***************************************************************** 02/05/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.31 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 US: An Orgy of Defense Spending 2 US: Insurers cannot exclude terrorism 3 Greens decide to remain in Government at least until Parliament vote 4 Renewable energy to drive French power investments 5 Germany: Siemens nuclear factory in Hanau to be pulled down 6 Europe: Chain Reaction 7 US: TVA backs ice condenser safety 8 Russia's nuclear plants increase share of electricity exports 9 US: NRC Contracts for Iodine Block Drug 10 US: Defense dominates budget 11 US: Bush Administration Unveils 2003 Budget 12 US: Fed budget might cut Nevada programs 13 US: Editorial: Put an end to bunker mentality 14 US: How the Departments Fare Under the Bush Budget 15 US: Critics say public concerns on TVA tritium production ignored 16 US: Bush Pledges Defiance on GAO at Greenbrier Retreat 17 US: Paducah cut for plant work may not stand 18 US: Should people be concerned about used fuel security? NUCLEAR REACTORS 19 US: Groups Calls for Leadership on Indian Point Security 20 Hungarian official says leak at Romanian nuclear plant poses no 21 US: Siegfried: Oconee Plant Nuclear Material Safe 22 US: Browns Ferry has reason to celebrate: Continuous run record set NUCLEAR SAFETY 23 US: Radiation pill supply urged 24 UN to help Georgia tighten atom safety after event 25 US: NEXT@CNN: Why is it so important to protect nuclear plants? NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 26 US: Agency needs funds for low-level lawsuit 27 US: Bush proposal would boost Yucca Mountain budget 40 percent 28 US: Abraham's culpable works go unexamined 29 Germany nuclear waste shipment en route for Britain 30 Kazakh nuclear fuel plant to benefit from new US-Kazakh joint 31 US: NUCLEAR WASTE BUDGET: DOE seeks more funds for dump 32 US: Debate rages over U.S. nuclear dumping ground 33 US: Brian Greenspun: Transporting terror (Yucca) 34 US: DOE plans 'temporary' nuke dump at Yucca 35 US: IEER: DOE Makes Wrong Choice by Selecting Yucca Mountain 36 US: Debate rages over U.S. nuclear dumping ground 37 US: DOE Landfill for nuke waste due to open May 1 38 US: WOTR: Nevada must not become the nation's nuclear-dump site, by NUCLEAR WEAPONS 39 US: 'Nova' breaks silence on U.S. operation with atomic consequences 40 Arms production to be pooled - 41 Russian Pacific Fleet calls Chechen rebel plot to hijack nuclear 42 Russia: Nuclear Rockets 43 US: Funds would boost readiness of test site 44 INDIA: Atomic Energy panel wants no-fly zones over N-installations US DEPT. OF ENERGY 45 LBNL Item on the City of Berkeley Council Agenda February 5, 2002 46 Test Site cleanup efforts lose funds in Bush budget 47 DOE: A federal priority 48 A closer look: Los Alamos on alert 49 National labs given more, less in budget 50 Safety woes tied to ORNL exposure incidents 51 Oak Ridge gains DOE budget thumbs 52 Funding for SNS looking good 53 DOE: OR cleanup efforts mediocre 54 Opinion: Oak Ridge gains a big thumbs-up from Gov. Sundquist, DOE 55 DOE budget details 56 Proposal reduces SRS cleanup funds 57 Tri-Cities needs help with vitrification crush OTHER NUCLEAR 58 NASA Proposes Atomic Rocket Program 59 IAEA says Georgia nuclear devices now safely stored 60 IAEA Daily Press Review Date 2002-02-04 Number 18 61 US to build nuclear-powered craft for deep space exploration ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 An Orgy of Defense Spending February 5, 2002 Robert Scheer: An Orgy of Defense Spending Bush's 'axis of evil' rhetoric fabricates a need. Now we get to see just how cowardly the Democrats in Congress can be. President Bush has proposed the most preposterous military buildup in human history--annual spending of $451 billion by 2007--and nary a word of criticism has been heard from the other side of the aisle. The president is drunk with the popularity that his war on terrorism has brought, and those sober Democrats and Republicans, who know better, are afraid to wrestle him for the keys to the budget before he drives off a cliff. The red ink that Bush wants us to bleed to line the pockets of the defense industry, along with the tax cuts for the rich, will do more damage to our country than any terrorist. The result will be an economically hobbled United States, unable to solve its major domestic problems or support meaningful foreign aid, its enormous wealth sacrificed at the altar of military hardware that is largely without purpose. Why the panic to throw billions more at the military when even the Pentagon brass have told us it is not needed? Our military forces, much maligned as inadequate by Bush during the election campaign, proved to be lacking in nothing once the administration decided to stop playing footsie with the Taliban and eliminate those monsters of our own creation. It was obviously not a lack of hardware that made us vulnerable to the cruelty of Sept. 11 but rather a failure of will by President Clinton, and then Bush, to brand the Taliban as terrorists and then to take out the well-marked camps of Al Qaeda with the counterinsurgency machine we have been perfecting since the Kennedy administration. Clinton authorized the elimination of Osama bin Laden in 1998, but the spy agencies simply failed to execute the order. Neither, apparently, were they competent enough to track Al Qaeda agents from training camps in Afghanistan to flight schools in Florida. All this even though these agencies possess secret budgets of at least $70 billion a year, combined. Despite the ability to read license plates from outer space and scan the world's e-mail, our intelligence agencies lost the trail of terrorists who easily found cover with lap dancers in strip joints. The bottom line is that we need sharper agents, not more expensive equipment. There is not an item in the Bush budget that will make us more secure from the next terrorist attack. That being obvious, Bush is now resorting to the tried and true "evil empire" rhetorical strategy, grouping the disparate regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." This alleged axis then becomes the rationale for a grossly expanded military budget, the idea being that the United States must be prepared to fight a conventional war on three fronts. However, no such axis exists. North Korea is a tottering relic of a state whose nuclear operation was about to be bought off under the skilled leadership of the South Korean government when Bush jettisoned the deal. Iraq and Iran have been implacable foes for 25 years, and both were despised by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, a key Muslim ally of the United States, Saudi Arabia, produced 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers--and Bin Laden. Saudi Arabia is also where Al Qaeda does its biggest fund-raising and yet, inexplicably, it is excluded from the new enemies list. Even if the accepted goal were the overthrow of the three brutal regimes targeted by President Bush, that would hardly requirean expansion of a war machine built to humble the Soviet Union in its prime. Is Bush the younger now telling us that his father failed to topple Saddam Hussein because he lacked sufficient firepower? The road to Baghdad was wide open after we obliterated the vaunted Iraqi tank army in a matter of weeks. Or does Bush the younger have even more grandiose plans in mind? His astonishing budget makes sense only if we are planning to use our mighty military in a pseudo-religious quest to create a super-dominant Pax Americana. Bizarre as that sounds, it may be the real framework for Bush's proposed spending orgy. In any case, almost every non-American speaker at the World Economic Forum in New York expressed fear at this specter. Even our own Bill Gates was alarmed at the United States' apparent hubris: "People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us." Is it too much to ask that these billions, our billions, be spent to enhance our security rather than further erode it? Robert Scheer writes a syndicated column. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 2 Insurers cannot exclude terrorism OrlandoSentinel.com: Business By Greg Groeller | Sentinel Staff Writer Posted February 5, 2002 Florida has rejected a move by insurance companies to limit terrorism coverage in their commercial property policies. Insurers nationwide have been clamoring for a "terrorism exclusion" since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, which cost the industry an estimated $50 billion to $70 billion. The industry says it needs to limit its exposure because it could not weather the financial shock of another large-scale attack such as the one that destroyed New York's World Trade Center. Only Florida and California have refused to allow a terrorism exclusion in policies issued within their states. More than 30 other states have already agreed to let insurers limit their coverage of damage from large-scale attacks involving weapons such as bombs or hijacked planes. Chemical, biological and nuclear attacks are still covered. Tami Torres, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Insurance, said Monday the agency may reconsider its decision later in the year. "At this time, we do not plan on approving exclusions of terrorism coverage on commercial properties," she said. A month ago, Florida regulators said they were close to reaching an exclusion agreement with Insurance Services Office Inc., the New Jersey-based outfit representing the industry in negotiations with the states. But those talks broke down after the industry didn't accept a proposal by Florida to rescind the limitations if Congress eventually creates a federal emergency fund to help with payouts from a future attack, Torres said. Regulators also decided there was not enough evidence to support the argument that the threat of more terrorism was disrupting the state's insurance market, Torres said. Only about a dozen commercial-property owners -- mostly in South Florida -- have called to complain about their skyrocketing insurance rates, she said. Of the 400 insurers operating in Florida, 246 have applied for terrorism exclusions, Torres said, though 91 have since withdrawn their applications in recent weeks and no one has filed for an exclusion in nearly a month. Insurance officials said Monday they fear Florida's decision will lead to even higher premiums for large commercial and government properties considered at high risk for attack. Others, they warned, may have trouble finding a company willing to cover them. "There will be a certain type of business out there that is going to have trouble getting insurance because companies are not able to exclude terrorism," said Sam Miller, a spokesman for the Florida Insurance Council, which represents the state's insurers. Several large companies and government agencies in Central Florida have seen their property-insurance rates soar in recent months. Orange County, for example, is now paying twice as much as a year ago to insure buildings such as the convention center and the 24-story courthouse in downtown Orlando. At the same time, the county's deductible has doubled to $500,000 and its coverage limit has slipped from $1 billion to $600 million. Hotels, large office buildings and theme parks also could be susceptible to rate increases, insurance officials said. Bob Jimenez, a spokesman for Walt Disney Co., said Monday the company insures its properties and businesses in Central Florida through a combination of private and self-insurance policies. He would not say whether Disney's rates have risen since Sept. 11. Insurers are hoping Congress approves an emergency fund soon, figuring it will calm the industry and put the brakes on rising rates. "Hopefully, Congress is going to make this whole issue moot in the next few weeks," Miller said. Greg Groeller can be reached at 407-420-5471 or ggroeller@orlandosentinel.com. Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel ***************************************************************** 3 Greens decide to remain in Government at least until Parliament votes on nuclear power HS Home 4.2.2002 - Soininvaara: decision could affect party's position in coalition A joint meeting of the Delegate Council and the Parliamentary Group of the Green League voted on Sunday to continue in the five-party coalition Government until Parliament votes on the application to build a fifth commercial nuclear reactor. If Parliament rejects a new nuclear power plant, the Greens will continue in the Government without holding a separate meeting. The Chairman of the party, Social Services Minister Osmo Soininvaara, feels that the party’s decision could have an impact on the party’s position in the Government. The Greens voted down a proposal calling for an immediate withdrawal from the Government, and another one stating that the party would continue in the coalition no matter what Parliament decides on the nuclear issue. In addition to Soininvaara, the Greens have one other minister in the Government - the Minister of the Environment Satu Hassi. Soininvaara warned of a possible risk that the present situation, in which the Greens are debating possible withdrawal from the Government, might affect discussions within the coalition. He also said that he believes that supporters of the Greens will accept Sunday’s decision quite well. The decision was made after three and a half hours of discussions, three separate proposals, and two votes. The meeting was held behind closed doors. Soininvaara said that the discussions involved the kinds of issues that "are not discussed within earshot of the other Government partners". The discussions were called constructive by many of the participants. Erkki Pulliainen, the only member of the Parliamentary group to vote for withdrawing from the Government, said that the debate was "tough", and that he accepts the democratic decision, and he does not see the situation as a split within the party. Soininvaara said after the meeting that he is looking forward to a debate on Finnish energy policy of a high standard. Both Soininvaara and Satu Hassi said that they expect Parliament to reject the proposal for a new nuclear power plant. "We have a better starting point than in 1993. The studies commissioned by the Government for its climate strategy - as well as other research - lead to the conclusion that Finland has options in its energy alternatives", Hassi said. Previously in HS International Edition: Finnish Greens consider possible withdrawal from government over nuclear issue (29.1.2002) Helsingin Sanomat ***************************************************************** 4 Renewable energy to drive French power investments FRANCE: February 4, 2002 PARIS - France said last week it would boost investment in renewable energy including wind power and curb energy demand to prevent electricity shortfalls over the next nine years. In a report to parliament, which is likely to set the first formal framework for electricity investments as the market is liberalised, the industry ministry said 21 percent of France's energy needs must be captured from wind and water by 2010. Renewable energy, which covers 15 percent of French consumption, will be boosted mainly by doubling wind powered generation to 14,000 megawatts, or 20 to 35 additional terawatt hours. Hydropower will also provide an additional eight TWh. At the same time, demand for power will also have to be controlled as the phasing out of coal and fuel fired generation may cause a shortfall for peak power from 2008, the report said. It proposed that France, the world's top power exporter, should study demand in Europe to try to curb exports during periods of high demand, and to cover peak demand from existing thermal units or by building new generation. In a statement with the report, the ministry made no mention of nuclear power which makes up 76 percent of French power production, but which is seen as a politically sensitive topic due to the presence of Greens in the centre-left government ahead of French presidential and other elections from April. REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 5 Germany: Siemens nuclear factory in Hanau to be pulled down BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 4, 2002 Text of report "Nuclear factory about to be pulled down" by German news magazine Der Spiegel on 4 February The Siemens nuclear factory in Hanau in Hesse, which has never been put into operation, will be pulled down. As early as this month, the dismantling of the plant for the production of plutonium fuel rods, which cost about 700m euros, will start. Thus, the large Munich concern is making a clean break with the project, which has been controversial right from the beginning and swallows up 1m euros in maintenance costs every year. The construction of the fuel element plant, which was supposed to replace the Alkem nuclear factory shut down by former Hesse Environment Minister Joschka Fischer (Greens), was discontinued in 1995. For fear of lengthy legal controversies, Siemens refrained from completing the plant. The sale of the almost completed factory to Russia later considered by Siemens was thwarted. The concern is now hoping that it will at least be able to sell part of the production facilities and above all the area to be vacated by autumn. If this does not succeed, the concern will face additional costs in the tens of millions; then the 2-metre-thick reinforced concrete walls would also have to be dismantled. Even without pulling them down, the liquidation of the nuclear locations in the region will cost Siemens another 728m euros. The company appropriates this amount primarily for the disposal and dismantling of old Alkem facilities that were exposed to radiation. Source: Der Spiegel, Hamburg, in German 4 Feb 02 p 18 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 6 Europe: Chain Reaction TIME Europe Magazine: Chain Reaction -- Feb. 11, 2002 Governments across Europe are opting for nuclear power in an attempt to avert projected energy shortages as fossil-fuel supplies diminish. But will opposition to these plans stop a renaissance of nuclear power? BY CHARLES P. WALLACE/HELSINKI [mail@TIMEatlantic.com] MINDAUGAS KULBIS for TIME The E.U. wants the Lithuanian government to close down Ignalina by 2009 When it comes to energy, resource-poor Finland needs a wide array of technology to meet its needs. Energy sources range from hydro-electric power to burning wood left over by the country's paper industry. Now the Finnish government has approved plans to build the nation's fifth nuclear power station, its first new reactor in more than two decades. That's bad news in much of the rest of Europe, where the public and politicians are dead set against new reactors. Last week, the upper house of the German parliament passed a law that will phase out the country's 19 nuclear reactors over the next two decades. In Austria, more than 915,000 signed a petition in January demanding that the Czech Republic close its Temelin nuclear power station or face an Austrian veto of its application to join the European Union. In Lithuania, the E.U. has pressured the government to shut down the Soviet-era Ignalina power station, similar in design to the ill-fated reactor in Chernobyl. In Western Europe, only France, which currently has 58 working reactors, continues to rely heavily on nuclear power. But even there politicians are wary of approving new nuclear plants in an election year. None of that has dissuaded the Finns from planning a new reactor on the site of one of two existing nuclear facilities. "It's not an either-or situation anymore," says Juhani Santaholma, president of finergy, the Finnish Energy Industries Federation. "We need nuclear power for the long term." The Finnish cabinet's decision to approve the plant last month followed a decade of strife. A new plant was first proposed in 1993, but Parliament voted against it. And even this time the cabinet was sharply divided, voting by only 10-6 to approve. Parliament will open debate on the new application Feb. 13, with the outcome likely to be close. Osmo Soininvaara, chairman of the Green League and Minister of Health and Social Services in Finland's coalition government, says members are evenly divided: one-third in favor, one-third against and one-third undecided. "I am quite optimistic" that the nuclear application will be rejected, he says, even though a no vote might force the Greens to leave the government. Finland clearly faces a bleak energy future. Government estimates suggest that electricity production will have to increase by 2,850 megawatts by the year 2010 and 3,800 megawatts by 2015 to meet expected demand. Nuclear power now accounts for 27% of electricity production. The country depends on imports from its neighbors for 71% of its energy. The largest supplier is Russia, selling Finland electricity as well as natural gas. According to Timo Haapalehto, a senior adviser in the Ministry of Trade and Industry's Energy Department, the government has concluded it can either build a nuclear power station or ramp up imports of natural gas from Russia. "We don't think it would be a good idea to depend on one country for so much of our energy needs," he says. Finland gets about a third of its imports from Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But Finnish industry studies suggest that their excess capacity will disappear as demand for electricity rises in those countries. And Finland has agreed to meet its obligations on greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires it to cut production of carbon dioxide to below 1990 levels. That rules out burning more oil or coal. According to Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), the privately held electricity consortium that proposed the new plant, the facility would be built on the site of an existing nuclear station at Loviisa, on the coast east of Helsinki, or Olkiluoto, on the country's western coast, to save money on infrastructure such as waste storage. It would be capable of producing between 1,000 megawatts and 1,600 megawatts. If the plant is approved by Parliament, it will begin producing electricity in 2008. "If we exclude nuclear power, it won't be possible for industry to grow as quickly," says Finergy's Santaholma. Germany's electricity producers make the same economic argument for their country, but to no avail. The government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder rules in coalition with the Green Party, which made abolition of nuclear power its No. 1 priority. The phase-out of nuclear-power was approved by the Bundestag in December and will be signed into law this month. The new law sets the overall working time of nuclear reactors at an average age of 32 years, meaning most stations will have between 11 and 13 years of life remaining, with the last station closing in 2020. "Germany is leaving nuclear-power production more quickly than any other European nation," says Jürgen Trittin, a leading member of the Green Party who is the Minister for the Environment. "This change sends signals far beyond Europe." Perhaps so, but signals from the rest of Europe are decidedly mixed. Swedish voters approved a referendum in 1980 to phase out nuclear power, but the decision was not binding on the country's Parliament and nuclear power has steadily increased in the country partly because of a shift in opinion. In polls, 75% of those questioned opposed nuclear power in 1986, a figure that fell to 44% in 2001. Nevertheless, no new reactors have been ordered and the Barseback power station near Malmo is to be closed by 2003, partly because of objections from nearby Denmark. The Czech Republic is plunging determinedly ahead with its Temelin reactor despite the wrath of its neighbors in Austria, just 60 km away. Temelin's first reactor went fully on line Jan. 11 and the second is scheduled to follow in mid-2003. Austria has no nuclear stations and is fiercely opposed to Temelin, but the campaign against it is colored by politics. A petition campaign against Temelin was launched by the far-right Freedom Party — which many Austrians saw as a thinly disguised excuse by the anti-immigrant party to stir up resistance to European Union enlargement to the east. In the end, a compromise solution is likely to prevail. In November Austria and the Czech Republic agreed on a package of concessions including $2.7 million in further safety enhancements. While Temelin's two pressurized water reactors are of Soviet design, Westinghouse Electric and a number of other foreign companies have been brought in to upgrade the facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last November concluded that most of the 73 safety issues identified at Temelin had been resolved and the remaining issues "would not from the experts' standpoint preclude the safe operation" of Temelin. The IAEA could give no such assurances concerning the Ignalina power station in Lithuania, and the European Union is telling Lithuania that its membership in the E.U. would be contingent on shutting it down. The plant, built by the Soviet Union in 1983, now provides 80% of the country's electricity and Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said the expense of closing it "should not be just Lithuania's problem." The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is administering pledges totalling $184 million to help pay for shutting down the first reactor by 2005. The E.U. wants the station completely closed by 2009. And somehow, funds must be found to provide Lithuania with the electricity it is giving up by closing Ignalina. One of the oldest nuclear plants in Europe is the 55-year-old station at Sellafield about 480 km northwest of London. Critics have demanded for decades that it be closed, but the plant's operator has resisted the pressure and, in fact, is opening a new processing facility to produce mixed-oxide fuel. The Irish government, which would like to block the new facility, is seeking international arbitration, while Norway and the Northern Ireland Assembly also raised objections. But the watchdog Nuclear Installations Inspectorate granted a long-delayed operating license in December. France, with a highly developed nuclear industry, ranks No. 2 after the U.S. in number of working nuclear power plants. The last new plant was completed 1993, but last week the French daily La Tribune reported that Secretary of State for Industry Christian Pierret had urged Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to approve construction of the first of a new generation in pressurized nuclear reactors. That brought protests from the Green Party, which Jospin wants to retain as a coalition partner for the Socialists. The Greens want to cut France's production of nuclear energy from the current levels of 75% of the total to 60% by 2007. Despite the other strident opposition, the experience in France, Finland and the Czech Republic shows that nuclear power still has an important place in Europe, largely because there is no easy alternative. [http://www.time.com/ ***************************************************************** 7 TVA backs ice condenser safety Elizabethton Star - Online Edition By Kathy Helms-Hughes STAR STAFF Tennessee Valley Authority's proposed license amendment would change technical specifications to allow Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants to provide incore irradiation services for the U.S. Department of Energy. The change would allow TVA to insert up to 2,304 tritium-producing burnable absorber rods into the reactor core at Watts Bar to support DOE in maintaining the nation's tritium inventory for national defense purposes, according to TVA's amendment application. At Sequoyah, up to 2,256 tritium-producing rods would be inserted. Each core at Watts Bar and Sequoyah contain 193 fuel assemblies and each fuel assembly contains 264 fuel rods. In TVA's amendment request, the federal utility proposes to insert up to 24 rods in selected fuel assemblies adjacent to the 264 fuel rods. