***************************************************************** 03/05/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.56 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 Nuclear ban debated in Panama 2 Germany: Utility Backpedals on Nuclear Power Phaseout 3 US: Bush View of Secrecy Is Stirring Frustration 4 US: David Broder: Be suspicious of government's need for secrecy 5 US: DOE plan to do further streamline reactor licensing 6 US: President's Clean Coal Initiative Now Underway Energy 7 Kazakh deputy energy minister reappointed to nuclear power NUCLEAR REACTORS 8 US: False TMI Alarm Awakens Hundreds 9 Spanish premier urges Lithuania to close nuclear plant, 10 Bushehr nuclear plant construction uninterrupted - Iranian NUCLEAR SAFETY 11 US: MORE HELP FOR NUCLEAR WORKERS IS SOUGHT 12 US: NRC Issues Confirmatory Action Letter to Allentown, PA., Medical 13 US: Nuclear Testing Caused Cancers Around the Globe NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 14 US: Gephardt Leads Webster Groves Residents In A Rally Against Nucle 15 Japan: Two armed transport ships to re-send MOX fuel to Britain 16 US: Steam studied for tank wastes 17 US: Energy Dept. Sued Over Nuclear Waste 18 US: Glass logs will end up in huge trenches in central Hanford 19 US: Gephardt stumps against moving nuclear waste, cites safety 20 EU law crackdown on nuclear stations 'inevitable' 21 US: Democratic leader encourages Yucca Mountain opposition 22 US: 38 of 293 questions on Yucca resolved 23 US: Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Reid unfairly blamed 24 US: Former Clinton aide joins state's anti-Yucca team 25 US: State awaits next shot in DOE's water fight 26 US: Letter: Citizens must get involved 27 US: Ensign returns to nation's capital 28 US: Political rift could hurt state's Yucca fight 29 US: Reid takes on world’s most powerful man 30 Ford man gets nuclear clean-up job 31 US: Yucca lobbyist touting security 32 US: Nuclear waste reclassification attacked 33 US: Franco-Kazakh uranium venture starts test production NUCLEAR WEAPONS 34 US: Al Qauida Nuke: To Tell Us, or Not to Tell Us 35 US: Lugar Warns of Nuclear Threats 36 Iraq developing nuclear bomb, says Straw 37 North Koreans to tour EU - 38 US: Hillary Has Nuke Meltdown 39 China Raises Defense Budget Again 40 US: Bloomberg: Feds Should Have Reported Nuke Fears 41 US: Defusing nuclear terror 42 US: Vermont towns prepare to vote on Earth Charter 43 US: Activists say nuclear shift poses threat US DEPT. OF ENERGY 44 NEW PLANT AT PIKETON STILL ISN'T A CERTAINTY 45 ORNL nuclear fusion experiment stirs flap 46 Locke meets with DOE's Abraham 47 Hanford cleanup budget figures remain fuzzy 48 Tritium plume appears benign 49 Hanford researchers work to pass the time 50 Giving credit where it's due OTHER NUCLEAR 51 Alvin Radkowsky, Developer of a Safer Nuclear Reactor Fuel, Dies at 52 Nuke Fusion Made in Tabletop Test 53 Researchers find possible evidence of nuclear fusion ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Nuclear ban debated in Panama Lloyds List; Mar 5, 2002 BY BRIAN REYES THE environment committee of the Panamanian legislature will today debate a proposal for a new law banning nuclear shipments through the Panama Canal. If implemented, the law could force specialist carrier Pacific Nuclear Transport, the British Nuclear Fuels subsidiary that carries controversial cargoes from reprocessing plants in Europe to utility clients in Japan and back, to sail the long way round. But the canal authority and the Panamanian government are opposed to the legislative move, arguing that the law would be unconstitutional and would violate several international agreements that Panama is signed up to. The debate comes at a time when Panama is reeling from one of the worst political corruption scandals in years, involving plans to build a major logistics zone in Colon. ***************************************************************** 2 Utility Backpedals on Nuclear Power Phaseout F.A.Z. - English Version F.A.Z. FRANKFURT. Contradicting earlier reports, one of Germany's leading nuclear power plant operators said on Monday that it would discuss the use of this source of energy with Germany's next government, to be elected in a Sept. 22 national vote. "Nobody asked me, even though our company accounts for a large portion of the electricity stemming from nuclear power," said Gerhard Goll, chairman of Energie Baden-Württemberg. A Berliner Zeitung newspaper report said that Germany's leading utilities were in agreement on the phaseout of nuclear energy over the next three decades, and had informed chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber of their decision. Mr. Stoiber has said that he would reverse the June 2001 agreement on a nuclear phaseout over the next three decades, if he were to be elected chancellor. The German government's energy report showed that "there was no reasonable alternative to nuclear energy," Mr. Goll said. At the same time, he stressed that under the current political premises his company would stick to its word and adhere to the agreement which energy providers reached with the government.Mar. 4, 2002 © Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2000 ***************************************************************** 3 Bush View of Secrecy Is Stirring Frustration (washingtonpost.com) Disclosure Battle Unites Right and Left By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 3, 2002; Page A04 The federal judge who ordered the Bush administration to turn over some records related to Vice President Cheney's energy task force wondered "what in the world" the Energy Department was doing, acting at such a "glacial pace" in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. "The government can offer no legal or practical excuse for its excessive delay," Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court in Washington wrote in an order made public on Wednesday. But while Kessler expressed amazement at the Energy Department's response to information requests under FOIA, the 36-year-old cornerstone law for government transparency, the reluctance to provide information has become routine throughout the administration, liberal and conservative public interest groups say. They say it is a gathering trend, fed by, but not rooted in, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They point to a memo issued in October by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, which they say is an indication of the administration's drive to restrict access to information. The memo – in the works long before the terrorist attacks – assures agencies that "when you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records . . . you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions." They also cite President Bush's executive order in November limiting the disclosure of past presidents' records. And Cheney's refusal last spring to release energy task force records prompted FOIA requests from at least a dozen organizations, including Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that sued both the task force and the individual agencies for the data. In response, a federal judge in one case said last week that he would order the nine federal agencies making up the task force to release their records on the task force meetings. The high-profile fight continues as the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative arm, has sued Cheney to force the release of energy task force documents, though not under FOIA. "If you look at the steady drumbeat of anti-openness measures taken by this administration, it's sobering," said David Vladeck, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which went to court on Thursday over farm subsidy records for an administration nominee that the Agriculture Department has refused to disclose on the grounds that the request is an "unwarranted invasion" of the nominee's privacy. On Wednesday, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) was informed that Kessler had ordered the Energy Department to release a portion of the records being sought after the group went to court in December to force compliance with an eight-month-old FOIA request. It is unclear how many documents the agency will release. Though the Energy Department has told the court that 7,500 pages are "responsive" to the NRDC's request, it can withhold some by claiming that they are exempt, for instance, because they are deliberative documents. NRDC attorney Sharon Buccino said the GAO suit is important because the NRDC, unlike the GAO, did not sue Cheney. There may well be documents relating to Cheney meetings in which the Energy Department did not participate. Another important distinction, she noted, is that the GAO is suing under a law that gives it oversight of the executive branch but does not require disclosure. A top official in the office that oversees FOIA policy for the entire government said that fears about the Bush administration's secretiveness are overblown. Things have not changed under FOIA nearly as much as one might have thought, said Daniel J. Metcalfe, co-director of the Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy. Metcalfe acknowledged that there is a shift from the Clinton administration, which placed greater emphasis on the discretionary disclosure of information. "The Ashcroft memorandum places more emphasis on an agency being careful, on giving full and careful consideration of the interests that are being protected under the FOIA exemptions," he said. "That's its primary focus." The Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966 and amended several times, most significantly in 1974, when Congress gave the courts power to review agency decisions. It is grounded in the belief that a democracy functions best with an informed public. The law gives citizens the right to petition agencies for information and offers nine exemptions, including the need to protect national security, trade secrets, deliberative processes and personal privacy. Openness advocates say that Ashcroft's memo will have a chilling effect on about 5,300 federal officials who handle 2 million FOIA requests a year. "The cumulative message from the White House and from Ashcroft is: Stall. Don't release," said Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, an access advocacy group. "They believe that the trend for 30 years has been to make the White House too open." Groups that have long experience filing FOIA requests are beginning to worry. It took a lawsuit under the first Bush administration to get things moving, but Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, had become accustomed over the past decade to routine disclosures from the Drug Enforcement Administration about doctors whose licenses to prescribe controlled substances had been withdrawn or limited because of misconduct. Under the current Bush administration, Public Citizen got the records, but they were so heavily redacted as to be unusable. The DEA has promised a clean copy, but if it doesn't deliver, it's back to court, Vladeck said. "We've just had a devil of a time getting those records," he said. The perception that the Bush administration has drawn the curtains tight holds not just among liberal groups. Judicial Watch, which gained prominence for its tireless campaign to pry information from the Clinton administration, said this week that it will join Public Citizen in its legal battle. Executive Director Larry Klayman, who noted that Judicial Watch has close to 100 federal FOIA actions pending, said the Bush administration's attitude is one of "arrogance throughout – that the government is not to be questioned." In its defense, the administration asserts that the powers of the executive branch have been eroded over the years. White House deputy press secretary Anne Womack, echoing earlier statements by White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, said that Cheney and Bush "came in here with the attitude that they would leave it a better, stronger place." There needs to be a balance, Womack said, between disclosure and protecting national security, between disclosure and protecting executive powers. Though concerned about the restrictions, some openness advocates say that, so far, there seems to be little difference between the Clinton and Bush administrations when it comes to FOIA requests. "I can only tell you in my 20- or 30-something-year experience in FOIA, the Clinton administration was not a bright spot," said Mike McGraw, a Kansas City Star reporter and American Society of Access Professionals member. Others disagree, noting that from 1995 through last year, as a result of a Clinton executive order, more than 800 million pages of documents were declassified, more than four times as many as in the previous 15-year period. The effects of the Ashcroft memo will appear over time, public interest groups say. Mark Zaid, executive director of the James Madison Project, a group promoting government accountability, said the memo "puts the fear of God" in FOIA officers, an "informal threat that secrecy should reign . . . because your job is on the line." One FOIA officer, who asked that his name not be used, said much essentially depends on the individual. "There are pro-disclosure FOIA officers, there are anti-disclosure FOIA officers," he said. Database editor Sarah Cohen contributed to this report. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 4 David Broder: Be suspicious of government's need for secrecy Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:27 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, 2002 David Broder Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON -- When administrations get into trouble, it is usually because of something the president or his aides have said or done. The Bush White House is different. It is running into problems because of its silence. Its refusal to talk or to share information is frustrating the other two branches -- Congress and the courts -- and is spawning more controversy than is healthy when President Bush is trying to sustain broad support for a war on terrorism and an ambitious domestic agenda. The headline dispute has been the battle between the General Accounting Office (GAO), an arm of Congress, and Vice President Cheney over access to certain records of the energy policy task force Cheney headed. That issue has not yet gone to court, but federal judges last week expressed impatience at foot-dragging by the administration on other requests from private groups for information on energy matters. Meantime, key legislators in both parties were chagrined to learn from The Washington Post's Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt that Bush had instituted a "shadow government" of sequestered senior civil servants after the 9/11 attacks without telling anyone on Capitol Hill. Bush is absolutely right in saying that he has "an obligation as the president (to) put measures in place that, should somebody be successful in attacking Washington, D.C., (would guarantee) there's an ongoing government." But it is inexplicable that he would not share his prudent action with the four top congressional leaders, with whom he meets weekly, so they would have the reassurance that came from that knowledge. If he cannot trust them that far, what does it imply? The leaders have been restrained in their public comments, but you know it rankles. As House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt has said repeatedly, his comment to Bush at the first bipartisan meeting after 9/11 was, "Mr. President, we have to trust you, and you have to trust us." That trust is vital, for there will be issues on which disagreement is inevitable. Energy is one. Critics of the administration plan are seeking to defeat it, not just on the merits but on the claim that it was shaped by industry lobbyists, some of whom were also significant contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. In an ideal world, the debate would center on substance, but probing the process by which a high-profile proposal is formulated is certainly not unprecedented. Remember the fuss about Hillary Clinton's health care task force. The courts so far have turned a deaf ear to administration efforts to keep its energy meetings secret. Judge Gladys Kessler last week ordered the Energy Department to give an environmental group some 7,500 pages of documents on contacts between outside organizations and department officials working on the task force. Two other judges accused the administration of stalling on related suits. The issue is different in the GAO suit against Cheney; it is a test, not of the Freedom of Information Act, but of the statute that lets the GAO audit executive branch activities. Last week, I interviewed GAO head David Walker, its top lawyer and two senior officials on Cheney's staff. It is perfectly clear that this is a dispute that does not have to become a test of strength or a constitutional showdown between the branches. Presidents are entitled to have confidential discussions with their aides. But that is not at issue here. Walker already has modified his original request for notes and memos of meetings with executives of Enron and other energy companies and now is asking only for the names, places, dates and subjects of meetings between the task force and outsiders. Cheney's aides insist that the demand for "subject matter" would inevitably escalate into a perusal of notes and minutes, but Walker says that is not his goal. Meantime, by insisting "on principle," as they put it, that Congress and the GAO have no authority to inquire into the activities of the president or vice president, because the White House is not an "agency" under the meaning of the statute, Cheney's team has rejected two options that would stop the GAO in its tracks. Cheney could invoke executive privilege, but does not wish to create the impression that he has something sinister to hide. Alternatively, he could say that GAO is seeking "deliberative material" and that its request would "substantially impair the operations of government." Under a 1980 statute, such a certification could not be appealed to the courts. Cheney's team is well aware of these options, but will not use them, because that would imply that GAO has jurisdiction to probe the task force, a claim Cheney disputes. In choosing confrontation over one of the available compromises, the administration is escalating a secrecy fight that only damages itself. It is time for talking, not stonewalling. (c) 2002, Washington Post Writers Group ***************************************************************** 5 DOE plan to do further streamline reactor licensing DOE Announces Public-Private Partnership to Demonstrate Streamlined Licensing Process for New Nuclear Power Plants DOE Issues $3 Million Solicitation for Early Site Permit License Project energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2002 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced today that the department is proceeding with the next phase of the Nuclear Power 2010 initiative, moving forward to establish public-private partnerships to share in the cost of selecting U.S. sites for new nuclear plants and for submitting formal applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for early site approval. Successful demonstration of NRC’s licensing and evaluation process is a major milestone for developing new nuclear power plants in the United States by the end of the decade. “This is a critical step in paving the way for deploying more nuclear power in the United States,” Secretary Abraham said. “Identifying and obtaining NRC permits for acceptable sites will answer the question of where we will build new plants and thereby remove a major hurdle to building a new U.S. nuclear plant by 2010.” Expansion of nuclear power in the United States is a key recommendation of the President’s National Energy Policy in order to meet growing demand while protecting the environment. Under the Nuclear Power 2010 initiative, the Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to match industry investments of as much as $48.5 million over the next two years to explore sites that can host new nuclear plants; demonstrate key NRC processes designed to make licensing of new plants more efficient, effective, and predictable; and conduct research needed to make the safest and most advanced nuclear plant technologies available in the United States. For this latest phase of the initiative, the Energy Department is seeking proposals by April 15, 2002, from U.S. nuclear utilities and generating companies to conduct a 30-month demonstration project for an Early Site Permit (ESP) application, anticipated to result in NRC approval of applications for specific sites in the U.S. Copies of the solicitation, number DE-PS07-021D14305, can be obtained from the department’s Interactive Procurement web site, http://e-center.doe.gov [http://e-center.doe.gov] . DOE will award up to $3 million in fiscal year 2002 to nuclear generating companies or utilities to initiate demonstration of the Early Site Permit process for U.S. sites. DOE anticipates that cost-shared cooperative agreements will be signed later this spring. The demonstrations may include the participation of architect engineers, engineering consulting firms, technology vendors, national laboratories, and not-for-profit organizations as members of partnerships or consortiums. As part of the demonstration project, industry will prepare, submit and obtain NRC approval of the ESP application and will provide a report to the department summarizing the lessons learned from the demonstration to improve industry ESP guidelines. The ESP demonstration is the second phase of a two-step project aimed at demonstrating the ESP licensing process for selected sites. Earlier this month, Secretary Abraham announced awards for the first phase of the ESP demonstration project, a cost shared private-public partnership to explore the cost, schedule and specific activities required to prepare and submit an ESP application to the NRC. Both privately owned and the Energy Department’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Savannah River Site and Portsmouth Site are presently under consideration by two major nuclear utilities as possible sites for new nuclear plants. Results will be provided to the department over the coming weeks. The ESP process was established by NRC in 1989 for utilities to complete the site evaluation component of nuclear power plant licensing before a decision is made to build a plant. Once issued, the ESP permit is valid for 10 to 20 years and can be used in conjunction with a subsequent Combined Operating License (COL) application to enable the efficient licensing of a nuclear power plant. More information on the Nuclear Power 2010 initiative and related activities, can be found on the department’s nuclear energy web site http://www.nuclear.gov [http://www.nuclear.gov] . Media Contact: Jill Schroeder, 202/586-4940 Hope Williams, 202/586-5806 Release No. PR-02-032 ***************************************************************** 6 President's Clean Coal Initiative Now Underway Energy Department's Release of Solicitation Calls on Industry To Match $330 Million in Federal Funding for Cleaner Coal Processes energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2002 WASHINGTON, DC -- The initial competitive stage of President Bush's $2 billion, 10-year clean coal technology initiative officially begins today with the Department of Energy's release of a solicitation offering $330 million in federal matching funds for industry-proposed projects. Earlier this year, President Bush traveled to West Virginia to talk about the importance of clean coal. "In order to become less dependent on foreign sources of energy, we've got to find and produce more energy at home, including coal," said President Bush. "I believe that we can have coal production and enhanced technologies in order to make sure the coal burns cleaner. I believe we can have both." "This solicitation signals our willingness