. This month's letter writing project includes a short background piece on the ABM Treaty, as well as sample letters to the Senate and to the news media. President Bush stated in December that ".... the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks." And that "Today, as the events of September the 11th made all too clear, the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other, or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning, or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction." However, he is not addressing the fact that many of our allies will be alienated when the U.S.'s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty becomes finalized. The U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty will not work to our advantage. Building more nuclear arms is very expensive, and they are ineffective. New nuclear weapons are likely to provoke a nuclear arms race with Russia and China. Finally, we understand that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) will file a lawsuit the week of June 3 to prevent President Bush from withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty without a vote of Congress. As always, thank you for your involvement in the work of FCNL. It is critical to our mission that the work we do in the Washington office is amplified with work from our constituents across the country. Sincerely, Kathy Guthrie Field Program Secretary ************ Background Information President Bush announced on December 13 his intent to withdraw the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The required six-month notice ends on June 13, 2002. Please contact your senators. Ask them to speak out on the floor of the Senate in opposition to withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. While the President will not change his decision, sharp criticism of this policy now could prevent future treaties from being eliminated. The ABM Treaty has been the cornerstone of arms control efforts since its inception in 1972. Withdrawing from the treaty to continue development of a missile shield system will hinder progress on nuclear reductions. A crash program to build a $200 billion or more missile shield is not a substitute for effective diplomacy, arms control, disarmament and international cooperation. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) will file a lawsuit the week of June 3 to prevent President Bush from withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty without a vote of Congress. FCNL has posted extensive background information about the proposed missile shield system on our web site at http://www.fcnl.org/issues/nuc/nmdindx.htm. ********** Sample Letter to Senators Dear Senator: Please speak out on the Senate floor in opposition to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. The ABM treaty has been the cornerstone of arms control efforts since its inception in 1972. Withdrawing from the treaty to continue development of a missile shield system could hinder progress on nuclear reductions. A crash program to build a $200 billion or more missile shield is not a substitute for effective diplomacy, arms control, disarmament, and international cooperation. ********* Sample Letter to the Media To the Editor: It is a danger to the people of the United States and the world that President Bush is planning to withdraw the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty on June 13. The ABM Treaty has been the cornerstone of arms control efforts since its inception in 1972. Our withdrawal will hinder progress on nuclear arms reductions. A crash program to buld a $200 billion or more missile shield is not a substitute for effective diplomacy, arms control, disarmament, and international cooperation. It is crucial that the people of the United States speak out so that this administration will not eradicate more treaties in the future. ------------------ CONTACTING LEGISLATORS Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121 Sen. ________ U.S. Senate Washington, DC 20510 Rep. ________ U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Information on your members is available on FCNL's web site: http://capwiz.com/fconl/dbq/officials/directory/directory.dbq?com mand=congdir CONTACTING THE ADMINISTRATION White House Comment Desk: 202-456-1111 FAX: 202-456-2461 E-MAIL: president@whitehouse.gov WEB PAGE: http://www.whitehouse.gov President George W. Bush The White House Washington, DC 20500 ----------------------------------------------------------------- For further information, please contact FCNL. Mail: 245 Second Street, NE, Washington, DC 20002-5795 Email: fcnl@fcnl.org Phone: (202) 547-6000 Toll Free: (800) 630-1330 Fax: (202) 547-6019 Web: http://www.fcnl.org Your contributions sustain our Quaker witness in Washington. We welcome your gifts to FCNL, or, if you need a tax deduction, to the FCNL Education Fund. You can use your credit card to donate money securely to FCNL through a special page on FCNL's web site http://www.fcnl.org/suprt/indx.htm FCNL also accepts credit card donations over the phone. For more information about donating, please contact the Development Team directly at development@fcnl.org. Thank you. ----------------------------------------------------------------- This message is distributed regularly via the fcnl-news mailing list. To subscribe to this list, please visit FCNL's web site at http://www.fcnl.org/listserv/quaker_issues.php. Alternatively, you can send an e-mail message to majordomo@his.com. Leave the subject line blank. The message should read "subscribe fcnl-news." Please Note: Make sure that you are sending this message from the e-mail address to which you would like fcnl-news materials to be sent. If you currently receive this message via the fcnl-news mailing list and are no longer interested in receiving messages from this list, send an e-mail message to majordomo@his.com. The message should read "unsubscribe fcnl-news." ----------------------------------------------------------------- We seek a world free of war and the threat of war We seek a society with equity and justice for all We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled We seek an earth restored... ***************************************************************** 26 Peace Action: Right Steps Up Push for Usable Nuke Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 14:00:01 -0500 (CDT) Action Alert Right Steps Up Push for Usable Nukes Disarmament advocates earned a victory when funding for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, also called "bunker busters" was defeated in the Senate Armed Services Committee in mid-May. Calls made by concerned citizens like you were paramount to achieving this success. However, in recent weeks Republicans have stepped up their efforts to push for the development of these new, more usable nuclear weapons. They are planning to restore the funding during an early June vote on the Defense Authorization bill. Their commitment to developing these weapons is clear. During a recent House vote on the same issue, Republicans circulated a flier on the House floor calling for votes in favor of the bunker busters. Provided by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Stump, it says, "As seen in Afghanistan, conventional weapons are not always able to destroy underground targets. . . The Nuclear Posture Review concluded that the United States may need Nuclear Earth Penetrators to destroy underground facilities where rogue nations have stored chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons." Read more at: http://www.peace-action.org/home/rnep.html Take Action! Please take immediate action to urge your Senators to ensure that no funding is allocated to this new nuclear weapon. You can find out who represents you at congress.org or reach your Senator by calling the congressional switchboard: (202) 224-3121 However, the most effective way to get your views across is to take a minute to send your Senator a fax. Below is a sample you can use. You can find your Senators' fax numbers by using congress.org. For tips on writing to Members of Congress, see our How To... section at http://www.peace-action.org/tools/act/howto.html The Honorable Senator (your Senator's name) US Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator (your Senator's name) , The administration has requested $15.5 million to study the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a so-called usable nuclear weapon designed to destroy bunkers or other targets buried in the ground. Developing these new weapons would send the wrong signal to the world. If we develop new, more usable nuclear weapons, other countries are likely to follow our lead. An increased reliance on nuclear weapons equates to an increased threat to global security. Nuclear weapons have not been used for 50 years. I urge you to work hard to keep it that way by ensuring that no funding goes to the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator in the Fiscal Year 2003 Defense Authorization Bill. Sincerely, (Your name) --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.363 / Virus Database: 201 - Release Date: 05/21/2002 ***************************************************************** 27 Nuclear Free Seas Flotilla Spreads Around The World Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 14:11:45 -0500 (CDT) July floatilla planned against sellafields' plutonium by the scoop (nz) 9:37am Thu May 30 '02 Nuclear Free Seas Flotilla Spreads Thursday, 30 May 2002, 3:52 pm Press Release: Nuclear Free Seas Flotilla Spreads Around The World. May 30th AUCKLAND, NZ Today three flotillas from the Pacific, Cape Horn and the Irish Sea announced their intention to protest against the shipment of rejected plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) due to leave Japan for the UK in early July. The rejected plutonium MOX shipment, containing 255 kgs of weapons-usable plutonium is being returned to the UK after British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) admitted to falsifying critical safety data after the fuel had arrived in Japan in 1999. The route the return shipment will take from Japan back to the UK is still unknown, but whichever route it takes a protest flotilla will be there to meet it. If it is the Pacific and Tasman Sea route the shipment is expected to pass through the protest zone in mid July. At least eight boats are preparing in Australia, Vanuatu and New Zealand to form a symbolic chain across international waters to protest the shipment through the Pacific and Tasman Sea. If the Cape Horn route is chosen, the five boats that currently make up the Cape Horn flotilla will be braving the winter weather off the Horn to send their message of