***************************************************************** 05/05/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.115 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 UK: New deal on nuclear power 2 Egypt: Nuclear power station to be set up by 2010 3 Japan: Turning point seen for N-fuel project NUCLEAR REACTORS 4 Output at Niigata nuclear plant cut due to turbine trouble 5 Chernobyl cancer rate questioned 6 US: Dry run for disaster at Crystal River 7 US: Evacuation won't be practiced at Crystal River 8 Police stop scavengers taking polluted metal from Chernobyl 9 US: Cyrstal River: Key people omitted from drills: the public NUCLEAR SAFETY 10 UAE draws up plan to handle disasters 11 US: Nuclear liability 12 US: Plan Urged For 'Dirty' Explosive 13 US: Serious Safety Precautions 14 Egypt: A fax, Fayed and enriched uranium NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 15 US: Waste Plan Under Attack 16 Taiwan: Government to set up commission to deal with island's radioa 17 Taiwan: Government to set up commission to deal with island's 18 US: In radio address, Nevada congresswoman opposes nuclear dump 19 US: No hope for Nevada in this week's House vote on Yucca Mountain 20 US: Utah next market for anti-Yucca ads 21 Taiwan sorry for nuclear waste failure 22 US: N-Waste Cask Designers, Foes Wrangle on Safety 23 US: Hauling a secretive business 24 US: Lawsuit pits S.C. governor vs. 6 tons of plutonium 25 US: Field Workers Finally Win Fight With Dump 26 US: State Officials want Federal Help for Hematite Plant Clean-up NUCLEAR WEAPONS 27 Papal visit nuke threat 28 US: Nuclear subs sail on as U.S. rethinks operations 29 Govt mulls a nuclear command US DEPT. OF ENERGY 30 No Evidence of Bomb at Tenn. Plant 31 Ohio weapons plant worker hopes his own fight benefits others 32 Claims seek DOE fairness ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 UK: New deal on nuclear power Guardian Unlimited Observer | Business | [UP] British Energy set to run ailing Magnox plants while taxpayers carry the financial risk Oliver Morgan, industrial editor Sunday May 5, 2002 The Observer [http://www.observer.co.uk] The nuclear industry is set for its biggest shake-up in a decade, with privatised generator British Energy poised to sign a deal with British Nuclear Fuels to run its ageing Magnox power stations for the rest of their lives. The deal, to be announced shortly, would see BE taking over the BNFL Magnox workforce, receiving a management fee and being given an undertaking that it can run the stations and sell the power at 'no financial risk'. The deal will help shore up British Energy's shares, which have fallen 336p since September to close at around 171p last week as the price of electricity has slumped. Last month BE said that forward prices for the summer of 2002 were below production costs. Industry insiders say the Magnox deal will be the first in a series of agreements that could see British Energy take over other chunks of state-owned BNFL as part of the Government's plans to privatise it. These could include BNFL's fuel manufacturing operations, based at its Springfields plant, and its Westinghouse reactor design business, both known as 'front end' businesses. Such a move would create a privately owned and man aged group with an enhanced balance sheet, capable of building and operating nuclear plants - should a new generation be built. It would also offer the Government a neat solution to the problem of selling off enough of BNFL to meet its commitment to a public-private partnership for the group. BNFL has effectively been split between those divisions such as the front end, which are deemed commercial, and those such as reprocessing at Sellafield, which are not and will be taken into a state-owned Liabilities Management Authority. Both BE and BNFL are anxious to see a new generation of power stations built. But some figures in BNFL are not keen to see the front end sold to BE, preferring a flotation that would allow them to run the business, along with operating Sellafield under contract with the LMA. These and other issues - codenamed Project Opel - have been raised at meetings between BE chief executive Robin Jeffrey and his BNFL counterpart Norman Askew at which the Magnox deal was hammered out. For its part, BE will not take on the liabilities of the six Magnox stations - set to run until 2009-10 - which will be assumed by the taxpayer via the LMA. Analysts say such a deal is vital for BE, which has to set aside hundreds of millions for reprocessing contracts with BNFL. BE sees these contracts as unnecessary and has tried to renegotiate them. The Magnox deal, which is understood to have support from Ministers, is one way of ensuring BE has a revenue stream secure enough to shore it up in the long term, while the BNFL PPP is carried out. Neither BNFL nor BE would comment. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 2 Nuclear power station to be set up by 2010 ArabicNews.Com Egypt, Economics, 5/4/2002 The Egyptian Ministry of Electricity will complete the building of a new nuclear power station by 2010, Minister Hassan Younis Monday. He said that construction of the new facility depends upon the use of the latest technology. Addressing the Parliamentary Industry Committee, Younis said that Egypt possesses sufficient skilled manpower to acquire such state-of-the Art facilities. The Committee has signed two cooperation agreements with South Korea and China to enhance the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The agreements means that Egypt will be benefiting from the training of technicians on the latest South Korean and Chinese technology. Copyright © 1995-2001 Arabic News.com, All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 3 Turning point seen for N-fuel project Asahi Shimbun www.asahi.com [http://www.asahi.com/] The Asahi Shimbun Japan's nuclear power policy has been brought to a crucial crossroads by plans to link government approval for a nuclear fuel reprocessing project with progress toward the commercial use of plutonium in nuclear reactors. The governmental Atomic Energy Commission says it would allow the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant currently under construction in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, to operate, but with a condition: Electric power companies must show progress in their so-called pluthermal programs to enable ordinary nuclear power plants to use plutonium as a fuel. In the pluthermal process, the plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel is combined with uranium oxide to create mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which is used in light-water reactors. Commission member Tetsuo Takeuchi announced the proposed condition Tuesday at a nuclear power policy forum in Aomori. Observers, meanwhile, see the proposal as a double-edged measure that could either prompt power companies to make real progress in pluthermal power generation, or simply result in a freeze in the Rokkasho project. Pluthermal programs have been stalled nationwide in the face of opposition by local residents, as well as by revelations of fabricated data regarding MOX shipments and a series of accidents at nuclear power plants. The commission believes power companies, which will need the Rokkasho facility to take their growing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel, will have no choice but to accept the conditions, demanding as they may be. Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Kansai Electric Power Co., which already have obtained central government approval for their respective pluthermal programs, will therefore have to step up negotiations with local governments. Chubu Electric Power Co. and Kyushu Electric Power Co. will also have to negotiate with local governments as a preliminary step in getting Tokyo's approval for their programs. The 2-trillion-yen Rokkasho reprocessing plant is being built by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., a joint entity established by nuclear power companies. The facility is slated to enter service in 2005, reprocessing spent nuclear fuel into plutonium. Meanwhile, spent fuel from Japanese reactors has been processed by Britain and France. Takeuchi told the forum that reprocessing at Rokkasho should begin only after plans concerning how the plutonium is to be used have been made clear. The project has drawn strong international criticism because it will give Japan the capacity to produce weapons-grade plutonium. In keeping with the commission's proposal, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry intends to come up with a formula under which the Rokkasho plant will produce only enough plutonium to meet the amount of orders received, sources said.(IHT/Asahi: May 2,2002) (05/02) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun ***************************************************************** 4 Output at Niigata nuclear plant cut due to turbine trouble Japan Today Japan News - News - Sunday, May 5, 2002 at 20:00 JST NIIGATA Output at a nuclear power plant was manually lowered Sunday morning due to trouble with a turbine-control device, the plant operator said. Tokyo Electric Power Co said the malfunction of the 1.1-million-kilowatt No. 3 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant occurred at around 7:37 a.m., but the turbine control-device returned to normal at 8:10 a.m. following a cut in power output. (Kyodo News) ***************************************************************** 5 Chernobyl cancer rate questioned Buffalo News - News Medical Reporter 5/4/2002 Good evidence shows radioactive fallout from Chernobyl led to a rise in thyroid cancer among children, but contrary to popular belief, radiation appears to have caused fewer cases of adult cancer, says a new Roswell Park Cancer Institute study. The study, which appears in the May issue of Lancet Oncology, is a study of the research that has been done on cancer risk as a result of the nuclear plant catastrophe. Among adult populations, there is no strong evidence to suggest that the risk of thyroid cancer, leukemia and other malignancies has increased, according to the research. However, none of the studies had follow-up periods that correspond with the latency period of these malignancies. As such, the researchers concluded, 16 years after the nuclear power plant explosion in the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl, the jury is still out on the potential cancer effects on the citizens of the former Soviet Union and neighboring