to begin a new partnership with the private sector to enhance our energy supply," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. "Technologies like this will help us preserve our environment while we strengthen America's energy security." Clean coal technologies represent a new class of pollution control and power generating processes that reduce air emissions and, in many cases, lower greenhouse gases to a fraction of the levels of older, conventional coal-burning plants. Some clean coal technologies offer the potential for giving even high-sulfur "dirty" coals many of the same environmental qualities of natural gas. Others also greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by boosting power plant efficiencies and releasing carbon gases in a form that can be more easily captured and prevented from entering the atmosphere. "America cannot afford to turn its back on the 250-year supply of secure, low-cost energy represented by the massive coal reserves that lie within our national borders," Secretary Abraham said. "Yet, it has been nearly a decade since the federal government joined with the private sector to move promising new concepts to the point where industry can decide if they merit commercial deployment. Today's solicitation tells industry we are ready to help share the costs and risks of new technologies that have emerged in the last 10 years. Without our support, those technologies would likely remain in the laboratory." Industry has until August 1, 2002, to submit proposals, and winning projects will be selected by late December. The Energy Department solicitation seeks projects that demonstrate or accelerate the commercial deployment of any technology advancement that "results in efficiency, environmental and economic improvement compared to currently available state-of-the-art alternatives." Among the technologies expected to be proposed are innovative concepts for reducing mercury, smog-causing nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and small particulate matter from existing and future power plants. New technologies that improve power plant control systems and permit plants to run more efficiently and reliably could also be proposed. Technologies that permit better management and control of carbon emissions are being strongly encouraged. Roughly one-third of the United States' carbon emissions come from power plants, and recently, as part of his National Climate Change Policy, President Bush placed a high priority on encouraging new technologies that can reduce these emissions while, at the same time, keeping energy costs affordable. The competition is also open to new combustion or other technologies that produce combinations of heat, fuels, chemicals or other useful byproducts in conjunction with power generation. The Energy Department will also accept projects that mix coal with other fuels, with the provision that coal must represent at least 75 percent of the fuel energy input. The department is also looking for advanced concepts for converting coal into a combustible gas that can be cleaned to extreme levels of purity. Prospective projects must also show the potential to move rapidly into the commercial market following the successful demonstration. For each project selected by the Energy Department, industrial sponsors must be willing to at least match the federal funding share. There will also be a requirement that royalties from commercially successful technologies be used to underwrite future clean coal research. Details and copies of the solicitation can be obtained electronically by linking to the department's fossil energy web site at: www.fossil.energy.gov [http://www.fossil.energy.gov] . Media Contact: Jill Schroeder, 202/586-4940 Drew Malcomb, 202/586-5806 Release No. PR-02-033 ***************************************************************** 7 Kazakh deputy energy minister reappointed to nuclear power company BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 5, 2002 Text of report in English by Russian news agency Interfax Astana, 5 March: Kazakh Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources Vladimir Shkolnik has appointed Mukhtar Dzhakishev to the post of president of the Kazatomprom national atomic energy company. At the same time, Dzhakishev has been freed from his duties as deputy minister for energy and mineral resources, ministry sources told Interfax on Tuesday [5 March]. Prior to his appointment to the post of deputy minister for energy and mineral resources in 2001, Dzhakishev, 38, had been president of Kazatomprom (from September 1998). Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1242 gmt 5 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 8 False TMI Alarm Awakens Hundreds TheWGALChannel.com - News - Moisture May Be To Blame POSTED: 10:38 a.m. EST March 4, 2002UPDATED: 5:07 p.m. EST March 4, 2002 MANCHESTER, Pa. -- A malfunctioning warning siren near Three Mile Island howled for 45 minutes early Sunday morning, awakening thousands of the nuclear plant's neighbors and prompting nearly 300 people to dial 911. [ ALIGN=] The siren is one of 34 that were built to warn York County residents of an impending nuclear disaster at the plant. It began sounding in Newberry Township at 1:30 a.m. It continued to sound for close to an hour. At least a few families fled their homes before getting word that it was a false alarm. The TMI emergency sirens are not supposed to go off unless they receive a signal from the York County Operations Center. County officials aren't sure why the siren on Potts Hill Road went off. There is speculation moisture or lightning may have set it off. County officials want to make sure it doesn't happen again. They said every emergency siren in the county will be retested, not just those for TMI, but for Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant as well. "I probably believed this was a fluke, but after 9/11, we have a comfort level to decide if it was or wasn't," said Patrick McFadden, emergency services director for York County. This was the second time in two months the siren system has malfunctioned. In January, all of the TMI emergency sirens in York County failed to sound during a test. That problem was fixed. Copyright 2002 by TheWGALChannel.com [lannews@theWGALChannel.com] . The ***************************************************************** 9 Spanish premier urges Lithuania to close nuclear plant, pledges EU aid BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 5, 2002 Text of report in English by Baltic news agency BNS Vilnius, 5 March: Spain, currently in the presidency at the European Union (EU), has proposed to Lithuania it close its Ignalina nuclear power plant (INPP) in 2009, to the amount of funding that the EU decides to allocate [sentence as published]. Speaking at a press conference in Vilnius on Tuesday [5 March], Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar admitted that INPP closure was a "difficult issue". "But I would propose to Lithuania to keep to the 2005 and 2009 closure dates, and then the EU will help Lithuania as much as it will be able to," the Spanish prime minister said. The INPP houses two Soviet RBMK [high-power pressure-tube reactor] reactors. Western politicians fear that this type of reactors - which are of the same design that failed in the Chernobyl accident - poses an ecological and economic threat to EU members. The EU has been pressuring Lithuania to adopt the decision on the plant's second unit closure as soon as possible and to turn it off in 2009. Lithuania has already pledged to close the first reactor unit at the INPP starting in 2005. The government should present to parliament its position on INPP closure in the near future. The draft project on the government sitting agenda for Wednesday proposes to set the plant's closure date on the basis of long-term support from the EU, with the funds for the closure to be provided by the EU comprising a separate line. The closure of the INPP and the management of its radioactive waste could run to something like 10bn litas (2.89bn euros). So far, international donors have pledged more than 200m euros for closing down the nuke. The European Commission has allocated an additional 70m euros annually from 2004 to 2006 for the plant closure. The INPP facility produces over 75 per cent of all Lithuanian electric power. Aznar said Lithuanian leaders had been invited to attend a meeting of EU leaders on 15 and 16 March in Barcelona. The Spanish prime minister said EU leaders didn't want to just talk to themselves, so had decided to invite candidate states to the meeting. A Lithuanian delegation led by president Valdas Adamkus is to attend the Barcelona event. Aznar wouldn't tell reporters when Spain might open an embassy in Vilnius. The Spanish ambassador to Lithuania resides in Copenhagen. Aznar said there were no political impediments to opening an embassy in Vilnius, just practical considerations that have yet to be worked out. He said his country wants an embassy in Lithuania. The head of the Spanish government arrived in Vilnius late on Monday evening. He met Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas briefly and flew home, citing important meetings in Madrid as the reason for his curtailed visit to Lithuania. (One euro equals 3.45 litas) Source: BNS news agency, Tallinn, in English 1111 gmt 5 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 10 Bushehr nuclear plant construction uninterrupted - Iranian diplomat BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 5, 2002 Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS Tehran, 4 March: Russian-Iranian cooperation on peaceful use of nuclear energy still continues, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Khamid Reza Asefi, said today. In a conversation with reporters, he denied allegations that the construction of the nuclear plant at Bushehr had been stopped. The cooperation between Tehran and Moscow on nuclear energy is aimed at only peaceful goals, so there is no grounds to stop the construction, the Iranian diplomat stressed. Source: ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1008 gmt 4 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 11 MORE HELP FOR NUCLEAR WORKERS IS SOUGHT The Columbus Dispatch Online: Archival Article Sunday, March 3, 2002 By Compiled by Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief The federal nuclear-workers compensation program receives a near- failing grade from some of the people who are trying to take advantage of the recently enacted law. Vina Colley, a former electrician at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, traveled to Washington last week to deliver a "report card'' on the program's effectiveness since it went into effect July 31. The grade: a "D minus.'' Colley's group, Portsmouth-Piketon residents for Environmental Safety and Security, is working on behalf of former workers at the shuttered uranium-enrichment plant in southern Ohio and other nuclear workers across the country. Colley says the compensation program, which gives $150,000 and lifetime health-care benefits to nuclear workers who contracted various cancers as a result of their employment, doesn't cover enough illnesses and isn't being run efficiently enough by the U.S. Department of Labor. Workers who have illnesses or employment backgrounds not eligible for federal compensation have to seek state workers' compensation benefits, which Colley also criticized. Paul Stevenson, 78, of Chillicothe, is struggling against the bureaucracy for compensation. He worked as a pipe fitter on and off during the 1970s for a subcontractor at the Piketon plant. He developed cancer in about 1979. Stevenson, who was 6 feet tall and about 200 pounds when healthy, now weighs about 110 pounds, said his daughter, Beth Mann of Columbus. The head of the compensation program acknowledges there are "kinks to be worked out.'' Of the 22,000 claims filed, nearly 2,000 have been approved, and about 500 have been granted tentative approval, said Roberta Mosier, deputy director of the Labor Department's energy employees occupational illness and compensation division. About 135 claims have been rejected. Congressional delegation visits military bases in Afghanistan Two Ohio lawmakers are in the Afghanistan region this weekend. Rep. David L. Hobson, R-Springfield, was asked to lead a congressional delegation. Hobson is chairman of the House Appropriation Committee's military construction subcommittee. Among the seven other lawmakers on the five-day trip, which departed Thursday, is Rep. Bob Ney, R- St. Clairville. Hobson was asked to assess the condition of some military bases in Afghanistan and the overall quality of life for the U.S.-led coalition troops in the country. "Media reports and military briefings are helpful, but it is important to see these facilities firsthand and talk with personnel on the ground, so we can share what we have seen with other members of Congress when we return,'' Hobson said. The lawmakers were scheduled to visit Kabul and the Bagram Air Base, as well as military facilities in Uzbekistan being used by units of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, according to Hobson's office. The delegation is to meet with Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai and other officials. jriskind@dispatch.com All content herein is © 2002 The Columbus Dispatch ***************************************************************** 12 NRC Issues Confirmatory Action Letter to Allentown, PA., Medical Firm NRC: Press Release Region I - 2002 - 12 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov No. I-02-012 March 4, 2002 Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: [opa1@nrc.gov] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a Confirmatory Action Letter to an Allentown, Pa., medical company that provides nuclear medicine services. The letter confirms the company's agreement to halt all NRC-licensed activities until it takes several actions to adhere to agency regulations. Medical Providers Capital Network has an NRC license that allows it to use certain types of nuclear material to perform diagnostic tests, such as radioactive imaging. The NRC's Region I office conducted an inspection at the firm's facility on February 27 and 28. During that inspection, agency inspectors found that the company was conducting NRC-licensed activities without an authorized user or radiation safety officer as required by its NRC license. The company also did not have a procedure manual available for its staff. Medical Providers Capital Network agreed in a telephone call on Friday (March 1) to take the following actions: immediately place all NRC-licensed nuclear materials in its possession in secure storage and cease all licensed activities until it has hired an NRC-approved authorized user and radiation safety officer; provide a written statement verifying that a qualified authorized user is actively performing the duties of an authorized user; verify that a procedure manual has been developed; and confirm that supervised individuals have been trained in the use of the new manual. ***************************************************************** 13 Nuclear Testing Caused Cancers Around the Globe Environment News Service: By Cat Lazaroff TAKOMA PARK, Maryland, March 4, 2002 (ENS) - Atmospheric nuclear weapons testing exposed millions of people around the globe to radioactive fallout, and may have led to the cancer deaths of more than 15,000 people, suggests an analysis of government studies by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. [Trinity] The Trinity test in 1945 in southeastern New Mexico (Photo courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory) An estimated 80,000 people who lived in or were born in the United States between the years 1951 and 2000 will contract cancer as a result of the fallout caused by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, warns the Institute (IEER). A recent government report, prepared by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimates radiation doses from testing at the Nevada Test Site as well as from testing outside of the continental United States. The latter category includes U.S. tests in the Marshall Islands and Johnston Atoll in the Pacific region, Soviet tests in Semipalatinsk - now in Kazakhstan - Novaya Zemlya, Russia, and British tests on Christmas Island. "This report and other official data show that hot spots occurred thousands of miles away from the test sites," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER). "Hot spots due to testing in Nevada occurred as far away as New York and Maine. Hot spots from U.S. Pacific area testing and also Soviet testing were scattered across the United States from California, Oregon, Washington, and in the West to New Hampshire, Vermont and North Carolina in the East." The most recent government study, a fact sheet, and official fallout maps are posted on the IEER web site at: http://www.ieer.org [http://www.ieer.org] . [crater] The Sedan Crater at the Nevada Test Site. The 104 kiloton Sedan nuclear device, part of the Plowshare program seeking peaceful uses of nuclear explosives, displaced about 12 million tons of earth, creating a crater 1,280 feet in diameter and 320 feet deep. (Photo courtesy Nevada Test Site) The maps show cumulative fallout and county by county radiation dose and fallout patterns. These fallout areas demonstrate where excess cancers could occur because of the radiation. "Despite that fact that its own studies have long shown extensive harm to people, including children, the U.S. government has had no effective public health response," said Lisa Ledwidge, a biologist and IEER's outreach director for the United States. "We applaud the fact that the United States government has been honest enough to say that it has harmed its own people, though it did so only under prolonged pressure from the people and some of its elected representatives," Ledwidge continued. "It is the only nuclear weapon state to have done so. But it is not enough to estimate numbers or say you're sorry. The harm is still occurring. The government needs to inform people fully." In the 1950s, for example, the government informed photographic film producers of expected fallout patterns so they could protect their film supply, but did nothing to inform milk producers so that they could protect a vital component of the food supply. "It is late in the day," said Ledwidge. "The government should not only urgently formulate a health and compensation response strategy, with public involvement, it should implement it without any further delay." [cows] Cows grazing on vegetation contaminated by radioactive fallout produced contaminated milk. (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy Agricultural Research Service) The NCI/CDC study was mandated by Congress through legislation passed in 1998, after a 1997 National Cancer Institute report that dealt with only one radionuclide - iodine-131 - and doses to the thyroid alone showed extensive exposures across the United States. Hot spots were scattered across the continent, with the most affected counties as far away as Idaho and Montana. "The 1997 report indicates that some farm children, those who drank goat's milk in the 1950s in high fallout areas, were as severely exposed as the worst exposed children after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Such exposure creates a high probability of a variety of illnesses," said Dr. Makhijani. "Yet the government did nothing to inform the people in these affected areas." The NIC/CDC report notes that "for most people, the major exposure route was the ingestion of cows' milk contaminated as the result of iodine-131 deposited on pasture grasses." The agencies also looked at other exposure routes such as contaminated air, vegetables, eggs and various dairy products. The researchers learned that goats' milk concentrates radioactive iodine-131 more than cows' milk. [goats] Because goat's milk absorbs more radioactive iodine than cow's milk, people drinking goat's milk may have a higher risk of fallout related cancers (Photo by Larry Rana, courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture) "It is estimated that at that time about 20,000 individuals in the U.S. population consumed goats' milk," the report notes. "Thyroid doses to those individuals could have been 10 to 20 times greater than those to other residents of the same county who were the same age and sex and drank the same amount of cows' milk." Kenneth Strickler learned in 1998 that he had thyroid cancer after his physician ran some tests. Strickler, who was born in 1954 in Challis, Idaho, a high fallout area, and who grew up there, said the public deserved to have more information about fallout zones. "The government should make the public aware of the symptoms of the types of cancer that might be caused from downwind syndrome," Strickler said. "They should publish an ad in the newspapers so that people can look for more information at their web site." Strickler suspected that a malfunctioning thyroid might be responsible for his strange metabolic symptoms as a result of information about thyroid radiation doses from fallout given to him by his sister, Nikki Doll. Doll attended a talk given in 1998 in Challis by Dr. Makhijani as part of a tour organized by the Snake River Alliance. [explosion] A 23 kiloton, above ground nuclear test explosion (Photo courtesy Los Alamos National Laboratory) "It is very frightening to know that radioactive tests were conducted by the United States and other countries with the knowledge that some harm might come to those who lived in the path of fallout," said Doll. "If the public is made aware of the possible dangers that hide in their environment, they can be alert to the symptoms and seek early diagnosis and treatment of a disease if it strikes." "The U.S. government needs to be responsible for its actions and to inform us about what they did and how it is affecting our lives and how it will continue to affect the lives of those we love," added Doll. While the United States already has a compensation program for people who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site, site of several above ground nuclear tests, it does not cover the majority of Americans who may have been exposed to radioactive fallout, IEER warns. "There are hot spots thousands of miles from tests sites and the new definition of 'downwinder' should include all of them," explained Ledwidge. "The new fallout maps and radiation dose estimates show that nuclear weapons states not only harmed their own people but also people in other countries," added Dr. Makhijani. "U.S., Soviet, and other testing likely created hot spots in Canada and Scandinavia, for instance. There may have been hot spots in many other countries all over the world." "It is high time for the United Nations to create a Global Truth Commission that would examine in detail comparable to the U.S government studies the harm that has been inflicted upon the people of the world by nuclear weapons production and testing," concluded Dr. Makhijani. "Nuclear weapons states owe an honest accounting, treatment and compensation to the victims of the nuclear age." The CDC/NCI report is available at: http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/Fallout/index.html [http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/Fallout/index.html] » Lycos Worldwide © Copyright ***************************************************************** 14 Gephardt Leads Webster Groves Residents In A Rally Against Nuclear Waste Transport Press Releases FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: 3/3/02 Congressman Richard A. Gephardt led community leaders and residents from Webster Groves in voicing concerns about the transport of nuclear waste through the town at a rally on Sunday, March 3, 2002. The rally comes in response to President Bush's decision to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Residents anticipate that transport of the estimated 77,000 tons of waste will come through Webster