protest. Whichever route the shipment takes to the UK the boat will have to go through the Irish Sea to reach its destination and there it will be met by a large Irish flotilla. Seven boats formed the Tasman Sea flotilla last year when a second shipment of plutonium MOX, this time from the French Areva company passed through. The Pacific Pintail carrying the plutonium MOX fuel changed course to avoid the flotilla. "The flotilla movement has grown in just a year says Bernard Kuczera, from the Pacific flotilla "Sailors all around the world are joining the coastal states that are already protesting these totally unnecessary and dangerous shipments" The quality of the French plutonium MOX, delivered to Japan last year has also been called into question. Public referenda and concerns over the use of MOX in Japanese reactors have meant no MOX fuel that has been delivered to Japan has been used. "As part of the flotilla I have the opportunity to act in a positive way against the nuclear industry. I am completely against the plutonium shipment transiting through these wild southern seas, which I know really well and where serious problems may occur. One is never a hundred per cent sure of the sea. this is true at Cape Horn or on any other route", says Olivier Pauffin from the Cape Horn flotilla. "We feel so strongly about this shipment that despite it being winter we will join together with the other flotillas around the world to demand that our seas and our oceans are nuclear free, said Pascal Grinberg also of the Cape Horn flotilla. "The Irish community feels it has suffered because of Sellafield and people here believe that their protests have been ignored by BNFL and by the British government, said Rowan Hand from the Irish Flotilla. "The Flotilla is a means of giving expression to high levels of concern and the interest in the project grows daily. In the weeks leading up to the August Flotilla we will be garnering the enthusiasm of our sailing friends and I am certain that a large flotilla will depart the historic port of Carlingford to make its protest" he said. "Quite simply the Irish Sea is not a dumping ground for the UK nuclear industry. The Irish people will not be bullied into accepting this; it is unjust and ultimately offensive, said Ron van der Horst from the Irish flotilla. "People are uniting all over the world to stop these shipments." Website: www.nuclearfreeflotilla.org ***************************************************************** 28 Musharraf Pins Hopes on Putin Monday, Jun. 3, 2002. Page 1 By Dirk Beveridge The Associated Press K.m. Chaudary / AP A Pakistani guard, right, and an Indian guard standing at the daily closing ceremony at a border post near Lahore, Pakistan. NEW DELHI, India -- As the Indian defense minister sought Sunday to calm fears of a nuclear conflict, Pakistan's president said he would not start a war over Kashmir and wants to talk to India about peacefully resolving the crisis. But with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee unwilling to meet with Pakistani General Pervez Musharraf before seeing an end to cross-border terrorism by Muslim militants, the Pakistani held out the possibility that Russia could serve as a mediator. President Vladimir Putin hopes a summit opening Monday in Almaty, Kazakhstan, could coax India and Pakistan off of their war footing. Musharraf expressed optimism that Russia, a traditional ally of India, could help -- presumably by shuttling between the two sides. "I think that President Putin can persuade India to join a dialogue," Musharraf told reporters late Sunday in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where he was spending the night before flying to the summit on Monday. Some Western diplomats and UN officials have left India and Pakistan amid concerns that the military standoff, punctuated by daily shelling and gunfire across the border, could escalate into a full-fledged war. Malaysia on Sunday urged nonessential embassy staff and families of its diplomats to leave -- following similar decisions by the United States, Britain, France, Israel, South Korea and the United Nations. "There is no plan for talks," Vajpayee said on his way to Almaty, unless Musharraf makes good on his promise to end cross-border terrorism. "If we see the result on the ground of General Musharraf's statement, we shall certainly give it a serious consideration," the Indian leader said. Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, in a tearful speech to a military conference in Singapore, said Sunday that India would neither be "impulsive" with Pakistan nor weak in "the war against terrorism, the same terrorism which hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon." Fernandes repeated India's pledge to avoid first use of nuclear weapons. "There is no way India will ever use a nuclear weapon other than as a deterrent," Fernandes said. "We stand by our nuclear doctrine." Pakistan, which has a smaller military, has not ruled out a first nuclear strike, although Musharraf told CNN on Saturday "any sane individual" would ensure that any conflict would not go nuclear. "Pakistan will not start a war," Musharraf told reporters Sunday in Tajikistan. "We support solving the conflict through peaceful means." Musharraf said he would "meet anywhere and at any level" and wanted one-on-one talks with Vajpayee. But "if he doesn't want to, I will not insist," Musharraf said. In a diplomatic offensive, Pakistan said it will send envoys to the United States and elsewhere to relay Islamabad's position on the crisis -- that it wants to discuss a solution but India won't come to the table. Later this week, Washington is separately dispatching to the region two envoys -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage -- to try to ease the tensions. Vajpayee said nothing to reporters when he arrived in Almaty for the summit of 16 nations ranging from Egypt to China. Although India says Islamic militants crossing the border from Pakistan have carried out terror attacks, including a deadly assault on the Indian Parliament in December that provoked the crisis, Musharraf has insisted he is cracking down. Musharraf disputes India's contention that Pakistan actively helps the militants, saying it provides only moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiris, most of them Muslims, who want either independence or a merger with Islamic Pakistan. Musharraf calls their campaign a "genuine freedom struggle." Fresh mortar and artillery fire broke out Sunday across the line that divides Kashmir. An early morning barrage from the Pakistan side killed a 20-year-old woman and wounded five other civilians, said witnesses in the village of Garkhal, about 120 kilometers south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state. In Naugam, 28 kilometers southwest of Srinagar, a suspected Muslim militant was killed by Indian army soldiers in a gun battle, according to an Indian army spokesman. A Pakistani military spokesman said "unprovoked" artillery and military fire from the Indian side killed two civilians and injured seven, including three children. India's military said Sunday its troops had fired artillery into the Pakistani side of the Naushahra and Sunderbani areas north of Srinagar on Saturday, killing five Pakistani soldiers and destroying two bunkers. The Pakistani military spokesman called the claim false. Hundreds of people have fled homes in the border areas, with some on the Pakistani side loading up household goods Sunday on wagons. "We are living in a very dangerous situation," said 65-year-old shoemaker Mohammed Sadiq. "The Indians shelled this area overnight, cutting off electricity and communication. They fired for about an hour. It's very difficult for us to stay here." In Singapore, Fernandes wept as he recounted violence against Indians in Kashmir. "I'm sorry for the difficulty I have every time I think of this," the defense minister said. "The country is angry and anguished. The pressure on our prime minister ... to launch an attack is intense." TheMoscowTimes.com ***************************************************************** 29 Nuclear Arms Concern Wolfowitz Las Vegas SUN June 02, 2002 SINGAPORE- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Sunday that the prospect of terrorists developing nuclear capabilities is "more frightening and dangerous" than nuclear proliferation among nation states. At a regional security conference in Singapore, Wolfowitz said the concern that "nuclear weapons or scientists with nuclear expertise (could) fall into the hands of rogue regimes or terrorist groups is a very, very real one." "The events of Sept. 11 if anything ought to intensify our concerns about it," he said. Robert Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state and a nuclear proliferation expert, said Southeast Asian ports in particular need to beef up security to help stem nuclear proliferation. "Governments should put in place strong shipment and transshipment controls to reduce the likelihood that their countries will become conduits for the ingredients of weapons of mass destruction programs worldwide," Einhorn said. The discussion on nuclear proliferation was one of a several seminars at a two-day conference, which was organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and attended by more than 150 defense officials. Maj. Gen. Kim Kook-hun, head of the South Korean defense ministry's arms disarmament bureau, said his government is deeply concerned about North Korea's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. President Bush has singled out North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" nations that sponsor terrorism or seek to develop weapons of mass destruction. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 30 India Seeks to Ease Nuclear Fears Las Vegas SUN June 02, 2002 NEW DELHI, India- India's defense minister said Sunday that his nation won't be "impulsive" and sought to ease fears of a nuclear war, as the Indian and Pakistani leaders headed to a summit where they are unlikely to talk peace - or even talk at all. As part of a diplomatic offensive, Pakistan announced that it will send envoys to the United States and other countries to relay Islamabad's position on the crisis. The emissaries will carry letters from Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf stating that Pakistan is ready to negotiate but that India does not want to talk. "Pakistan will not start a war. We support solving the conflict through peaceful means," Musharraf told reporters in the Tajikistan during a stopover on his way to Almaty, Kazakhstan for the three-day summit, which begins Monday. Musharraf has said for months he wants dialogue with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee over Kashmir, but Vajpayee says there first must be a stop to terrorist attacks by Islamic militants crossing into the Indian part of the province. Musharraf disputes India's contention that Pakistan actively helps the militants, saying his military government provides only moral and diplomatic support for Kashmiri separatists who want either independence or a merger with Islamic Pakistan. "I'm ready to meet anywhere and at any level. I would like the talks to be one-on-one, but if (Vajpayee) he doesn't want to, I will not insist," Musharraf said. He was optimistic about Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer to mediate talks this week between the leaders on the sidelines of the Kazakhstan summit in a bid to bring the nuclear-armed nations back from the brink of war. "I think that President Putin can persuade India to join a dialogue," Musharraf said. Vajpayee said Sunday no talks were planned and he would not meet with Musharraf until the cross-border terrorism stops. Musharraf and Vajpayee have indicated they would meet separately with Putin and officials from other worried nations. Fears of war have led the United Nations to order its staffers in India and Pakistan to send their families home, and the United States and other countries have advised their citizens to leave amid fears over the standoff, marked by daily shelling and gunfire across the line that divides Kashmir. This week, the United States is separately dispatching Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to the region to try to ease tensions. Vajpayee arrived Sunday in Almaty, where he was greeted by an honor guard at the airport. He did not speak to reporters. Earlier Sunday, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes, in a tearful speech at a security conference in Singapore, assured the world his country "will not be impulsive" despite what he called heavy public pressure for military action against Pakistan, which India accuses of responsibility for attacks on its soil. "We don't see the makings of any kind of an escalation that takes one to the extreme," said Fernandes, who reiterated India's pledge to avoid first use of nuclear weapons. "There is no way India will ever use a nuclear weapon other than as a deterrent," he said. Pakistan, which has a smaller military, has not ruled out a first strike, but Musharraf, in an interview with CNN on Saturday, said that no "sane individual" would let tensions between the two nations escalate into a nuclear war. Most of the cross-border attacks are in Kashmir, a divided Himalayan province claimed in its entirety by both India and Pakistan. The disputed region has been the flashpoint of two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought since independence 55 years ago. More than 60,000 civilians, Indian troops and guerrillas have been killed in the Indian-ruled portion of Kashmir - Hindu-majority India's only mostly Muslim state - since Islamic separatists launched an insurgency in 1989. Under pressure from the United States and India, Musharraf pledged in January to crack down on Islamic militants and said Pakistan must not be used as a base for terrorism attacks anywhere. But India says cross-border attacks have continued. Meanwhile, hundreds of people have fled their homes in border areas, with some on the Pakistani side loading up their household goods Sunday on wagons and trolleys. "We are living in a very dangerous situation," said 65-year-old shoemaker Mohammed Sadiq. "The Indians shelled this area overnight, cutting off electricity and communication. They fired for about an hour. It's very difficult for us to stay here." Since a December raid on India's parliament, which killed 14 people, India and Pakistan have amassed a million troops along their border and the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. The forces have traded artillery and small arms fire almost daily, killing dozens of people and forcing thousands in Kashmir to flee their homes. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 31 Officials Convene for Asian Security Las Vegas SUN June 02, 2002 SINGAPORE- The United States touted its anti-terrorism agenda. India's defense minister assured the world his country would not act impulsively in its standoff with Pakistan. Experts warned of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands. During a two-day regional security conference that ended Sunday in Singapore, senior defense officials from around the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere discussed strategies to fight terrorism and ensure security in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the conference that the authors of those attacks "have Asia in their sights" and are seeking to impose "a medieval, intolerant and tyrannical way of life." The nations of Southeast Asia - where a terrorist network linked to al-Qaida has been discovered - called for more Western financial aid, improved intelligence-sharing between neighboring nations, joint war games and a fund to help countries recover from future terrorist attacks. Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore, opened the conference with a plea to the United States to re-establish military ties with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Those links were severed in 1999 to punish the Indonesian military for human rights abuses in East Timor. "If the U.S. does not re-engage the (Indonesian military) and help it reform itself, a young newly elected government will not have an effective institution to support its policies. The stability of Indonesia is crucial to the future of the region and the strategic balance in East Asia," he said. Yet the conference's main issues - regional security, terrorism, arms proliferation - were largely overshadowed by the standoff between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan. The countries have massed more than a million troops on their border and the forces have been trading fire in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, raising fears of a war. Pakistan did not send a delegation to Singapore. But Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes was here - and he wept while speaking to the delegates about attacks by Islamic militants on India. "I'm sorry for the difficulty I have every time I think of this," he said. "The country is angry and anguished. The pressure on our prime minister ... to launch an attack is intense." Fernandes told The Associated Press Sunday that a proposed meeting between the leaders of India and Pakistan at a regional summit in Kazakhstan this week is not possible. "I do not see that possibility at all, because if there is to be any kind of talking then the cross-border terrorism has to stop forthwith," he said. India is demanding that Pakistan halt cross-border infiltration into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir and crack down on Islamic militants believed responsible for terrorist attacks in India. Fernandes said India will be steadfast in the fight against terrorism, but played down concerns that the current conflict could spin out of control. "We don't see the makings of any kind of an escalation that takes one to the extreme," he said. During one panel discussion Sunday, deputy secretary Wolfowitz said that the prospect of terrorists developing nuclear capabilities is "more frightening and dangerous" than nuclear proliferation among nation states. He said the concern that "nuclear weapons or scientists with nuclear expertise (could) fall into the hands of rogue regimes or terrorist groups is a very, very real one." "The events of Sept. 11 if anything ought to intensify our concerns about it," he said. The Singapore conference was organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and attended by more than 150 defense officials. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the conference was a useful forum for devising common security strategies. "No one nation is strong enough, powerful enough, independent enough to deal with these things by themselves," Hagel said. "This conference dealt with these issues and it was important because it connected our interests." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 32 Mind play matters in nuclear politics The Seattle Times: Editorials &Opinion Monday, June 03, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific Charles Krauthammer / Syndicated columnist WASHINGTON — At a dinner last year at the Russian Embassy, a senior Russian official expressed deep dismay that the Bush administration was preparing to eliminate large numbers of nuclear missiles without any coordination with Russia. I was astonished. "Mr. Minister," I said, "I never thought I would live to see the day when a representative of Moscow would complain that Washington is reducing its nuclear arsenal." Most striking was the Russian's tone. It was not at all bellicose. It was plaintive. The fact that we were prepared to make unilateral arms cuts, whether or not Russia followed suit, was deeply disturbing to him. And everyone in the room understood why. It showed how little Russia mattered. In the heyday of Soviet power, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko once defined a superpower as a country that has a say in every corner of the globe and without whose say nothing substantial can be achieved in any corner. The Soviet Union met that definition. In the Congo, Cuba, Germany, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Angola, Czechoslovakia, the Middle East — everywhere — Russia had a say, often a decisive say. It was not only that it had the largest land army in the world or the largest nuclear arsenal. We tend to forget the kind of "soft power" the Soviets possessed. For decades, they offered the world an ideology that held extraordinary sway among the intellectual classes. Not just in the Third World, but deep into the heart of the Western alliance, led by communist parties in France and Italy. Today, communism has about the same cachet as alchemy. Yet at the height of its power, communist and/or socialist governments ruled half the world. The wonder of the post-Cold War era is that Russia could have suffered a collapse to strategic irrelevance without revolution or revanchism. The Russians are not angry. They are simply hurt. And they were quite humiliated when we were preparing to unilaterally cut our nukes without even asking them for a quid pro quo. In the end, we acceded to Russia's paradoxical request and allowed it to give us that quid pro quo. Hence the Moscow treaty just signed by Presidents Bush and Putin. It was a wise concession to Russian sensibilities. The agreement was three pages, shorter than your average high-school term paper. It cost us nothing. And it gave Putin a magnificent signing ceremony and a place at the table. Even better, Putin and Bush then traveled to Italy and signed an agreement creating a strong Russia-NATO Council — another milestone in easing Russia into the sphere of the West. But for this to succeed we must understand that our relations with Russia are less a form of power politics than psychotherapy. We are dealing with a country that has suffered the most cataclysmic loss of power by any country not defeated in battle. The goal of our Russia diplomacy is not strategic stability — strategic stability is only an issue when dealing with enemies, and Russia is no enemy — but the management of sensibilities. When the Bush administration announced that it would be withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the usual chorus of reactionary liberals warned that this would be dangerous. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said it could trigger "Cold War II." The ever-reliable New York Times warned of the dark possibility of "a dangerous new arms race with Russia." What predictable nonsense. Russia does not threaten the United States. The United States does not threaten Russia. Russia is not in military competition with the United States. It would therefore have no reason to enter into a ruinous arms race that would in any event be rather one-sided. The critics were totally wrong. Russia's response to our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was not to increase its nuclear weapons, but to decrease them. Why? Because, strategically speaking, the U.S.-Russian nuclear balance no longer matters, except psychologically. These nuclear weapons are not really military devices but tokens. During the Cold War, they were tokens of grandeur. Today they are tokens of parity — a phony parity to be sure, but one whose appearance is worth preserving. Hence the treaty, hence the ceremony, hence the seat at the NATO table — costless magnanimity in the service of the most important international realignment since the opening to China: strategic partnership with Russia. The Washington Post Writers Group can be contacted via e-mail at writersgrp@washpost.com [writersgrp@washpost.com] . © The Washington Post Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 33 Japan: Nuclear remarks may spark Diet disorder Daily Yomiuri On-Line Yomiuri Shimbun A series of recent remarks by senior government officials, including the suggestion by one of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's closest aides that the nation might revise its three nonnuclear principles, is likely to spur confusion in the Diet, according to political observers. The opposition camp plans to attack the remark made Friday by Koizumi's closest aide that Japan may revise its nonnuclear policies. With the current Diet session drawing to an end June 19 and deliberations yet to be finalized on important major bills, the Diet may find itself in deadlock, the observers said. Japan has maintained since the late 1960s a set of three nonnuclear principles of not producing, not possessing and not allowing nuclear weapons into the country. The Prime Minister's Office on Saturday tried to play down the remarks, while the senior government official in question said the remarks did not reflect his real intention. Other aides to Koizumi stressed that the remarks were not far off the government's line of thinking. However, the opposition camp is considering linking the issue with a set of contingency-related bills, which could further complicate Diet deliberations. Japanese Communist Party Secretary General Tadayoshi Ichida said: "It's inexcusable for a senior government official to deny the government's nonnuclear policies. I'm extremely concerned about what the government would do if it took the lead in deliberating the contingency-related bills." The contingency-related bills initially were expected to pass through the Diet with few problems, but circumstances have changed since the Diet session began. Factors contributing to such changes include a scandal over the Defense Agency retaining personal data on individuals who had requested information as well as a series of indiscreet remarks made by members of the Prime Minister's Office and the LDP's Mori faction, to which Koizumi belongs. A weekly magazine quoted Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, who is a member of the Mori faction, as saying at a recent lecture that there was no constitutional problem with the nation having atomic weapons. The senior government official made his comment when responding to reporters' questions about Abe's comment. Ichita Yamamoto, an LDP House of Councillors Diet member who belonged to the Mori faction, told reporters after meeting Koizumi on Thursday at the Prime Minister's Office, "Mr. Koizumi appears to intend to put priority on the passage of a set of bills on postal service privatization and bills on medical system reforms." Yamamoto's remark threw cold water on the enthusiasm of the ruling parties for passing the contingency bills. Masao Akamatsu, vice chairman of New Komeito's policy affairs research council, declared on his Web site that he wants to topple the Koizumi Cabinet. The remarks were posted after Akamatsu became angry with inconsistent answers that Koizumi gave to questions in the Diet session. Some Diet members said Akamatsu was angered by Koizumi's lack of consideration for coalition partner New Komeito. They said the prime minister appeared to have forgotten the party was indispensable to ensuring major bills were passed through the Diet. Copyright 2002 The Yomiuri Shimbun ***************************************************************** 34 Complete Text of Bush's West Point Address [NewsMax.com] Monday, June 3, 2002 THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, General Lennox. Mr. Secretary, Governor Pataki, members of the United States Congress, Academy staff and faculty, distinguished guests, proud family members, and graduates: I want to thank you for your welcome. Laura and I are especially honored to visit this great institution in your bicentennial year. In every corner of America, the words "West Point" command immediate respect. This place where the Hudson River bends is more than a fine institution of learning. The United States Military Academy is the guardian of values that have shaped the soldiers who have shaped the history of the world. A few of you have followed in the path of the perfect West Point graduate, Robert E. Lee, who never received a single demerit in four years. Some of you followed in the path of the imperfect graduate, Ulysses S. Grant, who had his fair share of demerits, and said the happiest day of his life was "the day I left West Point." During my college years I guess you could say I was -- (Laughter.) During my college years I guess you could say I was a Grant man. (Laughter.) You walk in the tradition of Eisenhower and MacArthur, Patton and Bradley -- the commanders who saved a civilization. And you walk in the tradition of second lieutenants who did the same, by fighting and dying on distant battlefields. Graduates of this academy have brought creativity and courage to every field of endeavor. West Point produced the chief engineer of the Panama Canal, the mind behind the Manhattan Project, the first American to walk in space. This fine institution gave us the man they say invented baseball, and other young men over the years who perfected the game of football. You know this, but many in America don't -- George C. Marshall, a VMI graduate, is said to have given this order: "I want an officer for a secret and dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player." (Applause.) As you leave here today, I know there's one thing you'll never miss about this place: Being a plebe. (Applause.) But even a plebe at West Point is made to feel he or she has some standing in the world. (Laughter.) I'm told that plebes, when asked whom they outrank, are required to answer this: "Sir, the Superintendent's dog -- (laughter) -- the Commandant's cat, and all the admirals in the whole damn Navy." (Applause.) I probably won't be sharing that with the Secretary of the Navy. (Laughter.) West Point is guided by tradition, and in honor of the "Golden Children of the Corps," -- (applause) -- I will observe one of the traditions you cherish most. As the Commander-in-Chief, I hereby grant amnesty to all cadets who are on restriction for minor conduct offenses. (Applause.) Those of you in the end zone might have cheered a little early. (Laughter.) Because, you see, I'm going to let General Lennox define exactly what "minor" means. (Laughter.) Every West Point class is commissioned to the Armed Forces. Some West Point classes are also commissioned by history, to take part in a great new calling for their country. Speaking here to the class of 1942 -- six months after Pearl Harbor -- General Marshall said, "We're determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle, our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand, and of overwhelming power on the other." (Applause.) Officers graduating that year helped fulfill that mission, defeating Japan and Germany, and then reconstructing those nations as allies. West Point graduates of the 1940s saw the rise of a deadly new challenge -- the challenge of imperial communism -- and opposed it from Korea to Berlin, to Vietnam, and in the Cold War, from beginning to end. And as the sun set on their struggle, many of those West Point officers lived to see a world transformed. History has also issued its call to your generation. In your last year, America was attacked by a ruthless and resourceful enemy. You graduate from this Academy in a time of war, taking your place in an American military that is powerful and is honorable. Our war on terror is only begun, but in Afghanistan it was begun well. (Applause.) I am proud of the men and women who have fought on my orders. America is profoundly grateful for all who serve the cause of freedom, and for all who have given their lives in its defense. This nation respects and trusts our military, and we are confident in your victories to come. (Applause.) This war will take many turns we cannot predict. Yet I am certain of this: Wherever we carry it, the American flag will stand not only for our power, but for freedom. (Applause.) Our nation's cause has always been larger than our nation's defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just peace -- a peace that favors human liberty. We will defend the peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants. We will preserve the peace by building good relations among the great powers. And we will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent. Building this just peace is America's opportunity, and America's duty. From this day forward, it is your challenge, as well, and we will meet this challenge together. (Applause.) You will wear the uniform of a great and unique country. America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves -- safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life. In defending the peace, we face a threat with no precedent. Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger the American people and our nation. The attacks of September the 11th required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of a few dozen evil and deluded men. All of the chaos and suffering they caused came at much less than the cost of a single tank. The dangers have not passed. This government and the American people are on watch, we are ready, because we know the terrorists have more money and more men and more plans. The gravest danger to freedom lies at the perilous crossroads of radicalism and technology. When the spread of chemical and biological and nuclear weapons, along with ballistic missile technology -- when that occurs, even weak states and small groups could attain a catastrophic power to strike great nations. Our enemies have declared this very intention, and have been caught seeking these terrible weapons. They want the capability to blackmail us, or to harm us, or to harm our friends -- and we will oppose them with all our power. (Applause.) For much of the last century, America's defense relied on the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those strategies still apply. But new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies. We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. (Applause.) Homeland defense and missile defense are part of stronger security, and they're essential priorities for America. Yet the war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. (Applause.) In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act. (Applause.) Our security will require the best intelligence, to reveal threats hidden in caves and growing in laboratories. Our security will require modernizing domestic agencies such as the FBI, so they're prepared to act, and act quickly, against danger. Our security will require transforming the military you will lead -- a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. (Applause.) The work ahead is difficult. The choices we will face are complex. We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries, using every tool of finance, intelligence and law enforcement. Along with our friends and allies, we must oppose proliferation and confront regimes that sponsor terror, as each case requires. Some nations need military training to fight terror, and we'll provide it. Other nations oppose terror, but tolerate the hatred that leads to terror -- and that must change. (Applause.) We will send diplomats where they are needed, and we will send you, our soldiers, where you're needed. (Applause.) All nations that decide for aggression and terror will pay a price. We will not leave the safety of America and the peace of the planet at the mercy of a few mad terrorists and tyrants. (Applause.) We will lift this dark threat from our country and from the world. Because the war on terror will require resolve and patience, it will also require firm moral purpose. In this way our struggle is similar to the Cold War. Now, as then, our enemies are totalitarians, holding a creed of power with no place for human dignity. Now, as then, they seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life. America confronted imperial communism in many different ways -- diplomatic, economic, and military. Yet moral clarity was essential to our victory in the Cold War. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles, and rallied free nations to a great cause. Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. (Applause.) Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. (Applause.) Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. (Applause.) Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. (Applause.) There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. (Applause.) By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem, we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it. (Applause.) As we defend the peace, we also have an historic opportunity to preserve the peace. We have our best chance since the rise of the nation state in the 17th century to build a world where the great powers compete in peace instead of prepare for war. The history of the last century, in particular, was dominated by a series of destructive national rivalries that left battlefields and graveyards across the Earth. Germany fought France, the Axis fought the Allies, and then the East fought the West, in proxy wars and tense standoffs, against a backdrop of nuclear Armageddon. Competition between great nations is inevitable, but armed conflict in our world is not. More and more, civilized nations find ourselves on the same side -- united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos. America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge -- (applause) -- thereby, making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace. Today the great powers are also increasingly united by common values, instead of divided by conflicting ideologies. The United States, Japan and our Pacific friends, and now all of Europe, share a deep commitment to human freedom, embodied in strong alliances such as NATO. And the tide of liberty is rising in many other nations. Generations of West Point officers planned and practiced for battles with Soviet Russia. I've just returned from a new Russia, now a country reaching toward democracy, and our partner in the war against terror. (Applause.) Even in China, leaders are discovering that economic freedom is the only lasting source of national wealth. In time, they will find that social and political freedom is the only true source of national greatness. (Applause.) When the great powers share common values, we are better able to confront serious regional conflicts together, better able to cooperate in preventing the spread of violence or economic chaos. In the past, great power rivals took sides in difficult regional problems, making divisions deeper and more complicated. Today, from the Middle East to South Asia, we are gathering broad international coalitions to increase the pressure for peace. We must build strong and great power relations when times are good; to help manage crisis when times are bad. America needs partners to preserve the peace, and we will work with every nation that shares this noble goal. (Applause.) And finally, America stands for more than the absence of war. We have a great opportunity to extend a just peace, by replacing poverty, repression, and resentment around the world with hope of a better day. Through most of history, poverty was persistent, inescapable, and almost universal. In the last few decades, we've seen nations from Chile to South Korea build modern economies and freer societies, lifting millions of people out of despair and want. And there's no mystery to this achievement. The 20th century ended with a single surviving model of human progress, based on non-negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women and private property and free speech and equal justice and religious tolerance. America cannot impose this vision -- yet we can support and reward governments that make the right choices for their own people. In our development aid, in our diplomatic efforts, in our international broadcasting, and in our educational assistance, the United States will promote moderation and tolerance and human rights. And we will defend the peace that makes all progress possible. When it comes to the common rights and needs of men and women, there is no clash of civilizations. The requirements of freedom apply fully to Africa and Latin America and the entire Islamic world. The peoples of the Islamic nations want and deserve the same freedoms and opportunities as people in every nation. And their governments should listen to their hopes. (Applause.) A truly strong nation will permit legal avenues of dissent for all groups that pursue their aspirations without violence. An advancing nation will pursue economic reform, to unleash the great entrepreneurial energy of its people. A thriving nation will respect the rights of women, because no society can prosper while denying opportunity to half its citizens. Mothers and fathers and children across the Islamic world, and all the world, share the same fears and aspirations. In poverty, they struggle. In tyranny, they suffer. And as we saw in Afghanistan, in liberation they celebrate. (Applause.) America has a greater objective than controlling threats and containing resentment. We will work for a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror. The bicentennial class of West Point now enters this drama. With all in the United States Army, you will stand between your fellow citizens and grave danger. You will help establish a peace that allows millions around the world to live in liberty and to grow in prosperity. You will face times of calm, and times of crisis. And every test will find you prepared -- because you're the men and women of West Point. (Applause.) You leave here marked by the character of this Academy, carrying with you the highest ideals of our nation. Toward the end of his life, Dwight Eisenhower recalled the first day he stood on the plain at West Point. "The feeling came over me," he said, "that the expression 'the United States of America' would now and henceforth mean something different than it had ever before. From here on, it would be the nation I would be serving, not myself." Today, your last day at West Point, you begin a life of service in a career unlike any other. You've answered a calling to hardship and purpose, to risk and honor. At the end of every day you will know that you have faithfully done your duty. May you always bring to that duty the high standards of this great American institution. May you always be worthy of the long gray line that stretches two centuries behind you. On behalf of the nation, I congratulate each one of you for the commission you've earned and for the credit you bring to the United States of America. May God bless you all. All Rights Reserved © NewsMax.com ***************************************************************** 35 India categorically rules out use of nuclear weapons theage.com.au, Breaking News NEW DELHI, June 3 AFP|Published: Monday June 3, 7:44 PM India's defence ministry in an official statement today ruled out the