European countries. "This review revealed the need for further analytical investigation of the role of Chernobyl-related ionizing radiation exposure on cancer risk in countries of the former Soviet Union, such as Belarus, the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, and other European nations receiving significant exposures such as Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and Bulgaria," said Kirsten Moysich, lead investigator. Moysich's work is a study of studies. She reviewed the epidemiological literature relating to increased incidence of various cancers, mainly thyroid cancer and leukemia, attributable to the Chernobyl accident. The main subjects of the studies were children, who are more at risk from ionizing radiation than adults, as well as the thousands of Soviet workers sent to clean up the nuclear plant. The April 26, 1986, explosion is considered the worst environmental disaster ever. "Studies that compared cancer incidence rates before and after the accident may have been biased due to differences in the quality of cancer registries during these time periods," said Moysich. "Additionally, it cannot automatically be assumed that those individuals who developed cancer in contaminated areas were necessarily exposed at the time of the accident." e-mail: hdavis@buffnews.com [hdavis@buffnews.com] Copyright © 1999 - 2002 The Buffalo NewsTM ***************************************************************** 6 Dry run for disaster at Crystal River [St. Petersburg Times Online: Citrus County news ] In the first drill of its kind in the nation since Sept. 11, a simulated nuclear crisis at Florida Power's Crystal River nuclear plant will test local and state officials' readiness. By ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer © St. Petersburg Times published May 5, 2002 CRYSTAL RIVER -- From his office off U.S. 19, John Stephenson is plotting disaster. His plan, crafted in secret over the past six months with the help of some well-placed associates, could bring Crystal River to its knees. Under the scheme, a plume of radioactive particles will escape from the nuclear plant north of town. Carried by the wind as far as 50 miles away, it will contaminate crops, livestock, water supplies and the unlucky people in its path. Emergency sirens will pierce the air. Entire neighborhoods will be evacuated, the roads packed. "We don't hold back," Stephenson said. His is not the work of a terrorist. Stephenson is director of emergency preparedness for Florida Power, and the fictional scenario outlined above -- none of which will actually happen -- is part of a drill to evaluate how local and state officials would react in the event of nuclear crisis. The tests, scheduled for May 13 and 14 and again on May 29 and 30, will cover everything from reactor control room operators' ability to identify problems and the mobilization of local and state emergency centers, to the notification of the public, traffic control, sheltering and cleanup of radioactive fallout. The scope of this dry run extends far beyond Crystal River. Emergency workers will act as if radioactive material has spread over a 50-mile area. It will be the first broad test for Florida Power in six years and the first of its kind in the nation since Sept. 11. Florida Power and the operators of the nation's 102 other nuclear plants have been conducting drills for years, and for the most part, they have drawn little notice. Now, nuclear energy is in the public spotlight more than ever because of the events nearly eight months ago in New York City and Washington, D.C. "Sept. 11 has not changed anything in terms of the specific requirements we have, but everybody has a heightened sense of the value of a good response system," said Mary Hudak, spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which will monitor the drills along with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The problem emerges Sometime during business hours on May 29, six operators in a simulation control room at Florida Power's training center on Venable Street will encounter an unsurmountable challenge. Without warning, something will go wrong with the reactor. Within a few fleeting moments, the operators will have to determine the severity of the problem. It may start out as an "unusual event," a minor problem such as a hurricane warning or a small fire in a building outside the massive concrete and steel building that houses the reactor. Over time, though, key components of the mock reactor will fail until the situation reaches a "general emergency." If this were an actual emergency, radioactive material would be released into open air. The full details of the scenario are kept secret from participants until after the drill, but officials have said the problem will be caused by equipment failure, not terrorist activity, such as a jetliner crashing into the reactor containment building. Plant operators will have 15 minutes to call the Division of Emergency Management in Tallahassee, which is directly linked with officials in Levy and Citrus counties. The local governments will activate their own emergency operation centers as well as dispatch certain officials to the Venable Street office. There, they will go to work in a war room that contains rows