Groves on railways heading west to Nevada. Gephardt has expressed concerns about the Yucca Mountain decision, calling it "premature in light of the lack of scientific knowledge needed to reach a conclusion about the safety of transporting, then dumping, thousands of tons of radioactive nuclear waste." He added, "This is bad for the country, bad for Missouri and bad for Webster Groves." The Congressman told the crowd that he would like to explore storing the waste where it is produced. " We should examine how Europe manages their nuclear waste. The waste is stored on the site where it is produced in secure encasements. I consider this a safer alternative to moving tons of radioactive liquid on unreliable rail line thorough heavily populated areas, like Webster Groves." Those attending the rally joined the Congressman in signing a petition to protest the Yucca Mountain decision. Residents who did not attend the rally can sign the petition at the Webster Groves City Hall where it will remain until March 11 and then be sent on to President Bush. ***************************************************************** 15 Japan: Two armed transport ships to re-send MOX fuel to Britain BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 5, 2002 Text of report in English by Japanese news agency Kyodo Tokyo, 5 March: Plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel stored at a Japanese nuclear power plant in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, will be sent back to Britain later this year by two armed transport ships, the British manufacturer of the fuel said Tuesday [5 March]. British Nuclear Fuels PLC (BNFL) said it aims to bring back the MOX fuel, which contains 255 kg of plutonium, from Kansai Electric Power Co's Takahama plant on the Sea of Japan coast by the year-end on the two British armed vessels, carrying armed police from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. The plutonium could be converted for use in nuclear weapons. In 1999, BNFL was found to have falsified manufacturing data for MOX fuel shipped to Kansai Electric Power. Following the revelation, a plan to use the MOX fuel for the first time in Japan was cancelled, and Japan and Britain agreed that BNFL would take the fuel back to Britain. The shipment of the MOX fuel is the first of its kind following the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States. However, no special security measures other than those taken during the previous two MOX fuel shipments from Europe to Japan will be implemented, BNFL officials said. Under the Japan-US accord on the use of atomic power, the fuel's transfer requires approval by the USA. The Japanese Foreign Ministry said Washington is expected to give the green light to the plan soon. Environment group Greenpeace International said the two transport vessels Pacific Pintail and Pacific Teal, both armed with cannons, are likely to carry the fuel back to Britain. Source: Kyodo News Service, Tokyo, in English 1033 gmt 5 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 16 Steam studied for tank wastes This story was published Fri, Mar 1, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer Hanford's latest techno buzzwords are "steam reformation." That's a process being studied that could convert some of Hanford's radioactive tank wastes into pebble-sized crystalline rocks. The idea is that this could be an alternative to converting some tank wastes into glass logs. Hanford likely won't know until late 2002 whether it wants to tackle this concept. Ron Naventi, Bechtel National's Hanford project manager, talked about this idea Thursday to 140 members of the Tri-City Industrial Development Council in Richland. Naventi also said Bechtel is exploring moving the start date of glassifying Hanford's tank wastes from 2007 to 2006. Bechtel National is in charge of designing and building a complex to convert the radioactive wastes in Hanford's 177 underground tanks into a safer glass. Bechtel wants to start pouring concrete in October. Its contract with the Department of Energy gives it until December to begin that construction. DOE is looking for ways to speed up the long-range cleanup of Hanford and the federal agency's other Cold War sites. One approach under serious consideration is not converting all of DOE's radioactive tank wastes at Hanford, Savannah River, S.C., Fernald, Ohio, and West Valley, N.Y., into glass as currently planned. That means DOE is looking at other ways to neutralize some of Hanford's 53 million gallons of tank wastes. Right now, Hanford plans to set up a complex to separate the tank wastes into highly radioactive wastes and less radioactive "low-activity wastes." Two melters are to be set up in one building to convert the highly radioactive wastes into glass. And three melters of another design are to be set up in a second building to turn low-activity wastes into glass. Hanford is pondering whether one of the three low-activity waste melters can be replaced with a steam reformation set-up, said Naventi and Harry Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection. A basic problem with low-activity wastes is that much of it contains organic chemicals and sulfur. Those substances don't bind well with glass in the melting process. That means wastes heavily laced with organic chemicals and sulfur will lead to a glassified 712-foot-tall cylinder containing a low percentage of wastes and a high percentage of glass. Meanwhile, waste slightly laced with organics and sulfur will translate to a glassified cylinder that contains a sizable percentage of wastes and a smaller percentage of glass. Bottom line: A scarcity of organics and sulfur in wastes means fewer glass logs will have to be created. So Hanford is looking at splitting its low-activity wastes into two streams. Low-activity wastes with low percentages of organics and sulfur would be glassified as originally planned. Low-activity wastes with high organics and sulfur contents would be routed to steam reformation. Under steam reformation, the wastes and other chemicals would be put in a huge tube. The substances would be heated in the range of 1,500 degrees. That is supposed to destroy the organic materials -- leaving steam, carbon dioxide and the waste crystals. Those crystals and glassified low-activity wastes would be stored permanently -- likely buried -- at Hanford. The highly radioactive glassified wastes are supposed to eventually go to a proposed permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Naventi hopes Bechtel will finish testing the steam reformation concept and have a recommendation on whether it is viable late this year. "This real issue is: Will this actually work with actual tank wastes?" Naventi said. Boston cautioned that this idea will need approval by Hanford's regulators. Those regulators will be brought early into DOE's and Bechtel's brainstorming and testing, he said. Mike Wilson, manager of the state Department of Ecology's nuclear waste program, said the state is taking a wait-and-see stance. "It shows some real promise on paper," he said. Naventi said tackling steam reformation this decade could save a great amount of money after 2010. That's because the concept could replace preliminary plans to expand the glassification plants next decade. Meanwhile, Bechtel is studying if it can realistically begin glassification in 2006, before the legal deadline of 2007. Right now, Bechtel's melter designs indicate they will work 30 percent to 40 percent of the time because of the massive heat, radiation and wear and tear involved. Naventi believes Bechtel can upgrade those designs enough to double the time that the melters actually work. Boston said DOE expects to see some upgraded designs this spring, which should help the federal agency to see if a 2006 start date is possible. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. ***************************************************************** 17 Energy Dept. Sued Over Nuclear Waste Las Vegas SUN March 04, 2002 BOISE, Idaho- The Department of Energy is being sued over a proposal to abandon radioactive waste that has been buried in storage tanks, a practice environmentalists say could threaten water resources. The tanks, buried at sites in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina, held millions of gallons of liquid acid used to reprocess spent fuel rods until the late 1990s. The rods were bathed in the liquid acid, which extracted uranium, plutonium and other radioactive substances but left behind a highly radioactive stew of other metals. The waste fluid was stored in the underground tanks. Although much of the fluid has been pumped out and processed into a more solid form, a residual sludge remains, coating their bottoms and sides. The lawsuit, filed by environmentalists on Friday in U.S. District Court in Boise, asks that the department not be allowed to abandon the tanks. About 800,000 gallons of sludge remain in 10 tanks at Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The Energy Department plans to remove all but about 1,000 gallons in each tank, leaving a total of about 10,000 gallons in place, said department spokesman Brad Bugger. The other waste is buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. All three sites are near aquifers or rivers that could become contaminated if the containers leak, the lawsuit contends. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has classified the buried material as high-level waste, a designation which would not allow the department to abandon it. The Energy Department wants the waste's rating downgraded so it has the option of leaving the waste at the three sites. Bugger said there has been no decision to cap the tanks and that other options are also under consideration, including removing them. Gary Richardson, director of the Snake River Alliance, one of the plaintiffs, said the department was trying to circumvent established rules for handling high-level radioactive material. "We think that is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and that they are using regulatory rule-making as a sleight-of-hand way to define away the problem," Richardson said. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 Glass logs will end up in huge trenches in central Hanford This story was published Mon, Mar 4, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer Hanford's biggest single mission is to convert the radioactive liquids and gunk inside its underground tanks into glass. But that begs the question: What happens to the glass? Part of the answer is that the glassified "low activity wastes" will end up in six massive trenches to be dug in central Hanford. Each trench is expected to be 860 feet long, 260 feet wide and 30 feet deep. That's about the same space covered by each of Hanford's "canyons" -- the colossal plutonium processing plants that were idled at the end of the Cold War. "In fact it's wider" than a canyon, said Dewey Burbank, CH2M Hill Hanford Group's project engineer for the trench project. Right now, the trenches are going through planning stages. Design updates and public hearings should take at least two years before Hanford can realistically get the necessary state and federal permits to go ahead with the project. "We have to convince the Department of Energy and the (Washington) Department of Ecology that we can predict how the (glassified radioactive) materials will behave over a long time," said Fred Mann, a team leader at CH2M Hill. Requests for construction bids on the trenches are expected to go out in 2005, and two years later the first trench is supposed to be ready to receive the first cylinder of glassified waste from Hanford's radioactive waste glassification plants, which have yet to be built. For now, 53 million gallons of highly radioactive wastes are stored in 177 underground tanks. Hanford's master plan calls for building a complex of plants just east of the 200 East Area to begin in 2007 to convert those wastes into glass. Before glassification can occur, Hanford has to chemically separate the tanks wastes into two categories -- "low activity wastes" and very radioactive "high level wastes." Each type of waste requires a different glassification process. The idea is that the glass will safely hold the radioactive substances until their radioactivity decays to much less dangerous levels. The glass created from the highly radioactive waste will be put inside an existing huge underground vault in central Hanford that also holds canisters of spent nuclear fuel removed from the K Basins. Eventually, that glass is supposed to be shipped to a planned permanent storage site inside Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Meanwhile, the majority of Hanford's tank wastes is expected to be glassified as "low activity wastes." That glass is supposed to end up in stainless steel cylinders that are 712 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter. This low activity glass is to remain permanently at Hanford. Even if officials decide to convert some of it into something other than glass, chances are good that material will still end up in the proposed super trenches, said Harry Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection. The six super trenches will be on 100 acres southwest of the 200 East Area's shut down Plutonium-Uranium Extraction canyon. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires Hanford to show the trenches can hold the glass for 10,000 years. Mann said: "Our analyses show that we beat all the regulatory requirements by a factor of 100, maybe by 1,000." The super trenches will have two layers of plastic liners along the bottom and sides, plus a water collection system to gather any rain-driven fluid before it soaks into the soil beneath the trench. "From an engineering standpoint, this is pretty cut and dried," Burbank said. The glassification plants are expected to produce between 70,000 and 95,000 canisters of low-level wastes. The project is tentatively looking at putting 13,500 cylinders in each trench -- stacked three canisters deep. After it is filled with canisters, a trench will be "capped" -- meaning several layers of topsoil, gravel, sand and asphalt will be put on top of the trench to form a mound. That mound is supposed to keep out water, insects, critters and people. Eventually, the plastic liners will disintegrate hundreds or thousands of years in the future -- leaving the stainless-steel-encased glass buried in the dirt. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 19 Gephardt stumps against moving nuclear waste, cites safety Las Vegas SUN March 04, 2002 WEBSTER GROVES, Mo. (AP) - House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt has urged a St. Louis suburb to help challenge any government plans to ship nuclear waste through Missouri, calling such a move bad for the country and Missouri. "Safety has to be the paramount issue," the Missouri Democrat said Sunday during a rally at a converted train station here in response to President Bush's decision last month to ship high-level nuclear waste to a Nevada storage site. Bush approved the recommendation of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham that nuclear waste be moved to the Yucca Mountain repository, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The site could house about 77,000 tons of waste generated by nuclear power plants nationwide. Gephardt said he favors leaving the waste right where it is. European nuclear power plants encase their radioactive waste in glass and fiberglass and store the glass bricks on site, Gephardt said, calling that a safer alternative to moving tons of radioactive liquid along unreliable rail lines through heavily populated areas such as St. Louis. On Sunday, Gephardt and Webster Groves Mayor Gerry Welch signed a petition to protest the Yucca Mountain decision and urged residents to add their signatures to the list. Gephardt told reporters that he did not know if it would cost more to store nuclear waste at power plants or ship it to Yucca Mountain, though he said safety - not cost - was the most important factor. Abraham has said the material could be transported safely, and Bush said that storing the waste at a central site is safer than having it scattered at 131 sites. The president needs congressional approval to move forward with the plan to send radioactive material to Yucca Mountain, Gephardt said. Congress could stop the shipments by pulling from the appropriations bill the money required to finance Bush's plan, Gephardt said. John Hickey, a community activist, said he found out a couple of weeks ago that nuclear waste could travel along the tracks that run just northwest of his local home. His worry: the consequences if a train hauling nuclear waste derails, as a coal-loaded one did in another part of this suburb last summer. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 EU law crackdown on nuclear stations 'inevitable' Irish Newspapers - NUCLEAR power plants like Sellafield cannot escape from a planned EU environmental law warned Environment Minister, Noel Dempsey, in Brussels yesterday. He described as "daft" suggestions that separate non-EU controls would cover any pay-outs for environmental damage caused by nuclear accidents or spills. In the first round of talks on the new directive, Mr Dempsey challenged the majority of countries currently prepared to exclude the nuclear energy industry from the terms of the Directive. Backed by Austrian and Luxembourg, Mr Dempsey took an unusually tough line and warned Ireland would ultimately vote against the proposed Environmental Liability directive unless its terms are broadened. He explained Ireland had deliberately not signed the separate Paris Convention on the liability for nuclear accidents because, he argued, it capped the size of damages. Instead, he said it was contradictory to propose a European law that follows the "polluter pays" principle and exclude an entire sector. In the open debate, Mr Dempsey argued there should be no "special regime" for the nuclear industry. There was no reference to his argument in the subsequent comments by his British counterpart. Afterwards, the minister conceded that at the moment, he doesn't have sufficient support to block the legislation, which will eventually agreed by a qualified majority vote of ministers in conjunction with the European Parliament. Mr Dempsey insisted, however, he was confident over the coming year, he could build consensus support for his proposal to expand the terms of the law. * Ireland faces the second highest number of EU environmental complaints. Conor Sweeney in Brussels © Copyright Unison ***************************************************************** 21 Democratic leader encourages Yucca Mountain opposition Tuesday, March 05, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WEBSTER GROVES, Mo. -- House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt has urged a St. Louis suburb to help challenge any federal government plans to ship nuclear waste through Missouri to Nevada, calling such a move bad for the country and Missouri. "Safety has to be the paramount issue," the Missouri Democrat said Sunday during a rally in response to President Bush's decision last month to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles from Las Vegas. Bush approved the recommendation of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. The site could house about 77,000 tons of waste, mostly spent fuel pellets, generated by commercial nuclear power plants. Gephardt said he favors leaving the waste where it is. European nuclear power plants encase their radioactive waste in glass and fiberglass and store the glass bricks on site, Gephardt said, calling that a safer alternative to moving tons of radioactive liquid along unreliable rail lines through heavily populated areas such as St. Louis. Gephardt and Webster Groves Mayor Gerry Welch signed a petition to protest the Yucca Mountain decision and urged residents to add their signatures to the list. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 22 38 of 293 questions on Yucca resolved Tuesday, March 05, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal NRC members discuss repository's licensing By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has ample time to resolve 293 technical issues regarding nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain before submitting a license application in December 2004, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said Monday. But Martin Virgilio, director of the NRC's office of nuclear materials safety and safeguards, said new technical issues still could arise. "While on balance we want to see that the numbers come down, DOE is considering design changes to the repository. ... We may in fact open up additional (technical issues)," Virgilio said. "What we want to do is make sure that we have addressed all the (issues) that we need to address at the time of licensing." In preparing a license application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the Energy Department is working with NRC staff to answer technical questions. Speaking to NRC commissioners during a nuclear waste briefing, Virgilio said 38 issues have been resolved and that number should rise to 60 by the end of September. Those numbers did not satisfy NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan, who said the agency's pace should be closer to the Energy Department's goal of resolving 85 technical issues by the end of this fiscal year. McGaffigan cited a November report by the General Accounting Office, which mentioned technical questions in urging the Energy Department to delay its recommendation of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. "It's something that has great credence, and there are senior members of the United States Congress who think there are 293 major" questions, McGaffigan said. Virgilio said roughly two-thirds of the 293 issues could be resolved if the Energy Department submits documentation to support statements made to the NRC. The other third could be resolved if the department performs additional tests and analyses. NRC Chairman Richard Meserve and Commissioner Nils Diaz said their agency needs to address the public's growing concern about the safety of transporting nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. In the past 20 years, Virgilio said, about 1,300 shipments of highly radioactive spent fuel have been sent without failure. webmaster@lvrj.