use of nuclear weapons, amid heightened tensions with Pakistan. "India categorically rules out the use of nuclear weapons. India is a responsible country and it feels that it will be imprudent to use such weapons," the defence ministry statement said. "The government makes it clear that India does not believe in the use of nuclear weapons. Neither does it visualise that it will be used by any other country," it added. '); document.write(' '); document.write(''); The ministry said it made the statement in response to some media reports about the possible use of nuclear weapons in the current India-Pakistan standoff. Indian and Pakistani troops massed along the border have been exchanging artillery fire in the past two weeks, and analysts have warned that heightened tensions between the two could grow into a wider conflict. However, India's Defence Minister George Fernandes and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have both ruled out the possibility of a nuclear war. Copyright © 2002 John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 36 Koizumi under renewed pressure for reports of switch on Japan's non-nuclear policy Mon Jun 3,10:27 AM ET TOKYO - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi came under attack Monday for reports that his administration was considering a change to Japan's long-standing policy of not building or possessing nuclear weapons. Protesters rallied in Hiroshima and opposition members called for the resignation of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo News agency reported. Fukuda reportedly said last Friday that Japan's war-renouncing Constitution should not prevent it from having nuclear arms for self-defense. Koizumi has repeatedly said his government stands by Japan's non-nuclear policy, and Fukuda has denied that he meant Japan was considering such a departure. In the western city of Hiroshima, where 140,000 perished after a U.S. atomic attack Aug. 6, 1945, nearly 100 people protested Fukuda's comments in the city's Peace Park memorial to the victims. Opposition lawmakers likewise criticized the Fukuda's comment as inappropriate, with some calling for him to step down. Koizumi has backed his aide saying the remarks were misunderstood. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 37 Risks seen reducing nuclear forces Monday, June 3, 2002 The dangers are tied to a U.S.-Russia landmark agreement to reduce strategic units by two-thirds By FRED WEIR, CP MOSCOW -- At a lavish Kremlin ceremony last week, U.S. President George W. Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin signed a landmark accord to slash their strategic nuclear forces by two-thirds over the next decade. But Russian environmentalists are not cheering. They warn under the new treaty thousands of atomic warheads will be removed from well-guarded missile silos and put into storage facilities where notoriously lax security and poor staff discipline will leave them vulnerable to accidents or theft by terrorists. "Plutonium stocks are set to skyrocket, but Russia cannot afford to safely house the 150 tonnes of weapons-grade material it already has," said Vladimir Chuprov, an expert with Greenpeace-Russia. "Because of the security nightmare, the nuclear weapons in storage are scarier than those mounted on missiles." Scattered across Russia's vast hinterland are 52 military storage depots for the enriched uranium and plutonium from which nuclear warheads are made. The few visitors who have seen these facilities report yawning gaps in security and safety procedures, ill-paid and surly staff who are often drunk, and virtually no clear accounting for materials in storage. "The key problem in Russia, which will not be resolved by the current Russia-U.S. dialogue, is that we have no civilian oversight in the nuclear sphere," said Sergei Yushenkov, deputy head of the State Duma's Security Committee. The Duma is the lower house of Russia's parliament. "The glimpses we have are very worrisome, but even in the Duma, we cannot get a full picture." In even worse shape than military installations are hundreds of civilian facilities around Russia, where security is often non-existent, housing thousands of tonnes of spent reactor fuel and other nuclear wastes. Such materials can't be fashioned into atomic weapons but might provide terrorists with the stuff for a so-called "dirty bomb" -- radioactive substances wrapped around a conventional explosive -- which could trigger mass panic if detonated in an urban area. "Control over low level nuclear wastes in this country is very weak," said Dimitry Kovchegin, a nuclear safety specialist at the independent PIR Centre for Policy Studies in Moscow. "It's possible to find radioactive wastes in any city dump. Terrorists could easily acquire the means to make a dirty bomb in this country. This threat is very, very real." Last February a group of Duma deputies and environmental activists dramatized the danger by climbing through a broken fence and literally walking into a medium-security nuclear waste storage centre in Siberia, where they spent six hours beside a building housing 3,000 tonnes of highly-radioactive spent reactor fuel. "I was amazed at how easy it was," said Sergei Mitrokhin, one of the deputies. "No one challenged us. Guards walked past us, and never asked who we were or what we were doing. If we were terrorists, we could have stolen as much material as we wanted." According to a report issued by Harvard University last week, only about 40 per cent of Russia's bomb-grade materials and less than a seventh of enriched uranium have been secured, despite billions of dollars in U.S. aid. A key concern is the Russian navy's nuclear submarine fleet, most of which was hastily decommissioned after the demise of the Soviet Union. At Moscow's Kurchatov Institute, Russia's nuclear nerve centre, specialists are trying to devise ways to quickly dismantle and store the reactors and fuel rods from some 120 nuclear subs, many of which are rusting away in open harbours on Russian naval bases. "No one could have been prepared for all those ships going out of service at the same time like that," said Andrei Gagarinsky, the institute's director of research and development. "There is a huge amount of spent fuel to be dealt with, and the Russian navy has no funds to ensure security." About five years ago, he said, a group of sailors in the northern naval base of Severodvinsk actually hijacked an entire reactor unit from a disabled submarine, complete with fuel rods, hoping to sell it on the black market. "Of course they failed," said Gagarinsky. "But there's no doubt this area needs a lot of attention." It is not known how much nuclear material may already have gone missing. The former U.S.S.R. had more than 20,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and as much as 650 tonnes of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, experts said. Russia still deploys about 6,000 strategic and 8,000 smaller tactical warheads. Previous story: U.S. to resume making triggers for nuke bombs Next story: Old, new and Tory blue For all of today's stories subscribe to The London Free Press [http://www.lfpress.com/subscribe/default.asp] Copyright © 2002, The London Free Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 Russia alarmed by reports Japan ready to build nuclear weapons Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said last week that Japan's war-renouncing Constitution should not prevent it from having nuclear arms for self-defense, Kyodo News reported. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later said he stands by Japan's longstanding policy of not building or possessing nuclear weapons. In neighboring Russia, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Sunday that Fukuda's statement "prompts an understandable concern." "Japan — a huge world power, and the only victim of atomic bombs — has always been in the forefront of support for nuclear disarmament," Yakovenko said in a statement. "Now as the leading nuclear powers are making steps toward reducing their nuclear potential, such announcements by Japanese officials do not encourage the strengthening of the nonproliferation regime, and appear an anachronism," he said. Yakovenko was referring to a landmark arms control agreement signed by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month slashing each country's nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. Russia has also bristled at Koizumi's efforts to increase the role of Japan's military. Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have improved since the 1991 Soviet collapse, but they have never signed a formal treaty ending World War II because of a territorial dispute over four North Pacific islands. (adc) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. ***************************************************************** 39 *Russia alarmed by reports Japan ready to build nuclear weapons * /Sun Jun 2, 2:29 PM ET/ MOSCOW - Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed concern Sunday about a Japanese official's reported suggestion that Japan should be able to have nuclear weapons. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said last week that Japan's war-renouncing Constitution should not prevent it from having nuclear arms for self-defense, Kyodo News reported. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later said he stands by Japan's longstanding policy of not building or possessing nuclear weapons. In neighboring Russia, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Sunday that Fukuda's statement "prompts an understandable concern." "Japan ? a huge world power, and the only victim of atomic bombs ? has always been in the forefront of support for nuclear disarmament," Yakovenko said in a statement. "Now as the leading nuclear powers are making steps toward reducing their nuclear potential, such announcements by Japanese officials do not encourage the strengthening of the nonproliferation regime, and appear an anachronism," he said. Yakovenko was referring to a landmark arms control agreement signed by U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month slashing each country's nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. Russia has also bristled at Koizumi's efforts to increase the role of Japan's military. Relations between Moscow and Tokyo have improved since the 1991 Soviet collapse, but they have never signed a formal treaty ending World War II because of a territorial dispute over four North Pacific islands. (adc) Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 40 DOE defies Congress Albuquerque Tribune Online Despite the clear mandate from Congress to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers, including many in New Mexico, the Department of Energy is making the workers jump through illegal hoops, today's writers say. TODAY'S BYLINE Miller is a Policy Analyst for the Government Accountability Project, in Washington, DC. Silver works with the Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety, in Espanola. By Richard Miller and Ken Silver "Are you practicing witchcraft at home?" a company psychologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory asked electronics technician Ben Ortiz when he sought medical attention for the neurotoxic effects of solvents in the late 1980s. He was suffering from toxic encephalopathy, a well-known effect of chemical solvents, along with damage to his lungs. But the "witchcraft" question says a lot about the strategy used to deny occupational illnesses at nuclear weapons plants. Over and over again, company doctors considered it "strictly taboo" to make an occupational diagnosis. The first line of defense was to find a way to blame the worker. After meeting with sick nuclear workers across the country, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson recognized something needed to be done. He released previously secret documents which showed how workers were put in harm's way without adequate protections and that nuclear materials production took precedence over safety during the Cold War. He issued studies showing that nuclear workers suffered disabling and fatal illnesses due to exposure to some of the most lethal substances known to mankind. He admitted that the government routinely opposed sick workers' claims without regard to merit. Then he fought to pass a new federal law to compensate workers who were made ill from their jobs in the government's nuclear weapons plants. When the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act was passed in 2000, he declared: "This marks a major turning point in history." Workers were all ears. But it turns out Richardson was wrong. DOE turns law on its head For workers disabled from exposure to toxic substances such as heavy metals, solvents and asbestos, the federal law requires DOE to help workers with state worker compensation claims, rather than fighting them. An independent physicians panel determines whether an illness is work related, and if they find in favor of the worker, the DOE is required, by law, to instruct its contractors - such as Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories - not to contest these claims with the state worker compensation program. Moreover, the DOE is prohibited from bankrolling its contractors - such as the University of California, at Los Alamos, or Lockheed Martin, at Sandia, to fight these claims. Nineteen months after the law was signed, the DOE developed draft regulations which turn a major portion of this law into a twisted mess. DOE's rule sent to the White House for review on May 8 will: Allow contractors to fight physician panel determinations through appeals to the DOE Office of Hearings &Appeals. This added appeal creates a second major litigation for worker compensation eligibility and is directly at odds with the law. Reimburse DOE contractors for many of their legal costs to fight claims even though the federal law says the secretary of energy must disallow any legal costs to oppose claims once there is a positive physician's panel determination. Direct the physicians panel to apply the standards of causation from dozens of states where DOE has labs and factories, rather than apply a uniform federal standard of causation. In New Mexico, this means workers will be far less likely to win compensation for diseases such as asbestosis when compared with DOE lab workers in California. Congress called for a "timely, uniform and adequate" system of compensation. Leave workers high and dry without anyone to pay their claim if they were harmed when their employer had purchased worker compensation insurance polices from private companies. DOE has left a huge hole in the safety net, even though it could have simply ordered its current contractors to step in and pay the claims on a "self-insured" basis. The bottom line: Few if any deserving workers will ever get compensation under these rules. Cold warrior poisoned That is bad news for Alex Smith, of Cochiti Lake. He is one of three former Los Alamos workers who was poisoned by mercury while operating a mercury distillation unit in the K-Stock Room in 1948. Dr. Harriet Hardy, a rising star in the field of occupational medicine, was spending a year at Los Alamos. She made the diagnosis of mercury poisoning based on classic signs - like a blue line in the gums - in Smith and his co-workers. Smith has suffered neurological problems that are likely due to mercury. When he retired from Los Alamos in the early 1980s, Mr. Smith was told by Los Alamos lab doctors that the mercury poisoning episode had never occurred - as if to suggest it was all in his head. But recently, with help from the Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety, he has obtained Hardy's original memos from 1948 and her autobiography, which describe how lab Director Norris Bradbury backed her up in her decision to shut down the mercury still over the "[l]oud complaints" of lab scientists who were using the mercury. DOE's mendacity What motivates DOE to take a law intended to help the truly deserving and victimized Cold War employees of this country and turn it on its head? DOE doesn't want to spend money to compensate sick workers from its budget if it means less money for environmental cleanup, science or its defense programs. Astonishingly, while DOE spends $7 billion per year cleaning up contaminated dirt and poisonous nuclear waste that threatens nearby communities, it resists paying the legitimate costs of helping workers who were poisoned on the job. Toxic dirt is getting treated a heck of a lot better than the toxic work force. This ugly reality compelled a bipartisan group of seven U.S. senators - led by Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat - to deliver a stinging rebuke to Spencer Abraham, the Bush administration's secretary of energy. They wrote: "We believe the (worker compensation) regulations in key respects are at odds with the plain language of the statute and with Congressional intent and shortchange injured workers who deserve full compensation." Cancer claim lagging Congress divided responsibilities between the DOE and the Department of Labor. Labor administers claims for radiation-related cancers, beryllium disease and silicosis. It makes a single lump sum payment of $150,000 plus the medical care. Nearly 500 New Mexican workers have filed for these benefits and fewer than 10 have been approved. The main reason for the delay is that radiation exposures have to be estimated by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in order to determine "whether it is as likely as not" that radiation exposure caused the cancer. And the national institute finally issued its rules in early May. For many workers, it is unlikely that radiation doses can ever be estimated accurately because many exposures went unmonitored. Jonathan Garcia is an example. A former heavy equipment operator, he developed leukemia while working at the Los Alamos "hot dump". He has told us how he was exposed to the most radioactive wastes at Los Alamos and frequently went unmonitored. His experience is not uncommon. In fact, at DOE sites in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, Congress gave radiation-exposed workers the benefit of the doubt when they got certain radiation-related cancers and were not monitored properly. This same benefit of the doubt was also provided to uranium miners under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Given DOE's intransigence, Congress also should look at radiation-exposed workers in New Mexico to see whether they should also get the same benefit of the doubt. Congress is the solution Bingaman and Rep. Tom Udall, a Santa Fe Democrat, held a community meeting with 300 sick workers and their families in Espa§ola on May 11. DOE Assistant Secretary Beverly Cook, who is responsible for the DOE worker compensation program, was summoned to New Mexico to hear firsthand the problems wrought by her agency. Whether DOE has discovered or cares that its rules are unworkable still is unclear. But what did happen is that Bingaman and Udall are now focused on finding a solution. Obviously, Congress needs to acknowledge that DOE has a conflict of interest in helping workers with occupational illnesses. It needs to give contractor workers the choice of seeking worker compensation benefits from the Department of Labor or from the state worker compensation program. Congress should also take the DOE, its contractors and insurance companies out of the equation by having Labor issue the checks. That way DOE won't have a chance to undermine the interests of sick workers because it won't be controlling the purse strings. Meanwhile, Congress needs to take a closer look at whether workers in New Mexico deserve the benefit of the doubt given to workers in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. These basic steps are needed to address some of the unpaid costs shouldered by those who helped win the Cold War. © The Albuquerque Tribune. ***************************************************************** 41 The big con: Cleanup vs. B Reactor museum Published June 2, 2002 The U.S. government is usually grateful for patriotic service, but it seems to have decided to make an exception in the case of the B Reactor. It is difficult to know just how far up the ingratitude runs, but you can be sure it is above the head of Richland Department of Energy Manager Keith Klein. Klein wrote a letter April 19 to the Hanford Reach National Monument advisory committee. In it, he said that turning the B Reactor into a museum - an idea that has been pursued around here for at least the last 10 years - is commendable but not an appropriate use of federal cleanup money. Baloney. If federal money can be spent on a museum for Lawrence Welk, it should be available to honor the thousands of people who labored at Hanford at B Reactor to build one of the bombs that ended World War II. By linking everything to "cleanup" funds, the Department of Energy seeks the high ground. But guess what: DOE fell in the swamp, and that's not the easiest thing to do out here in the desert. About 60 years ago, some of the genius of America turned to development of nuclear power. The government focused attention and plenty of money on directing that development toward making bombs. The government urged workers to stay on the job. At the recent Hanford Safety Expo at TRAC, replicas of buttons given away at the first expo, before the bombs were built, urged workers to see H.E.W. (Hanford Engineering Works) through "To Final Victory." It was considered the patriotic thing to do. It is easy to imagine that some appointed bureaucrat from Washington, D.C., or even elected officials who are not from here, could miss the significance of the B Reactor. But not people who know this Washington. Those who labored at B Reactor and those who labored at other Hanford installations in the later years understood that this one reactor was symbolic of the entire war effort here. From the huge room where workers manually loaded the rods into the reactor, all the way out to the steel kettles filled with rocks to facilitate an emergency shutdown, this is a special place. Here Enrico Fermi and the president of DuPont, plus a few others, huddled after the reactor went critical for the first time, then shut itself down. A worker asked if they were trying to figure out what went wrong. No, he was told, they were putting together a pool as to when the reactor would restart itself. Which it soon did. B Reactor has been named a nuclear historic landmark by the American Nuclear Society. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. Do we want to take away money from cleanup to preserve the B Reactor? No. But that's a shell game being played by the Department of Energy. It can find the money to clean up and preserve the B Reactor as a museum, rather than just put a mound of earth over it and try to forget the sacrifices, triumphs and the part in the ultimate victory in World War II that it represents. All anyone in Department of Energy headquarters or some other government agency has to do is work a tenth as much - no, make that a thousandth as much - as any one of those folks who sweated in the desert making the world safe for democracy. The money's there. It's the gratitude that's missing. What's your opinon? Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 42 U.S. Orders Design of New Weapons Plant (washingtonpost.com) By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 3, 2002; Page A03 The Bush administration has ordered conceptual design work started for a new $2 billion to $4 billion plant that would produce plutonium triggers for the U.S. nuclear weapons force beginning in 2020, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The triggers will be needed even though President Bush last month signed an agreement with Russia to reduce the number of U.S. deployed nuclear warheads by two-thirds, from 6,000 today to 1,700 to 2,200 over the next 10 years. That is because the plutonium in the current triggers on the thermonuclear weapons is expected to decay. The United States has announced that many of the approximately 4,000 warheads taken out of operational status under the U.S.-Russia agreement will be kept in a ready reserve. The triggers, called "pits," provide a small atomic burst that creates the nuclear fusion explosion in the more powerful thermonuclear weapons. Pit production, which took place at Rocky Flats, Colo., ended in 1989. A small pit capability is being developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, but the administration's Nuclear Posture Review completed earlier this year said that "having the ability to produce pits is important to ensure the future viability of the nation's nuclear deterrent." A nuclear expert, Dale E. Klein, vice chancellor of the the University of Texas System, once described pits as resembling "bowling balls encased in stainless steel or beryllium." "We need to have the capacity to manufacture certified pits to maintain the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent into the future," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Friday. Although the administration is planning to produce new pits, debate is still taking place on how to dispose of the thousands of old pits removed from dismantled nuclear weapons. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League of Aiken, S.C., located near the Energy Department's Savannah River site, has complained about the danger of shipping 7,000 old pits there for dismantling. "Plutonium disposition facilities have been sold as nonproliferation missions at the same time DOE [the Department of Energy] has secretly been planning and upgrading its capabilities to fabricate 100-500 new plutonium pits per year at Savannah River," the environmental group said in a report last year. Plans call for site evaluation for the pit production facility to begin in September. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 43 [OFFTOPIC:1174] Irradiated beef goes mainsream Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 23:40:08 -0500 (CDT) Here's one more item for the day. -ixy http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/365839p-2956924c.html Irradiated ground beef goes mainstream By ANN MERRILL Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune (April 17, 2002 05:21 p.m. EDT) - If irradiated ground beef sounds a bit spooky, a bit futuristic, think again. You already might be eating it. Two years after its national debut in Minneapolis grocery stores, irradiated ground beef is available at thousands of supermarkets across the country. And in a move that could open the irradiation floodgates in the $115 billion fast-food industry, Edina, Minn.-based International Dairy Queen has begun testing it at two Minnesota stores. "This is historic," said Ron Eustice, executive director of the Minnesota Beef Council. "In two short years, we've grown from the zero to the point now where irradiated ground beef is expanding rapidly... ." The growing availability of irradiated ground beef gives many consumers confidence the burgers they cook medium rare on the back-yard grill won't make them sick and that the burgers slung by a teenage cook at a fast-food joint are safe. Although opponents of irradiation, which kills bacteria, continue to question its safety, the process has received all the necessary government approvals and the support of several health organizations. And a growing number of companies are betting that one day irradiated ground beef will be as common as pasteurized milk. Hungry for growth and increased sales, they see irradiation as a way to improve the safety, reputation and shelf life of their products. Mary Lynne Cox, owner of the Dairy Queen in Hutchinson, Minn., agreed to be one of two national test sites for irradiated ground beef, which arrives at her store as frozen patties. "Anything I can do to feed my customers a healthy product makes sense," she said. It's close to noon at her Cox's Dairy Queen on Main Street. Senior citizens, workers, and mothers with young children filed in for lunch. Those buying burgers said they have few qualms about the ground beef. "I was aware of (irradiation), but I don't have a problem with it. I had a burger here yesterday, too," said Craig Schmeling. Although restaurants are not required by law to inform consumers that they're using irradiated ground beef, many, including the two Dairy Queens, do. Dairy Queen spokesman Dean Peters said there has been very little negative reaction. Sales at the two stores actually have gone up, driven in part by recent promotions, he said. The company is taking a crawl-before-you-run approach to irradiated burgers, Peters said. "We're considering expanding to six or eight stores around the area, but have not made any rollout decisions" for the chain's nearly 6,000 stores, he said. Elsewhere, most food-service operators generally have not sought much attention about the use of irradiated ground beef. They're unsure of consumer reaction: Will customers, suspicious of irradiation, shun - or worse yet, picket - their business? Or will guests applaud the move as an effort at improving food safety? Ground beef processors, whether they sell irradiated meat to food-service operators or grocers, send their meat in refrigerated trucks to irradiation facilities, such as the SureBeam plant in Sioux City, Iowa. The ground beef, already in its final packaging, is unloaded and put on a conveyor belt. High-energy electrons are focused into a beam and scanned across the meat for a few seconds, disrupting DNA chains of bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli O157:H7. Irradiation has been used for nearly 20 years on food products such as wheat flour, potatoes and spices, and on medical supplies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the process for beef in 1997, followed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2000. The electron-beam technology has received support from the American Medical Association, World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It does not use radioactive materials or leave any radioactive residue. The flexibility in cooking irradiated meat is a big appeal, said Mike Harper, executive chef at St. Paul-based Wildside Caterers, which provides food for the suites at Minnesota Wild hockey games. "We wanted to serve a hamburger, but if we cook ground beef well done and then put it in the suites, it becomes a pitiful product," he said. Now, with irradiated ground beef, "we don't have to cook it to death," so it holds up better in catering. The main advantage of irradiation is food safety, but it also extends shelf life. Fresh ground beef has a shelf life of 15 to 18 days. Irradiated, it's 30 to 40 days. Irradiation adds a couple of cents to the cost of each burger, about 10 to 15 cents per pound. There's movement in grocery stores too, where about a dozen supermarkets in the Peoria, Ill., market are testing irradiated fresh ground beef. The move is significant because about 80 percent of retail ground beef is sold fresh, and until recently the only irradiated ground beef being sold was in the frozen meat case. The fresh ground beef is being sold under the Fairview Farms label next to regular ground beef in a case that features educational materials, said Gary Rhodes, spokesman for Kroger. "It's too early" to gauge consumer acceptance, he said. Kroger gets its irradiated meat from Excel Corp., a leading U.S. beef processor and a subsidiary of Minnetonka-based Cargill Inc. Some, however, don't want the choice. When grocery stores in Peoria began selling the fresh irradiated ground beef two months ago, several groups protested, including Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader. Irradiation opponents have raised questions about the safety of irradiation and potential health problems tied to today's large-scale farming practices, as well as concerns that irradiation will allow processors to become lax on cleanliness standards. http://www.nandotimes.com/healthscience/story/365839p-2956924c.html ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************