of desks with telephones at each seat. Three large projection screens are at the front of the room. On a recent afternoon, two of the screens displayed vital plant data, a complex array of numbers, while the third showed the Weather Channel. Because it is a drill, state emergency personnel will already be in Crystal River. They will not be allowed in the building until the call goes through, however. Experts with the state Bureau of Radiation Control will assist Florida Power in tracking the mock radiation plume. Field teams will collect air samples and look for deposits of radioactive material. After determining protective action is needed, a Florida Power official will take county and state representatives into a separate room and make recommendations to evacuate certain areas around the plant. The NRC will also make suggestions. But the decision rests with the state and county. Some evacuation will be necessary under the scenario and notices will be prepared for (but not actually sent to) about 20 local and regional media radio and television stations. There are 40 warning sirens across the 10-mile radius around the plant, 28 in Citrus and 12 in Levy, and these will be tested. A computer at the 911 center will confirm they were activated, but no sound will be emitted. During these initial moments, federal monitors will note communication between the various groups and the resulting decisions. At the same time, the NRC will review how Florida Power analyzes the problem and comes up with ways to stop the radiation leak. "Our folks take these pretty seriously," Stephenson said. "We want to stress our emergency responses to the point where we can detect and identify any areas we can improve." With evacuation comes problems associated with a frenzied public, eager to get far from the plant. In the event of a real emergency, traffic control stations would be set up at the major roads out of town. For the sake of the drill, a station will be established at the National Guard Armory on Venable on May 13. As a few cars drive through, FEMA officials will observe how emergency workers, covered in special suits to protect against radiation, monitor vehicles for contamination. Spots on cars that could pick up radioactive material, such as grills and wheel wells, will be scanned with Geiger counters. Some of the cars will be sent under a special shower, made from PVC pipe, and then remonitored. Drivers and passengers will also be tested. If positive, they will be directed to Withlacoochee Technical Institute on State Road 44 in Inverness, where showers are available. WTI is one of several evacuation shelters that would be used in a real emergency. Florida Power publishes a complete list for Citrus and Levy counties in an emergency planning brochure it publishes and distributes annually. Similar information is listed in the phone book. The shelter test will be held May 14. At WTI, the American Red Cross will register a handful of mock residents and sheriff's deputies will be on hand to provide crowd control. FEMA will observe registration and whether there are adequate supplies. FEMA will also review the evacuation plans of schools in Citrus and how local officials would care for children. While students have marched onto buses in the past, that activity is not planned for this drill. Front-page news When Florida Power conducted a drill in October 2000, few people took notice. The utility, state and Citrus and Levy counties had high marks, reaffirming the view there was little to worry about. Sept. 11 challenged that perception and made nuclear power front-page news. If jets could topple the nation's symbol of financial strength, could they be used against a power plant? Fears have risen to such a level in New York that some residents are calling for the decommissioning of the Indian Point nuclear complex, 40 miles from Manhattan. Activists say the evacuation plan is hopeless. The utility responds by saying the fears are overblown, that the danger is really contained to a 2-mile radius around the plant. Florida Power officials echo those sentiments. "Almost all releases are not going to be life and health threatening," Stephenson said. "But it's an emotional issue, and that's something we all understand." Even a company town like Crystal River, where it seems everyone works at Florida Power or knows someone who does, found itself questioning its sense of security. In the moments after the terrorism attacks, Florida Power insisted its security was adequate. Still, it drew criticism when it rejected the assistance of the National Guard. The utility has made several security enhancements since then, such as adding concrete barriers and fortifying its armed force. Showing how involved the area had become in the national debate, the state in February ordered 784,000 radiation blocking pills -- two for each of the 392,000 people who live near the Crystal River, St. Lucie and Turkey Point power plants. While fake pills -- M or hard candy -- may be given to emergency workers in the drill, the county will not test a widespread distribution of potassium iodide, known by its chemical symbol KI. That's because the state has still not devised distribution protocols, said Bill Hunt, the county's coordinator of radiological emergency