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 23 Where I Stand -- Brian Greenspun: Reid unfairly blamed Las Vegas SUN Today: March 05, 2002 at 8:16:30 PST Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun. YOU GOTTA LOVE those folks at the little paper down the street. Love them but not trust them one little bit. Nevada will soon be in the fight of its life, perhaps even for it, when the United States Senate argues over sustaining Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the high-level nuclear waste dump. At the forefront of that effort will be our senior U.S. senator, Harry Reid, the man who just three years ago, with the able help of then-Sen. Dick Bryan, body slammed the nuclear power industry and its GOP supporters who were trying to send the radioactive garbage our way some ten years earlier than originally planned. When President Bill Clinton vetoed that effort, Harry managed to find the 34 votes necessary to sustain that veto and keep the power boys at bay. Well, life has changed and now we are faced with a president, George W. Bush, who has flat-out lied to the people of this state, and we could be paying for that deception for generations to come. I realize that all of Nevada's mothers and fathers are in this fight together, regardless of political affiliation or liberal or conservative leanings, and that it does no good to try to divide us along such lines when we all need to stand together. I also know, though, that it was not President Clinton nor even candidate Al Gore who made the decision to stick that nuke garbage so far up our mountain that we may never recover from it. It was George W. Bush doing the bidding of his energy industry buddies and his Republican colleagues in the Congress. There is no other way to sugarcoat that betrayal. But, as we move forward in this fight -- a fight I know that has people from all sides questioning the real impact of a Yucca Mountain reality -- it is imperative that we lock arms against the bad guys, the evil ones, who would set upon Nevada families a potential of dozens of lifetimes of health and safety concerns that need not occur. We are, in the end, being put upon by our government because of money. It is cheaper to bury that poison outside of Las Vegas than to reprocess it like France does or store it where it is made until science finds a real solution. And that, for me, is the most disturbing part of this whole nightmare. President Bush made a money decision with our lives and our futures. And that is just plain wrong. So enters the Review-Journal, which tries to make political hay out of this very bad situation. In a contorted bit of illogical logic, the folks down the street have tried to leave Harry Reid holding the nuclear waste bag. Rather than admit how wrong they were in shoving George Bush down Nevada's throats in the last election as if he were the Second Coming, they have tried to equate his actions with the words of his opponent in the last election. The election, clearly, is over but there should be no doubt in any person's mind that Al Gore would have sought a scientific solution to nuclear waste and not the politically easy one that President Bush has employed. Simply put, with George we get nuke waste. With Al, we would have gotten science. But, rather than admit how wrong that editorial board was in its assessment of Bush's promise to Nevadans, the R-J has chosen to lay the blame at Harry's feet. That is not only wrong but also unfair and so, so like the Review-Journal. If we win this fight in the Senate it will be because of many people, Republicans and Democrats who have stepped up for this fight. But it will be mostly because Harry Reid is the assistant majority leader of the United States Senate. If we lose -- which means there aren't enough Republicans true to their principles to help us win our fight -- it will be because of just one man -- President Bush -- who told us one thing and did just the opposite. Don't ever get confused about that! All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 24 Former Clinton aide joins state's anti-Yucca team Las Vegas SUN Today: March 05, 2002 at 10:35:21 PST Podesta to help Reid rally Senate Democrats to vote against dump By Jeff German John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, has been hired to help Nevada leaders lobby Congress against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. Podesta, part of the Washington lobbying firm of Podesta Mattoon, will work primarily with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to rally support for the state's position among Democrats in the Senate, where the next battle over Yucca Mountain is unfolding. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who returned to Washington Monday following a two-week hiatus for undisclosed personal reasons, is said to be looking for a well-known Republican lobbyist to help him win the support of his GOP colleagues. Gov. Kenny Guinn is expected to veto President Bush's recommendation of Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, within the next 40 days. The Senate, controlled by Reid and the Democrats, is expected to be Nevada's best chance of sustaining the governor's veto. In a statement this morning, Reid said he has enlisted the help of Podesta and his brother, Anthony T. Podesta, to help him educate lawmakers on the national security risks and health dangers of shipping nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. "Nevada has a powerful new ally in John Podesta," said Reid, the Senate's assistant majority leader. "John served the nation well during his White House tour of duty." Reid said Podesta, who was Clinton's chief of staff from 1998 through 2000, "stood with Nevada then and has decided to stand with Nevada now." Details of how the Podesta brothers will be paid haven't been worked out. But Nevada leaders have the option of funding the lobbying effort from a $500,000 anti-Yucca Mountain fund recently approved by the American Gaming Association in Washington, or from a $250,000 war chest set up by the Nevada Resort Association in Las Vegas. The state also can dip into its $5.3 million anti-dump fund to pay for the new lobbyists. Reid and Ensign need 51 Senate votes to sustain Guinn's veto. The senators have estimated that they have as many as 34 senators, mostly Democrats, on their side now. "Finding the right group to help Nevada fight the Bush nuclear waste plan hasn't been easy," Reid said. "Big energy companies have spent an obscene amount of money in D.C. to gobble up most of the lobbying firms around town. "Thankfully they were not able to buy one of the best. John is the right man to help educate lawmakers about just how dangerous President Bush's plan really is." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 25 State awaits next shot in DOE's water fight Las Vegas SUN Today: March 05, 2002 at 9:44:10 PST By Cy Ryan SUN CAPITAL BUREAU CARSON CITY -- State officials expect the Department of Energy to launch a new effort to preserve its temporary water rights at Yucca Mountain. Senior Deputy Attorney General Marta Adams said Monday she expects "to see activity on that front pretty soon." Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt has given the state until March 29 to file an answer to the DOE request to overturn the state's denial of permanent water rights at the proposed site of a high-level nuclear waste dump. At a status hearing on the case Friday, Hunt rejected the state's motion to delay processing the permanent water rights case. Adams argued against expediting the process because "the political landscape could change in the next five months." Adams called the water issue "one bastion of state control." Michael Turnipseed, director of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, denied permanent water rights for Yucca Mountain when he was state engineer. Hugh Ricci, his successor, has rejected the application of the DOE to extend its temporary water permit. He said the temporary permit was for studying the suitability of the site, but President Bush's recent declaration of Yucca Mountain's suitability now means the study period is over and the water permit expires. DOE spokesman Allen Benson said the agency has built and filled a million-gallon reservoir, providing enough water to last six to nine months after its temporary permit expires in April. The primary activities requiring water currently are dust control, household use for workers and ongoing scientific studies, Benson said. More water-intensive uses, such as pouring concrete, are not occurring, he said. After the state files its answer to the DOE both sides will be able to file their motions on the permanent water permit. Hunt already ruled once in favor of the state, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Hunt's ruling. It sent the case back to Hunt for further hearings. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 26 Letter: Citizens must get involved Las Vegas SUN Today: March 05, 2002 at 8:50:19 PST If you put semantics aside, letter writers Ron Danish and Sondra Cosgrove are both right. We are a republic and a representative democracy. Our destinies are controlled by 100 senators and 435 congressmen who unfortunately are practically unsupervised because of the low participation by citizens in political activism. The reasons are varied from complacency to disinterest, and one of the main reasons is our poor educational system, which rarely teaches civics. Instead we have liberals tearing down portraits of our founders because they judge them (our founders) out of historical context. We all should read or re-read the Declaration of Independence to re-affirm that our founders outlined our role, in citizen political activism, as a right and duty to petition government. Now that we are at war, it is more essential that we participate in our representative democracy. Phone, write, e-mail and fax politicians to keep them honest. Enron, Global Crossing, Arthur Anderson, our energy policy and Yucca Mountain are all connected. Ask Congress to explain it to you! Vote with knowledge and never vote the straight party ticket. Vote for the best person. FRANK PERNA All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 27 Ensign returns to nation's capital Las Vegas SUN Today: March 05, 2002 at 10:35:21 PST Ensign returns to nation's capital By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., returned to the nation's capital Monday but did not offer details about why he took two weeks off from his job in Congress to tend to a "personal matter." "I'm not making any comments one way or the other," Ensign said this morning. "I'm just asking people to respect my privacy." Ensign, 43, dropped out of the public arena Feb. 15 after President Bush formally approved the Yucca Mountain project. The following week he did not surface during a congressional recess, missing high-profile events that included Nevada visits by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Ensign aides have said they would make no comment on the senator's absence other than to say that it was a personal matter. Neither they nor Ensign offered any further information. Ensign spokeswomen Traci Scott said even his staff doesn't know the details of why the senator was out. "He guards his privacy," she said. "We've been told it was a personal matter." Ensign arrived Monday and is catching up quickly today on what he missed. He said he worked from home over the last two weeks and made plenty of phone calls. "It wasn't like I was completely out of the loop," Ensign said. He said he would meet with the rest of the state's congressional delegation on strategy to fight Yucca Mountain. Ensign missed Senate sessions last week, including a debate on an election reform bill. Ensign missed five relatively minor votes during the week. Last year Ensign missed 11 of 380 Senate votes, according to Congressional Observer Publications, which tracks voting. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 28 Political rift could hurt state's Yucca fight Las Vegas SUN Today: March 05, 2002 at 10:42:53 PST By Erin Neff Nevada politicians pride themselves on shelving partisan ideals for the greater good of the Yucca Mountain battle. But Democrats have hiked anti-Republican rhetoric in recent weeks not just to shine light on the state's fight but to sow seeds of blame destined to sprout just before Election Day. Political leaders claim there is nothing harmful about Democrats and Republicans talking differently, but some suggest the discourse could create a rift in Nevada's Yucca Mountain fight. "In a body like the Senate, it helps to have both senators saying the same thing," said Tim Fackler, a UNLV political science professor who specializes in American politics and campaigns. "The individual differences are usually aired within the borders of Nevada itself, but if that seeps into Washington, that could be a problem." Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., hasn't been shy about slamming the Republican president on national television even as he discusses his friendship and working relationship with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. Last week Reid upped the political ante by filing a friend of the court brief to a General Accounting Office lawsuit against the White House seeking disclosure of information related to creation of the Bush administration's energy policy. With key Yucca Mountain decisions made during a Republican administration and with proponents of the project donating to local Republican congressional races, Democrats say the issue will dominate the campaigns by the time voters go to the polls in November. "It will absolutely be a campaign issue for the congressional races, and I also think it will be an issue in some of the state Senate races," Nevada's Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said. "We'll definitely point out candidates' ties to the nuclear industry or to proponents of the project." The difference between the parties was clearest immediately after Bush on Feb. 15 approved Yucca Mountain to be the nation's nuclear waste repository. Democrats attacked Bush while Republicans said they were "disappointed" or felt Bush had been misled. "President Bush is a liar," Reid, the Senate's Assistant Majority Leader, said. "He betrayed Nevada and he betrayed the country." "All Americans should be concerned, not just because he lied to me or the people of Nevada and indeed all Americans, but because the president's decision threatens Americans' lives," Reid added. Republicans like U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons say they take no offense to remarks against their party's national leader and don't see Reid's lawsuit as anything other than support for Nevada's cause. "I support that concept of the lawsuit," Gibbons said. "It's not Republicans versus Democrats, it's Nevada against the other 49 states." But Lisa Gue, a policy analyst with non-partisan consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said the Democrats have taken the lead -- at least in Washington -- fighting Yucca Mountain. "The Bush administration's attachment to energy industries is not helpful to the Yucca Mountain fight," Gue said. "In as much as this administration proposes construction of new nuclear power plants, it is an implicit endorsement of Yucca Mountain." The Democrats are driving that point home to voters on a daily basis. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., called Bush's decision a "broken promise" and Democratic congressional candidate Dario Herrera has been attacking the administration and House Republicans at every opportunity. "It's a great issue for us and we're going to keep it up," said Mark Nevins, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington. Nevada's Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn, who met Bush at the White House just days before the president's decision, said he was "dismayed" by Bush's actions, but is not upset by the Democrats' harsh words. "This is not about Republicans or Democrats," Guinn said. "This is about Nevadans. "It isn't politics," he added. "It's the health and safety of every resident at stake." Reid said Republicans such as Guinn and Ensign, "didn't care what I said." "I never apologize to anyone when I disagree with the president," Reid added. Reid also said he does not think his remarks about Bush or his decision to join the GAO lawsuit against the White House will affect his relationship with Ensign. Ensign did not return numerous calls for comment. "I told the president what I was going to do," Reid said about his remarks. "It was no surprise to him." Berkley said she didn't see much difference in her statement and the ones the Republicans made after the president's decision. "I think we're all coming from the same page," Berkley said. "The Nevada delegation speaks with one voice when it comes to Yucca Mountain and I believe that we will continue to work ... in a united fashion." Even as she says that, Berkley and Herrera join in a common refrain assaulting Republican House leaders and touting Democratic House leadership as friends of Nevada. "The reality is the House Republicans are rabidly pro-Yucca Mountain," Berkley said. "No amount of rhetoric will change that." Jon Porter, the Republican vying with Herrera to represent Nevada's 3rd Congressional District, said it's time to put talk like that aside. "Now more than ever, with Senator Reid in such a strong leadership position in the Senate, we need to work together," Porter said. "Now more than ever we need to be unified and put this strong rhetoric aside." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 29 Reid takes on world’s most powerful man [RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL] March 5, 2002 Jon Ralston [online@rgj.com] What one Texan couldn’t do for Harry Reid, another just might: Turn him into a bona fide national figure. In another millennium, Nevada’s mild-mannered senator leapt Ross Perot’s stratospheric populism with one tall dose of criticism. But Perot ultimately succumbed to his own self-marginalization campaign. But a super-popular president? Well, that’s a different story. As the country bows to George W. Bush’s ascension as commander in chief in the wake of 9/11, he has been treated, as Mary McGrory pointed out this weekend in The Washington Post, with “a certain amount of deference.” Bipartisan genuflection is the order of the day on Capitol Hill. So who was that man who called Bush a liar repeatedly after the administration’s Yucca Mountain decision? And now who is the quiet man making the loud noises over the administration’s secret energy policy dealings? Look, up on Capitol Hill, it’s a senator. From Nevada. It’s Harry Reid. Yes, the politics may play well at home — telling the plain-spoken truth about a president who patronized the state in 2000 and suing the vice-president to find out if nuclear industry bosses whispered in his ear about Yucca Mountain. But this is dangerous stuff in the hurly burly of Washington politics. Reid has dared do what no one else has and that is to take on Bush &Co. head-on. Reid, too, was patronized by Bush during that now-infamous huddle at the White House with Gov. Kenny Guinn and Sen. John Ensign. Reid warned Bush that he would not hold back if the president broke his word given in 2000 that he would not designate the site until the scientific facts were in. In her column, McGrory repeats the story Reid and his aides have spread far and wide. Bush called the senior senator aside as the Nevadans were leaving the White House and whispered: “I appreciate a frank-spoken man.” I wonder how the president feels now about Reid’s candor. McGrory’s column, a staple in the venerable Post, is nothing short of an ode to Reid. To Dick Cheney’s claim that he shouldn’t have to release those documents that detail how the Bushies crafted their energy plan, McGrory writes: “Thank heaven Reid disagrees.” And then, expanding her column to include the administration’s tactics on the war effort, clamping down on the release of information, her column ends: “Things will only get worse if nobody complains, as Harry Reid has concluded.” Everyone, including Reid, knows how risky this is. The president is still the most powerful man in the world, much less in Washington. And if Reid decides to be unrelenting on the administration, he will face retribution. But the parochial benefits notwithstanding — and surely some of the folks back here think Reid has gone too far — the senator seems unlikely to back off now. And as he becomes sought after for national talk shows as The Man Who Took On Bush, Clark Kent is about to become Superman. Jon Ralston, who publishes The Ralston Report, works for Greenspun Media Group. He welcomes comments and questions. Write him at 2675Windmill, #3621 Henderson, NV 89074. Or call (702) 870-7997. © Copyright Reno Gazette-Journal, a Gannett ***************************************************************** 30 Ford man gets nuclear clean-up job The Independent - United Kingdom; Mar 5, 2002 A SENIOR Ford executive has been recruited by the Government to take charge of Britain's pounds 60bn in nuclear waste liabilities. Alan Edwards, who works for Ford of Europe, has been seconded to run the new Liabilities Management Unit which will take responsibility for the clean up and decommissioning of nuclear sites from British Nuclear Fuels and the Atomic Energy Authority All Material Subject to Copyright ***************************************************************** 31 Yucca lobbyist touting security Las Vegas Business Press Tuesday, March 05, 2002 By David Hare, Staff Writer When Geraldine Ferraro was asked to lobby on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to push for approval of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, she had at least one thing in mind when accepting the position. "As a New Yorker who's gone through Sept. 11, and someone who is acutely aware of the situation at Indian Pont, the safe storage of nuclear waste interested me," Ferraro said from her office on 42nd Street in Manhattan. "I'm all for doing anything preventive to help make our country more secure." The Indian Point Nuclear Plant is located in Westchester County, N.Y., about 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan. Protesters have organized to have the plant shut down in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes. According to the New York Times, in September, 2000, an independent monitor, investigating an accident that occurred at the plant earlier that year, found that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "conducted inadequate plant inspections as far back as 1997, and relied on flawed analyses, inexperienced staff members and the company it was supposed to regulate." In lobbying for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Ferraro, a former Democratic vice presidential candidate, joined her friend and colleague Republican John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor and presidential chief-of-staff. He was hired last year by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Both Ferraro and Sununu toured the Yucca Mountain facility last month. Ferraro described the tour as a lesson in geology. "If I'm lobbying on behalf of Yucca Mountain then I had to go out there, and I'm hoping more senators do the same," she said. "I don't blame Nevadans for raising questions about Yucca Mountain. They should be doing that. But I think if more people saw the site, they'd be less concerned about its safety. "I learned more about geology on that trip, and I walked away feeling comfortable about the reliability of the site." Critics of the repository have raised concerns about everything from geological components to groundwater contamination. Then there's the issue of transporting the nation's waste, a total of 77,000 tons, from nuclear plants in at least 39 states. Regarding transportation of nuclear waste, including issues about the casks it will be contained in, Ferraro said she's confident those concerns can be addressed in the licensing process between now and 2010, when the U.S. Department of Energy wants to begin accepting waste at Yucca Mountain. "If the scientific questions (about Yucca Mountain) don't meet certain standards, then I'm certain it will be rejected at that point," Ferraro said. "In some strange way, I think the people of Nevada, in raising questions, have made this a better process. They've given us a heads up that we need to proceed with caution when it comes to Yucca Mountain." Speaking on behalf of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., was Nathan Naylor, who said the senator is disappointed in Ferraro for joining the ranks of the nuclear power industry. "The Nuclear Energy Institute knows how to spend money better than Enron did. They are masters at spreading it around," Naylor said. "As a Democrat, it's disappointing they got one of our own." He added that both Ferraro and Sununu have damaged their credibility in Washington since they've become paid lobbyists for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Ferraro, on the other hand, said her conscience is clear. "I am being paid, there's no doubt about it. But I'm careful about the clients I pick," she said. "I don't represent anybody whose cause I don't believe in. "I'm a lawyer, not a scientist. I'm a citizen. I'm a scared grandmother. I want to make sure I'm doing everything possible to prevent problems in the future." Naylor said it's unconscionable that anyone would argue for shipping and storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain because of what happened on Sept. 11. "It's a no brainer. Each