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, watchdog for the public, has made a proposed determination that the amendment request involves no significant hazards consideration. According to NRC, the change in operations would not involve a significant increase in the probability or consequences of an accident previously evaluated; would not create the possibility of a new or different kind of accident from any previously evaluated; or involve a significant reduction in a margin of safety. Kenneth Bergeron, a physicist who retired in 1999 from Sandia National Laboratories, spent years simulating tests on reactor meltdowns as well as comparing and evaluating concrete and steel containments vs. those which rely on ice condensers to prevent a meltdown. Bergeron believes tritium production would make the ice condensers even more vulnerable to accident. But Bergeron is not the only one to raise safety issues about ice condensers. In April 1995, Curtis Overall, a 17-year-employee of TVA, reported problems to TVA management concerning Watts Bar ice condenser containment design. He received threats at work, was reassigned, and later fired. He raised the safety problems to the NRC, and after filing complaint against TVA for job discrimination, was reinstated in 1998 by a federal judge. John Moulton, TVA media relations manager, said tritium tests performed at Sequoyah were successful. "We've looked at it and don't see any impact on the operation of either plant. We see no problem with the production of power and the production of tritium." Moulton said the idea is to produce tritium in the same cycle as electricity is being produced, and the tests proved it could be done. Moulton contacted TVA's expert on ice condensers, who was on travel. "He said that as far as the containment on ice condensers, we have thoroughly examined that and there will be no impact whatsoever by the production of tritium on additional heat or whatever the question might be." The expert also said the amount of tritium to be produced is very small and has little impact, according to Moulton. "He said all of this is addressed in our license amendment which has been published by the NRC in the Federal Register." The rods will be inserted during an outage "and we will continue to generate electricity. There will be no appreciable impact on the power plant at all," Moulton said. TVA's reactors are scheduled to begin tritium production in the fall of 2003. Copyright © 1996 - 2001 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. Direct questions or comments to webmaster@starhq.com [kfender@starhq.com] Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc., 300 Sycamore Street Elizabethton, Tennessee 37643 - 423.542.4151 ***************************************************************** 8 Russia's nuclear plants increase share of electricity exports BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 4, 2002 Moscow, 3 February: The share of nuclear power plants in Russia's electricity exports increased to 32.9 per cent in 2001 from 24.9 per cent in 2000, power monopoly Unified Energy Systems of Russia (UES) has announced in a press release. It said it is continuing efforts to optimize exports, laying special emphasis on cooperation with the power generating enterprises of the Ministry of Atomic Energy and other electricity producers... Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1049 gmt 3 Feb 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to ***************************************************************** 9 NRC Contracts for Iodine Block Drug Las Vegas SUN February 05, 2002 NEWARK, N.J.- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has signed a $1 million contract to buy up to 6 million doses of a drug that could help prevent thyroid cancer in the event of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant. The two-year contract with Anbex Inc. of Branchville, N.J., to supply potassium iodide pills was approved on Feb. 1, NRC spokeswoman Rosetta Virgilio said Tuesday. The NRC deal is in addition to the Department of Health and Human Services' purchase in December of 1.6 million doses of potassium iodide as a precaution against nuclear accidents or terrorist attacks on reactors. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, people living near nuclear plants have called for distribution of the drug, and some people have bought their own. HHS said last month that it planned to buy an additional 5 million to 10 million doses this year. One tablet is believed to protect an adult's thyroid gland for about 24 hours from the radioactive iodine that could be released in a reactor accident. The drug does not protect against other illnesses caused by radiation. In December, the NRC contacted 34 states with nuclear reactors or those within 10-mile emergency planning zones, asking if they were interested in receiving protective doses of the drug. So far, only Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and New Hampshire have said they are interested, Virgilio said. Virgilio called the purchase "a prudent measure." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 10 Defense dominates budget The Columbus Dispatch Tuesday, February 5, 2002 By Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief Stephen J. Boitano / Associated Press Government Printing Office employee Stephen Morbley stacks federal budget books for sale in Washington. President Bush sent his $2.13 trillion proposed 2003 budget to Congress yesterday, seeking an overall increase of 4 percent over the fiscal 2002 budget. Some of the Ohio projects in Bush's proposed budget: + Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant -- Money for cleanup at the site of the shuttered uranium-enrichment plant in Piketon would drop to $167.8 million from $174.2 million this year. Funds for worker re-training would drop to $1 million from $1.5 million. + Other Ohio nuclear sites -- $419.7 million would be allocated for cleanup at four U.S. Department of Energy sites in Ohio: Fernald, Mound, Ashtabula and Battelle Columbus Laboratory. Source: President Bush's proposed budget WASHINGTON -- President Bush's $2.13 trillion budget would boost national- security spending and slash taxes, but the administration wants to dramatically cut highway money to Ohio and other states to help finance the war on terrorism. The 2003 spending plan, which is likely to be altered by a Congress not eager to restrict domestic spending, was unveiled yesterday with an emphasis on the war and safeguarding U.S. borders. "We're unified in Washington on winning this war,'' President Bush told troops during a visit to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. "One way to express our unity is for Congress to set the military budget, the defense of the United States, as the No. 1 priority and fully fund my request.'' Bush is asking for about $66 billion more for defense and homeland security next year. But to help cover that cost, his budget would cut highway spending by $9 billion, to $22.6 billion. That would chop Ohio's share of federal highway money to $620 million, a decrease of about $280 million, and by about $280 million, from $900 million, said Brian Cunningham, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation. "If the numbers hold, it could be a big problem'' that could delay new construction projects or equipment purchases, Cunningham said. Administration officials say the cut is a result of declining gasoline-tax revenues, noting that in better economic times, highway spending rose. The Bush administration makes it clear in a 5-inch-thick stack of budget documents that the president is seeking to revamp the federal government's priorities. "In this war, our first priority must be the security of our homeland,'' Bush said in a budget message to Congress. "We have priorities at home, as well -- restoring health to our economy, above all. It is a bold plan, and it is matched by a bold agenda for government reform.'' Many of the figures are based on White House ratings of programs for effectiveness and management, with low marks resulting in less funding. Congressional Republicans praised the budget as a prudent way to meet security needs while reining in spending. "It's a responsible budget, and I'm glad the president understands the need to maintain fiscal discipline,'' said Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio, adding that he still wants to examine the details of Bush's defense increase. "His prioritization of resources toward homeland security and defense is appropriate. The modest increase for domestic discretionary funding is responsible, given the huge increases we've seen in the past several years and the amount of money that is already in the pipeline.'' But some Republicans indicated that not everyone is eager to endorse some of the domestic-spending cuts. "I'm not looking at that thing (Bush's budget) as gospel,'' said Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Navarre, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. Democrats complained that Bush is focusing on tax cuts to the detriment of needed domestic programs. The proposed 2003 budget "will put us further into deficit, use money from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that both parties called off-limits, and cut education, health- care, skills-training and rural programs,'' House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., said in a statement. Bush's budget includes $344 billion to extend the $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut that went into effect last year. Other tax provisions include a deduction for taxpayers who make charitable contributions but don't itemize, at a cost of $32.6 billion; and a tax credit of as much as $2,500, a variation on the president's voucher proposal to help pay private-school costs of students who move out of failing public schools, at a cost of $4.2 billion. The budget plan forecasts a $106 billion deficit for the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. It projects an $80 billion deficit for fiscal 2003, which begins Oct. 1. The administration does not expect surpluses until 2005, and even then only if money from the Social Security trust fund is counted. Overall, Bush would spend nearly 4 percent more next year than this, but that figure masks the large disparity between spending for defense and homeland security and spending for programs such as job training, environmental protection and highway funding. Defense costs would rise to about $379 billion, an increase of about 14.5 percent, the largest jump in military spending in two decades. Homeland-security spending would nearly double, reaching about $38 billion. But outside mandatory benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare, most nondefense spending would barely rise, and a number of programs would be cut. The U.S. Department of Labor budget would cut about $500 million from job-training programs, for instance, a move the administration says is part of a consolidation aimed at saving money while still helping hundreds of thousands of people find jobs. The budget also contains a call to rescind some of the spending already approved by Congress this year -- cuts that could include $5 million for a teacher-training program at COSI in Columbus. "I don't think they'll fly,'' Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Perry Township, said of cuts in this year's spending. "We all knew that we would have to see an increase in defense spending. We knew we would see an increase in spending for homeland security, and we knew some programs will get cut,'' said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. But the Bush budget is only "a beginning point. It's a place to start the discussion,'' he said. Dispatch Washington Bureau reporter Jack Torry contributed to this story. Copyright © 2002, The Columbus Dispatch. Content may not be ***************************************************************** 11 Bush Administration Unveils 2003 Budget Environment News Service: By Cat Lazaroff WASHINGTON, DC, February 4, 2002 (ENS) - President George W. Bush has released his fiscal year 2003 budget, dramatically boosting military spending and slashing domestic programs. The $2.13 trillion spending plan represents 3.7 percent increase over the current year, but includes cuts in numerous programs, including conservation spending. The budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins October 1, includes a $48 billion raise for defense programs - the largest such increase in almost 20 years. Homeland security, a major budget priority since the terrorist attacks of September 11, would receive $37.7 billion, almost twice the budget for such programs last year. [Bush] President Bush called today for massive increases in military spending (Photo courtesy The White House) "My budget provides the resources to combat terrorism at home, to protect our people, and preserve our constitutional freedoms," Bush said in releasing the budget. "Our new Office of Homeland Security will coordinate the efforts of the federal government, the 50 states, the territories, the District of Columbia, and hundreds of local governments: all to produce a comprehensive and far reaching plan for securing America against terrorist attack." The Bush plan includes billions of dollars to combat bioterrorism through research, improvements to hospitals and public health systems, stockpiling vaccines and antibiotics, and protection against natural disease outbreaks. Despite a five fold reduction in the project 10 year budget surplus - from $5.6 trillion to $1 trillion - President Bush also proposes to make his $1.35 trillion, 10 year tax cut plan, passed last summer, a permanent budget fixture. "By curtailing unsuccessful programs and moderating the growth of spending in the rest of government," Bush said, "we can well afford to fight terrorism, take action to restore economic growth, and offer substantial increases in spending for improved performance at low income schools, key environmental programs, health care, science and technology research, and many other areas." [vaccine] The Bush budget includes increased spending to combat bioterrorism, including stockpiling vaccines against diseases like anthrax (Photo by Joe Parker, courtesy U.S. Navy) To pay for these priorities, the Bush budget slashes spending for several environmental programs, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which would lose $300 million in funding. As he did last year, President Bush proposes to reduce funding for centralized enforcement activities at EPA, shifting about $10 million to the states to support local environmental enforcement. In another repeat of last year's White House budget, Bush proposes to cut funding for water projects at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, largely by placing a moratorium on the launch of new projects. Certain navigation projects, including dredging and upgrading locks and dams, would get funding boosts, as would environmental restoration efforts in the Florida Everglades and Columbia River Basin. Bush plans to raise money by leasing out mineral rights to some public lands - including the North Slope of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Congress has so far blocked the administration's efforts to open the pristine refuge to oil and natural gas drilling. Spending increases for conservation including full funding - more than $900 million - for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is supported by offshore oil and natural gas leases. National parks operations would receive $1.58 billion under the Bush budget, up about $107.5 million from last year, and national wildlife refuge funding would rise by $54 million. One notable increase would be Bush's $100 million request for cooperative conservation efforts under a new program, The Cooperative Conservation Initiative (CCI). The initiative would encourage private landowners to implement conservation projects with public land managers and local communities. [ANWR] The Bush budget calls for raising money by opening part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration (Photo courtesy Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) Half of the program's budget would be distributed to states to fund cost share grants for innovative conservation projects. The other $50 million would be used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service to fund cost share grants. Bush says he remains committed to eliminating the National Park Service's $4.9 billion maintenance backlog by 2006, providing about $663 million in fiscal year 2003. But conservation groups say that figure is far too little to meet the agency's needs. The Bush plan proposes a spending deficit of $80 billion for 2003 - the first budget deficit since 1998 - and another, smaller deficit of $14 billion in 2004. The administration projects that the federal government will overspend by $106 billion this year, largely due to vastly increased defense spending since September 11. © Environment News Service (ENS) 2001. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 12 Fed budget might cut Nevada programs Las Vegas SUN February 01, 2002 LAS VEGAS SUN WASHINGTON -- Nevada lawmakers are preparing for budget battles over Nevada programs that could be cut from federal funding rolls according to President Bush's proposed budget, due next week. The budget is a framework for Congress. Lawmakers make federal funding decisions during the year-long budget process, but ultimately President Bush must sign them into law. Among the programs that may be on Bush's chopping block are programs and projects that Congress and Bush approved just last year as part of the Labor and Health and Human Services spending bill. The programs have not yet received the money, and Bush apparently wants to "redirect" it to other priorities, congressional members said. A few of the programs include: + $1.75 million for the city of Las Vegas to use in existing work training programs to help laid-off workers. + $1 million to further develop the cancer institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. + $900,000 for a Clark County School District reading program called Project STARS. + $250,000 to update equipment in the neonatal unit at University Medical Center. The Bush administration also has proposed sacrificing hundreds of education programs in part to help pay off a deficit in the popular 30-year-old Pell Grant program, which benefits roughly 4.4 million college students, Education Secretary Rod Paige said this week. Among the programs is a $440,000 after-school project in Clark County designed to reduce the drop-out rate, a project promoted by Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. Berkley vows to preserve the money, spokesman Michael O'Donovan said. Betsy Fretwell, assistant city manager for the city of Las Vegas, said the city has not been notified that the displaced workers funding could be cut. "We've not been given any indication that the funding is at risk, and we're working with the delegation offices every day regarding the use of those funds," she said. "We're watching this with an eye to the future because these programs are important to the city and the citizens of the city." Among other proposed cuts in Bush's budget: + $1.7 million for a UNLV program that improves access to health care for people in rural Nevada. + $160,000 for a Clark County school-to-work program. + $420,0000 for laptop computers in an elementary-junior high school in Hawthorne. + $150,000 for a workforce learning summit sponsored by the Reno/Sparks Chamber of Commerce. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 13 Editorial: Put an end to bunker mentality Las Vegas SUN February 05, 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney uses high-minded rhetoric in defending his refusal to turn over records of secret meetings that his energy task force held with energy executives. Turning over the records, Cheney argues, would create a chilling effect, making it less likely that people in the future would offer "unvarnished" opinions to the president. "What's really at stake here is the ability of the president and the vice president to solicit advice from anybody they want in confidence," Cheney said a week ago. Cheney's argument sounds good, but it falls apart when you examine the Bush administration's hypocritical policy on the release of information involving communications with the White House. Last week the New York Times reported that two months ago the Bush administration approved the release to Congress of thousands of e-mail messages by top White House aides in the Clinton administration. Some of the e-mails included messages sent to and from Vice President Al Gore's senior aides and outside advisers. In Cheney's world, it would appear that executive privilege applies just to Republican administrations. The White House's withholding of the names of those who spoke with the energy task force also is selective. For instance, as the Los Angeles Times first reported last summer, the vice president departed once from his pledge to keep secret the names of people who met with his energy task force. That was regarding a May 15 meeting when Cheney and the energy task force sat down with executives who run companies that use alternative forms of energy, such as sun, wind and geothermal heat. Not coincidentally the White House divulged the names of the producers of clean energy sources just one day before Cheney's report formally was released, a period when there had been criticism that the administration had only listened to oil, gas and nuclear power executives. Cheney's hurried meeting with alternative-energy producers was a clumsy attempt to fend off suggestion s that the task force's report was largely written by oil, coal and nuclear power executives. It also demonstrates that Che! ney only cares about executive privilege when it is politically convenient. Dragging out the matter with the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm that is suing for the release of the energy task force records, is just postponing their inevitable disclosure. The more President Bush and Vice President Cheney strain to justify reasons for secrecy, the worse they look. Bush should spare his administration any further embarrassment and release the names of those people who met with the vice president's energy task force and also disclose what subjects they discussed. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 14 How the Departments Fare Under the Bush Budget The Washington Post Tuesday, February 5, 2002; Page A13 President Bush yesterday proposed a $2.13 trillion budget for next year that significantly increases spending for the military and homeland security while limiting funds for many domestic programs. The budget now goes to Congress, where – like all presidential budget proposals – it will be subjected to substantial revision. Also like other presidential budgets, the figures in the Bush budget can be viewed in a variety of ways. In some cases, analysts can argue that a department's budget is up, down or flat. The increases and decreases for each agency listed below are based on budget authority, the amount of money the law allows the government to commit to spending during the current fiscal year or future years. Some agencies prefer to think in terms of outlays, the amount of money the government proposes to spend in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Here's how each agency fared in the budget: AGRICULTURE Discretionary spending in the Agriculture Department would essentially stay the same, at $19.35 billion. The budget would increase spending on "homeland security" programs, such as disease prevention and nutrition for low-income families. The budget also assumes $73.5 billion in new crop subsidies over the next decade. The budget proposes a number of cuts for international food aid as well as programs to improve rural housing and telephone service. It eliminates roughly $150 million in congressional "earmarks" for research projects, and there are no new funds for a program to protect wetlands. The budget proposes an additional $146 million to protect the food supply from "intentional and unintentional risk." Spending on nutrition programs would grow to a record $41 billion. – John Lancaster COMMERCE The Commerce Department would spend about $5.2 billion – $14 million less than the estimate for the current fiscal year. As it did in last year's budget, the White House is proposing to slash the Advanced Technology Program, which helps fund promising high-tech ventures, on the grounds that the program often provides "unwarranted corporate subsidies." The administration is proposing an additional $93 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, partly to improve its storm forecasting, and an increase of $30 million for the Bureau of Export Administration to help prevent the shipment abroad of goods and technology that could be used by terrorists to make weapons. The Bureau of Economic Affairs would get an extra $10 million to upgrade U.S. economic statistics. – Paul Blustein DEFENSE The budget would boost military spending more than 14 percent to $379.3 billion in 2003, the biggest percentage increase since President Ronald Reagan began an arms buildup in 1981. Over the next five years, the Pentagon's account would increase $120 billion, to $451 billion – nearly the same peak level, adjusted for inflation, that Reagan reached in 1985. Much of the requested rise would cover higher pay for troops and improved housing and medical benefits. But it also would earmark $27 billion for the administration's war on terrorism, including $10 billion for contingency operations and $8 billion to protect U.S. troops abroad and at home. The proposal foresees no expansion in the number of active-duty troops. But the procurement account would rise from $61 billion this year to about $70 billion in 2003. The budget puts greater emphasis on developing pilotless drones and expanding intelligence capabilities. But it also funds more traditional big-ticket projects, including two new jet fighters – the Air Force's F-22 and the Navy's F/A-18E/F. A third plane still in development, the Joint Strike Fighter, also would be continued. – Bradley Graham EDUCATION The administration proposed a $50.3 billion budget for the Department of Education, a 3.7‚percent increase in discretionary appropriations for an agency whose budget has more than doubled since 1996. Budget authority, however, would rise 1‚percent. The proposal includes a $1 billion increase for Title I, which would raise spending in the agency's biggest education program for the disadvantaged to $11.3 billion. The budget also asks for a $100 million increase in early literacy programs and a $1 billion – or 13 percent – increase in special education funding. The budget includes an education tax credit that would provide as much as $2,500 a year in private school tuition for parents with children in failing schools and $375 million to fund school-choice demonstration programs and enhance charter schools. – Michael Fletcher ENERGY The administration is seeking $21.9 billion for the Department of Energy – $570 million more than last year – with much of the increase aimed at boosting security for nuclear weapons, strengthening nonproliferation programs with Russia and developing nuclear power plants for Navy vessels. The administration is seeking a $433 million increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration. The budget also contains a request for $1.3 billion for energy efficiency and renewables; $150 million for FreedomCAR, a research program to aid the development of cars powered by fuel cells; money to move forward on a controversial proposal to build a huge, centralized site for nuclear waste storage in Nevada; and an $800 million fund for expedited cleanup at selected nuclear weapons manufacturing sites. – Martha Hamilton and Walter Pincus EPA The president proposed to reduce spending for the Environmental Protection Agency from $7.9 billion this year to $7.6 billion in fiscal 2003, although agency officials said the aim is to eliminate $300 million in pork projects that were added by Congress despite the administration's objections. The budget includes $4.1 billion for general operations, the highest funding level ever for regulatory, enforcement and state grants, but would freeze hiring to fill vacancies in the enforcement division while shifting $15 million to the states for increased enforcement activities. The budget authority for the agency operating program actually would increase 2 percent over 2002. There is $20 million for a new watershed initiative to improve water quality and more funds to clean up abandoned industrial sites known as "brownfields." – Eric Pianin HHS Discretionary spending at the Department of Health and Human Services would rise 9 percent from the last fiscal year, primarily because of a massive infusion of cash for bioterrorism protection. Of the total $489 billion HHS request, about $429 billion is dedicated to mandatory programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The administration is requesting an additional $4.3 billion for bioterrorism protections such as vaccine development, lab improvements, hospital modernization and expansion of the National Pharmaceutical Drug Stockpile. The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the office of the secretary would receive the bulk of bioterror money. As he did last year, Bush is requesting an extra $190 billion over 10 years to begin providing prescription drug coverage to low-income Medicare recipients. Lawmakers in both parties say about $300 billion is needed to address the problem. Many health programs dealing with prevention and direct patient services would be trimmed or would receive no increases under the Bush budget. Hospitals would receive less in Medicaid reimbursement and graduate medical education funding. – Ceci Connolly HUD Bush's $31.4 billion budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposes a $2 billion rise in budget authority. It includes $204 million for 34,000 new housing vouchers to subsidize rental housing for the poor and adds $238 million to the HOME investment partnerships program for housing rehabilitation and to encourage home ownership among low- and moderate-income households. HUD proposes cutting the public housing capital fund by $438 million, while boosting the operating subsidy by $40 million. It wants to cut the community development grant program by $336 million, the amount earmarked this fiscal year for special purpose projects. HUD officials propose cutting the $25 million rural housing program, saying it should be merged with the Agriculture Department's program even though that agency has proposed a slight decrease in rural housing services. – Ellen Nakashima INTERIOR The Interior Department's $10.6 billion budget plan is virtually unchanged from a year ago, with significant increases for the National Park Service and management of Indian trust funds offset by cuts in the budgets of several other agencies. Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton highlighted a $100 million Cooperative Conservation Initiative, a new matching grant program for individuals, organizations and state and local governments to obtain federal funds for conservation projects. The Park Service budget rose $107 million, to $1.58 billion, and the administration requested $663 million to continue working on a maintenance backlog at parks and recreation areas. The department requested $159 million to reform the long-mismanaged Indian trust funds. – Guy Gugliotta JUSTICE Although the Justice Department reported an increase of 11 percent in budget authority and fee-funded and mandatory spending programs, the budget actually shows a decrease of 1 percent in the agency's discretionary budget authority, to $23.1 billion. The decrease is a result of supplemental funding added to the fiscal 2002 budget to fight terrorism. The Justice budget includes $2 billion more for counterterrorism enhancements, including $412 million for the FBI to improve intelligence-gathering, information technology and background investigations, and $734 million for the Immigration and Naturalization Service to beef up border patrols. The Drug Enforcement Administration budget would increase slightly, to $1.6 billion, and includes $24.6 million and 133 new positions for the drug diversion program. The Bureau of Prisons budget would stay virtually unchanged at $4.6 billion. The president is requesting the elimination of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, a $565 million program that reimburses states when they arrest illegal alien fugitives. – Cheryl W. Thompson LABOR The budget proposal for the Labor Department is $56.5 billion, a decrease of several percent. Eighty percent of Labor's budget involves mandatory spending for unemployment insurance and other programs in which the spending is determined by formula. The budget calls for a $1.8 billion drop in these mandatory programs, principally the result of a $4 billion decrease in projected unemployment benefits. But there are also cuts in discretionary spending – $545 million – in what Labor said were ineffective and duplicative programs. Overall, the budget for discretionary spending was $11.4 billion, down $1.1 billion. – Frank Swoboda STATE With added money for AIDS programs, government personnel and allies in the war on terrorism, the State Department would spend $1.2 billion more than last year, a 5.9 percent increase overall for international affairs programs. The budget includes $1.4 billion for security. The State Department, alone, shows an increase of 4‚percent in budget authority. An extra $226 million in economic aid would primarily benefit Pakistan and Jordan, while the majority of an added $457 million in military aid would go to Pakistan, Jordan, India and Oman. The Andean anti-drug program would cost $731 million. The peacekeeping budget would drop by $118 million on the assumption that the United States will leave Bosnia and cut back in Sierra Leone and East Timor while playing no major role in Afghanistan. – Peter Slevin TRANSPORTATION The budget includes large increases for transportation security, the Coast Guard and the Federal Transit Administration, including about $4.8 billion for the new Transportation Security Agency, established in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. As a result of the large security increases, the budget shows an increase of 19 percent in discretionary budget authority for the Transportation Department. The budget, however, also reflects a slight drop in budget authority, from $64.3 billion in 2002 to $63 billion in fiscal 2003, the result of a legislative quirk in the formula that determines how much will be spent from the highway trust fund each year. The budget shows a nearly $9 billion cut in highway funding. The budget would give Amtrak, the national passenger train corporation, $521 million, less than half what it says it needs to avoid huge cutbacks. – Don Phillips TREASURY Treasury would get a boost of about 5 percent, to $16.7 billion from $15.8 billion, with the Internal Revenue Service and the Customs Service accounting for about $900 million of the increase. The Customs Service would get $3.1 billion, with the new money to be used to strengthen its ability to guard the nation's borders. The IRS would see its budget rise to $10.4 billion from $9.9 billion, with much of the increase being used to improve its computer and telephone systems. – Albert B. Crenshaw VETERANS AFFAIRS Overall, the budget calls for a 7 percent increase in the VA's discretionary budget authority, from $24.7 billion to $26.4 billion. Much of the increase would provide health care for veterans, which would grow by almost $1.5 billion. The budget also calls for more spending on veterans cemeteries. – Edward Walsh © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 15 Critics say public concerns on TVA tritium production ignored Elizabethton Star - Online Edition Editor's Note: Part one of two in a series. By Kathy Helms-Hughes STAR STAFF Does the public have a voice when it comes to the production of material to be used in weapons of mass destruction? Those who are old hands at challenging such issues say "No." On Dec. 17, 2001, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission published in the Federal Register, notice to amend Tennessee Valley Authority's license requests for Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants to allow the Department of Energy to contract with TVA for the production of tritium which would be used to maintain the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. The idea of using commercial reactors for a defense mission began during the Clinton Administration with Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary and her successor, Bill Richardson. During the last weeks of 1998, while public attention was focused on what appeared to be the impending impeachment of President Clinton, Energy Secretary Richardson was studying how the United States would renew its supply of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen needed to turn an atomic bomb into a hydrogen bomb. New kid on the block, having been in his current position barely four months, Richardson came up with two options: Construct a particle accelerator at Savannah River Site or purchase and complete TVA's Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, a white elephant deferred by TVA in 1988 due to staggering debt problems. A question arose during O'Leary's administration: Would modifying an unfinished reactor for tritium production and operating it for weapons production be a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? In 1988, at the request of the Department of Energy, Congress ordered an interagency review of the policy. The report, which was published only on the Internet with no report number or publicly available paper trail, found no problem with using the commercial reactors, according to Kenneth Bergeron, a physicist who spent most of 25 years at Sandia National Laboratories performing or managing research on nuclear reactor safety and tritium production. According to Bergeron, the interagency report also meant that DOE would not have to demonstrate the safety of a new nuclear facility. Instead, all that was needed was to amend the license of a commercial reactor. Bergeron, in his article, "While No One Was Looking," published in the March/April 2001 Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, said TVA first responded to DOE's request for proposals by offering up Bellefonte, Watts Bar and Sequoyah, but quickly withdrew the option of using the two operating facilities. Bergeron said Richardson invoked a Depression-era law, the Economy Act, to compel TVA to cooperate, arguing the act "required" TVA, as a federal agency, to provide "irradiation services" as long as those did not interfere with its principal mission. Then-TVA Chairman Craven Crowell caved to pressure Dec. 8, 1988, though insisting in his letter to DOE that using Bellefonte would cost less in the long run and would be better for everyone. TVA submitted its application for amendment on Watts Bar and Sequoyah to the NRC on April 20, 2001. The documents were made available to the public through the NRC's ADAMS Public Electronic Reading Room link at the NRC Web site -- a site which even members of the NRC admittedly have trouble accessing. The idea of publishing the notice is to give the public an opportunity to express concerns about how the NRC decision might affect them. Based on their objections, they may file a request for a hearing and petition to intervene in the decision-making process. Having those objections heard, however, is not an easy process. The petitioner must be able to back up those concerns with specific, well-documented "legal-speak" -- including references to studies and laws which substantiate their concerns. John Moulton of TVA Media Relations, when asked about issues raised by those who question the production of tritium by TVA, said, "Most of what you say sounds like basically the anti-nuclear community looking at all kinds of different reasons why we shouldn't do it. ... It's basically a national defense mission. "When we looked at it, there would be no significant impact at all on the production of electricity. We would have to change some things and there would be some expense, and of course, that's what the interagency agreement with DOE was -- to make sure DOE paid TVA for all of the changes so that there wouldn't be any impact on ratepayers," Moulton said. Lisa Cutler of the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, when questioned about nuclear non-proliferation, the ongoing reduction of surplus nuclear weapons and the need for tritium, said, "The questions we've been getting on it lately is whether our need for tritium for the stockpile has been changed by any of the announcements coming out of the administration about cuts, and we have determined that it will not. We still have a need for domestic produced tritium and we hope to move forward with the proposal with TVA." Ann Harris, a safety advocate who formerly worked for TVA and prevailed in six legal complaints against them over safety issues, submitted a petition for intervention on behalf of her group, We The People, which is made up of people that have come into contact with the industry through some mechanism, whether it be safety issues or public meetings. "It's basically been a whistleblower organization. We have a long and bloody history of being the ones that have raised the flag about these plants in communities where they're unsafe," Harris said. She contends the nuclear industry dismisses We The People, however, as a bunch of "anti-nukes." "I don't have a problem with nuclear power if they'll make it safe and if they'll manage it safely," she said. "But I've got a real heartburn over the fact that they can't make it safe and they can't tell me that it will be safe." According to Harris, people who live beyond the boundaries of Watts Bar and Sequoyah have the misconception that they will not be affected by the tritium decision. "What people don't understand is that your area is in the absolute dumping ground for the downwind radiation," she said. TVA's attorneys, Winston & Strawn -- a Washington, D.C.-based industry law firm hired by the agency -- challenged We The People's petition to intervene on Jan. 29, arguing the group did not establish standing. In its petition against Sequoyah, member Phil Carroll, who lives about 12 miles from the nuclear plant, expressed concerns of potential injury due to his close proximity, contending his "life, health and property would be jeopardized by the production of tritium." TVA challenged Carroll's "broad assertions of potential injuries," saying that "a petitioner must show an injury that is 'distinct and palpable, particular and concrete,' as opposed to being conjectural or hypothetical." Harris said, "The general public does not know the ways and trappings set out by the NRC. There's no sense in them commenting about morals in any of this, because morals are not involved. You have to have an argument." Harris, who owns property at Ten Mile, Tenn., and resides in Rockwood -- both within 20 miles of Watts Bar, also cited geographic proximity as a cause of concern. TVA attorneys challenged her petition, stating: "We The People has not demonstrated any means by which the proposed amendment could lead to offsite consequences injurious to Ms. Harris or her property." Harris objected to tritium production at Watts Bar based on the increased opportunity for terrorist attacks which would jeopardize her life and the lives of others in surrounding communities. She also raised a concern that the Tennessee River might be rendered unusable should an accident occur. TVA's attorneys dismissed the assertions, saying, "In total, Ms. Harris' alleged interests constitute nothing more than hypothesis, fear and conjecture ..." "TVA's attorneys have denied that any of these parties attempting intervention have standing or have any rights," Harris said. "TVA's got two floors (in the Twin Towers in Knoxville) made up of nothing but lawyers, and they've got to go out and pay somebody to do this?" she asked. "This is physically a David and Goliath fight because the industry and the utilities are basically on the same side and they're trying to keep us from coming over the fence and joining them. "They're throwing this out there to people that live in economically depressed areas who do not have access to the monies that these utilities and this government has," she said. "According to the law, the public is supposed to be the third party at any and all come-togethers," Harris said. "But any time that they're challenged, they take it as a personal affront and they're attempting to constantly deny everybody (based on) the fact that 'the public is too ignorant' to know what's going on -- I've even had them say that to me. "Their boiler plate has not changed in the past 20 to 25 years. I'm not offended that TVA takes this position. It's nothing but they've pushed the right button on their computer-typewriter again and said the very same things they've always said. Nothing's changed at TVA." Jeannine Honicker, a 68-year-old grandmother of six and long-time critic of TVA, also petitioned to intervene. In August 1995, Honicker spent more than eight hours in a Knoxville jail after speaking out of turn at a TVA public meeting. She and then 67-year-old Faith Young of Dixon Springs, Tenn., who were instrumental in the mothballing of TVA's Hartsville Nuclear Plant, attended the meeting to raise safety concerns over the start-up of Watts Bar. Frustrated that the structuring of TVA's public meetings allowed them an opportunity to voice their concerns to board members during a "listening session" at which board members typically do not respond to questions or comments, the two women decided to get their objections heard on the front end of the meeting. Young stood up first and was restrained in handcuffs by TVA Security. Honicker tried to interject, standing and saying, "I am Jeannine Honicker ..." She was immediately grabbed by the left arm, which was broken at the time, and hauled off to jail. Her son, Clifford Honicker, tried to come to his mother's aid and was arrested as well. In her petition to intervene, Honicker took issue with the fact that TVA's analysis was made before Sept. 11 and "did not consider the probability or consequences of a fully fueled jetliner being used as a missile and purposely being crashed into a nuclear power plant." Changing Watts Bar and Sequoyah to co-generators of nuclear weapons material, Honicker said, changes them from civilian targets to military targets. She raised concerns that TVA should analyze a worst-case scenario, such as what size population would be affected if a terrorist attack at Watts Bar happened to coincide during a University of Tennessee football game, which usually draws a crowd of about 100,000. According to DOE, the prevailing wind from Watts Bar blows north, taking in Knoxville, the Tri-Cities and Elizabethton, which lie in a northeasterly direction. Any radiation released during a nuclear event and picked up by the prevailing wind potentially could be carried beyond the boundaries of Watts Bar. Honicker also objected based on the non-proliferation treaty. "The United States has repeatedly objected to other nations using their commercial nuclear power plants to produce material for nuclear weapons. Will we not be seen as speaking with forked tongue if we say, 'You can't use your nuclear power plants to produce nuclear weapons material for military purposes, but we can,' " she stated. Honicker also challenged the decision based on an increased risk to persons living outside TVA's 10-mile "area of interest." "The wind knows no artificial boundaries, and the rivers flow past state markers," she said. Honicker's petition, as well as one submitted by Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League of Aiken, S.C., also was challenged by TVA attorneys. "It took four lawyers 16 pages to answer my three-page request," Honicker said. "I do not live within the correct distance. I live 150 miles away ... I just didn't show that I was going to be personally injured beyond that of a large population. In other words, if it's an attack by a plane, a whole bunch of folks are going to be killed -- and that doesn't make it just to me." Honicker, who now resides in La Grange, Ga., and also owns a home in Nashville, contends she does have a stake in the decision regardless of her distance from the reactors because her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren live in Knoxville and potentially could be placed in danger. However, she said, the nuclear regulators "don't intend to have a hearing and they're going to get around it any way and every way they can. It wouldn't matter if Jesus Christ, Himself, came down and intervened, He wouldn't be allowed in," she said. Copyright © 1996 - 2001 Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc. Direct questions or comments to webmaster@starhq.com [kfender@starhq.com] Elizabethton Newspapers, Inc., 300 Sycamore Street Elizabethton, Tennessee 37643 - 423.542.4151 ***************************************************************** 16 Bush Pledges Defiance on GAO at Greenbrier Retreat Roll Call: Current News February 04, 2002 By Susan Crabtree [SusanCrabtree@rollcall.com] At a private session with House and Senate Republicans before their retreat at the Greenbrier resort inWest Virginia wrapped up Friday, President Bush passionately defended Vice President Cheney's refusal to hand over documents to the General Accounting Office. Bush told Republicans gathered there that the White House would continue to refuse to comply with the GAOdemands "as a matter of principle," according to several GOP aides present. Referring to the advice he sought while forming his policy on the stem-cell issue last year, the President stressed the need for open and frank discussions within the White House and argued that consenting to the agency's demands would jeopardize that. "He sees it as protecting ... this White House as well as future White Houses,"one aide said, noting that House and Senate Republicans gave him a standing ovation after the statements. Senior White House officials also promised House and Senate GOPleaders that Bush and Cheney would be generous with appearances on the campaign trail this year, according to several GOPsources. The two principals may make as many as 100 appearances on behalf of GOP candidates and incumbents, with Cabinet officials also expected to play a major role. Specific details of the White House's political program were not released. On Thursday top White House officials also told the bicameral group of Republicans that the President would not pursue Social Security reform legislation this year. According to one GOPaide present, chief White House political adviser Karl Rove said Social Security was "off the table"until 2003 at the earliest. "The President has not and will not offer a legislative solution on this matter this year,"Rove told the gathering, according to the aide. "We're not at the point where we can put a program out there and sell it to the American people,"another GOPleadership aide acknowledged. "[The public] knows that Social Security is in question, but they don't know why or how or what to do about it." By the end of the retreat Friday, House Republicans had debated a number of budget strategy approaches and said GOPleaders would hold two weeks of "listening sessions" with Members to reach a consensus. During a large session on the budget, more than a dozen Members spoke up in favor of balancing the 2003 budget, a proposal promoted by Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and numerous other fiscal conservatives. Republican Study Committee Executive Director Neil Bradley explained that the plan would be almost identical to the President's spending blueprint. It would only differ, he said, by eliminating funds designated for Bush's $75 billion economic stimulus bill, a package that has met months of resistance in the Senate and may fall by the wayside this year. "We would clearly like to have a balanced budget in the conference,"said Chief Deputy Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) after the retreat. "We're committed to spending whatever is necessary to meet the President's goals, and we will have a plan to get the budget back in balance in the foreseeable future." Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) has spoken out in favor of the RSC plan as one way to impose fiscal discipline. But he and the rest of the GOPleadership will explore several options in the coming weeks. "Ultimately, the plan may include passing a balanced budget, it may include passing the President's budget, and the President issuing veto threats on each appropriations bill,"a DeLay aide noted. "DeLay is proposing this as one way. He's not married to it." GOPaides report that the retreat also went a long way in healing some old wounds between the House and Senate. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.)helped write and pass a conference resolution recognizing the House's accomplishments in adopting the President's agenda this year as well as lauding retiring House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), a nine-term Member. Armey and Lott tangled over the economic stimulus bill last year during a private session of House and Senate GOPLeaders. Members and aides also left the retreat buoyed by a commitment from the White House to improve communications. White House adviser Karen Hughes and Republican National Committee spokeswoman Mindy Tucker pledged to keep the lines open. "Karen Hughes is keenly interested in making sure communication is working,"a GOPleadership aide said. "Before, some of my colleagues didn't feel the love, as they say, but now people are really pumped." John Bresnahan contributed to this report. Copyright 2002 © Roll Call Inc. [http://www.rollcall.com/aboutus/] All rights ***************************************************************** 17 Paducah cut for plant work may not stand The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Tuesday, February 05, 2002 Rep. Whitfield says it is even possible to get added funding during Congress' action. It is not known what any cut would affect. By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 The Bush administration's proposed $20 million cut in environmental work at the Paducah uranium enrichment plant for fiscal year 2003 may not pass legislative muster, says U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R- Hopkinsville. "This is just a proposed plan, and Congress does not always accept that," he said. "In fact, last year it wasn't accepted, and we will have hope that maybe we could get some additional funding out of this." Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced Monday that DOE's $21.9 billion budget proposal to Congress is $570 million higher than for the current fiscal year, ending Oct. 1. The proposal includes $6.7 billion for environmental cleanup nationwide. Of that, $800 million is being set aside for "expedited cleanup" of sites that pose greatest public risk. Whitfield said Paducah's share of the base amount is $73.5 million, down from $93.4 million this fiscal year. It was uncertain how the cut — similar to those at closed enrichment plants at Piketon, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn. — would affect jobs and cleanup schedules. "It depends on where they take the $20 million," said Phil Potter, Washington-based policy analyst for Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International, which represents nearly half the Paducah plant's 1,500 workers. "But it's difficult to cut $20 million out of the programs and it not affect some jobs." Another question mark is whether Paducah will qualify for some of the $800 million. DOE says sites that get the funding must reach agreements for faster schedules that show "measurable gains and accountability." The Paducah plant is competing with nuclear weapons sites — such as Rocky Flats near Denver and Savannah River in South Carolina — that are among the nation's most contaminated, he said. "Some people could argue that Rocky Flats and Savannah River have even more serious environmental problems than Paducah," Whitfield said, adding that Paducah has a good chance because of its history and because Congress will scrutinize the list. Potter said he thinks Paducah will qualify because of its longtime problems, notably contaminated groundwater, scrap piles and nearly 40,000 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) waste. Whitfield said part of the "good news" is that the DOE budget increases from $16.4 million to $19.7 million the amount spent on cylinders. That includes $10 million toward building a facility to convert the hazardous material into something safer that might be used commercially. The budget also raises from $2.4 million to $6.8 million the funding for Paducah plant security. DOE's total budget request of $21.9 billion includes $8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $433 million. Of the increase, $358 million is for nationwide activities in response to the Sept. 11 terrorism. The job-producing cylinder project has been repeatedly delayed since Congress mandated it in 1998, setting aside $373 million for the work. Last month, the Energy Department asked the three finalists to extend bids until the end of February. Whitfield repeated Monday that he thinks there is resistance by some in DOE and the Office of Management and Budget toward the project. "It's our understanding that the companies submitting the bids have been led to believe that during the next 30 days, something is going to happen," he said. "I hope that's the case, and we're going to do everything we can to be sure that's the case, but I wouldn't take it to the bank yet." Abraham said at a Washington news conference that his department is working with OMB on the cylinder project, as well as one to have a "competitive domestic uranium enrichment capacity." The Paducah plant is the nation's only enrichment facility, and DOE and Paducah plant operator USEC have been squabbling over the details of a plan to keep it running. "We're in the process of trying to accomplish both those objectives," Abraham said without indicating when either issue would be resolved. He said the changes in environmental spending stem from a "top-to-bottom" review of a plan calling for spending $300 billion over the next 70 years to clean up all DOE facilities. Although $300 billion may be realistic, Abraham said, "70 years isn't something I can live with and it shouldn't be something that the people of the communities that have environmentally contaminated sites should have to live with." He said the review showed that as much as two-thirds of annual environmental spending was going to maintenance and overhead costs at DOE facilities, instead of cleanup. "Our preference is to clean things up." ***************************************************************** 18 Should people be concerned about used fuel security? CNN.com - Dumping Ground Debate: Scott Peterson - February 1, 2002 Scott Peterson: Used fuel is absolutely secure at plant sites today. It's stored in one of two ways: in steel-lined vaults at the plant, under water, very safely monitored. The water itself is very clean and is a shielding agent, along with the lead that lines the pools, for the radiation and fuel. The second option is stainless steel and concrete containers at the site. These containers have been tested by the Sandia National Laboratories (and) they are certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as safe. And it is an interim step, a safe step until ultimately we move this fuel to a national repository, as is our national policy. NEXT@CNN: Can you allow for a plane crashing into say -- a spent fuel pool? Peterson: Spent fuel pools are going to be very difficult targets to hit for several reasons. It's because their location within the facilities themselves makes them very difficult to even approach if you are a terrorist, or if you are trying to hit these with any object coming in from outside the plant site. So in that context, we think they're very safe. Really if you look at the nuclear industry, it's a model of industrial safety that's really ahead of it's time in terms of the types of scenarios that we're looking at today. NEXT@CNN: So is Yucca Mountain the way to go? Peterson: Certainly science suggests that Yucca Mountain right now is a suitable site, and world-class engineers and scientists have been studying Yucca Mountain for the past 20 years. They've done a tremendous amount of work in geology, in engineering, looking at volcanoes, earthquakes, water movement throughout the mountain. Doing scientific tests underground to super-heat the rock to see what chemicals or what reactions may change within the rock once the fuel is placed in there. There's no piece of ground that's better studied in the world than Yucca Mountain right now. And the Department of Energy has wrapped up all these scientific reports, and is in the position now to make a determination on the site suitability on Yucca Mountain. NEXT@CNN: Why don't the plants want to store the waste on-site and forego the controversy? Peterson: The plants were never contemplated to store fuel on site, and in fact were built to store a very small amount of fuel until the federal government met its obligation to move it to one facility where it's easier to manage and more cost effective to manage. And so, what you have are power plants that are starting to run out of fuel. And nuclear power today produces electricity for one out of every five homes and businesses. So we're getting to the situation where if we don't have a federal project that's up and running, you're going to start having 20 percent of the nation's power shut down. NEXT@CNN: What is spent fuel? Why does it need so much protection? Peterson: Well-used fuel -- when it comes out of the reactor -- has undergone the fission process, so it's highly radioactive. But we know how to keep it safe, and we do that on-site in these storage pools and in the containers. We know how to transport this material safely. We've done it through 3,000 shipments since the mid-1960s here in the United States, without any consequence whatsoever to public health or the environment. And now, the DOE has said we know that we can manage this long-term in a repository. And we think as an industry that Yucca Mountain is that site. The engineering is in place to move these containers safely to a federal repository, and store them 1,000 feet underground, where they are more secure and easier to manage. NEXT@CNN: Aren't all those transports vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attacks? Peterson: The transportation program has been developed with safety as really the first step in it. And we've demonstrated over the past 35 years that we can move this material across the country very safely. We have a lot of state and local input into this process. These shipments are monitored by satellite the whole way. They have police escorts through the states. The state governors are notified. So every precaution has been taken to make this process safe, from the engineering of the containers themselves to be able to withstand fantastically incredible accident scenarios to the guides who get them to the repository itself. ***************************************************************** 19 Groups Calls for Leadership on Indian Point Security U.S. Newswire 4 Feb 17:42 With Nuclear Terrorism in Headlines and Growing Outcry in Congress, Groups Call for Leadership on Indian Point Security To: State and Assignment desks, Daybook Editor Contact: Stephen Kent, 845-424-8382 (o) or 914-589-5988 (cell), for the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition; Web site: http://www.closeindianpoint.org [http://www.closeindianpoint.org] News Advisory: On Tuesday, February 5 at 10:30 a.m. the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) will sponsor "A Call for Leadership on Indian Point," a press conference and rally showing growing concern about the vulnerability of the Indian Point nuclear plant in the wake of new reports of terrorist plots. The event takes place in front of the Westchester County Office Building, 148 Martine Avenue in White Plains, New York. IPSEC represents a growing broad-based coalition of some 35 local, regional and national civic and environmental groups calling for a shutdown of Indian Point's reactors and tighter security of its radioactive fuel pools in light of the threat of terrorist attack. Speakers include (confirmed:) Westchester County Legislators Tom Abinanti, Andrea Stuart Cousins and George Latimer, and (invited:) New York State Comptroller Carl McCall, along with IPSEC coalition representatives. They will highlight the growing number of state and local officials and members of Congress, along with local, regional and national civic and environmental groups, who oppose the Indian Point evacuation plan as unworkable given the new terrorist threat, and are calling increasingly for the plant to be shut down to protect public safety. In recent days, Governor Pataki certified the evacuation plan, despite widespread objections that the plan cannot protect the public from a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, members of the New York Congressional delegation responded to mounting public concerns with calls for decommissioning the plant and federalizing security. A Terrifying Week for Nuclear Security The event is the culmination of seven days of terrifying news about nuclear security, including cover stories in The New York Post and Daily News on Friday with headlines blaring that terrorists may be plotting to attack Indian Point. It began with the State of the Union message on Tuesday, January 29, in which President Bush stated that captured terrorists were known to have engineering drawings of US nuclear plants. On Thursday, January 31, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld revealed U.S. intelligence reports that al Qaeda had active plans for crashing hijacked planes into U.S. nuclear plants and recruited operatives to carry it out, making headlines across the country, especially in the New York media. On Friday, February 1, saying "since September 11, everything has changed," Governor Pataki called on the federal government to reassess its guidelines for the Indian Point evacuation plan and asked the NRC for a limited number of potassium iodide pills. Pataki Approves Evacuation Plan Over Citizen Objections But just the day before, Governor Pataki also approved the current evacuation plan for Indian Point, which was last updated in 1996 and never intended to handle a 9-11-style terrorist attack situation, in spite of the largest number of constituent phone calls his office ever received on a single issue opposing the move. The Governor's approval allows the plant to keep operating for another year on the basis of the old plan while in effect bouncing the problem back to the NRC. It was a flat rejection of a direct appeal to Governor Pataki the preceding week from county and state officials and some 35 civic and environmental groups that participate in the IPSEC coalition, asking him to withhold sign-off on the emergency plan pending an impartial review that takes the new terrorist threats into account. Many county legislators have voted recently to reject the current evacuation plan as inadequate in the face of new threats. "We can't go on pretending that we have a workable evacuation plan when we don't," State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky told The New York Times, in response to Governor Pataki's announcement. "We have an evacuation plan right now which is wholly inadequate to protect our public safety," the Times Alex Matthiessen as saying, the executive director of Riverkeeper, one of groups in the IPSEC coalition. Some In Congress Step Up to the Plate On Friday, February 1, U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) became the first member of Congress to call directly for the decommissioning of Indian Point and securing the spent fuel and radioactive material stored on its site. "Today, I have concluded that the continued operation of the Indian Point nuclear power plant presents an unacceptable risk to the safety and security of the New York metropolitan area," she said. At the Tuesday press conference it will be announced that Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) now seconds Lowey's statement. In addition, members of the New York Congressional delegation, including Representatives Nydia Velazquez, Jerrold Nadler Eliot Engel and Maurice Hinchey have signed onto a Riverkeeper petition to the NRC calling for immediate shutdown of the Indian Point reactors pending an independent safety review. On Saturday, February 2, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and James Jeffords (I-Vt.) introduced legislation to replace private security forces hired and managed by Entergy and other nuclear power plant owners with federal guards. Bush Administration Sides with Plant Owners on Security Issue On Sunday, February 3, the Bush administration weighed in against the Senators' plan, agreeing with the nuclear power industry that private owners should be entrusted with security at nuclear plants. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told NBC's "Meet the Press" on February 3, "those who own the nuclear power plants have to provide" the security. But as Nita Lowey pointed out in her February 1 statement, "A failure at Indian Point, resulting either from a terrorist incident or from an accident, would have a catastrophic human and economic impact on New York, far more devastating in its scope than anything our nation has experienced." She introduced the Nuclear Security Act (H.R. 3382) into the House, which also would federalize security at nuclear facilities. Status Quo Unacceptable, Leadership Needed "With the president and the secretary of defense highlighting terrorist threats to nuclear plants, to continue to leave security at Indian Point in the hands of Entergy to rubber-stamp an unworkable evacuation plan is worse than preposterous," said IPSEC coordinator Stephen Kent, "it's simply unacceptable, not to mention deeply insensitive to the urgent concerns of residents. What we need at a dangerous time like this isn't pandering to private energy companies and false reassurance from KI pills for a fraction of the affected population. We need responsive leadership like Nita Lowey and Richard Brodsky have shown We intend to show them and other elected officials who can gather the courage to put residents' security ahead of Entergy's profits that they are not alone, the residents are with them." Experts Advise Shutdown IPSEC has gathered expert testimony from many independent sources saying the Indian Point plant is extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack, that the evacuation plan cannot protect public health or safety in the event of a terrorist attack or major accident, and that since the plant cannot be made safe living under a plausible terrorist threat, it should be shut down. Once expert, Dr. Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies who holds an Oxford University Ph. D. in analysis of thermonuclear fusion, gave the following testimony to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on December 7, 2001: "Comparatively little can be done to harden the Indian Point reactors so that they are inherently more robust against acts of malice or insanity. There is, however, one option that would quickly and substantially reduce the vulnerability of the reactors. That option would be to shut down the reactors. Their vulnerability would be reduced in two ways. First, the propensity of a reactor core to melt, if the flow of the cooling water to the core is interrupted, is substantially reduced within a few hours of shutdown. Second, a reactor core's inventory of short-lived radioisotopes is substantially reduced within a few days of shutdown, thus reducing the potential incidence of early health effects and thyroid cancers in surrounding populations if an accident occurs." Copyright 2002, U.S. Newswire ***************************************************************** 20 Hungarian official says leak at Romanian nuclear plant poses no danger BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 4, 2002 Text of report by Hungarian TV on 3 February The switching off of a Romanian nuclear power station does not constitute a danger to Hungary and is not classified as a special situation, Lajos Voeroes, deputy head of department of the Nuclear Energy Office, has said in reply to a question from "Newsreel" [this programme]. The Cernavoda nuclear power station in southern Romania was switched off on Saturday morning [2 February] after the leakage of heavy water was noticed. Romanian officials will give further information next week. Source: Hungarian TV2 satellite service, Budapest, in Hungarian 1920 gmt 3 Feb 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All ***************************************************************** 21 Siegfried: Oconee Plant Nuclear Material Safe WYFF TheCarolinaChannel.com Tuesday February 05 09:05 AM EST South Carolina's homeland security director said Monday that there's no need to worry about the potential for a disaster at the Oconee Nuclear Station. Gen. Steve Siegfried spoke at Clemson University on Monday and gave assurances that the workers at the plant are well-trained to handle an emergency. During an emergency it takes only a few seconds to hit a button and get all of the plant's fuel rods underground. "You may damage the station, you'll be without power for awhile, but you're not going have a nuclear thing like Chernobyl or something like that," Siegfried said. "In order to do that, you have to have a functioning reactor and the first thing that nuclear plant will do is shut down." Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! and ***************************************************************** 22 Browns Ferry has reason to celebrate: Continuous run record set by Unit 3 reactor By Dennis Sherer Staff Writer February 5, 2002 The Unit 3 reactor at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant has been helping keep the lights burning around the Tennessee Valley nonstop for 619 days and counting. Tennessee Valley Authority officials announced Monday the reactor set a continuous run record for the agency at 9:45 p.m. Friday. That performance broke the previous record of 616 days and 22 hours, which was set by the Johnsonville, Tenn., Fossil Plant Unit 3. That record covered Sept. 25, 1995, through June 3, 1997. Browns Ferry Unit 3 began its run at 11:44 p.m. May 25, 2000. TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough Jr. praised Browns Ferry employees for the record-setting performance. "They are demonstrating their commitment to providing affordable reliable power for the benefit of the people of the Tennessee Valley," he said. McCullough said Browns Ferry is "working in a way that ensures the safety of the public and their fellow employees, while constantly improving the performance of their plant." Unit 3 has a capacity to produce enough electricity to supply 650,000 homes. TVA officials estimate it would cost more than $750,000 a day to purchase the power produced by the reactor. "Long, safe operations like this from all our power plants help TVA reduce the cost of power and excel in a competitive industry," McCullough said. John Scalice, TVA's chief nuclear officer, said the federal utility's long-term goal is to operate its reactors continuously between refueling outages. The next scheduled refueling outage for Unit 3 is in the spring. Browns Ferry spokesman Craig Beasley declined to reveal the date of the planned outage. "We don't release that information for competitive reasons," Beasley said. Other utilities could raise the price for electrical power sold to TVA if they knew the Unit 3 reactor was shut down for refueling, he said. The Unit 3 reactor has performed well since it was restarted in 1995 after a 10-year shutdown for repairs, TVA officials say. That reactor, along with the Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors, were shut down in 1985 because of safety concerns. Unit 2 was restarted in 1991. TVA directors are expected to decide later this year if Unit 1 will be restarted. Environmental and cost studies are under way to help TVA directors determine the feasibility of restarting the reactor. U.S. Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby, both R-Ala., and U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., have called on TVA to restart the idle reactor to help the north Alabama economy and to ensure the utility has enough electrical power to supply expected growth in the region. Preparing Unit 1 for a restart is expected to create up to 2,500 construction-related jobs during a five-year period leading up to the restart. Dennis Sherer can be reached at 740-5746 or [dennis.sherer@timesdaily.com] . Copyright © 2002 TimesDaily | Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 23 Radiation pill supply urged Chicago Tribune By Julie Deardorff Tribune staff reporter Published February 5, 2002 Though Illinois has rejected free potassium iodide pills from the federal government, lawmakers Monday called on Gov. George Ryan to provide the controversial anti-radiation tablets to families living near nuclear power plants. The effort, spearheaded by U.S. Rep Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), comes less than a week after federal officials announced renewed concern over terrorist threats to nuclear power plants and is part of a growing movement by legislators to force states to accept the free pills. In New York, Gov. George Pataki asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 1.2 million doses of potassium iodide Saturday, a cause championed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). "I'm calling on Ryan to reverse what I believe is an irresponsible decision," Schakowsky said Monday during a news conference at the Thompson Center. "No one in Illinois living near a nuclear power plant should be without them." Potassium iodide pills, also known as KI, are not a vaccine or antibiotic that can prevent radiation exposure. But if taken in time and at a correct dosage, they can help protect the spongy thyroid gland from absorbing dangerous radioactive substances, such as iodine 131, which can cause cancer. In December the NRC set aside $800,000 to fund initial stockpiles of potassium iodide to provide one or two doses to people living within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant. Illinois, which has 11 reactors at six sites--the most in the nation--has 115,000 doses of potassium iodide available for emergency workers and for people who cannot be quickly evacuated. But widespread distribution is still being debated, said Patti Thompson, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety. "We have been looking at this issue for 20 years and have not closed the book on it," Thompson said. "But there are some problems that come with stockpiling. It isn't a solution." Officials are concerned that people who take the pill may do so incorrectly and may be left with a false sense of security. And Illinois officials say the effectiveness of potassium iodide is misrepresented. "There are no drugs that can be used effectively to block the uptake of other radioisotopes such as cesium by muscle tissue and strontium by the skeletal system," Thomas Ortciger, director of the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety, wrote in response to a letter from Schakowsky. "It is irrational to suggest that people use a pill to protect the thyroid gland while potentially allowing the rest of their bodies to be subjected to exposures to other radionuclides." Schakowsky, who is working to pass federal legislation that would requires states to ensure that homes and public facilities within 50 miles of nuclear power plants have the pills, argues that Illinois residents have enough sense to evacuate an area near a major nuclear disaster. "Give the people of Illinois some credit," she said. "They're going to take their pills and head to the hills." Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune ***************************************************************** 24 UN to help Georgia tighten atom safety after event UNITED NATIONS: February 5, 2002 UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said last week that it was sending experts to Georgia to tighten safety in the former Soviet republic after two deadly nuclear devices turned up in a remote separatist region. Experts from the United States, Russia, France and Germany would also participate in the meetings to be held with Georgian authorities next Thursday and Friday, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. The group would search for ways to improve the management and security of radioactive sources in Georgia and to help plan the recovery of the two devices, which were found in a remote forest in Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region but have not yet been recovered due to severe weather. The encased but unshielded cylindrical devices are about the size of a person's hand and contain highly radioactive strontium-90, the IAEA said. The incident has heightened fears - stoked by the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States - that terrorists might obtain nuclear material to make a so-called dirty bomb that could spread toxic radiation when exploded. The IAEA said discarded radioactive sources have been found from time to time in Georgia over the past decade, and it believed many other sources remained "lost, abandoned or otherwise outside of regulatory control." The Soviet Union, one of the world's five recognized nuclear powers, broke up in 1991 and nuclear materials once under its control have turned up in many of its former republics. SEVERE RADIATION BURNS Apparently once used in a generator, the two devices in Georgia severely injured three men who found them while gathering wood in a snowy field in early December 2001 and carried them back to their camp for warmth, Washington-based Science magazine reported this week. The three men, unaware that they had been over-exposed to a deadly radioactive source, suffered nausea and began vomiting shortly after the initial exposure. Within a week, severe radiation burns appeared on their backs, and one is now in very serious condition, an IAEA spokeswoman said last week. Abkhazia, which declared independence from Georgia in 1991, has remained outside the Georgian government's control and Georgian guerrillas regularly clash with the Abkhazian military. The IAEA has already sent a medical team to Georgia trained in handling radiation sickness and another team to help recover the devices and transport them to a safe place. The watchdog agency said the devices were widely used in the former Soviet Union as heaters, power sources for remote communication systems and generators. Story by Irwin Arieff REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 25 NEXT@CNN: Why is it so important to protect nuclear plants? Dumping Ground Debate: Paul Leventhal - February 1, 2002 CNN.com - Paul Leventhal: Right now the nuclear power plants in this country are vulnerable to a terrorist attack, if it were one on a scale of what we saw on September 11. NEXT@CNN: Why is spent fuel such an issue? Levanthal: With a nuclear power plant you have two things to worry about in terms of potential sabotage. You have the reactor itself, which has a large amount of radioactive fuel inside of it. The other is the pool on the plant site where all the spent fuel is stored. NEXT@CNN: Would the Yucca Mountain option help? Levanthal: Both from a site security standpoint and a nuclear non-proliferation standpoint, since spent fuel contains a lot of plutonium (a nuclear weapons material) it's better that the spent fuel be put for final disposal in a geological repository. And the site that's been selected, in this country, is Yucca Mountain. But, there's a lot of controversy about whether this is the appropriate site and whether it has been fully characterized to be safe. And it looks like it's going to take several years before they are in a position to speak authoritatively on that question. We very much hope that the site can be safely characterized, so that the spent fuel can be gotten out of harm's way. There's another issue too. There are some in the nuclear industry and bureaucracy that would still like to reprocess that spent fuel to extract the plutonium, so that the plutonium can be recycled as fuel. This is a program that has been shut down in the United States since the late '70s, early '80s. But there are some die-hard supporters that think that the plutonium is too valuable a resource to throw away. The problem is that in addition to being a potential fuel, it is also a potential atom bomb material. It is one of the two principle materials used in nuclear weapons. So our institute has been strongly advocating disposing of the spent fuel without reprocessing -- disposing of it in unaltered form, deep in the earth. NEXT@CNN: What about the dangers of transporting it? Levanthal: That is a major consideration. But it is one like nuclear plant security itself -- it is solvable if you apply the necessary resources. For nuclear power plants, we are advocating military protection when we are in a state of war against terrorists. Right now, the regulations do not require a military escort along the entire route -- only when it passes through, or near, large cities. The notion that these massive casts are resistant to terrorist attacks is fallacious. There are ways that these casts can be penetrated through the use of high explosives, their contents dispersed. And therefore you have to make sure that terrorists can't get near them. You don't want to get into a situation where they've actually overcome the escort and are in a position to use explosives on the highly radioactive spent fuel. NEXT@CNN: How bad could the radiation threat be? Levanthal: A successful attack on a plant -- meaning that the core melts down, and the containment is breached so there is a pathway out of the plant for the highly radioactive plume -- you could have hundreds of fatalities within 10 miles of the plant. And within 50 to 100 miles of the plant, you could have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of fatalities from cancer over the long term. And the downwind path for these types of causalities could extend for hundreds of miles. NEXT@CNN: Can spent fuel be used for dirty bombs? Levanthal: The biggest dirty bomb conceivable is the successful sabotage of a nuclear power plant. That's the ultimate dirty bomb. And that, of course, is the ultimate nuclear terrorism threat -- that terrorists could obtain atom bomb material or even a stolen weapon and detonate it. I am afraid that that's something we have to be concerned about as well. NEXT@CNN: Any reason not to be depressed? Levanthal: Well, I think there are reasons not to be depressed, but it's going to take some action. One is nuclear power plants probably can be adequately protected with military resources. But it's gonna take troops, not state police, and not the "rent a cop" guard forces that are often in place at these plants. The industry and the NRC talk about highly professionalized, well-paid paramilitary forces protecting the plants. The truth of the matter is that these plants are often protected by rent-a-cops whose salaries start at about eight or nine dollars an hour. So it's a situation not unlike what you find at airports, where you find the poorest paid employees are those checking your baggage before you get on a flight. That has to be corrected promptly. ***************************************************************** 26 Agency needs funds for low-level lawsuit Journalstar.com: Nebraska BY NANCY HICKS Lincoln Journal Star The Washington, D.C., attorneys representing Nebraska in its low-level radioactive waste lawsuit haven't been paid for two months. The Department of Environmental Quality owes the Collier, Shannon and Scott law firm about $1 million, but doesn't have any money left in its defense fund. However, the Legislature's Appropriations Committee came to the rescue Monday, quickly sending to the full Legislature a bill that would give the agency $4 million for work on the lawsuit. Chairman Sen. Roger Wehrbein of Plattsmouth said the Legislature could probably begin first-round debate on the measure within a couple of weeks. The speaker of the Legislature can expedite a deficit bill deemed an emergency, he said. In preparation for the lawsuit, DEQ has already collected and catalogued nearly 2 million documents that now fill a 30-by-60-foot room. About 50 people have been deposed for the trial expected to last six or seven weeks this summer, Mike Linder, DEQ director, told the committee during a Monday afternoon hearing. "We've been holding bills for two months in anticipation that the Legislature would provide more money," said Linder. Most of that money goes to the law firm that is helping Nebraska defend the suit. The low-level radioactive waste compact commission, several utilities and the contractor, U.S. Ecology, allege in a federal lawsuit that Nebraska acted in bad faith when the state refused to license a facility in Boyd County. Nebraska has already spent about $11 million on the lawsuit since January 1999 and expects to spend another $7.3 million over the next year, including the $4 million emergency infusion, according to DEQ staff. The $4 million would come from another DEQ fund designated for solid waste landfill closures. The state has closed all the old unregulated landfills and no longer needs the money, Linder said. All current landfills are regulated and owners are financially responsible for any cleanup costs, he added. Reach Nancy Hicks at nhicks@journalstar.com or 473-7250. Copyright © 2002, Lincoln Journal Star. All rights reserved. 