one of those shipments would be a target of opportunity for terrorists, a dirty bomb on 18 wheels," he said. Meanwhile, Sen. Reid announced in a press release that he will be joining a General Accounting Office lawsuit seeking to compel Vice President Cheney to release information about his meetings with energy executives. According to the release, Reid hopes to learn if the Cheney meetings held during the formation of the administration's national energy policy influenced the president's decision to abandon his campaign promise to base any conclusion on a national nuclear waste repository on sound science. "There is no question that Vice President Cheney met, on several occasions, with nuclear power executives," Reid said in the release. "Cheney needs to stop hiding the truth. He should tell the public which executives he met with, and when he met with them." Last week a federal judge ordered the Department of Energy to hand over documents to an environmental group seeking to learn what influence Enron Corp. and other companies had on the administration's energy policy. Copyright 2002 Las Vegas Business Press ***************************************************************** 32 Nuclear waste reclassification attacked Tuesday, March 5, 2002 Associated Press BOISE, IDAHO-Environmental groups contend the U.S. Energy Department's attempt to reclassify residual nuclear waste could threaten aquifers in three states. A lawsuit in U.S. District Court asks that the Energy Department not be allowed to reclassify former waste storage tanks buried in the ground at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The tanks held millions of gallons of liquid acid that was used to reprocess spent fuel rods until the late 1990s. The rods were bathed in the liquid, which extracted the uranium but left behind a highly radioactive stew of other metals along with the acid. The waste fluid was stored in buried tanks. Although much of it has been pumped out and processed into a more inert, solid form, a residual sludge remains in the tanks, coating the bottoms and sides. About 800,000 gallons of sludge remain in 10 tanks at the Idaho laboratory. The Energy Department plans to remove all but about 1,000 gallons in each tank, leaving a total of about 10,000 gallons in place, said department spokesman Brad Bugger. The Energy Department has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to reclassify the last remaining sludge and tanks at a level that would allow them to be filled and capped with cement and left in place. "We think that is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and that they are using regulatory rule-making as a slight-of-hand way to define away the problem," said Gary Richardson, director of the Snake River Alliance. The Snake River Alliance is joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Yakima Nation in the legal action. The lawsuit isn't new; the groups renewed the claim last week after review by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which sent it to the lower court in Boise. The Energy Department must respond by April 30. Oral arguments are set for July 22 in Boise before U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill. Bugger said the federal government still does not know how it will deal with residual waste that is pumped out of the tanks. "It is our intention to remove it. The question then is what to do with it once it out of the tanks," Bugger said. One option is to develop technology that would extract all but the highest level waste and ship the remaining material off to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico. Bugger also said the department has not decided whether to abandon the remaining waste and tanks. Another option might be to dig the tanks out of the ground. "That would be extremely expensive and could expose workers to radiation fields," Bugger said. A study on that option is due to be released sometime this summer. Idaho has its own agreement with the federal government which stipulates that the waste is to be removed from the state by 2012 or any further waste shipments to the state would be halted. Craig Halverson, program manager for the Idaho laboratory's oversight office, said the state's position includes any residual sludge. Copyright © 2002 Charleston.Net. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 33 Franco-Kazakh uranium venture starts test production BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; Mar 4, 2002 Almaty, 4 March: The Katco uranium joint venture, in which Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom [Kazakh atomic industry] national atomic company owns a 45-per-cent stake and the French Cogema company owns a 55-per cent stake, started production of yellow cake (low-enriched uranium) in an experimental pattern at the southern Kazakh Moinkum deposit in early 2002. The Kazatomprom press service has told the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency that the first consignment of yellow cake was produced as early as in December 2001, but the product underwent the relevant state expertise only at the beginning of this year. According to the press service, it is expected that 100 tonnes of yellow cake (or 259,980 pounds of uranium dioxide) will be produced annually at the initial test stage of the project and in a year this will be increased to 1,000 tonnes (2.6m pounds of uranium dioxide) a year. The press service said that Moinkum's proved uranium reserves were currently estimated at 20,000-27,000 tonnes (or 52m-72m pounds). [Passage to end omitted: Kazatomprom increased uranium output to 2,020 tonnes in 2001 from 794 tonnes in 1998] Source: Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 0441 gmt 4 Mar 02 /BBC Monitoring/ © BBC. ***************************************************************** 34 Al Qauida Nuke: To Tell Us, or Not to Tell Us Newsday.com - Tuesday, March 5, 2002 6:14 AM According to Time magazine, top government officials believed for "a few harrowing weeks” last fall that a portable nuclear bomb might go off in Manhattan, killing 100,000 people, poisoning millions with radiation, leveling a lot of the city and rendering most of the metropolitan area, including our part, uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. They had reason to believe a missing piece of the Russian nuclear arsenal had been obtained by terrorists allied with the al-Qaida network. To prevent panic, the White House kept mum while the suspected threat was investigated by super-secret agents. The FBI was not informed, according to Time. The mayor of New York was not informed. None of our local officials was informed. Besides suggesting the story line of the kind of action-thriller movies I never go see (it's the basic plot of the badly received 1997 DreamWorks film "The Peacemaker,” with George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, which I didn't go see), this information was provisionally stored in a part of my brain marked "Think About This Some Other Time, Please.” There are only a few subjects in there. "Death” is the big one. Otherwise, I can't think of any others. At the time I heard about it, to be fair, I was driving home from a visit with relatives in another state. We were proceeding at about 50 miles an hour beside a tractor-trailer truck, wending our way through a zig-zagging construction zone on I-95 in a light drizzle. Our car was confined on all sides by concrete barriers and other moving vehicles. The Time story was mentioned on the radio. It didn't seem like the right time to consider the implications of "three harrowing weeks” we didn't know we were having, back in October, when Time says this crisis was handled by a select few people in the know. But since then, I've re-filed this information in a new folder, which is provisionally titled: "Maybe Better Think About This, Like It Or Not.” Was this the right thing for the government to do? Should a few people decide what's best for the millions who might be affected? What were the considerations? Was the government mainly concerned about public safety? What part did economic considerations play? If the financial center of the world emptied out, it would have had serious economic implications, to be sure. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York said yesterday he thought the government did the right thing, not telling. City officials should have been warned, but citizens shouldn't necessarily be warned of nuclear threats, he said. They shouldn't? What if people wanted to prepare themselves -- whether that means making spiritual amends, or just making arrangements to be with family, or to go underground, or to make a run for it in the Dodge Caravan? Who decides whether we get to make these choices? I don't know. I'm glad I'm not in charge of deciding for others. This is new ground. There is not much precedent for this brain-twister in public policy. Movies are practically the only frame of reference. In the movie "Jaws,” of course, the local officials opted to keep mum about the shark in the water. But they were worried mainly about the impact of the "panic” on tourism and the local economy. What would George Clooney have done? How about Robin Williams? What would he do in his movie about this? Go find the ethics department where this kind of question has come up. I looked in college directories from all over the country. The ethics business is huge. There are experts on health-care ethics, business ethics, computer and information ethics, media ethics, science and biology ethics, government ethics, legal ethics and, of course, personal ethics. But I regret to report that there is no department of terrorist-threat ethics yet. I'm sure there will be. Until then, I am a sorry substitute because I don't know what the answer is. I mentioned my I-95 journey for obvious reasons: Imagine all the people being evacuated along that road, which is mainly a two-lane highway. It would not be good. I called the Nassau county executive's office to find out what he would do if he knew, but County Executive Thomas Suozzi was in meetings and could not be reached. I called the Suffolk county executive's office, but it was after 4:30 p.m., and the whole place was closed. "You have reached the Suffolk county executive's office,” said the recorded voice. "The office is now closed and will reopen tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.” But suppose it will not reopen tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.? That is the question. Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc. ***************************************************************** 35 Lugar Warns of Nuclear Threats Yahoo! News - Mon Mar 4, 6:43 PM ET By CAROLYN SKORNECK, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The United States must expand its fight against nuclear proliferation far beyond the former Soviet Union, Sen. Dick Lugar says, contending the West faces a real threat that terrorists will obtain, and use, weapons of mass destruction. "As horrible as the tragedy of Sept. 11 was, the death, destruction and disruption to American society was minimal compared to what could have been inflicted by a weapon of mass destruction," the Indiana Republican told the Council on Foreign Relations. During Lugar's unsuccessful 1996 bid for the presidency, three of his TV ads "depicted a mushroom cloud and warned of the horrible threat posed by the growing danger of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorist groups," he recalled. "At the time, those ads were widely criticized for being far-fetched and alarmist," he said, but now they are viewed differently. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks "graphically demonstrated how vulnerable we are." Lugar, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-sponsor of the Nunn-Lugar program to dismantle and secure the former Soviet Union's weapons of mass destruction, said he has little doubt Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida would have used such weapons if they had them. The counter-proliferation program should be expanded to all countries in the coalition against terrorism that are willing to work with the United States on safe storage, accountability and planned destruction of the dangerous weapons and materials, he said. Lugar said he has been working with the Bush administration to give it the authority to launch emergency operations to prevent a proliferation or weapon of mass destruction threat from "going critical." Pakistan and India, nuclear neighbors that have fought two wars in the last half-century over Kashmir and appeared this year to be on the brink of conflict again, might be future partners in that effort, he said. The United States has spent about $5 billion on counter-proliferation in the former Soviet Union, an effort launched 11 years ago as the U.S.S.R. was breaking up. The Nunn-Lugar program — named in part for former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga. — has deactivated nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads, found legitimate jobs for Soviet weapons scientists to preclude them from selling their expertise to rogue countries or terrorists, and started to control Soviet stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The United States is spending $400.2 million this year on the effort, known officially as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The Bush administration is seeking $416.7 million for next year, a 4 percent increase, said Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Hansen. President Bush's reference to an "axis of evil" — North Korea, Iraq and Iran — did not go far enough in expressing today's dangers formed by "the intersection of weapons of mass destruction," Lugar said. America must lead the fight, but it also needs allies and alliances, creating a chance for NATO to reinvigorate itself if it uses its upcoming Prague summit to focus on that threat, he said. "If NATO does not now help tackle the most pressing security threat to our countries today ... it will become increasingly marginal," he said. Wading into the argument over how to determine when the war on terrorism is won, Lugar suggested making two lists of nations: those that, willingly or not, contain terrorist cells, and those that possess materials, programs or weapons of mass destruction. The anti-terrorism coalition would go nation-by-nation through the first list, sharing intelligence and cutting off illicit financing to root out each cell. All countries on the second list would have to account for all materials and weapons of mass destruction and make them secure. "The war against terrorism will not be over until all nations on the lists have complied with these standards," he said. Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 36 Iraq developing nuclear bomb, says Straw Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Nicholas Watt, political correspondent Tuesday March 5, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Saddam Hussein is pressing ahead with the development of a nuclear bomb and would already have one were it not for sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, warns today. Mr Straw's tough rhetoric is designed to increase the pressure on Baghdad ahead of the prime minister's talks in Washington next month with George Bush. Tony Blair warned at the weekend that Britain is preparing to join the US in a military confrontation with Baghdad. He will also meet US vice president Dick Cheney for talks on Iraq next week in London, it was reported last night. Stepping up the pressure on Baghdad to open up its weapons programme to inspections, Mr Straw warns that Saddam will have to "live with the consequences" if he refuses to abide by international law. "There is evidence of increased efforts to procure nuclear-related material and technology, and that nuclear research and development work has begun again," the foreign secretary writes in today's Times. "Without the controls which we have imposed Saddam would have a nuclear bomb by now. "We cannot allow Saddam to hold a gun to the heads of his own people, his neighbours and the world... Let no one - especially Saddam - doubt our resolve." Mr Straw says that Iraq is developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering weapons beyond the 90-mile limit imposed by the UN, which would allow it to hit countries "as far away as the United Arab Emirates and Israel". There is a growing feeling at Westminster that the increasingly bellicose rhetoric from the British government is designed to soften up public opinion ahead of any strikes against Iraq. It is understood that Mr Blair is planning to publish detailed intelligence material outlining Iraq's weapons programme in the same way that he published intelligence about al-Qaida. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 37 North Koreans to tour EU - Japan Today Japan News - News - Gareth Jones Tuesday, March 5, 2002 at 09:30 JST BRUSSELS The European Union plays host this week to a delegation from communist North Korea in a flurry of diplomacy that contrasts sharply with Washington's branding of the reclusive state as part of a global "axis of evil." The delegation of senior economic officials, led by Foreign Trade Minister Ri Gwang Gun, was due to arrive in Brussels on Monday and also to visit Italy, Sweden and Britain over a two-week period. "I welcome this week's opportunity for dialogue between Brussels and Pyongyang," said European Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten in a statement. "The EU is already one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to the DPRK (North Korea), we have begun exploratory talks on human rights, and now I hope we can help North Korea build for a more prosperous future," he said. Patten was one of several European officials to criticise U.S. President George W Bush's speech last month describing North Korea, Iraq and Iran as an "axis of evil". Bush later visited South Korea and renewed an unconditional offer of talks with the North that would include Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programmes. Pyongyang rejected the offer. Asked how the EU felt about hosting talks with North Korea at such a sensitive time, Patten's spokesman, Gunnar Wiegand, told reporters: "We always factor in U.S. positions." "And President Bush endorsed the sunshine policy (of South Korea)," he added, referring to President Kim Dae-jung's efforts to engage the North in a process of dialogue and cooperation. The North Korean trip to Europe follows a landmark visit to Pyongyang last May by Patten and other senior EU officials. At that time, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said he wanted to learn more about the working of European economies. In Brussels, the North Koreans will meet representatives of the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank. On Monday the Commission, the EU's executive arm, approved a three-year plan to boost technical aid to North Korea aimed at helping the impoverished country to join the world economy. Some of the aid will be used to train government officials and industry managers in the principles of a market economy and international trade. The EU is also keen to help North Korea in the areas of sustainable development and environmental protection. The Commission has provided 243 million euros ($210 million) to North Korea in food and humanitarian assistance since 1995 and an additional 95 million euros to the KEDO project, which aims to stop nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula. The EU says North Korea could receive a further 15 million euros in aid if it shows progress on human rights, economic reform and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Last year, most EU countries agreed to open diplomatic relations with North Korea in the hope of encouraging greater openness and of boosting reformers in Pyongyang. Wiegand said the Commission had no plans to open its own office in the North Korean capital. He added that Pyongyang wanted to establish a mission in Brussels or another EU capital. "These talks have not yet been finalized," he said. (Reuters News) © Reuters 2001 ***************************************************************** 38 Hillary Has Nuke Meltdown NewsMax.com: Inside Cover Story With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff Monday, March 4, 2002 7:52 p.m. EST New York Sen. Hillary Clinton had an angry meltdown Monday afternoon after learning that New York City might have been facing nuclear terrorism last October and she wasn't told. "This is absolutely incomprehensible to me!" the former first lady barked to reporters. "And I expect answers! And I don't expect it ever to happen again!" Sen. Clinton blew her stack after a report Sunday revealed that last fall federal investigators kept New Yorkers in the dark despite suspicions that al-Qaeda terrorists had gotten their hands on a 10-kiloton nuke that had gone missing from weapons stockpiles in the ex-Soviet Union. The feds said secrecy was necessary in order to avoid widespread panic. In contrast to Mrs. Clinton's near-hysterical reaction, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was more low key. Saying he wished he and Gov. Pataki had been notified, Giuliani acknowledged: "Maybe it's possible there would have been nothing we could do except just hope and pray. It's possible that we could have put more emphasis on protecting some areas." It's not clear what Sen. Clinton would have done had she been notified of the nuke threat - beyond high-tailing it out of New York to leave her adopted state to face the radioactive music on its own. All Rights Reserved © NewsMax.com ***************************************************************** 39 China Raises Defense Budget Again (washingtonpost.com) Push to Increase Regional Influence Hampered by Army's Struggle to Modernize By John Pomfret Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, March 5, 2002; Page A10 BEIJING, March 4 -- China will announce another 17 percent rise in defense spending this week, completing a one-third increase in acknowledged military expenditures over the last two years, Chinese and other Asian sources said today. The increase reflects Beijing's ambition to build a powerful military to complement its robust economy and underpin its strategic position in Asia. But despite more than a decade of big jumps in the defense budget, Asian and Western military officers and Chinese sources said the 2.5-million-member People's Liberation Army, the largest standing fighting force in the world, is struggling with its modernization program, handicapped by low pay, poor morale and difficulty absorbing new weapons. Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng will announce an increase of around 17.6 percent in defense spending when he details China's budget on Wednesday during a meeting of the legislature, Chinese sources, Asian diplomats and Chinese-language media reports said. China increased defense spending by 17.7 percent last year; the jump this year will bring its publicly acknowledged defense budget to $20 billion. China's real defense spending, including funds expended but not reported, is considered the highest in Asia, considerably more than the $45 billion spent annually by Japan. By comparison, the Bush administration has proposed a $379 billion defense budget for the next fiscal year. Beijing explained its increase last year as a response to "drastic changes" in the military situation around the world, a reference to the U.S.-led war in Kosovo in 1999. This year, sources said, Beijing needs more money to bolster its nuclear forces following the Bush administration's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and continue work on a missile defense system. China has often voiced concern that, if the United States builds a missile shield, the Chinese nuclear force would lose its strategic deterrent without more and better warheads and delivery vehicles. China's main modernization efforts, however, focus on turning the People's Liberation Army from an army of farmers into a modern, streamlined fighting force and to abandon the People's War doctrine, which involves basic guerrilla tactics, in favor of more traditional doctrines used by world powers. The goal, according to Pentagon reports, is to become a "regional hegemon," project Chinese power into any corner of Asia, protect sea lanes for Chinese oil, replace the United States as the preeminent power in the region and use Chinese power to guarantee reunification with Taiwan. To do so, China has embarked on a shopping spree for weapons from Russia, Israel and South Africa and a worldwide hunt for technology to improve its nuclear weapons and rocketry programs. China was the world's biggest arms importer in 2000, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It will probably be so again in 2001 and 2002, analysts say. Starting in 1997, China shed 500,000 troops from the army, transferring them to the People's Armed Police, which deals with internal security. It has also launched an ambitious program to enhance training, education and living standards for the men and women currently in uniform. Chinese analysts consider morale a major problem for the army. One Western military attache who has had links with the Chinese military since the 1980s described the army as facing a "spiritual crisis." "It has lost its revolutionary elan," he said. "It is no longer a tough, ragtag force of creative and motivated guerrilla fighters. It has become rigid, bureaucratized and slow." Morale problems are reflected regularly in the People's Liberation Army Daily, the army's newspaper, where complaints about bad pay, lack of vacation time and poor training are routine. Last week, the military, responding to years of complaints, promised to increase its rations budget by 20 percent, the newspaper reported. Once a route out of the countryside for smart young men, the army no longer can attract the talent it needs, Chinese sources said, because other opportunities have arisen with economic reforms. Among the upper levels of society, an army career is almost a joke. Practically no students from Beijing or Qinghua universities, China's most prestigious, consider a career in the military, which pays a colonel less than $350 a month. Reform-minded senior Chinese military officers regularly compare the army to a state-owned enterprise burdened by aging, untrainable workers. "What can you do with someone who is 45 and has grown up in the old PLA?" said one Chinese major general. "There are thousands of people like this. Many are officers, and because we can't do anything with them, our younger officers are angry and leaving the service." A good percentage of training, up to 30 percent in some cases, is taken up with political indoctrination, Chinese sources said. "Political reform is not just necessary for the economy to grow faster," said one former officer who recently left the army because it lacked opportunities. "It's a prerequisite for military modernization, too." As a result, Chinese soldiering suffers. Western military officers in Beijing said one reason China is so reticent about participating in U.N. peacekeeping is that its units are incapable of operating independently. In peacekeeping, the basic unit is a platoon, about 10 to 20 troops. "But they cannot function as a platoon," said a Western officer. "Once they are detached from the mother ship, they freeze up. In peacekeeping, if you don't have smart people commanding your small units, the situation can turn catastrophic very fast." More broadly, the PLA's reputation still has not recovered from the killings around Tiananmen Square during the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. The PLA's efforts to save people during floods in the summer of 1999 helped for a while. But, simultaneously, many stories arose of local military leaders leading smuggling rings. Jokes about corruption in the military and its obsession with politics are now routine. When Japanese Self-Defense Forces sank an intruding vessel, believed by Tokyo to be a North Korean spy boat, inside China's 200-mile exclusive economic zone in December, China's navy did not dispatch a ship to monitor the incident. "They must have been busy," the punch line went, "studying the 'Three Represents' [the latest political philosophy of President Jiang Zemin] or smuggling." China's military acquisitions have been substantial. Recent Russian weapon and equipment sales have included 72 Su-27 fighter-ground attack aircraft; 100 S-300 surface-to-air missiles; 10 Il-76 transport aircraft; four Kilo-class submarines and two Sovremenny-class destroyers. China has also signed a contract to assemble at least 200 more Su-27s at the Shenyang Aircraft Corp. in northeastern China. But an Asian military officer estimated that 60 percent of the Su-27s cannot fly, either because they are broken or because the pilots lack the skill to fly them. "Their men are 20 years behind ours in terms of their skill at handling and repairing these sophisticated machines," he said. "This gap in personnel is not easily closed." China's purchases of the Sovremenny-class destroyers were touted as another sign of Beijing's new ability to project force and challenge U.S. influence in Asia. But attempts to purchase an early warning radar system failed in July 2000 when the United States blocked Israel from selling China an Il-76 aircraft equipped with AWACS-style radar, a system Israel calls the Phalcon. "Without the Phalcon," said a Western attache, "the Sovremenny is a sitting duck." © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 40 Bloomberg: Feds Should Have Reported Nuke Fears Monday March 4 7:43 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other elected representatives said Monday that New York officials should have been told about reported fears of a nuclear attack on the city last October published by Time magazine. Time magazine said on Sunday that a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, senior federal officials feared a nuclear weapon obtained from the Russian arsenal was being smuggled into New York. The White House's Counterterrorism Security Group, part of the National Security Council, was alerted to the danger through a report by an agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, according to the magazine, but New York officials and senior FBI officials were not informed in an effort to avoid panic. ``I do believe the New York City government should have been told,'' Bloomberg said. The threat was later determined to be false, but the magazine said counterterrorist investigators went on their highest state of alert -- without coordinating plans with New York officials, including then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. ``I should have been notified, the governor should have been notified and the state police should have been notified, at a minimum,'' Giuliani told reporters Monday. Said New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer: ``There's always been a little bit of a wall between the federal government and the local about exchanging intelligence. I think 9-11 has shown us that can't happen.'' New York's other Democratic senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said she was ``outraged'' over the lack of communication. ``I was not informed and I'm outraged,'' Clinton said. ``If it is true that there were credible threats of some kind of a nuclear attack on this city and the mayor, the police, the FBI, the governor, the officials responsible for protecting us were not told, that is a dereliction of duty.'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was not notified and was ``not unduly distressed that I was not.'' ``I don't think I could have done much with the information,'' Annan added. ``What was important is that the authorities who have the responsibility for security did what had to be done.'' Copyright © 2002 ***************************************************************** 41 Defusing nuclear terror | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists By Jeffrey T. Richelson On October 16, 1994, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) received word that one of its informants was being held hostage by a domestic terrorist group, the Patriots for National Unity, in a New Orleans safe house. The next morning, after overhearing plans to kill the hostage, a raid by the FBI’s hostage rescue team freed the informant. During a debriefing, the rescued informant revealed that members of the terrorist group were looking to obtain nuclear material and assemble several nuclear devices. The bureau also determined that one of the group’s members may have leased a boat. In response to a possible nuclear threat, the FBI alerted a number of other federal agencies, including the Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST)—a special unit under the control of the Energy Department’s Nevada Operations Office. Fortunately, this entire scenario is fictional, just like the many incidents of nuclear terror portrayed in films and novels over the last 40 years: from Spectre’s threat in the 1961 James Bond thriller Thunderball to employ stolen nuclear bombs against U.S. or British cities; to the Libyan-backed threat of atomic devastation in Larry Collins’s The Fifth Horseman (1980); to the destruction caused by a terrorist nuclear device in Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears (1991); to the attempt by an aggrieved Serbian to incinerate the United Nations in the 1997 film The Peacemaker starring George Clooney and Nicole Kidman. In the scenario described above, NEST was participating, along with the FBI, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and several other organizations, in a “full-field exercise” designated “Mirage Gold.” The purpose of the exercise was to test how successfully the agencies would respond to a nuclear terrorist threat—and if they could work together effectively. Origins The possible need to track down lost, stolen, smuggled, or “improvised” nuclear devices has concerned national security agencies for at least as long as novelists have been spinning fictional scenarios. A 1963 national intelligence estimate, The Clandestine Introduction of Weapons of Mass Destruction into the U.S., addressed the question of whether the Soviet Union was likely to attempt to smuggle biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons into the United States. The intelligence community concluded that “the Soviets almost certainly would not contemplate the use of clandestinely delivered nuclear weapons except as a supplement to other weapons in the context of general war,” and that “the Soviets probably recognize that it would be impracticable for them to mount a clandestine nuclear attack on a sufficient number of [U.S. delivery vehicles] to reduce substantially the weight of a U.S. strike.” There was also, in the 1960s, concern about the possible consequences of a crash of nuclear-armed aircraft. According to Duane C. Sewell, commonly referred to as the “father of NEST,” this led to the creation of a team based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that could send qualified people to pick up the remains of the aircraft, detect the presence of a nuclear device, determine the area at risk, remove the bomb, and minimize the physical and political damage. When a B-52 carrying four thermonuclear bombs crashed near Thule, Greenland, in 1968, the value of such a capability was demonstrated. “Project Crested Ice” involved transporting two technicians and an instrument for detecting plutonium, suitably winterized to operate at temperatures of minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, to the accident scene. Within 24 hours of arrival, they were able to locate the area contaminated with plutonium. Then, in the summer of 1972, the terrorist group Black September seized, and ultimately murdered, nine members of the Israeli Olympic team. Among those who became seriously concerned over the prospect of nuclear terrorism was James Schlesinger, then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He held a series of meetings exploring whether terrorists could steal plutonium and make a bomb with it, whether they could steal a bomb, and whether the United States would be able to locate it. In 1974, while those issues were being considered and investigated, the FBI received a note demanding that $200,000 be left at a particular location in Boston or a nuclear device would be detonated somewhere in the city. This note was not part of an exercise, but the real thing (New York Times Magazine, December 14, 1980). William Chambers, a Los Alamos nuclear physicist who was studying the detection issue, was instructed by the AEC and FBI to assemble the best team he could and head for Boston to search the city. The operation reflected its ad hoc origins. The group rented a fleet of mail vans to carry concealed equipment that could detect the emissions of a plutonium or uranium weapon. But the team found that they did not have the necessary drills to install the detectors in the vans. NEST field director Jerry Doyle recalled, “If they were counting on us to save the good folk of Boston . . . well, it was bye-bye Boston.” Fortunately, it was all a hoax—FBI agents waited, but no one showed up to claim the bag of phony bills they left at the designated location. The threat to Boston resulted in a secret November 18, 1974 memo from Gen. Ernest Graves, the AEC’s assistant general manager for military applications, to Mahlon E. Gates, manager of the commission’s Nevada Operations Office. Titled “Responsibility for Search and Detection Operations,” it authorized Gates to assume responsibility for the planning and execution of AEC operations to search for and identify “lost or stolen nuclear weapons and special nuclear materials, nuclear bomb threats, and radiation dispersal threats.” Before the end of 1975, the NEST team was established to prepare for and manage such activities. Capabilities If necessary, NEST can deploy approximately 600 individuals to the scene of a terrorist threat, although actual deployments have rarely involved more than 45 people. According to a Nevada Operations Office briefing, deployed personnel come from a pool of about 750 individuals, most of whom work for Energy or its private contractors in other primary capacities. In addition to NEST members based at the team’s Las Vegas headquarters, personnel are pulled from three Energy Department labs (Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia), and from three contractors (Reynolds Electrical & Engineering, Raytheon Services of Nevada, and EG&G). NEST personnel also have a wide variety of specialties. NEST briefing slides list 17 different categories of personnel, including four types of physicists (nuclear, infrared, atmospheric, and health), engineers, chemists, and mathematicians, as well as specialists in communications, logistics, management, and public information. As a result, the organization chart for a full NEST field deployment contains a multitude of divisions and subdivisions—what one might expect at a large government agency. If a nuclear terrorist threat is received, the NEST team first assesses the threat’s technical and psychological validity. To determine if the technical details are accurate and indicate some knowledge of building nuclear devices (or were simply lifted from a Tom Clancy novel), NEST maintains a comprehensive computer database of nuclear weapon design information—from reports in scientific journals to passages from spy novels. Meanwhile, psychologists and psychiatrists examine the letter writer’s choice of words and sentence structure to try to assess the writer’s state of mind and the region from which he or she originates. If NEST were to move into the field, it would not travel lightly. Along with the ability to deploy about 600 people, it also has about 150 tons of equipment at its disposal. NEST’s air force consists of four helicopters equipped with radiological search systems, and three airplanes (a King Air B-200, a Citation-II, and a Convair 580T) modified for remote sensing missions. It can deploy vans with equipment capable of detecting the emissions from nuclear material. And by applying appropriate artwork to the sides of vehicles, its graphics department can help undercover vans blend into the flood of commercial vans on the road. When asked if the artwork would be the same as a legitimate company’s or be imaginary—possibly allowing a terrorist armed with the Yellow Pages to determine that the van was a phony—a NEST spokesperson remarked that the search team seeks to insure that it does not “raise the suspicions of the terrorists.” NEST also has an arsenal of hand-held nuclear detectors that can be concealed in any one of many attaché cases, briefcases, lunch packs, and suitcases. The detectors can silently let a NEST member know that a radiation source has been detected by transmitting a signal to the member’s concealed earphone. In addition to equipment for detecting nuclear material, NEST also has diagnostic, disablement, and damage-limitation devices. Its diagnostic capability includes portable X-ray machines to peer under a bomb’s outer shell as well as a hand-held device that looks like a Dustbuster and can pick up emissions to better estimate a threat. To disable a bomb, NEST might detonate explosives around it, or it could use a 30-millimeter cannon to blast the bomb into small pieces. The team can construct a nylon tent, 35 feet high and 50 feet in diameter, into which 30,000 cubic feet of thick foam can be pumped, which can mitigate the spread of radiation from a radiation dispersal device. According to a NEST team member, however, the foam is primarily intended to limit the damage from a non-nuclear detonation used to disable a nuclear weapon. Deployments Since NEST’s creation, about 100 threats involving alleged nuclear devices or radioactivity have come to its attention. At least a dozen, and possibly more than twice that number, have resulted in deployment of NEST personnel. NEST, in general, will not confirm or deny when or whether it has deployed to a particular city or region. However, it has been reported that between 1975 and 1981 NEST personnel were sent to investigate threats in Boston, Los Angeles, Spokane, Pittsburgh, New York, Sacramento, Tennessee, and Reno (Time, January 8, 1996; Washington Post, June 21, 1983). The threat to New York came in July 1975 when terrorists claimed, “We have successfully designed and built an atomic bomb. It is somewhere on Manhattan Island. We refer you to the accompanying drawing in one-eighth scale. We have enough plutonium and explosives for the bomb to function. The device will be used at 6:00 p.m. July 10 unless our demands are met.” As reported in the New York Times Magazine, the key demand involved $30 million in small bills. NEST was impressed by the drawing. According to one account, it was sophisticated, precise, and “made by someone with more than a passing acquaintance with nuclear physics.” But that did not lead the United States to part with real money. A dummy ransom package was left at the drop site in Northampton, Massachusetts, and FBI agents waited for someone to claim it. Nobody showed up and there was no further communication from the extortionists. That same year, Fred L. Hartley, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Union Oil Company of California, received a note claiming that there was a nuclear device on one of the company’s properties. The extortionist wanted $1 million; otherwise, the bomb would be detonated. Such a threat, away from the natural radiation of an urban area—where radiation can be emitted by freshly paved streets or Vermont granite in an office building—made it easier to use NEST vans in the search for a nuclear device. “The guys were out there in their trucks listening to their earpieces,” former NEST official Jerry Doyle told Larry Collins, the author of the first major article on the search team. “Suddenly one got an intensive reading, looked up and there, about 50 yards away, was a big bulky, unidentified wooden crate resting by a refinery fence. There was a moment of real panic,” Doyle recalled. Fortunately, it was just a box left by some repairmen, and the signal came from natural radioactivity in the soil. The FBI managed to capture a suspect, who was tried and convicted, but was released after six months in prison. NEST’s deployment to Washington, D.C. during the bicentennial summer of 1976 may be the type of precautionary deployment that becomes more common after the September 11 attacks. Vans circled the streets and drove around federal buildings near the Mall, checking radiation levels. The FBI worried that a terrorist group might be tempted by the bicentennial’s significance to threaten to explode or release nuclear material, but the summer passed without a threat. Not all of NEST’s deployments have involved nuclear terrorism. For three months in 1978, about 120 NEST personnel helped the Canadian government locate the remains of the Soviet Cosmos 954 ocean surveillance satellite that crashed into northern Canada. The following year, NEST equipment was used to monitor radiation in the vicinity of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. Mirage Gold Returning to the Mirage Gold exercise, an intensive evaluation of NEST and the nature of the exercise revealed several problems. By early morning on October 18, 1994, the first NEST search and support personnel had arrived in Louisiana and, along with FEMA and Defense Department personnel, established command posts in an unused industrial complex across the Intercoastal Waterway from the New Orleans Naval Air Station. Communications equipment—including secure voice, data, and video display systems for the exercise—had been installed in September. That afternoon, “a maritime target was located (anchored at Lake Michoud) and put under surveillance,” according to the Nevada Operations Office after-action report. “Additional information,” according to the report, directed NEST personnel to a small flying service at an airstrip near Magazine Road in Belle Chase (the Naval Air Station). During a drive-by, the team’s radiation detectors registered a “hit” which led them to a mock nuclear device hidden in an airport shed. Following orders from the FBI, NEST waited until noon the next day when the three Patriots for National Unity members drove away from the airport. While NEST kept the terrorists under surveillance, the FBI proceeded to secure the airport. When the shed was searched, an improvised nuclear device was found, along with information indicating that it was armed and set to explode on Thursday at noon. NEST personnel constructed a 35-foot cone around the shed and pumped in thick foam to limit blast effects and absorb radioactive particles. One part of the Nevada Operations Office after-action report asserts that the plan to disable the device “was successfully carried out before the deadline without the release of any radioactivity,” although other parts are consistent with an account given by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn in their book One Point Safe (1997). According to the Cockburns, someone had failed to obtain permission to detonate explosive charges to disable the simulated bomb. As a result, the search team was left with a mound of foam that made it impossible to determine if the bomb had been properly disabled, and forensic experts were unable to search the crime scene. But according to a scathing memo sent to the manager of the Nevada Operations Office by Adm. Charles J. Beers, then the Energy Department’s deputy assistant secretary for military applications and stockpile support, problems with Mirage Gold went far beyond such mistakes and involved the very integrity of the exercise. The Beers memo “requested” a general assessment of NEST that would address a number of concerns regarding the exercise. These included the failure to employ a realistic estimate of the time the operation would require, the negative impact of the large NEST structure