926 P Street Lincoln NE 68508 402 475-4200 feedback@journalstar.com ***************************************************************** 27 Bush proposal would boost Yucca Mountain budget 40 percent Las Vegas SUN February 04, 2002 WASHINGTON (AP) - Work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump site would get a 40 percent increase in the $2.13 trillion budget proposal for next year that President Bush sent Congress on Monday. The extra $150 million - boosting the 2003 budget for Yucca Mountain to $527 million - would allow the Department of Energy to prepare an application for a license to bury spent nuclear fuel and begin work on road and rail projects to get waste to the site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham last month announced he would formally tell Bush that Yucca Mountain is a suitable site for burying the radioactive waste, despite lingering questions about the geology of the area and the objections of Nevada's elected officials. "We have taken no job more seriously in the past year than that responsibility," Abraham said Monday at a briefing on the proposed budget. The repository could open in 2010. But Abraham also acknowledged that "other people have a role to play" in the 20-year-old search for a waste disposal site. Last year, for example, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., succeeded in trimming $55 million from Bush's request for Yucca Mountain. "We're in a fiscal strait jacket on new spending, which is why boosting the funding for Yucca Mountain is so troubling," said Nathan Naylor, Reid's spokesman. Reid is the Senate's No. 2 Democrat and chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water projects. "In the Congress, we'll try to put less money in," said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., also a Yucca Mountain opponent. "That's pretty standard every year." The government has spent $7 billion studying the science, safety and feasibility of burying highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain. The site, if finally approved and licensed, is expected to hold up to 77,000 tons of waste, buried in a labyrinth of bunkers 900 feet beneath the surface. Abraham said his recommendation to Bush could come as early as next week. Nevada has 60 days after a presidential decision to object and override the decision. Congress would then have 90 legislative days to override Nevada's objection, affirming the president's decision. Both the House and Senate must act by majority vote. Once those legislative hurdles are cleared, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would have to issue a license approving the design and construction plans. The Energy Department plans to submit the license application in 2004. Among other Nevada budget proposals for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, the administration included $4 million for the monorail that is now under construction on the congested Las Vegas Strip. The four-mile project is expected to be completes by 2004 at a cost of $650 million - $162.5 million a mile. The state sold bonds to pay for the construction. On the Net: President's budget proposal: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/ [http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 28 Abraham's culpable works go unexamined Las Vegas Business Press From the beginning of the Yucca Mountain battle, president after president, energy secretary after energy secretary has assured Nevadans that the suitability of the mountain for a waste dump would be judged on science, not politics. What is remarkable is how little effort U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham put into making a scientific case, and his own words are the evidence. In his Jan. 10 letter notifying Gov. KennyGuinn of his intention to recommend Nevada as the dump site, Abraham nodded fleetingly in the direction of science (one sentence), then spent the rest of the letter advancing entirely nonscientific grounds for the recommendation. He wrote of the "effective operation of our nuclear navy." He wrote of "terrorist attacks" that might target power plant on-site dumps. He wrote of the importance of assuring that "nuclear power ... remains an important part of our dome stic energy production." All of these issues are legitimate and arguable issues of nuclear waste policy, but they're not the science that is supposed to underlie Abraham's personal preferences in public policy on nuclear issues. This is a truly remarkable document, and it is astonishing that it has gotten so little attention, since Abraham convicts himself with his own words. Gov. Guinn has called Abr aham's terrorism argument "... an emotional issue. It is certainly not scientific." But U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has defended Abraham's use of nonscientific arguments in the letter: "The secretary of energy is not only a scientific operator, but he also deals in government and ... deals with the politics, with government. He's a political appointee, so I think he has both responsibilities." The problem with Reid's stance is that it does not distinguish between Abraham's l eade rship role on policy and his legal responsibility for the Yucca Mountain project, which is supposed to be solely restricted to science. The letter Abraham wrote to Guinn is a legal document, required under section 114(a)(1) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. It's not an op-ed page essay or a policy recommendation to Congress or a speech to an energy conference. (Guinn and Reid do agree that, as Guinn puts it, "the terrorism issue is our issue ... 200 moving targets on the highways all across America.") In his tantrum against Nevadans two weeks ago, nuclear power industry lobbyist John Sununu made a point similar to Abraham's "terrorist attacks" argument when he spoke of whether Nevada is "willing to do its part in what is part of a national plan for homeland security" (if you think disdain for this McCarthyite line is limited to Nevada, see the Washington Post Web page for columnist Mary McGrory's Jan. 20 essay, "Nuclear Booby Prize.") But Sununu is paid to raise off-the-point issues to divert attention from the science of Yucca Mountain. Abraham's job, however, is to not be diverted from science. Copyright 2002 Las Vegas Business Press ***************************************************************** 29 Germany nuclear waste shipment en route for Britain BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 5, 2002 Text of report by German news agency ddp on 5 February Walheim: A nuclear waste shipment proceeded through Baden-Wuerttemberg without incident on Tuesday [5 February] morning. Three containers carrying a total of 21 spent fuel elements were taken by road from the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant to the nearby Walheim steam power plant. Only six demonstrators were there, a police spokesman in Walheim said. The shipment was accompanied by 600 policemen. It had started at 0430. Shortly after 0500, it had reached its destination, the spokesman said. The shipment is intended for the British reprocessing plant of Sellafield. It is the first of a total of five nuclear waste shipments from Neckarwestheim planned this year. The containers are now to be loaded on to a train. They are to be taken via Karlsruhe to Woerth in Palatinate on Wednesday. There the containers might be added to further nuclear waste shipments from northern Germany and taken to Sellafield. Source: ddp news agency, Berlin, in German 0434 gmt 5 Feb 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright ***************************************************************** 30 Kazakh nuclear fuel plant to benefit from new US-Kazakh joint project BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 4, 2002 Almaty, 4 February: Two US companies and the Brookhaven National Laboratory will help the Ulba Metallurgical Plant (UMP, in eastern Kazakhstan) to develop a system of extracting low-enriched uranium from uranium concentrates and subsequently using the processed uranium as a source of energy in civilian nuclear reactors throughout the world. The information agency of the US embassy in Kazakhstan told this to the Interfax-Kazakhstan agency today, quoting a press release by the US Department of Energy. The UMP is one of the former Soviet plants that produced nuclear weapons. The report said that Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas (GNF) from Wilmington (North Carolina) and RWE Nukem from Danbury (Connecticut) will help the UMP to use its advanced solvent extraction technology to produce low-enriched uranium from uranium concentrates. Under its Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention [IPR], the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) [in the Department of Energy] has allocated 1.2m dollars for three years to fund the joint work by the UMP and Brookhaven National Laboratory to design and install a production system based on the technology, the report says. Recovered uranium will be used by GNF and other industrial producers of nuclear fuel in boiling water reactors. Partners from the US industry have already allocated funds equal to NNSA's contribution for the project. The project is part of a programme of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons with the participation of Kazakhstan and the US private sector, the report by the American side says. In Washington's opinion, the project "will strengthen the country's energy security, support the world economy and will promote international cooperation". The programme participants, the report says, have been attracted by the NNSA of the US Department of Energy which will continue to assist them to implement the programme. The programme is expected to immediately create 50 civilian jobs for former nuclear weapons specialists in Kazakhstan and hundreds of additional jobs, over the next few years, for the former staff of the enterprises for developing and producing nuclear weapons. The NNSA's Initiative for Proliferation Prevention programme helps to attract former Soviet experts in weapons of mass destruction to developing industrial technologies for peaceful purposes. [Passage to end omitted: the programme was launched by US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in Washington last week] Source: Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 0756 gmt 4 Feb 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter All Material Subject to Copyright ***************************************************************** 31 NUCLEAR WASTE BUDGET: DOE seeks more funds for dump Tuesday, February 05, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Request signals shift in program By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Forging ahead with plans to develop a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the Energy Department on Monday asked Congress for a 41 percent increase in its 2003 Yucca Mountain Project budget and may request even more money later this year. The department budget sent to Capitol Hill contains $527 million for nuclear waste disposal, the largest funding request for Yucca Mountain since 1996. With President Bush about to receive a recommendation to bury waste in Nevada, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and other Energy officials said their efforts now will be directed to forming a repository license application and developing plans to transport thousands of tons of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "This budget is satisfactory to support an expeditious course towards licensing," Abraham said at a budget briefing. Later, however, the top Yucca Mountain Project manager said budget shortfalls the past two years have pushed back the Energy Department's timetable for a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Plans now call for license paperwork to be submitted by late 2004, according to Lake Barrett, acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Further, Barrett said, the Energy Department will now embrace a "modular" approach to repository construction to keep the department on track to meet its goal for accepting nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain by 2010. Under that scenario, only portions of the underground and above-ground repository features would be completed and available to begin processing arriving waste. Nevada officials, who have mounted a multipronged legal, political and public relations campaign to derail the nuclear waste project, said the new Energy Department budget attempts to put space between Yucca Mountain and serious scientific questions about its suitability. "A fait accompli is what they're trying to make this thing, and it's very transparent," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said through a spokesman. "What they're trying to do is throw enough money and inevitability about Yucca Mountain regardless of what the science comes out." The department's budget request is certain to be scaled back by Congress, said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. "Last year they requested more money than they got, and I'm sure that's the same that will happen this year," he said. Bob Loux, director of Nevada's nuclear waste project office, said the state will object to allowing the Energy Department to build the repository in stages. "The modular approach is probably contrary to several national laws," Loux said. "We'll see if they get there." Energy officials said the forward-leaning budget is not a sign that President Bush has decided to designate Yucca Mountain for a repository. Abraham will recommend Yucca Mountain to Bush, but won't forward his decision to the White House until after Feb. 10, spokesman Joseph Davis said. From a manager's standpoint, Barrett said, "if I don't put things in the budget, I won't have the money" if the president decides to keep the program alive. Abraham acknowledged the program will face continued scrutiny. "Our time frame has always been a case of recognizing other people have a role to play here," he said. "Obviously I'm not the only player in this. The state of Nevada has a role, and, potentially, Congress has a role." The Energy Department budget request is the largest since 1996, when it asked Congress for $630 million. It received only half that amount, forcing managers to narrow the disposal program focus on Yucca Mountain site suitability. Barrett confirmed the Bush administration may ask Congress later this year for additional money to speed plans for an $800 million rail line if the site selection process is completed by midsummer. "If the site is designated, the administration will seek additional funding to begin construction of essential transportation facilities and infrastructure within Nevada," an administration budget document states. For that to happen, Bush would have to recommend the site, Gov. Kenny Guinn would issue his expected veto and then Congress would have to override Nevada's veto, all within several months. Nevada leaders have signaled they will try to draw out the process as long as possible. While seeking to boost repository spending, the Energy Department budget calls for a 76 percent cut, to $18.2 million, for research into transmutation, a nuclear waste processing method that some view as a possible alternative to long-term storage. Ensign, a transmutation proponent, said he expects lawmakers will restore funding. "This is something that we've initiated in Congress," he said. "So we'll just take this and increase it." In its budget, the Energy Department proposed a $6 million line item to begin planning rail and truck access to the repository site. "We need to start planning access to the site if approved," Barrett said. "We're going to offer to work with Nevadans," Barrett said. "What the Nevadans do with that is up to the Nevadans. We want to make sure we can support working together on a common basis in the future." "Hopefully we can work something out," Barrett said. There's little chance of that, Loux said. "I don't think there's going to be any discussions between the state and the Energy Department on those things until long after the recommendation process is complete and long after the resolution of lawsuits and perhaps even after the licensing process is up," Loux said. The Energy Department also plans to try to revive efforts in Congress to loosen budget restrictions on the Nuclear Waste Fund, a utility-fed account that pays for a portion of the repository program. Efforts to move the roughly $9 billion fund "off budget" so it could be more easily tapped for increasingly costly repository construction failed last year on Capitol Hill. Barrett also said the Yucca Mountain Project will perform legal work on its NRC license in-house following the November departure of the Winston &Strawn law firm. He declined to give more details, referring questions to Energy Department legal counsel. Winston &Strawn left the repository program in November, two weeks after Energy Department investigators confirmed the Chicago-based firm was a registered lobbyist for a nuclear industry group at the same time it held a $16.5 million Yucca Mountain contract. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 32 Debate rages over U.S. nuclear dumping ground - February 1, 2002 CNN.com - (CNN) -- Despite Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's announcement in early January that Nevada's Yucca Mountain is a scientifically sound and suitable site for storing the country's nuclear waste, the controversy over the nuclear dumping ground continues. A panel of scientists has issued a report raising concerns about the scientific testing conducted at Yucca Mountain. The report lends strength to the arguments of several environmental and scientific groups that assert that the site is unsuitable. The groups allege that insufficient testing has been done to determine whether Yucca Mountain's geological and hydrologic features are adequate to safely store used fuel rods and other radioactive waste from the United States' 103 nuclear power plants. NEXT@CNN's Natalie Pawelski delved into the pros and cons of storing nuclear waste with two very opposing views. Paul Leventhal represents the Nuclear Control Institute, a watchdog group that opposes the Yucca Mountain site designation. Scott Peterson represents the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy group that supports the Yucca Mountain site designation. They share their views here. ***************************************************************** 33 Brian Greenspun: Transporting terror (Yucca) Las Vegas SUN February 05, 2002 Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun. WHAT ABOUT the axles of evil? When President George W. Bush told the people of the United States that the state of our union was good, he told us not only what we wanted to know, but also what we needed to hear. Ever since September 11 this nation has been trooping across uncharted ground while our government has plotted a course that pits the free world against a terrorist evil that we have promised to eradicate. That President Bush's popularity has skyrocketed is no accident and perfectly understandable given the devastation that befell us in September and the deliberateness, forthrightness and steadfastness with which his administration has prosecuted this long and difficult war to stamp out terrorism. We know it is the right thing to do and we know it must be done if our children are to have half a chance to grow up in a world that is no longer held hostage to the dysfunctional elements of a world society that has, in some parts of the globe, gone mad. There are few Americans who could not have been more proud of our president when he spoke about the "axis of evil" that starts in North Korea and settles itself deep into the heart of Iraq and Iran. He caused quite a stir in those countries and even amongst some of the friendlies around the world, but he told it like it is and like it must be told if we are to once and for all make this new century safe for democracy and other living things. And while I believe he could have included another couple of terrorist-abetting countries, I think he did just fine. For starters. Let's take North Korea, for example. It is a totalitarian state that starves its people so that it can use what resources it has to build weapons of mass destruction for the purpose of intimidating its neighbors and selling those weapons to rogue states for the hard currencies that it believes will make it secure. What North Korea does is export the means to terrorize innocent people. Iraq, well, what can anyone add to the megalomaniacal Saddam Hussein's efforts to create such weapons of incredible destruction that, once completed, he'll be able to terrorize not only his neighbors in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but also the entire Middle East. It could be the perfect end to a madman's dream. And the fact that Bush threw Iran into the middle of the evil axis was really no reach at all despite the diplomatic hand wringing about how friendly Iran was becoming toward us. The fact is that some of the most vicious terrorist groups in the world are not only sponsored and trained in Iran but also are encouraged by members of the government to create such havoc in the Middle East and other parts of the world that people cannot feel safe in their homes, at their jobs or while they play. I am comfortable for the time being that President Bush has his arms around the world for the purpose of rooting out these terrorists and their cells, their allies and their governmental sponsors wherever they be and for however long it may take. That is, after all, his job -- to make sure that nobody threatens the United States or anyone in this country with a life filled with terror and uncertainty. So, now let's look a lot closer to home. It seems to be a safe bet that the president will follow the hastily made recommendation of his secretary of energy, Spencer Abraham, who thinks that the best answer to the problem of what to do with the nation's high-level nuclear waste is to bury it in Yucca Mountain, just a few miles from downtown Las Vegas and the 1.5 million people who live here. Oh, yes, let's not forget the 35 million people from around the country who visit us annually and who probably won't once that stuff starts coming our way. The question is why? Why would our president, the man who hates terrorists and who is doing his level best to make our world a safer place because they won't be in it, force Nevadans to accept the deadliest poison known to man? He knows that requiring us to live with the threat to our health and safety that comes with the nuke waste package is a kind of terrorism that should not be imposed upon any citizen, let alone those of us who dwell in the fastest growing state in the country. There is no question that the Department of Energy cannot possibly guarantee us that we will live free of accident and completely out of harm's way for the next 10,000 years. Heck, our government has a huge problem guaranteeing us that anything it does will last for a decade, let alone one thousand of them! So, to foist upon us such deadly uncertainty, the kind that will make parents lose sleep at night and our business people consider doing their business elsewhere, threatening the jobs of thousands of Nevadans, is to create a level of terror that no one in this country deserves. Especially not at the hands of our own government! And yet that is exactly what the president will do if he makes good on Abraham's promise to shove that stuff down our throats. Not only will President Bush be creating hundreds of new targets for terrorists to intimidate us with as those trucks start rolling through 43 states and almost every populated city in America, but he also will be placing in jeopardy millions of families along the way because of the inevitable accidents that will happen. The axles that will carry those trucks across the nation's highways and through our cities will be threatening the health and safety of every American who lives, drives or vacations within the reach of the deadly plutonium that travels from the relative safety of the nuclear power plants where it is made to an uncertain future as it passes through our cities and past our homes and schools. Those axles will carry evil. It is not the kind that reaches out from caves in Afghanistan or from religious schools in Iran, presidential palaces in Iraq or some dark spot in the very secretive North Korea, but it is every bit as terrorizing to the mothers and fathers who will have to put their children to sleep each night wondering when death and sickness will be visited upon them. Some say the difference, of course, is that George Bush's war is against evil people and evil governments who aid, abet and encourage terrorist activities. But when the axles of evil carry the nuclear waste to Nevada, there is no doubt a high degree of terror will roll with them. President Bush should be terrorizing the bad guys who want to kill us. He should reject any role in spreading the same kind of terror here at home. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 34 DOE plans 'temporary' nuke dump at Yucca Las Vegas SUN February 05, 2002 By Benjamin Grove Yucca budget President Bush's budget released Monday asked lawmakers for $425 million for Yucca programs: + Suitability/licensing/performance assessment -- $111.9 million, 69 percent increase from last year + Core science -- $71.3 million, same + Design and engineering -- $128.5 million, 79 percent increase + Waste transportation in Nevada planning -- $6 million, new allocation + Environmental law compliance -- $1.6 million, same + Operations/construction -- $45.6 million, 34 percent increase + Project management -- $40.2 million, 24 percent increase + External oversight -- $19.8 million, same Source: Energy Department WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department wants to construct an above-ground nuclear waste storage area near Yucca Mountain as part of its effort to start shipping 77,000 tons of waste to Nevada by 2010. Critics say the plan, which clearly emerged as a central part of the department's Yucca Mountain budget on Monday, would be akin to a large-scale temporary waste storage area. Congress has already voted down a plan to build a temporary facility. Nevada officials said this is part of Energy's attempt to get Yucca Mountain approved before it goes through Congress. "This is a classic sort of piece-mealing," said Bob Loux, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects director. "It's kind of getting the nose under the tent." Loux said he doesn't think that the plan would meet federal law regulating the repository. He said the state would sue if the plan goes forward. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the attempt to license Yucca before scientific studies are complete, and to ship waste there before construction completion, was typical of the department's zeal to advance the project. "We have said all along that the DOE thinks this is a done deal," Ensign said. "I'm used to the DOE dealing this way." Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has said he will recommend to President Bush that Yucca Mountain be named the nation's nuclear waste repository. That recommendation is expected this month. Congress will have the final say in the matter and could vote on the issue as soon as this year. While critics say the Energy Department plans a kind of temporary storage site, its officials are careful not to call it that. "This is not an interim site -- it's a permanent repository," acting Yucca project director Lake Barrett said. "But it has to remain on the surface before going underground. You are always going to have some (spent nuclear) fuel on the surface." It is not yet known how much waste would sit at the surface storage area while tunnels are being completed, Barrett said. Yucca tunnels likely would not be complete by the 2010 deadline, so when Bush unveiled his budget Monday, he asked Congress for enough money to keep the project on track, even if it means shipping waste to Nevada before the underground dump is complete. "After enormous study, we are poised to recommend a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste," Abraham said Monday during a budget briefing. He also told reporters, "We have taken no job more seriously in the last year than that responsibility." Nevada lawmakers opa Yucca repository, including any kind of temporary storage. Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., noted the old phrase, "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has vowed to trim the Yucca budget. The Senate majority whip sits on the Appropriations Committee where he'll have the chance to do so. Bush and Energy Department are asking lawmakers for $527 million for the next fiscal year for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, which manages the Yucca Mountain project. About $425 million would be spent on Yucca development. The money, a 41 percent increase from last year, would allow the department to shift its focus from studying Yuccato licensing and constructing it. If Bush and Congress approve the site, the Energy Department could submit an application in late 2004 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to bury the nuclear waste under the desert ridge, officials said Monday. White House officials stress that Bush has not decided whether he will give approve Energy's recommendation. But he is widely expected to do so. "Budgets are political documents," said Keith Ashdown, spokesman for watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. "The Bush administration is saying something with the document they released Monday." White House officials referred questions to Energy Department, where officials flatly denied that the budget was an indication the president had already signed off on the project. "No, the president hasn't made any decision," spokesman Joe Davis said. Barrett said the budget process requires departments to submit budgets 1 1/2 years before they will get the money, so requests are routinely made in case projects get final approvals. Barrett said Bush could make a decision "early summer or sooner, possibly" -- before lawmakers make final budget decisions. "The project for '03 is predicated on the (Yucca) project going forward," Barrett said Monday. "We're very pleased with the support of this (Bush) administration." Critics said it is inappropriate for administrations to request money for projects they haven't approved. "How can the DOE can move forward with licensing and even construction is really absurd when there is so much work to do in finishing up the scientific studies," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist with Nuclear Information &Resource Service. The Energy Department is forging ahead with other spending plans based on the assumption that Bush will approve the site. For the first time, the department is budgeting money -- $6 million -- for planning a rail system in Nevada to transport thousands of waste shipments over several decades. There are no tracks to Yucca now, but the rail system could be in place as early as 2008, Barrett said. If Bush and Congress sign off on Yucca, the Energy Department could ask Congress for more money later this year, Ensign said. The Energy Department said it will apply for an license without the help of an outside law firm, at least for now. Chicago-based Winston &Strawn for two years shepherded the license application, but quit its $16.5 million contract in November amid controversy that the firm may have a conflict of interest. While it represented the department on Yucca issues, it had also been a registered pro-Yucca lobbyist for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a top industry trade group. The firm denied having a conflict of interest. Davis declined to say whether the Energy Department is actively looking for another firm as in-house counsel is handling the work. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 35 IEER: DOE Makes Wrong Choice by Selecting Yucca Mountain For further information contact: Arjun Makhijani [ ieer@ieer.org] : (301) 270-5500 P R E S S R E L E A S E The Department of Energy Accelerated Cleanup Program of the Nuclear Weapons Complex an Invitation to Lax Standards Bush Administration DOE Budget May Increase Contamination Threat to Crucial Water Resources DOE Should Be Relieved of Cleanup Responsibility; States Should Be Given the Option and Funds for Cleanup Takoma Park, Maryland., Feb. 4, 2002: In its budget document for fiscal year 2003, the Bush administration has deemed the six-billion dollar-a-year Environmental Management (EM) Program of the Department of Energy (DOE) as "ineffective." The budget proposes an expenditure of $6.7 billion on Environmental Management, including "$800 million in a new 'reserve' fund to implement fundamental program changes, with the expectation that the proposed reforms will improve cleanup efficiency by completing construction projects within baselines, reducing the cost of waste treatment and disposal, and integrating cleanup strategies across different sites." (p. 127) "I think the Bush administration's conclusion that the DOE's Environmental Management Program is ineffective is completely correct," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), in Takoma Park, Maryland, which has published many studies [http://www.ieer.org/pubs/index.html] on nuclear-related technologies. "With some exceptions, what we have had so far is largely a cleanup of taxpayer dollars, rather than a program that will actually protect future generations. But the proposed cure does not address the cause of the disease. On the contrary, it is likely to make the program worse." For instance, the Department of Energy has recently suggested, as part of cost cutting at its Hanford, Washington site, that it may be preferable to mix most of the highly radioactive waste with cement and discharge it into lined trenches on the site. The Columbia River, the largest in the West, runs through the site. "This approach to cost cutting would turn the Hanford site into a de facto high-level waste dump," said Dr. Makhijani. "It would represent an abandonment of a program of glassifying this dangerous waste and disposing of it in a deep repository. It's not the program idea of glassification of the waste that's wrong. The problem has mostly been bad management and contracting, and poor execution." IEER published a major study on the EM program [http://www.ieer.org/reports/cleanup/index.html] in 1997, which documented the many failures of the program and recommended changes. Institutional problems were central, including failure to use the best available technology and science, failure to prepare projects with small-scale trials, and lack of proper project review. The report recommended that the EM program been taken out of DOE. Another basic problem it pointed out was the lack of stringent clean-up standards. "You can't have a sound program without stringent, national cleanup standards which the DOE has refused to have. This rush to cleanup is not a substitute for a sound program that is directed towards protecting water resources and future generations," said Dr. Makhijani. " The proposed acceleration of cleanup is really a continuation of the old pattern that has been a part of the problem. There have been several 'accelerated' cleanup proposals already and they stress expedient short-term approaches, like capping dumps or cementing wastes, which often create worse long-term problems. And the DOE should be relieved of its cleanup responsibilities. States that want to do it should be given an escrow account with enough funds to do the cleanup themselves with their own contractors, under stringent federal oversight." IEER has put a major focus on pointing out the necessity of a sound cleanup program to protect some of the most important water resources in the United States. In October 2001, IEER published a study, Poison in the Vadose Zone [http://www.ieer.org/reports/poison/toc.html] , about the Snake River Plain aquifer. It pointed out that the DOE did not have plans to retrieve the enormous amount of plutonium-contaminated waste, containing more than one ton of plutonium, that had been dumped on the site, which sits over the sole source aquifer, which is the largest contiguous aquifer in the West. "Accelerating clean-up will not address the great difficulties of how the buried waste is to be retrieved at the Idaho National Lab and how it will be processed for safe storage and repository disposal," said Dr. Makhijani. "The $800 million fund to accelerate cleanup seems like an invitation for states to settle for lax standards that would leave considerable amounts of radioactivity in the soil. This approach promises to pose an even greater threat to crucial water resources like the Snake River Plan aquifer, the Savannah River, and the Columbia River. Offering money for accelerated cleanup without stringent cleanup standards and buried waste retrieval is the wrong way to go. The government should put more money into protecting crucial water resources from critical threats." -30- Available on this site: + Containing the Cold War Mess: Restructuring the Environmental Management of the US Nuclear Weapons Complex [http://www.ieer.org/reports/cleanup/index.html] , IEER report, 1997 + Poison in the Vadose Zone: An examination of the threats to the Snake River Plain aquifer from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory [http://www.ieer.org/reports/poison/toc.html] , IEER report, 2001 Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org [ieer@ieer.org] Takoma Park, Maryland, USA Posted February 4, 2002 ***************************************************************** 36 Debate rages over U.S. nuclear dumping ground - February 1, 2002 CNN.com - (CNN) -- Despite Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's announcement in early January that Nevada's Yucca Mountain is a scientifically sound and suitable site for storing the country's nuclear waste, the controversy over the nuclear dumping ground continues. A panel of scientists has issued a report raising concerns about the scientific testing conducted at Yucca Mountain. The report lends strength to the arguments of several environmental and scientific groups that assert that the site is unsuitable. The groups allege that insufficient testing has been done to determine whether Yucca Mountain's geological and hydrologic features are adequate to safely store used fuel rods and other radioactive waste from the United States' 103 nuclear power plants. NEXT@CNN's Natalie Pawelski delved into the pros and cons of storing nuclear waste with two very opposing views. Paul Leventhal represents the Nuclear Control Institute, a watchdog group that opposes the Yucca Mountain site designation. Scott Peterson represents the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy group that supports the Yucca Mountain site designation. They share their views here. RELATED SITES: • The Yucca Mountain Project [http://www.ymp.gov] • Eureka County, Nevada Nuclear Waste Page [http://www.yuccamountain.org/] • EPLevanthal: Yucca Mountain • Yucca Mountain Facts.org [http://www.yuccamountainfacts.org/] • USGS: Yucca Mountain Geophysical Studies [http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/gump/ymp/ymp.html] • The Study Committee [http://www.studycommittee.org/] ***************************************************************** 37 DOE Landfill for nuke waste due to open May 1 Augusta Georgia: Technology: Web posted Tuesday, February 5, 2002 By Frank Munger Scripps Howard News Service OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - A nuclear landfill scheduled to open this spring on the government's Oak Ridge reservation may ultimately receive 2 million cubic yards of waste and cost more than $100 million. "That's what we anticipate our long-term needs will be," said Bill Cahill, the project manager for the U.S. Department of Energy. It's the first waste facility of this type to be built here in at least 20 years, Cahill said. The project's first phase, which is nearing completion, will have two disposal cells capable of holding about 400,000 cubic yards of low-level radioactive and hazardous waste. The design includes several layers of clay, rock and various synthetic liners to prevent waste from contaminating area groundwater. It also has a system to collect and treat liquids that leach from the waste operations. The new landfill is about a mile from the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. It will receive wastes generated by cleanup activities at each of DOE's Oak Ridge facilities - Y-12, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly called the K-25 site). There will be a high volume of waste, but the levels of radioactivity and chemical contamination will be relatively low, Cahill said. The wastes will include construction rubble, concrete, soils and general debris, he said. The landfill, slated to begin operation on May 1, will be capable of taking a truckload of waste every five minutes, said Joe Williams, project chief for Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's environmental contractor. Although operating the landfill will be expensive, DOE officials said they will save millions of dollars by disposing of waste locally rather than shipping it to commercial landfills or other federal sites. Citizens who attended public meetings on the DOE waste program several years ago overwhelmingly favored treating and disposing of waste on the government's Oak Ridge reservation rather than transporting it to other parts of the country. 1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle ***************************************************************** 38 WOTR: Nevada must not become the nation's nuclear-dump site, by Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn by Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham called to inform me of his decision to press ahead with plans to bury 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. "This decision stinks," I told him, "and Nevada will redouble its fight." In implementing its rich propaganda campaign, the nuclear industry now paints Nevada as unpatriotic, obstructionist and a NIMBY warrior. However, this is America's fight, not just Nevada's. Very troubling, and something that should concern every citizen of this nation, is the fact the Energy Secretary made his decision without requiring any analysis of the transportation risks to the 43 states and hundreds of cities and towns through which this dangerous, volatile waste will travel. The citizens of this country have not been told of the danger to them, their children, and future generations caused by shipping through their neighborhoods and possibly alongside their schools, stadiums or through their downtown and industrial areas, 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear fuel at a rate of 3,000 to 4,000 truck and rail shipments per year for 38 years. Such risks include individual exposure to radiation from the mere fact the waste travels through their community, declining property values along the transportation route, and the likelihood of accidents, which would release deadly radiation into the immediate environment. I urge every citizen who lives in one of the states within which this extremely hazardous material will travel to review the report titled, "Radiological Consequences of Severe Rail Accidents Involving Spent Nuclear Fuel Shipments to Yucca Mountain: Hypothetical Baltimore Rail Tunnel Fire Involving Spent Nuclear Fuel," which can be found at the Agency for Nuclear Projects, Nuclear Waste Project Office website, www.state.nv.us/nucwaste. This report examines the circumstances surrounding the July 18, 2001, rail accident that occurred in Baltimore's Howard Street tunnel, igniting a fire that burned for five days. The report assesses the consequences of this accident had the train been carrying a shipment of spent nuclear fuel, concluding that the result of such an accident involving spent fuel would be devastating. Due to the duration of the fire and the extremely high temperatures, the accident would have resulted in a significant and deadly release of radiation from the transportation container. This is what can happen when this waste travels through your community. The likelihood of an accident raises additional issues, such as who will pay for and train emergency response crews in each of the hundreds of cities and towns, big or small, through which this dangerous waste will travel? Who will pay for and provide the protection needed to ensure that each shipment is safe from terrorist attack? Many claim Yucca Mountain will somehow aid national security. To the contrary, even if the project proceeds, shipments of highly radioactive spent fuel -- some 100,000 individual terrorist targets -- will not begin for years. Spent fuel will accumulate at reactor sites across the country for at least the next 50 years, even if more plants are not built. The key to addressing this problem is to secure those sites now, possibly with the anti-aircraft guns and troops proposed this month by DOE, not simply shipping the spent fuel to another site, where it will be stored above-ground for years. Under that industry-boosted scenario, Yucca Mountain will only create a massive new target, and thousands of smaller mobile ones. There is no need to push through a project; we have time to find a storage site that does not fail the test of science or endanger the citizens of this country, as Yucca Mountain does. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said spent fuel can be safely stored at reactor sites for at least the next 100 years, and perhaps up to 1,000 years. Only by acknowledging that Yucca Mountain is dangerous and unnecessary can we finally begin the process of finding a safe and workable solution to the nation's spent nuclear-fuel problem. Fortunately, this is a nation of laws, and one of considerable common sense. With our backing, good scientists and good lawyers can now unravel the house of cards created by years of ineptitude and political maneuvering at Yucca Mountain. I have confidence in the common sense of President Bush, who promised me personally and in writing that the project would not be mindlessly advanced in the face of bad science. I believe the President is a man of his word. If he changes course, however, my duty is clearly to Nevadans, and I will spare no effort to ensure that science and the law will ultimately stop Yucca Mountain from going forward. Kenny Guinn, Republican governor of Nevada, is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (www.hcn.org). [http://www.hcn.org/wwwboard/wotr_forum.html] Any comments or concerns please contact Editor Betsy Marston, (970) 527-4898 or e-mail betsym@hcn.org [betsym@hcn.org] ***************************************************************** 39 'Nova' breaks silence on U.S. operation with atomic consequences HoustonChronicle.com By ANN HODGES The wraps are off, and now we know who stole America's A-bomb secrets and gave them to the Soviet Union with World War II in progress. Associated Press Ethel Rosenberg and her husband, Julius, are separated by a wire screen as they are transported to jail in New York City March 29, 1957. PBS' Nova "solves" that espionage mystery tonight. Fifty years too late, but it's fascinating viewing. Secrets, Lies & Atomic Spies uses newly declassified top-secret documents, including post-Cold War KGB files, to track the spy who stole his country's most important secret. The spy was never prosecuted or even publicly accused. To have done that would have broken the government's cover on an extraordinary code-breaking operation that revealed not only this spy's involvement in passing U.S. secrets to the Soviets, but also at least 300 other spies, as well. Some were highly placed government officials. At the top of the spy chain was an 18-year-old Los Alamos scientist, U.S. Army Pfc. Ted Hall. He got off, free as a bird, and there's an interview with his wife to tell us how. You'll also see Hall himself, in a tape he made shortly before he died in 1999. His motive, he says, was "humanitarian." What should have been done with him, since the government knew what he'd done? Nova puts that question today to a man who was one of Los Alamos' team of top-secret nuclear physicists. "Shot!" Sam Cohen shoots back. Proof of Hall's espionage was the result of incredible work by Meredith Gardner, a crack code-breaker in World War II, who's also interviewed here. In a dramatization, he's shown working on a Soviet code so complicated that the experts thought it would be impossible to break. Gardner broke it, and he and Nova's experts explain how. And from then on, Gardner worked with FBI agent Robert Lamphere (also interviewed here) on Project Venona, the name given to thousands of coded telegrams from Russia containing the names of Soviet agents involved in stealing this country's atomic secrets. One of them was top nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs. Others were high officials in the U.S. government. Venona also played a role, only now coming to light, in the prosecution and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as Soviet spies in 1953. There's another good public-service program tonight on PBS. Bill Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy goes looking through the playbook of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to point out a provision he says could cost the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico untold millions in damage claims. Under NAFTA's "Chapter 11" provision, Moyers and his guests point out, foreign companies can sue if the companies believe they have been hurt by those governments. Such cases are decided by three-man tribunals, barred to the public, Moyers reports. Those tribunals, he warns, can overrule decisions by U.S. courts. He cites big-money cases that already have raised serious questions in all three countries, and the effects of those cases upon the communities involved. The report could have used more balance, and it should have dumped the ominous music to underscore its points. Still, this is Moyers in full investigative sail. Nova: Secrets, Lies & Atomic Spies, 7 tonight, PBS/Channel 8. Grade: A. Bill Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy, 9 tonight, PBS/Channel 8. Grade: A-. ***************************************************************** 40 Arms production to be pooled - The Times of India INDIATIMES TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2002 12:16:42 AM ] NEW DELHI: Apart from talks on leasing of two nuclear submarines and four long-range strategic bombers to New Delhi, Indian and Russian officials are expected to discuss joint development and production of high- tech weapon systems this week. Defence ministry officials described the meeting of defence minister George Fernandes and the Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov here on Monday as a "courtesy call". The prevailing tension along the Indo-Pak border and New Delhi’s need for supply of armaments and spares also figured during the talks. New Delhi and Moscow will sign a protocol on defence cooperation later in the week, with Russian deputy prime minister Ilya Klebanov visiting New Delhi in the next few days. The two sides are likely to discuss the sale of aircraft-carrier Admiral Gorshkov and the leasing of four TU-22 long-range maritime surveillance aircraft, which are also nuclear- capable, and two nuclear Shchuka-B (Bars) multi-role submarines, among other key weapon systems, to India. Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. | ***************************************************************** 41 Russian Pacific Fleet calls Chechen rebel plot to hijack nuclear sub unrealistic BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Feb 5, 2002 Vladivostok, 5 February, correspondent Anatoliy Artyukhov: The commanding staff of the Russian Pacific Fleet has called Chechen rebels' plans to hijack a nuclear submarine as unrealistic, the press service of the Pacific Fleet told RIA on Tuesday [5 February], commenting on the personal cache belonging to the late Chechen leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, found in Chechnya yesterday. It contained a plan of seizing a nuclear submarine in Maritime Territory. The press service said that a nuclear submarine "could only be hijacked in a foreign science fiction action movie, but in real life it would be a doomed plan". "There is an enhanced security system for protecting nuclear facilities in Russia, including in those locations where nuclear submarines are stationed. All of them are protected by several circles of defence and are being guarded around the clock", the press service added. [Omitted: known facts] The Chechen rebel plot to hijack a nuclear submarine was to be performed by seven people of Slavic origin. Should they have managed to access the submarine, their next move would have been to attach an explosive device to the reactor section and to the warhead of one of the nuclear missiles on board the submarine. After that they would have put forward their main demand - immediate cessation of all military actions on the territory of Chechnya and a complete withdrawal of the federal troops. Source: RIA news agency, Moscow, in Russian 0604 gmt 5 Feb 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. World Reporter ***************************************************************** 42 Russia: Nuclear Rockets Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2002. Page 4 MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia is deploying its advanced Topol-M ballistic missiles in its fleet of nuclear submarines, a senior general said, signalling a shift in military tactics. General Yury Baluyevsky, first deputy chief of the General Staff, said in the weekend edition of Tribuna newspaper that priority was being given to sea-launched rather than land-based Topols. The rockets have a range of more than 10,000 kilometers and have been designed to defeat the sort of missile defense systems that the United States is planning to build -- in the teeth of Russian opposition. The Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report. The first 10 Topol rockets were deployed in the Saratov region in 1998, and six to 10 more deployed in each of the subsequent two years. Cash constraints meant there was no funding for more last year. [http://www.moscowtimes.ru ***************************************************************** 43 Funds would boost readiness of test site Tuesday, February 05, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Shorter time sought to prepare for blasts By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The federal agency managing the Nevada Test Site unveiled a budget Monday including $15 million to shorten the time needed to resume nuclear testing. The budget request by the National Nuclear Security Agency does not mean the United States is preparing to end a nearly decade-long moratorium on underground nuclear tests, said John Gordon, the agency's administrator. "I want to emphasize this time ... as I have every other time, there are no plans to test," Gordon said. "This is what I think is responsible stewardship on our part." The $15 million request would be a $6 million increase over the current year's budget for test readiness, according to agency records. If Congress signs off on the request, the money would be distributed to the test site and the nation's nuclear laboratories. Under current conditions, the test site would need two to three years to get ready. That's too long, according to the Nuclear Posture Review, a report released by the Bush administration last month. "I'll feel a lot more comfortable about my job if I have a shorter period of time than three years," Gordon said. The government has not considered resuming tests following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Gordon said. Checking the safety and reliability of aging nuclear weapons is the reason to improve testing readiness, he said. During a Pentagon briefing last month, Gordon aide John Harvey said 18 months would be a reasonable period to prepare for a nuclear test. But Gordon said Monday he does not know what the new preparation time should be or when that decision would be made. "We're working with the Department of Defense to determine what the time frame should be. I don't know if it will be 18 months or not." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., would support a reduction in the time needed to resume underground nuclear tests at the test site, according to Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen. "But there's a big difference in supporting a reduced preparation time and supporting a resumption of nuclear tests," Hafen said. As chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water, Reid helps shape the test site's budget. The last underground nuclear detonation at the test site occurred Sept. 23, 1992. Since then, the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons have been checked through subcritical tests that do not cause a nuclear explosion. "The stockpile stewardship program, as we see it now, is going very well," Gordon said. "I just think we, for prudence, ought to be prepared to do anything else that is required." webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 44 INDIA: Atomic Energy panel wants no-fly zones over N-installations [http://www.indian-express.com] Tuesday, February 05, 2002 GAURAV C. SAWANT NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 4: THE Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) has written to the Ministry of Civil Aviation to declare air corridors above nuclear installations as ‘no fly zones.’ Security around these installations is also being reviewed in the wake of an international alert from the FBI warning of attacks by Islamic terrorists. The FBI flashed its warning — which was conveyed to the Intelligence Bureau — following the interrogation of an al Qaeda terrorist. Since India and Pakistan have signed a treaty not to attack each other’s nuclear installations, the fear is of a strike by non-state actors like terrorists, sources said. ‘‘There is a proposal for low-level radars to detect air intrusion. The IAF is tasked to scramble and shoot down any incoming alien aircraft. However, reaction time would be more if the entire area is declared a no fly zone. Then any flying object would be easily identifiable as friend or foe,’’ an official said. The Coast Guard has placed additional high speed interceptor boats off the Mumbai coast for the protection of Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) along with naval commandoes who carry out special checks, sources in the Coast Guard said. Anti-aircraft guns have also been deployed. ‘‘Requisition for deployment of additional anti-aircraft guns has also been made for Narora Atomic Power plant, Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (Rawathbhata), Kaiga Atomic Power Station in Karnataka, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research and Madras Atomic Power Station at Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu),’’ an official in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. ‘‘We have been on a heightened alert since May ‘98 and following the events of September 11 and December 13, all possible measures to tighten security are being taken,’’ J.D. Virkar, inspector general (security), Department of Atomic Energy, told The Indian Express. In fact, in the wake of recent terrorist strikes, Dr Anil Kakodkar, AEC chairman and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, has been attending Cabinet Committee on Security meetings, sources said. While the Central Industrial Security Force is in charge of security of nuclear installations, local police, army, navy, coast guard and air force handle over-all security. The Bhaba Atomic Research Centre in Maharashtra has its own security unit, provided by the state reserve police. © 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 45 LBNL Item on the City of Berkeley Council Agenda February 5, 2002 Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 14:43:00 -0800 (PST) The Berkeley City Council has passed some historic legislation over the years. You continue to impact life around the nation with actions which are fundamental to peace and justice in this city, and continue to provide courageous acts for other communities around the world to follow. The item on the agenda for this evening concerning the LBNL plan to restart the Tritiated Mixed Waste Treatability Study is more important than you may realize. There are 350 National Laboratories, like LBNL, that have the same problem with disposal of radioactive mixed waste. The DOE Hanford facility in Washington has billions of gallons of mixed waste with no answer for disposal. Instead, it is stored in huge vats which are leaking into the groundwater, into the Columbia River, and contaminating large parts of the state. Emissions from Hanford have poisoned communities around it. Oak Ridge, Savannah River, Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs have problems as severe with radioactive disposal and contamination of the environment. The "study" that LBNL is planning to continue will add nothing to further research on the mixed waste problem. There are 350 other National Labs where facilities are much more sophisticated with much better qualified scientists to work on this difficult solution. Large amounts of funding for decades have been provided to solve this problem with little progress to date. The solution will not come out of LBNL. But tritium will come out of the stacks during that study and continue to pollute our environment. In 1997, Nick Samios, the Director of Brookhaven National Lab who had served for 15 years, was removed as Director over a 5 Curie emission of tritium, others were fired. At LBNL, the last "accident" released nearly 50 Curies of tritium. Why are the standards different here? During the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) meeting in December, the LBNL chemist Dr. Li-Yang Chan admitted that tritium is being released into the environment from the treatability study, as he had reported in his 1997 professional publication. This was contrary to what the LBNL attorney, Ms. Shepherd, had stated just minutes before to a room full of concerned citizens and the CEAC members. LBNL is a morally bankrupt and corrupt institution. The infiltration of the CEAC by LBNL has bankrupted the environmental protection process for this important commission. The physical violence against citizens, intimidation, and corruption of members on the commission by Gordon Wozniak and Elmer Grossman are unprecedented examples of terrorism perpetrated by LBNL and the University of California. LBNL and UC have a very long history of terrorism against any and all perceived dissenters. I know, I was a whistleblower at the Livermore Lab. "Nobody Beats Berkeley" is an excuse to batter anyone UC decides to target. Take a look at WAGE (www.wage.org). Local law enforcement and UC/LBNL entities have continued to harass me for more than 10 years. The encouragement and continued support of this type of behavior by several members of the City Council is even more egregious and inexcusable. Fortunately commission meetings will soon be televised on community TV. The disrupting and disgusting behavior of certain commissioners will be transparent to the community. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. The environment in communities around LBNL is contaminated with emissions of tritium from the National Tritium Labelling Facility. We have measured tritium in the rain guages as far as Albany. LBNL reported tritium in the goat droppings and milk of animals grazing around LBNL in a 1996 study. This doesn't touch on the radiation burden on the communities from past years of radiation research and chemical emissions. Nor does it address the synergystic effect of radiation and chemicals which together is much greater. Legislation is underway in Congress to allow the recycling of radioactive contaminated metals, soils, building materials, etc. from DOE facilities and nuclear power plants as decommissioning begins and continues in the years ahead. The U.S. has 110 nuclear power plants which eventually will be decommissioned. The industry intends to dump the billions of tons of contaminated materials into the private sector - into our breasts, into our bodies, into our brains, nerves and muscles. And into our babies and children. It's a cost saving measure... for those industries and corporatins like ENRON. I will be meeting later this month with members of the Japanese Diet, and Korean and Chinese representatives who are extremeley concerned about these practices. They do not want our rad waste shipped to their countries, especially without informing them. The radioactive tritium contaminated trees from LBNL shipped to Japanese and Korean paper mills will also be discussed. Other countries do not want our radioactive waste. This community does not want LBNL's radioactive waste either. In Russia, 12% of the children today are mentally retarded. Think of the cost to their society of that tragedy. Chemicals and radiation have been dumped for decades into their environment. Slowly, our children will suffer the same consequences of a bankrupt environmental protection program. Think of the children in our community, if for no other reason, and vote tonight for a nuclear free Berkeley. Sincerely yours, Leuren Moret Commissioner Community Environmental Advisory Commission Radiation and Public Health Project (www.radiation.org) President, Scientists for Indigenous People __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE Valentine eCards with Yahoo! Greetings! http://greetings.yahoo.com Attachment Converted: "c:\lib\news\attach\GrassrootsNewsSFBV2.6.02.doc" ***************************************************************** 46 Test Site cleanup efforts lose funds in Bush budget Las Vegas SUN February 05, 2002 By Mary Manning The budget President Bush presented to Congress reduces proposed funding for environmental cleanup at the Nevada Test Site by about $26 million, although a planned center for counter-terrorism training could receive $10 million. The Bush administration on Monday asked Congress for $818 million to fund operations at the Test Site -- which includes money needed to prepare for the licensing of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The $10 million increase for developing a counter-terrorism training center, supported by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was the largest single increase in the Nevada budget. The site, 65 northwest of Las Vegas, received $708 million in 2002. Although the DOE's budget for Test Site increased, the total masks deep cuts for site cleanup, officials said. Last year the DOE received $88 million for restoring the Test Site's environment, including monitoring for possible radioactive contamination in ground water and cleaning up former toxic and radioactive waste on the property, which is larger in area than Rhode Island. This year Bush proposed $61.9 million for Test Site cleanup. "This was a major surprise to us," National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Kevin Rohrer said of the reduced environmental funding. Most of the funding increase for the Nevada site involves preparing an application and license for Yucca Mountain, expected to be recommended by Bush later this month as the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository, Rohrer said. From 1951 to 1992 the Test Site was the proving ground for 928 above- and below-ground nuclear experiments. Work at the site has shifted primarily to maintaining readiness to resume nuclear testing if the president orders it, as well as decontaminating the area. Carl Gertz, project manager in charge of environmental cleanup at the Test Site, said he would make ground water monitoring and low-level nuclear waste disposal his top priorities. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Monday established a new $800 million account that can be tapped by all 109 DOE sites nationwide to speed cleanup at those sites. DOE facilities from throughout the country will use part of their budgets to contribute to the fund. Nevada's contribution to the new account would be $28 million. Proposed funding for experimental defense programs, including the training center, is $58 million, as compared to $48 million in the budget effective during the current fiscal year. Another project supported by Reid involves moving the Atlas, a high-tech experimental facility, to the Test Site from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico as part of a national weapons consolidation program. The move would cost about $3.3 million.00 All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 47 DOE: A federal priority The Cincinnati Post One of the few domestic programs in line for more federal money in 2003, it appears, is the cleanup of nuclear weapons plants. That would be good news for those living near the former uranium processing plant in Fernald, northwest of Cincinnati. U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has announced plans to expedite the Fernald cleanup, which overall is already running ahead of the original schedule. The current plan calls for it do be finished in 2010; Energy Department officials now say it could happen by 2006. Workers have already demolished six of the 10 major buildings at the complex, along with other smaller structures. Permanent disposal facilities for some wastes have been built on-site; other wastes are being sent to disposal facilities in the West. A massive groundwater treatment program has been underway for years. By far the biggest remaining hurdle is disposal of relatively high-level wastes in two of three deteriorating, earth-covered silos that contain heavy metals and uranium ore from the Belgium Congo. A previous attempt to prepare the wastes for shipment by encasing them in glass failed. Contractors are now building four 750,000-gallon tanks to store these wastes temporarily. Starting in 2005, if all goes according to plan, the wastes will be encased in a concrete-based material and loaded into smaller containers for shipment to a permanent disposal site. The cost of the silo project alone will likely be around $400 million - enough to make, say, a good start on a light rail line or something else constructive - and the total cleanup cost at Fernald will likely top $3.7 billion. Those are staggering numbers, but they're part of the price of winning the Cold War. And the sooner the Fernald cleanup is done, the less expensive in the long run it will be - and the easier it will be for residents to breathe more easily. Publication date: 02-05-02 ***************************************************************** 48 A closer look: Los Alamos on alert Orange County Register - Top News February 5, 2002 Since Sept. 11, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, has increased its security. It has more than 500 armed guards, 75 people who are trained in special weapons and tactics, and Humvee vehicles and large-caliber machine guns. John C. Browne, the lab's director, spoke recently at a National Press Club gathering hosted by John Aubuchon, the organization's president. The following is an excerpt: Q. You talked about the need for an increased pace of research. Will the 2003 budget offer the added funding for physical sciences? A. The support for the physical sciences are going up. What we need to do is sustain that increase probably for about a decade. There are fields of science such as the development of tiny materials called nanomaterials that will allow us to develop new types of vaccines. Q. Why should the U.S. continue to operate two nuclear-design labs? A. The country gains from having two laboratories - both do peer review of each other. We've learned how to share so that one lab might take the lead in one area, like Lawrence Livermore Lab has done in laser fusion, and Los Alamos has in advanced radiography. Q. You spoke of the need of recruiting young scientists. Are the schools producing them? A. The schools aren't producing as many U.S. students. We had some problems recruiting in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee incident. Every summer we have on the order 1,300 students. We have 300 to 400 post-doctoral students who do their research at our lab, many of whom stay on as permanent scientists. Q. Periodic talk among Republicans about lifting the moratorium on nuclear weapon testing - when do you believe the stockpile stewardship program will be able to put an end to that kind of suggestion? A. We have gone through annual certification of the stockpile since 1995. I think what the administration is proposing through the nuclear posture review makes a lot of sense - we have to know what would it take to return to nuclear testing if conditions in the world ever changed. [http://www.ocregister.com] Copyright 2002 The Orange County Register ***************************************************************** 49 National labs given more, less in budget ContraCostaTimes.com Published Tuesday, February 5, 2002 + Nanotechnology and counterterrorism funds up; cleanup and Russian nuclear city aid decrease By Andrea Widener CONTRA COSTA TIMES Science scored big in President Bush's proposed budget Monday, with increases that will likely trickle down to Bay Area laboratories. As expected, counterterrorism research received the biggest gains, rising from $1 billion to $3 billion. Other winners were research initiatives to examine computer network infrastructure, climate change and nanotechnology, a specialty at several local research facilities. Basic science at the Department of Energy, which oversees the Bay Area's major labs, did not see the big boosts of organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. But the DOE's nuclear nonproliferation budget, which funds much of the counterterrorism and nonproliferation work, did increase over expected levels, to $283 million. The budget for October 2002 to October 2003 is far from final. It now goes to Congress, which will likely make many changes before it is completed this fall. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, who represents the weapons research facilities Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and Sandia/California National Laboratories, said she is generally satisfied with how much funding they received but is looking to fix unexplained decreases in terrorism research at Livermore and in the DOE's Nuclear Cities Initiative, a program to spur economic development in closed Russian nuclear cities. The lab is getting $68 million for terrorism research from the DOE this year; it is projected at $60 million in the upcoming budget. That figure does not include yet-to-be-divvied money from the defense department and NIH. "We believe that if investments are increased in nonproliferation, then the labs will benefit," said Tauscher, who said she is more concerned with the budget deficit and tax cut. Local groups, and the labs themselves, are concerned about major cuts in the DOE's environmental cleanup funds. At Livermore lab, for example, preliminary cleanup funding falls from $41 million to $30 million. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a multi-disciplinary science research facility, received initial funding for a building that will house a new nanotechnology research center that may begin construction in 2004. It also got an unexpected bump for the Advanced Light Source, a research facility that generates intense ultraviolet and X-ray beams for researchers nationwide. Managers at Sandia/California said there were few surprises in the budget. They got funds to build a defense computing center and an increase in bioterrorism research. Because of these increases and retirements, Sandia expects to hire about 100 people this year and take its work force to 900; about 30 of the hires would be for new positions. "For us it is significant, both (as) an opportunity and a challenge, to reshape the laboratory," said Greg Thomas, deputy to Sandia/California's director. The National Ignition Facility, a $2 billion laser construction project at Livermore, was fully funded. Budget officer Jeffrey Fernandez said the lab was surprised by the size of decreases in both nonproliferation and environmental cleanup funding, but he expects much of that money to be restored as the budget's details are sorted out. "Preliminary is the key word," he said. "The DOE budget is increased in areas that affect the laboratory, (which) is generally positive for us." Reach Andrea Widener at 925-847-2158 or [awidener@cctimes.com] ContraCostaTimes.com ***************************************************************** 50 Safety woes tied to ORNL exposure incidents Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:52 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Oak Ridge National Laboratory this morning issued an official incident report concerning four incidents in December in which a handful of workers were exposed to radiation. "We had a breakdown in our safety procedures," Jim Roberto, associate director for physical sciences at the lab, said of the report's conclusions. Basically, Roberto said an adequate safety review was not performed prior to testing of an electron cyclotron resonance source that is currently under development. The exposures took place in Building 6000. The unplanned exposures to radiation occurred on four separate occasions: Dec. 13, 19, 21 and 26. These exposures involved seven members of ORNL's Physics Division, but not all seven individuals were present on all four occasions, according to the report. Five of these individuals received measured or calculated doses that were above "background levels" while the other two were not in the area long enough to record any measurable dose, the report indicated. The maximum total whole body exposure was 35 millirem and the maximum total extremity exposure was 145 millirem, according to the report. A millirem is a measure of radiation absorbed by tissue, taking into account the difference in damage produced by various kinds of radiation. Three hundred millirem is equivalent to about three dental X-rays. The average American gets a dose of about 360 millirem a year, most of it from radon gas and some from man-made sources, such as X-rays and airline flights. Roberto said serious safety issues like this one involve disciplinary actions, but he said he could not discuss what those might be. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 51 Oak Ridge gains DOE budget thumbs -up 02/05/02 Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:55 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 Security a high priority by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy's fiscal year 2003 budget reflects the rapidly changing security environment that has resulted from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent War on Terrorism. Close to $1 billion is being requested for activities in response to the Sept. 11 events and for physical and cyber security activities at DOE's facilities, according to DOE. Walter Perry, a spokesman for DOE, said it could be a week before the federal agency's Oak Ridge Operations office firmly knows where it stands with the FY 2003 security budget and other funding figures. However, DOE could spend close to $120 million, if not more, in FY 2002 on security for its Oak Ridge facilities. In comparison, DOE officials said local security funding totaled $90 million in FY 2001, $71 million in FY 2000 and $66 million in FY 1999. Security funding in 1988 -- near the end of the Cold War -- was around $99 million. The total funding requested for the National Nuclear Security Administration is around $8 billion. The NNSA is the quasi-independent agency within DOE that oversees the nuclear weapons complex, including the Y-12 National Security Complex. In a statement issued Monday afternoon, U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., said total funding for Y-12 could increase $97 million from last year. The FY 2003 budget request for the Oak Ridge weapons facility is said to be around $717 million. Thompson said President Bush's budget also includes $243 million for facilities and infrastructure improvements at the DOE's weapons sites, which would benefit Y-12 as well. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced DOE's part of President Bush's budget during a press conference Monday afternoon. The event was shown live via satellite at the American Museum of Science and Energy. Abraham said $1.1 billion is being requested for nonproliferation activities in FY 2003. That's about $87 million more than the FY 2002 appropriation. Oak Ridge is actively involved in a number of programs to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons via the Center for International Threat Reduction, which is headquartered in Commerce Park. The center develops, coordinates and assists in several programs, including: + International Safeguards -- Provides technical support to DOE in order to reduce global nuclear danger, prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy. + Nuclear Cities Initiative -- Engages Russian nuclear weapons scientists in work other than producing weapons of mass destruction. + Second Line of Defense -- Works to prevent the illicit trafficking of nuclear-related materials, equipment and technology that contribute to nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 52 Funding for SNS looking good Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:56 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Spallation Neutron Source's guardian angel continues to watch over it. President Bush's fiscal year 2003 budget requests $225 million for the SNS, which is under construction atop Chestnut Ridge. The $1.4 billion SNS is the biggest U.S. science project under construction. Though the FY 2003 funding request is technically less than last year's total of $290 million, Bill Madia, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said it was the "full amount" needed for the project next fiscal year. When the SNS is completed in 2006, researchers from the United States and abroad -- an estimated 2,000 a year -- will come to the facility to study materials that will form the basis for new technologies and improvements in telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation and health, among other areas. "It's too important," said Madia, who added that he won't stop worrying about the facility until it's fully operational. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which will oversee the facility once it is finished, partnered with several other DOE labs to build the SNS. In addition to the SNS, Madia said other Oak Ridge National Lab programs should benefit from the FY 2003 budget, including the Center for Nanophase Materials Science. This research facility will be built beside the SNS. In nanoscience, objects are measured in nanometers, 1 billionth of a meter. For comparison, the smallest features on current computer chips measure about 200 nanometers. And a human hair is 100,000 nanometers thick. U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District, who has worked diligently on securing funding for Oak Ridge, was unavailable for comment. The congressman did issue a press statement indicating he is pleased with Bush's budget proposal. "All in all, there is good news in the president's request, but the real heavy lifting will come in the weeks and months ahead on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue," said Wamp, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 53 DOE: OR cleanup efforts mediocre 02/05/02 Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:56 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge cleanup efforts have been labeled mediocre based on a recently finished comprehensive review of the federal agency's Environmental Management program. Oak Ridge has focused on the "easy work," not on higher-risk activities, according to a brief summary of the review that is included in President Bush's fiscal year 2003 budget request for DOE. "I don't know what that means," said Jenny Freeman, executive director of the East Tennessee Environmental Business Association. Her organization represents businesses in the environmental and waste management fields in Oak Ridge and surrounding areas. Both Freeman and Susan Gawarecki, executive director of the Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, said Oak Ridge has tackled some difficult cleanup projects. Those include, but are not limited to, removing radioactive sludge from a series of underground storage tanks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and signing a $165 million, 14-year cleanup agreement for the Melton Valley Watershed, which is contaminated with radioactive and chemical wastes. "Oak Ridge doesn't toot its own horn," said Gawarecki. In fact, Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office, said local officials could not comment on the comprehensive review or the FY 2003 budget. He said DOE headquarters is handling press inquiries. The recently completed review, which looked at cleanup efforts at all DOE sites, ultimately ruled that the federal agency's Environmental Management program is ineffective. Many sites are behind schedule for cleanup while completion costs are escalating, according to documents provided by DOE. However, both Freeman and Gawarecki question the criteria used in the review. DOE has not gone into much detail about how the investigation was conducted, but the federal agency is using it to launch a new cleanup program. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the budget request for DOE's Environmental Management program for FY 2003 will be $6.7 billion. This budget will have two categories: One for basic funding at every site, and an $800 million expedited cleanup account out of which those sites that agree to participate in the new plan will receive additional funds to fast-track cleanup. To have access to the new cleanup account, a site and DOE will have to reach an agreement on an expedited schedule that shows measurable gains in addressing cleanup and important risks. Gawarecki said she hopes DOE can accelerate its cleanup efforts, but she is remaining cautiously optimistic about the new plan. "There is no free lunch," she said, adding that sites might be asked to give up something for the additional funding. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 54 Opinion: Oak Ridge gains a big thumbs-up from Gov. Sundquist, DOE Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 1:16 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2002 In his final State of the State address, Gov. Don Sundquist Monday night predictably continued his call, which legislators cannot long ignore, for sweeping tax reform today in order to meet the needs, and notably the education needs, of the state's children tomorrow. But the governor, while lamenting the state's worsening fiscal woes, also used the occasion to cite many of the good things that are happening in Tennessee, and seem certain to continue here given the generous 2003 budget nod from the Department of Energy. Oak Ridge also fared quite well and drew a large share of Mr. Sundquist's accolades. Let's hear it in the governor's own words: ... But what we offer today isn't good enough for the future. We must work harder and invest more wisely if we are to fulfill the promise of each new child. Technology will be an increasingly important part of that equation. With our new Tennessee Means Technology initiative, we're redoubling our efforts to leverage Tennessee's abundant science and technology resources. A shining example is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which more than half a century ago helped save our democracy. Today, under the management of the University of Tennessee and Battelle, the lab has joined forces with state government, broadening access to its vast resources. Most of you here tonight, including Governor Wilder and Speaker Naifeh, joined me in providing support for the construction of the world's largest science project -- the Spallation Neutron Source. Included in that project is a state-of-the-art computational science center, housing the fastest computer in the world. A computer soon capable of 10 trillion calculations per second, and one that will help UT become a world leader in the field. In return, Oak Ridge National Lab is becoming an even stronger economic development partner, helping create 26 new start-up companies in just the last 18 months. Well said, Mr. Sundquist. Certainly the funding gained and progress toward completion of the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source project, coupled with other high-tech gains, have represented bright spots for a state administration that has seen its share of frustrations. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 55 DOE budget details energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release RELEASE DATE: February 4, 2002 Secretary of Energy Unveils DOE '03 Budget FY2003 Budget Details President Bush's Top Priorities: National Security, Homeland Defense and Economic Growth WASHINGTON, D.C. - Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today released the Department of Energy's (DOE) Fiscal Year 2003 Budget request to Congress, calling the plan a blueprint to "build a stronger foundation for energy security in the 21st century." The budget request of $21.9 billion will deliver concrete benefits, fulfilling the Bush administration's commitment to ensuring our national security, energy security, energy efficiency, environmental quality, and science and technology. Additionally, the Secretary discussed the department's evolution from an agency focused on Cold War missions to a well-managed, accountable department that is changing the way it does business in the 21st century. "We have not turned our backs on tough decisions," Secretary Abraham said in remarks made this afternoon. "We've accelerated nonproliferation programs with Russia, improved the plutonium disposition program and helped to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks." "After careful study, we are poised to recommend a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste, we moved ahead to cure the persistent Path 15 bottleneck in California, we challenged old ideas in our environmental cleanup program, and we set a new course for automobile transportation with FreedomCAR," Abraham added. Following on the President's call in the State of the Union address to "do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security," the department requested $8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that directs additional funding to nuclear nonproliferation and stockpile stewardship programs. "We will ensure the safety, security and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. And we'll make sure future research, development and production plans are geared to the Administration's defense strategy," continued Abraham. Secretary Abraham also discussed the department's efforts to devote resources to implement the Administration's National Energy Plan, direct research and development toward new ideas and innovation, and move technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace. Funding priorities for the FY2003 budget highlights are as follows: National Nuclear Security Administration ($8 billion for FY2003, an increase of $433 million above FY2002) The total funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is $8 billion. This is a 5.7 percent increase over the FY2002 appropriations. Included in that appropriation is $358 million for activities in response to the September 11 events. Within the FY2003 total, funding is provided to continue and expand activities to respond to the rapidly changing security environment. The budget requests $510 million for the physical and cyber security activities at the laboratories, plants and Nevada Test Site. The FY2003 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation request of $1.1 billion, is $87 million over the FY2002 appropriations. Included in that appropriation is an additional $223 million for activities related to the war on terrorism. Directed Stockpile Work and Campaigns budget totals $3.3 billion. This funding will support the maintenance and evaluation of the existing stockpile and weapons refurbishment programs as well as fund 15 scientific, engineering and readiness campaigns to develop new capabilities to assess weapon status, extend weapon life and certify the reliability of the stockpile. In addition to the NNSA programs, there are five other essential national security programs, reporting directly to Secretary Abraham - Intelligence, Counterintelligence, Security, Independent Oversight and Performance Assurance, and Energy Security and Assurance. The FY2003 request for these five programs total $318 million, an increase of $32 million or 11 percent. Energy ($2.4 billion for FY2003) The department has requested $277.1 million for the Weatherization Assistance Program to provide heating assistance to at least 123,000 low-income families. This funding supports the President's commitment to double funding for Weatherization Assistance over the next 10 years. Approximately $150 million is included in the budget for FreedomCAR, a program dedicated to refocusing transportation research and development toward cost-effective, fuel cell powered vehicles and developing the infrastructure needed to make hydrogen an available fuel source. The budget request also includes funding to implement the President's $2 billion, 10-year clean coal technology initiative as well as increased research into carbon sequestration, a promising long-term approach for reducing carbon emissions that President Bush cited last June in announcing his climate change policy. The department has allocated approximately $38.5 million to launch a major new nuclear initiative, Nuclear Power 2010. Nuclear Power 2010 is a cooperative, cost-shared initiative with industry that will develop advanced nuclear technologies and demonstrate new regulatory processes leading to the startup of new nuclear plants by 2010. This year's budget also supports the collaboration of nine leading nuclear nations to develop Generation IV nuclear energy systems. These are the next generation of reactor and fuel cycle technologies, available after 2010 but before 2030, that are safer, more reliable, and proliferation resistant. Environment ($7.4 billion for FY2003, a $169 million increase above FY2002) Last year, the Department announced that it would conduct a sweeping review of its Environmental Management programs and activities while maintaining the Department's commitment to health and safety and continued environmental cleanup with the ultimate goal of a "stronger, more effective and efficient environmental management program." The results of the top-to-bottom Environmental Management Program review were unveiled last week. Secretary Abraham announced a total of $6.7 billion will be allocated to support the goals of the new plan. The plan includes provisions for basic funding at every site and an $800 million expedited cleanup account out of which those sites that agree to participate in the new plan will receive additional funds to fast-track cleanup. To access this cleanup account, a site and DOE will have to reach agreement on an expedited schedule that shows measurable gains and accountability ensuring that site more resources. The plan also calls for a refocusing of the Environmental Management Program's Science and Technology program to concentrate on high-priority technical needs at closure sites, short and intermediate-term projects, and high-risk, high-payoff projects. As a part of the compelling national interests, including the maintenance of our energy options, the Secretary has requested $527 million for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management to advance the geologic disposal program to dispose of high-level radioactive waste, defense and commercial spent nuclear fuel, and to preserve our environment. This request is $150 million over the FY2002 appropriations. The increase in funds will provide for technical activities to support the development of the license application; continue design work to develop final construction drawings and specifications; conduct performance confirmation testing, monitoring and evaluation activities, as required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing regulations; and continue development of the Nevada transportation design and planning. The Nevada Transportation budget element is new in FY2003 and includes $6 million for initial conceptual design and technical support. The budget also includes $130 million for the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health and $26 million for the Office of Worker and Community Transition. Office of Science ($3.3 billion for FY2003) The request for the Office of Science will support increased funding for operations and instrumentation at Office of Science user facilities used by over 18,000 university, industry and government researchers. The request also provides for: + funding to keep the construction of the Spallation Neutron Source on schedule; + increases in research, including nanoscience research to understand how to "tailor" materials for specific uses; + climate change research, including a new Climate Change Research Initiative, the Human Genome and Genomes to Life programs, and Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, + supercomputer research and development to harness the full capability of modern supercomputers to solve scientific problems; and + funds to counter the infrastructure deterioration at Office of Science laboratories. The entire FY 2003 budget can be accessed via the internet at http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/03budget/index.htm [http://www.mbe.doe.gov/budget/03budget/index.htm] . Media Contact: Jeanne Lopatto/ Jill Schroeder 202/586-4940 Dolline Hatchett 202/586-5806 Release No. PR-02-016 Back to Previous Page> ***************************************************************** 56 Proposal reduces SRS cleanup funds Augusta Georgia: Technology: Web posted Tuesday, February 5, 2002 By Brandon Haddock [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] Staff Writer Savannah River Site would get less money for environmental cleanup under the Bush administration's budget proposal for fiscal year 2003. The proposal would reduce funding for SRS cleanup activities by $103.3 million, a reduction of 9.7 percent compared with this year's total. Under the proposal released Monday, the SRS environmental management account would receive $961 million in fiscal 2003. The new fiscal year begins Oct. 1. The environmental management account makes up 85 percent to 90 percent of the site's annual budget, which has hovered near $1.5 billion in recent years. It funds efforts to clean pollution and treat radioactive waste at the site. The proposal must be approved by Congress, which could raise or lower the amounts slated for SRS. The site also could gain money from the Energy Department's $800 million expedited cleanup account. To get the money, the site would have to strike new cleanup deals with its environmental regulators, including the state of South Carolina. A local observer said the site likely will face some job cuts if it can't get money from the expedited cleanup account. "Obviously, with this year's budget being so tight, a $100 million cut probably means that there would be some reductions in staff without any relief from the expedited cleanup account," said Ernest S. Chaput, the special projects coordinator for the Aiken-Edgefield Economic Development Partnership. Some nuclear watchdogs have been critical of the expedited cleanup plan, calling it a ploy to get states to lower cleanup standards at nuclear-weapons sites such as SRS. "The question for public officials and the community around the site is whether they are going to make a deal with the devil to reduce environmental cleanup standards in order to get more money," said Bob Schaeffer, public education consultant for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. "There are very serious, long-term environmental problems at SRS. You can't make them go away through budget gimmickry," Mr. Schaeffer said. U.S. Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is reserving judgment on the expedited cleanup fund until more details surface, a spokesman said. "We're still a little unsure about how the two pots of money are going to work," Kevin Bishop said. Site supporters, including Mr. Graham, praised the administration's funding proposal of $384 million for the nation's plutonium disposition program, which is funded through a separate account from environmental management. The program would build two plutonium-processing plants at SRS at a cost of $3.8 billion over 20 years. Until a few weeks ago, SRS boosters had worried that the administration would abandon the program. "Seeing if the administration would commit $300 million to plutonium disposition was a pretty good marker of gauging their intentions," Mr. Graham said in a statement. "By proposing $384 million, they've gone beyond the marker. I think it shows they're very serious." Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409 or bhaddock@augustachronicle.com [bhaddock@augustachronicle.com] . 1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle. ***************************************************************** 57 Tri-Cities needs help with vitrification crush Published Feb. 4, 2002 State lawmakers should share the expected $67 million sales-tax windfall from the Hanford vitrification project with the communities that will have to handle most of its impacts. The Tri-City region must have the help, especially in a year when the state is looking at taking away millions that have been helping to fill the holes in local government budgets left in the wake of Initiative 695. Still, Tri-City lawmakers aren't hopeful about the prospects on a bill to divert 10 percent of the vitrification project's sales taxes to Mid-Columbia governments, even though the legislation would not cut into any existing state revenue streams. Construction of the vitrification plant, which will glassify Hanford's most troublesome radioactive wastes, is expected to boost the local population by 7,100. Local governments will need the money to pay for services like police and fire and improvements such as new roads and water lines that the newcomers will warrant. Supporters at least have been able to finagle a hearing for the bill on Tuesday. But in the end, it still will have to pass muster with budget writers. Granted, it's a tough year for Hanford communities to ask for such consideration. Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, is turning down just about all requests for money this year since she has to patch a$1.25 billion state budget hole. She likely will patch some of that with the millions of new dollars the state will be receiving from construction of theHanford plant. Tossing a few million the way of the Tri-Cities shouldn't be out of the question. The vitrification project is expected to bring enough workers to town to require about $10 million to $11 million a year in additional services. Mid-Columbia governments are asking for a paltry $6.7 million between now and 2007. That leaves more than $60 million for the state to use to help shore up its budget. In addition, the plant workers will be spending their paychecks here and driving further sales tax revenues for the state. State lawmakers cannot just leave this community to fend for itself as it works to get the most important environmental cleanup job in the region done. What's your opinon? Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 58 NASA Proposes Atomic Rocket Program Newsday.com By PAUL RECER AP Science Writer February 4, 2002, 6:20 PM EST WASHINGTON -- NASA has proposed spending almost a billion dollars over the next five years to develop atomic-powered rockets that could speed spacecraft across the heavens and nuclear-reactors to energize outposts on distant planets. In President Bush's 2003 federal budget, released Monday, the space agency proposes to spend about $46.5 million to begin developing nuclear electric rockets and $79 million more to build atomic-powered generators that can fly on spacecraft. Such atomic-driven energy systems, said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science, would eventually free NASA from a dependance on chemical rockets, which are relatively slow and clunky, in the agency's exploration of distant worlds, such as Jupiter's moons or the planet Pluto. Right now, NASA spacecraft are launched by a burst of chemical rockets that burn for a few minutes to break away from Earth's gravity. After that, said Weiler, the spacecraft must drift across deep space toward their target or whip around nearby planets to gain speed, voyages that can take years. The spacecraft, in most cases, are powered by solar cells that convert sunlight to electricity. For distant planets, the sunlight often is so dim that there is little electricity for instruments. "That's like exploring the West using covered wagons," said Weiler. He envisions rockets that use nuclear fission or fusion that could fire for months, driving the spacecraft to higher and higher speeds, and then slowing the spacecraft when it approaches its target. Such a technique could possibly halve the time of a 17-year voyage to Pluto, the only solar system planet not yet visited. Weiler said that NASA has used nuclear-powered generators to power 20 spacecraft in the past, but now has only one such generator left in its inventory. Using nuclear generators would free spacecraft from their dependance on the sun for electrical power. Nuclear generators, Weiler said, could energize long, detailed explorations of Mars, or power mobile laboratories traveling the surface of the Red Planet. NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe said that nuclear powered rockets and generators would help humans "conquer the problems of distance and time" in space exploration. The proposal is sure to be opposed by some who fear that a launch accident could cause a nuclear-powered spacecraft to explode and possibly scatter radioactive material around the globe. Some earlier launches of atomic-powered craft attracted pickets, lawsuits and protesters. Weiler said he believes it is possible to build nuclear-powered rockets and generators that would not present a hazard to Earth when they were launched into space. "The number one issue would be safety," he said. "Anything that we build would have to safely survive the worst possible scenario, which would be a rocket blowing up on the pad. "If you can't show that a system could survive that, then don't talk to me," Weiler said he would tell engineers. On the Net: NASA's science budget: http://spacescience.nasa.gov Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press ***************************************************************** 59 IAEA says Georgia nuclear devices now safely stored AUSTRIA: February 5, 2002 VIENNA - The United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency said yesterday it had completed a mission to Georgia to recover two containers filled with deadly radioactive material and has stored them at a safe location. The December discovery of the titanium-based ceramic containers in Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region renewed fears, in the wake of the September 11 attacks on America, that nuclear material could fall into the hands of people who would use it to make crude bombs. "The team we had there, along with the Georgian authorities, have recovered the sources and safely contained and secured them at a storage site," Lothar Wedekind, spokesman for the international Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told Reuters. Wedekind would not disclose the location of the storage site, but said that it was safe and secure. The team, supervised by the Vienna-based IAEA, launched the recovery mission on Saturday. The containers were discovered in December. The agency said the radioactive strontium-90 material in the fist-sized containers cannot be used to make even a crude nuclear bomb. But the IAEA declined to speculate on whether it could be used for a so-called "dirty bomb", by using conventional explosives to spread the radioactive material. "This is not the kind of material used in conventional bombs and it's not explosive," Wedekind said. "It's a product of nuclear fission and is not itself fissionable." In November the agency said attacks using nuclear material were far more likely than thought. One of its experts said then that commonplace radioactive materials could easily be attached to conventional explosives. The Soviet Union, one of the world's five recognised nuclear powers, broke up in 1991 and nuclear materials once under its control have turned up in many of its former republics. Abkhazia, which declared independence from the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 1991, has remained outside the Georgian government's control and guerrillas regularly clash with the Abkhazian military. The three Georgians who found and briefly handled the containers in early December suffered severe radiation sickness and one of them was still in critical condition. The IAEA sent a medical team to help treat them in January. Wedekind said that there was no change in the condition of the men, two of whom remain in hospital. Story by Louis Charbonneau REUTERS NEWS SERVICE ***************************************************************** 60 IAEA Daily Press Review Date 2002-02-04 Number 18 1. Non-proliferation Leaders attending World Economic Forum believe that mounting international diplomatic pressure and renewed US attack on "evil axis" may convince Iraq to readmit UN weapons inspectors. (BBC; NYT - 4/2) Dem. P.R. of Korea; Iran, Islamic Republic of; Iraq; UN; United States of America 2. IAEA IAEA announces that international team of experts safely recovered and secured two powerful radioactive sources found in remote northwest forested area of Republic of Georgia late last year. (ITAR; MOS; YAH - 3/2) Georgia; IAEA 3. Terrorism Warning that US still lacks technical ability to predict terrorist attacks, head of Los Alamos National Laboratory called for more Government spending on science to develop global system for the detection of weapons of mass destruction. (CHI - 1/2) United States of America 4. Nuclear power Germany's 19 operational nuclear power units reportedly generated 171.3 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity In 2001, setting an all-time national record. (NUC - 1/2) Germany 5. Nuclear safety IAEA OSART mission finds French Tricastin NPP satisfactory overall and stresses improvements and "potential for progress" at EdF site. Reactor crack forces closure of Dutch nuclear energy facility. (ana; R - 1/2) France; IAEA; Netherlands ***************************************************************** 61 US to build nuclear-powered craft for deep space exploration theage.com.au, Breaking News WASHINGTON, Feb 5 AFP|Published: Tuesday February 5, 7:58 PM The United States plans to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft to explore the far reaches of the solar system and conduct experiments on the surface of distant planets, the US space agency announced. The fiscal 2003 budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contains a request for $US46.5 million ($A91.52 million) to begin development of a nuclear electric propulsion system that would allow space probes to double their speed. Another $US79 million ($A155.48 million) are being allocated to fund work on nuclear power-generating systems that will travel aboard spacecraft to distant planets, according to the document unveiled today. Nuclear-powered space travel and exploration, NASA said, "paves the way for an unprecedented capability in the next decade and beyond". The agency said engineers will use "safe and proven" radioisotope power-generating technologies that will enable space probes to roam the surface of Mars, drill deep underground in search for signs of life and conduct experiments day and night. The dramatic increase in speed will allow NASA scientists to send space probes to distant planets like Pluto or undertake protracted space cruises, hopscotching from one planet to another. Most current spacecraft rely on chemical-fuel rockets to deliver them into orbit, and on solar cells to generate power for on-board research equipment. However, these propulsion systems do not allow speedy space travel, according to NASA scientists. Moreover, solar panels are likely to be ineffective in deep space exploration far away from the Sun. The nuclear power program is likely to boost the scientific return from future space missions "by increasing the operational lifetime and productivity of spacecraft and instruments; enabling multiple landers on a single mission; providing energy for high-power planetary survey instruments for remote sensing and deep atmosphere probes; and allowing high bandwidth communications," said the US space agency. NASA plans to try its new nuclear power-generating technology on the Mars Smart Lander/Mobile Laboratory that is scheduled to arrive on the Red Planet in 2009 to drill for water-related minerals and fossils that could indicate that life once existed on Mars. The nuclear power systems are expected to make the Smart Lander highly mobile and extend its operability from months to years. The presidential budget request for space science programs that include deep space travel was boosted 19 per cent for fiscal 2003 to reach more than $US3.4 billion ($A6.69 billion). However, allocations for human space flights, including work on the International Space Station, were reduced by $US700 million ($A1.38 billion). By Maxim Kniazkov Copyright © 2002 John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************