on rapid decision-making, the leaking to NEST personnel of key information, including the location of the device, and the deployment of communications systems before the FBI had requested assistance from NEST. The consequences of such actions were “optimistic and unrealistic results.” The Beers memo was also less than complimentary to the leadership of NEST. He wrote, “It is quite possible that we have allowed a management regime to be established that does not serve the NEST program as well as it should. . . . Perceptions of poor integration of assets, improper flow of information to players during exercises, and implications that an unrealistic time line has been advertised are not issues that can be solved by budget reallocations, but reflect on leadership and management of the program.” NEST management reacted swiftly, commissioning an outside review group, headed by Duane Sewell, to examine the entire program. The group conducted more than 120 hours of interviews and produced an 80-page report, which noted that a deteriorating relationship with Energy had lowered both the morale and effectiveness of NEST. In addition, the review group found a number of well-known but unspecified “technical constraints which limit the ability of NEST to respond effectively to the full range of nuclear devices which might be developed by a terrorist organization.” Energy Department managers had not yet made a decision, according to the Sewell panel, as to whether they would continue to accept those limitations or seek the funding necessary for the research required to eliminate or reduce them. A 1996 assessment of NEST, conducted by minority counsel to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, was relatively optimistic. NEST “is clearly a national asset which could not be duplicated by other organizations because of the unique scientific capabilities and field operational experience of the nuclear weapons laboratories that directly support it with volunteers and R&D.” The assessment noted that since the Sewell report, NEST had “successfully conducted its first truly no-notice full-field exercises overseas.” In addition, “in exercises since Mirage Gold, the NEST team had also deployed all of its resources within established time lines.” The search team had conducted 16 major command post and full-field exercises. But the report also cited continuing technical constraints, again unspecified, that senior management at the Energy Department needed to address. Outlook The catalyst for NEST’s creation in the mid-1970s was the attempt to enlist nuclear terror in the service of extortion. And some NEST exercises still employ a nuclear extortion scenario, according to a current team member. But the premise for Mirage Gold was different, and consistent with today’s greatest fear—that terrorists may not be interested in money or changing government policy. They may simply want to detonate a nuclear weapon. It is also a premise that puts a much greater premium on intelligence. Nuclear extortionists have to threaten a particular city or area and give the threatened party time to react, giving NEST time to deploy and attempt to locate any bomb that might be in place. But terrorists could strike anywhere, and would give no warning. A NEST spokesperson acknowledged that without advance intelligence, the team would have nowhere to go. Exceptions may include deployments at high-profile events, such as the Salt Lake City Olympics, which would be obvious potential targets for terrorists. But to prevent detonation of a terrorist nuclear device in other circumstances would require warning from the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, or an allied intelligence service. Of course, even advance warning is no guarantee of success, given the difficulty of locating a hidden nuclear device and the limited time that may be available. A comment in the Nevada Operations Office’s after-action report on Mirage Gold is chilling, not as a criticism of NEST members, with their diverse talents and dedication, but as an acknowledgment of a harsh reality. The report notes that it would be “a drastic mistake to assume that NEST technology and procedures will always succeed, resulting in zero nuclear yield.” Jeffrey T. Richelson is a senior fellow with the National Security Archive, Washington, D.C., and the author of The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology (2001). ©2002 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ***************************************************************** 42 Vermont towns prepare to vote on Earth Charter - 3/5/2002 - ENN.com Tuesday, March 05, 2002 By Kevin Kelley, Reuters MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Twenty years after sparsely populated Vermont helped boost national interest in nuclear disarmament, environmentalists are hoping the state's voters can galvanize the movement for sustainable economic development by endorsing an Earth Charter next week. Supporters of the charter, which promotes economic development strategies that are self-perpetuating and environmentally friendly, are trying to build momentum for adoption of the document at a United Nations summit on the issue to be held this summer in South Africa. The initiative, and Vermont's potentially out-sized role in setting national priorities, hearkens back to March 1982. That year nuclear disarmament activists used the state's tradition of direct democracy to demonstrate grassroots support for a freeze by the United States and Soviet Union on the production, testing, and deployment of nuclear weapons. The freeze proposal was endorsed in 161 of the 185 towns in which it appeared on the ballot, helping to swell participation in one of the largest nuclear weapons protests ever held. An estimated 250,000 people marched to U.N. headquarters in New York in June 1982 in support of the freeze. "The nuclear freeze campaign showed that when town meetings in Vermont unite to say something, the world will listen," said Gwendolyn Hallsmith, the charter's chief promoter in Vermont. "We're one of the few places on Earth where people actually convene on a local level to decide matters of importance." LIVELY INTERNATIONAL DEBATE The Earth Charter vote, which will take place on March 5 at town meetings in more than three dozen Vermont communities, comes amid a lively international debate over the future of economic development aid. U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has publicly questioned the effectiveness of development aid programs, while his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, has called for a huge increase in aid money and cancellation of debt payments by the world's poorest countries. Against that background, the Earth Charter sets forth a series of values and aspirations on the theme of "respect and care for the community of life" and calls for "a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace.'' The document has its origins in a 1987 U.N. commission proposal for a world charter to guide economic development along environmentally sensitive lines. Draft versions were then circulated internationally among nongovernmental organizations, professional societies, and specialists in various fields. The charter's final form was presented at The Hague two years ago. Voters in 40 of Vermont's 251 towns will be asked to endorse a call for government officials at all levels to use the Earth Charter "to guide decision making on issues of local, state, national, and international importance." Hallsmith expects the Earth Charter referendum to win approval in most towns, but the document's occasionally fuzzy formulations have not insulated it from opposition. James Ehlers, editor of Outdoors magazine, has been urging fellow Vermont hunting enthusiasts to give the charter a critical reading. Ehlers objects in particular to a provision saying that wild animals should be protected from "methods of hunting, trapping, and fishing that cause extreme, prolonged, or avoidable suffering." "Even though the language is very vague, that could be interpreted as leading to a ban on all hunting," Ehlers said. "When I see organizations known to have antihunting and antifishing agendas endorsing this charter, I get skeptical." Ehlers also finds fault with references in the charter to "ecological management of resources," suggesting they "might be masking a no-growth agenda." Outdoors magazine is published in Burlington, Vermont's largest city, which has already endorsed the Earth Charter via a city council vote. Brattleboro, Middlebury, and Williston are some of the more populous towns that will be voting on the charter in the state of approximately 610,000 residents. Copyright 2002, Reuters ***************************************************************** 43 Activists say nuclear shift poses threat Augusta Georgia: 03/05/02 030502 technology 2 @ugusta BOISE, Idaho - Environmental groups contend the U.S. Department of Energy's attempt to reclassify residual nuclear waste could threaten aquifers in three states. --> Activists say nuclear shift poses threat Associated Press [http://wire.ap.org/] BOISE, Idaho - Environmental groups contend the U.S. Department of Energy's attempt to reclassify residual nuclear waste could threaten aquifers in three states. A lawsuit in U.S. District Court asks that the Energy Department not be allowed to reclassify former waste storage tanks buried in the ground at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Savannah River Site near Aiken. The tanks held millions of gallons of liquid acid that was used to reprocess spent fuel rods until the late 1990s. The rods were bathed in the liquid, which extracted the uranium but left behind a highly radioactive stew of other metals along with the acid. The waste fluid was stored in buried tanks. Although much of it has been pumped out and processed into a more inert, solid form, a residual sludge remains in the tanks, coating the bottoms and sides. About 800,000 gallons of sludge remain in 10 tanks at the Idaho site. The Energy Department plans to remove all but about 1,000 gallons in each tank, said department spokesman Brad Bugger. The Energy Department has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to reclassify the remaining sludge and tanks at a level that would allow them to be filled, capped with cement and abandoned in place. "We think that is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and that they are using regulatory rule-making as a sleight-of-hand way to define away the problem," said Gary Richardson, the director of the Snake River Alliance. The Snake River Alliance is joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Yakima Nation in the legal action. The lawsuit isn't new; the groups renewed the claim last week after review by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which sent it to the lower court in Boise. The Energy Department must respond by April 30. Oral arguments are set for July 22 in Boise before U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill. Mr. Bugger said the federal government still does not know how it will deal with residual waste that is pumped out of the tanks. "It is our intention to remove it. The question then is what to do with it once it is out of the tanks," Mr. Bugger said. One option is to develop technology that would extract all but the highest-level waste and ship the remaining material to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. Mr. Bugger also said the department has not decided whether to abandon the remaining waste and tanks. Another option might be to dig the tanks out of the ground. "That would be extremely expensive and could expose workers to radiation fields," Mr. Bugger said. A study on that option is expected to be released sometime this summer. Idaho has its own agreement with the federal government, which stipulates that the waste is to be removed from the state by 2012 or any further waste shipments to the state will be halted. Craig Halverson, the program manager for the site's oversight office, said Idaho's position includes any residual sludge. Mr. Bugger said whatever treatment plan it authorizes must also be approved by the state. 1996 - 2002 The Augusta Chronicle. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 NEW PLANT AT PIKETON STILL ISN'T A CERTAINTY The Columbus Dispatch Online: Archival Article U.S. plan Sunday, March 3, 2002 NEWS 06B By Malia Rulon Associated Press Two former nuclear-processing plants in Ohio and Kentucky are being pit against each other as the U.S. Department of Energy decides where to build a facility to process spent uranium. Instead of choosing a contractor this week to build two facilities -- at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon and the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah, Ky. -- the department has asked bidders how much it will cost to build one plant at each site. In a letter sent to the bidders late Thursday, Don R. Sloan, chairman of the department's Source Evaluation Board, said the department would use this information "in making a decision on the number and location of plants.'' That has riled lawmakers from both states who have repeatedly reminded the department that a 1998 law specifies the construction of two plants, not one. "It is a despicable decision for them to even ask for a one-plant plan. That shows that they are at least contemplating violating the law,'' said Rep. Ted Strickland, an Ohio Democrat whose district includes the Piketon plant. Strickland and Ohio Sens. Mike DeWine and George Voinovich, both Republicans, sent a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham earlier this year, saying that "in order for this project to satisfy the intent of Congress, the winning bidder must commence construction of the two facilities.'' The law specifies that the two facilities begin by Jan. 31, 2004. Walter Perry, a spokesman from the Department of Energy office in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said the department is asking for the new bids because it's considering "alternatives.'' A decision on where and how many plants will be built will be made by January 2003, Perry said. He referred questions about why the department is asking for one- plant plans to the department's Washington office. Messages seeking comment were not returned. The conversion facilities are expected to bring several hundred long-term jobs along with as many as 800 construction jobs to each site. The jobs are needed in Piketon, where hundreds of workers were let go last year when USEC stopped uranium-enrichment operations and scaled back to just one enrichment facility in Paducah. During the Cold War, the plants produced weapons-grade enriched uranium for national defense projects. The conversion facilities would convert this stockpile of depleted uranium, a dangerous and toxic byproduct of the gaseous-diffusion process, to a more stable form for storage, use or disposal. The Energy Department currently manages about 700,000 tons of depleted uranium, which is stored in 57,700 aged and radiation-emitting steel cylinders. "There is a reason why that legislation called for two plants,'' Strickland said. "To have to repackage and transport this material could be exceedingly dangerous.'' All content herein is © 2002 The Columbus Dispatch ***************************************************************** 45 ORNL nuclear fusion experiment stirs flap Work described in scientific journal By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel senior writer OAK RIDGE - An Oak Ridge National Laboratory research experiment that may have achieved nuclear fusion with collapsing bubbles is attracting international attention - and controversy. A scientific paper describing the physics research is expected to be the cover story in the next issue of Science, the sacrosanct journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The publication was to be released Thursday, but an embargo was lifted Monday after bootleg reports of the work began to circulate, including a story in the London Sunday Times. Fueling interest is the fact that some results of the research have been contradicted by a follow-up Oak Ridge experiment, leading some observers to suggest this could be a budding scandal similar to the "cold fusion" debacle of 1989. The comparison is making ORNL administrators cringe. "This is not cold fusion. That's not what this is all about," Lee Riedinger, the laboratory's deputy director for science and technology, said Monday. "That drives me crazy. It makes me sick." First off, Riedinger said, nobody at ORNL is claiming to have uncovered the secret to unlimited energy supplies - as was suggested in the British account. Even if the research holds up under scrutiny, it doesn't appear feasible to "scale-up" the fusion technique the million or billion times necessary for actual power production, he said. Secondly, the Oak Ridge work - unlike claims of a cold-fusion process by a Utah research team - has been peer-reviewed, Riedinger said. Plus, the research is founded on known physics principles and involves fusion of nuclei at high temperatures, nothing like the reports of cold fusion chemistry, he said. The research is based on "sono-luminescence," a phenomenon discovered in the 1930s. It involves the use of sound waves to form bubbles in a liquid. The bubbles collapse after rapidly achieving a maximum radius. During collapse, the gas inside a bubble heats up with sufficient energy to break chemical bonds and give off flashes of light. A team of researchers, headed by Rusi Taleyarkhan, a senior scientist in ORNL's Engineering Science and Technology Division, reportedly developed ways to make the tiny bubbles much larger using acetone for the liquid and injecting strong pulses of neutrons. The sound-induced bubbles were about 1,000 times bigger than previously achieved, forming clouds of bubbles that expanded and collapsed and interacted. The question is whether the collapsing bubbles generated the high temperatures necessary for the fusing of deuterium nuclei. Scientists refer to the fusing of two deuterium atoms as "d-d fusion." Scientists were looking for two important bits of evidence: the presence of radioactive tritium created by the fusion process and the release of neutrons at a signature energy level (2.5 million electron volts). This is where the controversy arose. Taleyarkhan and colleagues - Richard Lahey Jr. of Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute and Robert Nigmutulin of Russia - said they measured both tritium and neutrons at the appropriate point in the experiment, which took place early last year. They initially submitted a technical paper for publication last spring, but it was later sent back and revised, based on additional documentation. Meanwhile, other ORNL physicists - Dan Shapira and Michael Saltmarsh - repeated the experiment and were unable to verify the neutron emissions even though Shapira and Saltmarsh reportedly used superior detection equipment. Riedinger said both sides believe they are right, but he said the disagreement should be considered scientifically healthy and productive. Any new research must stand the test of time and be repeated time and again before it's accepted, he said. Because of the differences, Riedinger said he suggested that the research paper submitted to Science by Taleyarkhan and others be modified to include references to the contradictory work done by Shapira and Saltmarsh. The differences in the neutron measurements will have to be resolved by future experiments, the ORNL official said. He disagreed with those who suggested the Oak Ridge study should have been withheld until it could be further validated or disputed, saying the scientific community can be the judge. "The goal here is to put all the data out into the real world," Riedinger said. "It's interesting physics." Perhaps recalling the embarrassment of the cold-fusion reports that never panned out, the ORNL hierarchy was cautious in fielding questions about the work. Officials refused to speculate on future applications, saying there are too many "ifs" at the moment. "If the effect is confirmed, there are obvious research opportunities," the lab said in a prepared statement. "We have no way of knowing whether any practical applications, such as fusion energy, might be possible. The relevant cross sections for this particular process indicate that scale-up is unlikely. If the claim of nuclear fusion is indeed correct, these experiments would still have produced only one-tenth of a millionth of a watt of power - far too small to measure." That didn't stop the hype and conjecture. The London Times, in its report, said, "If confirmed, the discovery could rank among the most important since the dawn of the nuclear age." Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. Copyright 2002 The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 46 Locke meets with DOE's Abraham This story was published Wed, Feb 27, 2002 By Les Blumenthal Herald Washington, D.C., bureau WASHINGTON -- Gov. Gary Locke told Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on Tuesday that the state expects the Bush administration to abide by the agreement covering cleanup at Hanford and provide the necessary funding. "We will do everything necessary to protect Washington state's interests," Locke said after the face-to-face meeting. "We sued the Clinton administration. We will sue the Bush administration. It's not partisan. We've seen too many delays." Locke said he agreed with the administration's effort to speed up the cleanup at Hanford and other Department of Energy nuclear sites by providing incentives to contractors. But the governor said that should not come at the expense of providing full funding for the ongoing effort. The president's budget, submitted to Congress earlier this month, called for a $262 million cut in Hanford's base cleanup funding. That's at a time when, by some estimates, Hanford actually needs a $200 million increase to comply with deadlines in the Tri-Party Agreement, the pact among the state of Washington, the DOE and the federal Environmental Protection Agency that governs Hanford cleanup. But the cut came with a twist amid indications the administration wants to pressure Washington and other states to amend their agreements such as the Tri-Party Agreement. Overall, the administration proposed spending $6.7 billion nationally on cleanup. But $800 million of that would be set aside to award additional funding to sites that adopted innovative ways to reduce the cost and timetable for their cleanups. Locke said the state is not about to be pressured into changing the Hanford cleanup agreement. The governor said funding for an incentive program should be on top of what the department needs to spend to keep the Hanford cleanup and similar efforts at other sites on course. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 47 Hanford cleanup budget figures remain fuzzy This story was published Sat, Mar 2, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer Some cleanup proposals but no dollar figures have begun to materialize out of Hanford's foggy budget picture. Soon, probably this month, the Department of Energy will be legally obligated to run some revamped fiscal 2003 Hanford cleanup budget figures by Washington's Department of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency. Will the state and EPA like those plans and figures? Their approval is needed for DOE to tackle its plan to accelerate cleanup at Hanford. Will DOE's headquarters in Washington, D.C., like those plans and figures? Its approval is needed to keep Hanford from slipping behind on its current cleanup obligations. The Tri-Party Agreement, the legal pact governing Hanford's cleanup, requires DOE to brief the state and EPA on its budget request within 30 days of it going to Congress. Those 30 days end Monday. But the state and EPA have granted DOE one or two weeks of extra time to sort out 2003's extra-complicated budget picture. So, the state's and EPA's feedback is expected in the near future. But no one, even in Washington, D.C., knows when DOE's headquarters will say what it likes, what criteria it will use and where it will send extra cleanup money. Even though no dollar figures have been nailed down, DOE's two Hanford field offices think they are in good shape to sell their plans and numbers to Hanford's regulators and DOE's headquarters. "We think we measure up well," said Bob Rosselli, DOE's deputy manager for site support functions. Best-case scenario is Hanford gets lots of extra money. The site's highly radioactive cesium and strontium capsules will be disposed of early. Glassification of tank wastes and closure of the tanks will speed up. Hanford's Columbia River shore will be cleaned up faster. Worst-case scenario is Hanford's cleanup budget gets whacked big-time, and an irate state of Washington sues DOE for breaking legal promises. Right now, officials from the state, EPA and DOE all use the same phrase in guessing how Hanford's 2003 budget will unfold, "cautiously optimistic." But state and EPA officials also say they are willing to get combative if Hanford's cleanup appears to be underfunded. DOE is using a new budget approach, which makes Hanford's constituencies skittish. For fiscal 2002 Congress has appropriated $6.7 billion to DOE for nationwide nuclear cleanup. Of that, $1.722 billion goes to Hanford. For fiscal 2003, which begins Oct. 1, DOE is asking Congress to appropriate $6.7 billion again. The wrinkle is that $5.9 billion will be distributed among DOE's cleanup sites in the traditional manner. But $800 million will be held in an incentive fund that will be divided among DOE sites that produce new plans to accelerate cleanup at their locations. DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., will decide which sites will get parts of that $800 million. And DOE says it will ask Congress for an extra $300 million if $800 million is not enough to pay for all the accelerated cleanup plans. So right now DOE is guaranteeing Hanford will get $1.46 billion in 2003 -- $262 million less than the site's 2002 appropriation. DOE still has not calculated how much Hanford will need in 2003 to meet all its legal cleanup obligations. For several years until 2001, DOE always had a legal compliance dollar estimate available on the day the agency sent its Hanford budget request to Congress. For 2003 unofficial estimates from the sidelines range from $1.765 billion to more than $1.9 billion. So DOE's current guaranteed budget request ranges from $305 million to more than $400 million short of what is legally required. Rosselli contended people should focus more on potential long-range acceleration of Hanford's cleanup rather than on blow-by-blow dollar crunching. He contended the budget fuzziness for 2003 is not drastically different from the haziness of previous Hanford budgets going through Congress. That's because Congress never nails down a final DOE cleanup budget appropriation the autumn of each year. Tri-City DOE officials believe Hanford's acceleration proposals to get extra cleanup money match what DOE headquarters has in mind. They noted DOE wants to shift to performance-based contracts. Hanford already has done that. DOE wants to crank up reducing environmental risks, rather than sticking with a maintain-in-place strategy. Hanford is already actively cleaning up -- not studying while in a holding pattern -- at the K Basins, the Plutonium Finishing Plant, the tank farms and along the river shore. Hanford's bottom line is DOE's Richland office and Office of River Protection have a guaranteed $1.46 billion for 2003. They need about $300 million to $400 million out of the $800 million to $1.1 billion incentive fund set aside for 2003. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 48 Tritium plume appears benign This story was published Sat, Mar 2, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer A super-high concentration of radioactive tritium in southern Hanford appears nonthreatening, the Department of Energy has concluded. Hanford officials have mapped a plume of concentrated tritium that escaped from the highly radioactive 618-11 waste burial site near Energy Northwest's complex. "The evaluation indicated that the impacts of the 618-11 tritium plume are likely to be minimal," John Morse, DOE's ground water/vadose zone project manager, wrote in a Dec. 31 letter to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA agrees with DOE's conclusion, said Dennis Faulk, EPA's acting Hanford site manager. DOE will most likely tackle the small area of tritium-laced ground water when it begins soil removal and decontamination at the 618-11 burial site in 2018, said a DOE report accompanying Morse's letter. Highly radioactive wastes from Hanford's 300 Area were buried at 618-11 in the 1960s. The wastes are so radioactive that no technology exists today to safely remove the material from 618-11. The Columbia River is 312 miles away. In 1999 and early 2000, technicians discovered a previously unsuspected concentration of 8 million picocuries of tritium per liter of ground water in a well just east of 618-11's fence. The federal drinking water limit for tritium -- based on cancer risks -- is 20,000 picocuries per liter. Hanford experts have taken soil and water samples to try to map the area and potency of the new tritium plume. The sampling has mapped a somewhat triangular tritium plume roughly 0.6 mile beyond the fence, almost 1,000 feet wide at 618-11's fence, and about 165 feet wide at its front. The plume's highest tritium concentration recorded was 5.29 million picocuries per liter. That dwindled to a reading of 25,400 picocuries at the front of the plume. The study looked at different speeds at which the tritium could flow to the Columbia River. The report concluded the most likely travel time would be 70 to 80 years, and by then a benign concentration of 5,500 picocuries per liter would reach the Columbia. The river would drastically dilute that concentration further. Tritium is the fastest and one of the most abundant radioactive contaminants in Hanford's ground water. But tritium also is much less radiologically potent than many more radioactive contaminants at Hanford. And since its radioactivity decays by half every 12.3 years, it is among the fastest-decaying radioactive substances at the site. Consequently, tritium ranks somewhat low on Hanford's list of headaches. But discovery of this plume two to three years ago sparked concern because of its unexpected high concentration so close to the river. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights ***************************************************************** 49 Hanford researchers work to pass the time This story was published Mon, Mar 4, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer Think of it as time caught inside a test tube. That captured time then kicks into warp speed. Five to 10 minutes zip by in one second. Conceivably, a month could pass in one laboratory hour. A laboratory year could equal a few centuries at Hanford. This time acceleration takes place on one tabletop in a small lab room inside southern Hanford's 331 Building. That table holds what is essentially two elaborate chemistry sets complete with vials, tubes, sensors and other thingamabobs. The setups use hot temperatures and fast water and chemical flows through tubes and glass particles to simulate an accelerated passage of time. Computer simulations and a device resembling a CAT scanner examine the glass after it is aged and weathered in the lab. "The whole thing is put together on a computer, and we can look out into the future," said Pete McGrail, a senior research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The purpose of all this: Figure out how long it will take low-activity radioactive glass to split, chip, crumble or dissolve. This is to help Hanford's scientists determine what can be done to make that glass hold together longer while it is buried here. This is part of Hanford's biggest and toughest environmental cleanup project -- building plants to convert the site's 53 million gallons of radioactive tank wastes into glass. The glass is to have radioactive substances trapped inside it, holding them safely until their radioactivity can decay to less-dangerous levels. The bottom line: The glass trapping Hanford's radioactive tank wastes needs to last 10,000 years to meet federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards. In other words, take the time elapsed from the Biblical days of Moses to the present and multiply that by three. That's about 10,000 years. Over that time, Hanford's future radioactive glass must resist corrosion. It must resist cracking from the normal crystalline breakdown of age, or from the chemical interplay among the numerous substances found within Hanford's radioactive tank wastes. "We have to deal with a good fraction of the periodic table (of chemical elements)," McGrail said. One problem is that Hanford's tank wastes contain lots of sodium oxide, which weakens the final glass. Consequently, Hanford has to figure out what other chemicals have to be added to counteract the effects of sodium oxide. Another issue is to figure out how much waste can be crammed safely into a glassified waste cylinder, reducing the number of canisters that have to be buried. "It's a balancing act for us," McGrail said. Hanford's glassification engineers and scientists have a rough idea of what the chemical makeup of glassified waste should be. McGrail is trying to give those engineers a clearer target to shoot for. Glassification has fascinated McGrail -- who has a doctorate in environmental engineering and bachelor's and master's degrees in nuclear engineering -- for almost 20 years. He has studied the potential glassification of Hanford's tank wastes since 1994. "Even though we've been at this for a long time, we're still learning," he said. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 50 Giving credit where it's due Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:14 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, 2002 Construction on the William L. and Liane B. Russell Laboratory for Comparative and Functional Genomics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is expected to be completed next year. The roughly 36,000-square-foot mouse research facility represents the first new construction in ORNL's Life Sciences Division in more than 30 years. However, the looming question is what will the facility be called? The existing facility, located at the Y-12 National Security Complex, has officially been known as the Mouse Genetics Research Facility and has sometimes been called the Mammalian Genetics Research Facility, but it has primarily been referred to as the Mouse House. Will that catchy little title carry over to the new facility? So far, that appears to be the case. Barry Berven, operations director for ORNL's Life Sciences Division, said "Mouse House" will probably continue to be used within ORNL when referring to the facility. However, Berven said he didn't know if an effort would be made to distance the new facility from that title when it's discussed publicly. Billy Stair, director of ORNL's communications department, told me that lab officials will most likely continue to use the name "Mouse House" as an informal reference to the facility. He said people recognize that name and therefore are familiar with the research related to the facility. But the name "Mouse House" also carries a little baggage. John Marburger, science adviser to President Bush, has publicly said that officials should stop referring to the new facility as the Mouse House. In addition, Martha Krebs, former director of DOE's Office of Science, didn't feel the name was "scientific enough," according to Berven. He said Krebs indicated the title "Laboratory for Comparative and Functional Genomics" was a better fit. The powers that be at ORNL chose to add the Russells' names to the new facility's title to honor what Bill Madia has dubbed the "most distinguished scientific couple" in ORNL's history. "Their contributions have provided the foundation for ORNL's current genetic and genomic program," Madia said earlier. Liane and William Russell founded ORNL's Mammalian Genetics and Development Section in 1947. Liane still works part-time for the laboratory. There's really no way to avoid using the name "Mouse House" to identify the facility as long as officials at ORNL and UT-Battelle, the lab's manager, continue to do so. However, The Oak Ridger will continue to use the facility's official title in addition to a new abbreviated informal reference -- the Russell research facility -- to identify the new Mouse House. After all, in my opinion, it's only fair to give credit where credit is due. * YET AGAIN: The contracts keep rolling out for the massive Spallation Neutron Source construction project. Most recently, Vacuum Technology Inc. of Oak Ridge was awarded a $220,000 equipment supplies deal relating to the SNS's vacuum residual gas analyzers. The analyzers, according to project officials, will be distributed along the entire length of the SNS's linear accelerator to provide real-time monitoring of the vacuum levels and gas constituents and to perform leak testing as needed. When completed in 2006, the SNS will become the world's leading research facility for study of the structure and dynamics of materials using neutrons. Paul Parson is the science and technology reporter for The Oak Ridger. He can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 51 Alvin Radkowsky, Developer of a Safer Nuclear Reactor Fuel, Dies at 86 March 5, 2002 By KENNETH CHANG Dr. Alvin Radkowsky, a nuclear engineer who developed a reactor fuel that does not generate waste that can be reused for nuclear weapons, died on Feb. 17 in Israel. He was 86. Born in the United States, Dr. Radkowsky was the chief American scientist for the design of nuclear reactors for naval ships and submarines from 1950 through 1972. He also headed the design team that built the United States' first full-scale commercial nuclear power plant in Shippingport, Pa. In the 1980's, Dr. Radkowsky developed a technology, now being tested, that replaces much of the uranium at the core of a nuclear reactor with thorium, a cheap and relatively plentiful element occurring in minerals. When thorium is used, the nuclear reactions are altered so that the reactor produces much less plutonium, and the radioactive waste it does create is more difficult to refine for use in bombs. "Alvin specifically had the goal of stopping reactors from producing weapons-grade material," said Seth Grae, president of Thorium Power Inc., a company Dr. Radkowsky helped found in 1992 to bring his design to market. Dr. Radkowsky hoped the thorium fuel design could be offered to countries like North Korea and Cuba, allowing them to use reactors to generate electricity but largely eliminating worries that they would scavenge the spent fuel rods for nuclear weapons. "He was an outstanding nuclear engineer working successfully on an important and timely topic," said Dr. Edward Teller, who was Dr. Radkowsky's master's thesis adviser at George Washington University before World War II. "I believe his argument for thorium, that it cannot be easily used for military purposes, is valid." In a letter to The New York Times in 1984, Dr. Radowsky said that "a thorium reactor's plutonium production rate would be less than 2 percent of that of a standard reactor, and the plutonium's isotopic content would make it unsuitable for a nuclear detonation." A variation of the thorium idea may allow the Department of Energy to use excess plutonium in commercial nuclear power plants, also without creating byproducts suitable for weapons. Thorium Power is running tests at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. Mr. Grae said he hoped the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would approve the thorium fuel assembly for use in American nuclear reactors in three to four years. Alvin Radkowsky was born in Elizabeth, N.J., and graduated from City College of New York in 1935 with a degree in electrical engineering. He received his master's degree in physics from George Washington University in 1942, studying under Dr. Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb. He completed his doctorate in 1947 at the Catholic University of America in Washington. In 1972, Dr. Radkowsky moved to Israel and became a professor of nuclear engineering at Tel Aviv University. "It was Alvin's efforts at Teller's request which led to him to develop this type of nuclear fuel and eventually led to the formation of the company," Mr. Grae said. Dr. Radkowsky was a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Nuclear Society. He was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1991. Survivors include his wife, Annette Eisenberg Radkowsky; a daughter, Gilah Chukat of Israel; a brother, Lawrence Radkowsky of Silver Spring, Md.; and six grandchildren. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information ***************************************************************** 52 Nuke Fusion Made in Tabletop Test Las Vegas SUN March 04, 2002 WASHINGTON (AP) - In a tabletop experiment, researchers created a reaction like nuclear fusion - the energy source of the sun. Using a device described as the size of three stacked coffee cups, they zapped tiny dissolved bubbles with sound waves, triggering a flash of light and super-high temperatures. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Rennsselaer Polytechnic Institute say the phenomenon was like nuclear fusion in a bottle, but they are uncertain if it could be used as a source of energy. The study appears this week in the journal Science and was released for publication by the journal on Monday. Researchers said that the experiment, which they called "bubble fusion," created two signs of nuclear fusion: a burst of subatomic particles called neutrons and the production of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen. Harnessing nuclear fusion, the power that lights the sun, has long been a goal of researchers who view it as the ultimate energy source. Most researchers have concentrated on huge machines that mimic the sun by compressing hydrogen plasma and heating it to millions of degrees to force atoms to fuse. This reaction gives off heat and an isotope of helium, along with some subatomic particles. But in the experiment reported in Science, researchers used the simple equipment to create and analyze a brief flash and burst of heat that may be fusion. R. P. Taleyarkhan of Oak Ridge, the first author of the study, said in Science that the experiment is true "tabletop physics," using an apparatus "the size of three coffee cups stacked on top of the other." Richard T. Lahey Jr., a Rennsselaer professor and a co-author of the study, said it was not clear if the technique could be used as an energy source, but it could be valuable in fundamental studies of nuclear fusion. In the study, researchers used a beaker of a chemical called deuterated acetone. Normal acetone is a colorless, volatile liquid often used as a paint remover or chemical solvent. In deuterated acetone, the chemical's normal hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium, a hydrogen isotope that is heavier than ordinary hydrogen and is capable fusion reactions. When combined with oxygen, deuterium is sometimes called "heavy water." The researchers introduced tiny bubbles, no bigger than the period at the end of a sentence, into the beaker. They then zapped the bubbles with sound waves. The bubbles rapidly expanded and then collapsed. It's believed that the bubble collapse causes a momentary shock wave that creates high pressures, high temperatures and a flash of light, called sonoluminescence. In a discussion of the experiment, F. D. Becchetti, a physicist at the University of Michigan, said the study by Taleyarkhan needs to be confirmed by other researchers. "If the results are confirmed, this new compact apparatus will be a unique tool for studying nuclear fusion reactions," said Becchetti. He said the experiments appear to have been carefully done and analyzed by reviewers. "The results are credible until proven otherwise," said Becchetti. The announcement of the Taleyarkhan tabletop fusion experiment is in sharp contrast to the tabletop fusion experiment announced at a news conference in 1989 by researchers at the University of Utah. The Utah experiment used electrodes placed inside a vat of heavy water, or deuterium. The Utah conclusions were quickly rejected by many other physicists. Taleyarkhan's experiment, however, was reviewed by a committee of experts, selected by Science, before the study was accepted for publication. Science: www.sciencemag.org All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 53 Researchers find possible evidence of nuclear fusion Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 12:26 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5, 2002 by Paul Recer Associated Press WASHINGTON -- In a tabletop experiment, researchers created a reaction like nuclear fusion -- the energy source of the sun. Using a device described as the size of three stacked coffee cups, they zapped tiny dissolved bubbles with sound waves, triggering a flash of light and super-high temperatures. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute say the phenomenon was like nuclear fusion in a bottle, but they are uncertain if it could be used as a source of energy. The study appears this week in the journal Science and was released for publication by the journal on Monday. Researchers said that the experiment, which they called "bubble fusion," created two signs of nuclear fusion: a burst of subatomic particles called neutrons and the production of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen. In an unusual comment on the work, other scientists at Oak Ridge posted a review on the Internet that disputed the findings. It said their repeat of the experiment failed to detect sufficient neutrons to prove the claimed results. Harnessing nuclear fusion, the power that lights the sun, has long been a goal of researchers who view it as the ultimate energy source. Most researchers have concentrated on huge machines that mimic the sun by compressing hydrogen plasma and heating it to millions of degrees to force atoms to fuse. This reaction gives off heat and an isotope of helium, along with some subatomic particles. But in the experiment reported in Science, researchers used the simple equipment to create and analyze a brief flash and burst of heat that may be fusion. R. P. Taleyarkhan of Oak Ridge, the first author of the study, said in Science that the experiment is true "tabletop physics," using an apparatus "the size of three coffee cups stacked on top of the other." In the study, researchers used a beaker of a chemical called deuterated acetone. Normal acetone is a colorless, volatile liquid often used as a paint remover or chemical solvent. In deuterated acetone, the chemical's normal hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium, a hydrogen isotope that is heavier than ordinary hydrogen and is capable fusion reactions. When combined with oxygen, deuterium is sometimes called "heavy water." The researchers introduced tiny bubbles, no bigger than the period at the end of a sentence, into the beaker. They then zapped the bubbles with sound waves. The bubbles rapidly expanded and then collapsed. It's believed that the bubble collapse causes a momentary shock wave that creates high pressures, high temperatures and a flash of light, called sonoluminescence. In a discussion of the experiment, F. D. Becchetti, a physicist at the University of Michigan, said the study by Taleyarkhan needs to be confirmed by other researchers. In a repeat of the experiment that used slightly different equipment, D. Shapira and M. J. Saltmarsh of Oak Ridge contended the neutron emission they detected was too small to explain the tritium production reported by Taleyarkhan. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************