planning. Adding to the sense of anxiety over nuclear power are nationwide concerns over the structural integrity of the plants. Officials were shocked earlier this year when it was disclosed that acid had eaten a gaping hole in the reactor vessel head of the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio. Less than an inch of stainless steel held back the highly pressurized water in the reactor. The loss could have compromised the plant's cooling system, which prevents meltdown. In Crystal River, a small crack around one of the control rod nozzles that penetrate the 80-ton vessel head was found and repaired during a refueling outage last fall. Florida Power plans to replace the 25-year-old head in 2003, but insists the problem was minor compared to Davis-Besse. While some volunteer firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers will participate in the drill, the public at large will probably not notice the commotion. Asked whether it would make sense to build on the greater public awareness generated by the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks, Florida Power and the Citrus County Sheriff's Office said a large-scale drill would be impractical. An obvious obstacle, they said, is getting people to voluntarily disrupt their day for a drill. Evacuation could result in an accident and raise liability questions. "We don't want to alarm anyone," Stephenson said. "The state of Florida knows how to evacuate," Florida Power spokesman Mac Harris added, citing the annual scramble to avoid hurricanes and wildfires. Stephenson said Florida Power has made a more concerted effort to educate the public about emergency plans. He said he has spoken to numerous groups in recent months about the issue. Moreover, the law officers, fire and other emergency workers who take part in the drills are members of the community and share this information with their neighbors, he said. "I really think we have engaged a lot of the community," Stephenson said. "And we have for 20 years." Assessing the damage May 30 is known as the recovery phase of the drill and will encompass a larger area. While the 10-mile radius around the nuclear plant is said to be most at risk in the event of a disaster, the radioactive particles could spread much farther. The federal government has established a 50-mile "ingestion zone" around nuclear power plants in which crops, water supplies and livestock could be tainted. "The skin provides a reasonable barrier, but if you eat or drink radioactive particles, they get into your organs where they can have significant effects," said John Williamson, environmental manager for the state Bureau of Radiation Control. The radius around the Crystal River nuclear plant includes parts of eight counties, excluding Citrus and Levy: Alachua, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hernando, Lake, Marion, Pasco and Sumter. In a real emergency, the Department of Energy would supply a plane with wings equipped with radiation detectors. The plane will not be used in the drill, but the federal government will supply state and local officials with data as if a flyover were conducted. Using that information, the state will dispatch field monitoring teams to certain areas within the ingestion zone. They will take soil, water and crop samples as well as milk from a dairy and bring it to a mobile testing laboratory for further study. Contaminated crops would be quarantined during an actual event. Also, checkpoints would be set up along Interstate 75 and other major arteries to inspect and stop tainted food products from leaving the area. At the same time, officials will determine what to do with contaminated soil and property. At best, the radioactive particles will decay in a few days and pose no other problem. At worst, soil would have to be removed and homes destroyed. Of course, no one knows for sure what the damage would be. A 1982 study prepared for the NRC estimated that a worst-case meltdown in Crystal River could cause 1,160 cancer deaths within one year of exposure, 6,630 injuries and $53-billion in damage. In announcing a visit to Crystal River in January to allay fears of terrorism, NRC commissioner Nils J. Diaz cast doubt on the study. He said it was used to determine whether power plants should be built near major airports and was not a comprehensive look at the health effects. "It might not be true," he said. [http://www.digitalcity.com/tampabay/news/] ***************************************************************** 7 Evacuation won't be practiced at Crystal River [St. Petersburg Times Online: Citrus County news ] [http://www.tampabay.com/] By JIM ROSS, Times Staff Writer © St. Petersburg Times published May 5, 2002 CRYSTAL RIVER -- When Citrus County practices what it would do if a nuclear disaster strikes, citizen evacuation isn't part of the exercise. Why not? What's the harm in staging periodic community drills that include evacuation? Not all residents would participate, of course. But at least the interested ones could practice the steps they would take if an accident, or a terrorist, strikes the Florida Power plant and forces them to flee their homes. "The biggest thing is liability," said Bill Hunt, the county's coordinator of radiological emergency planning. "If you're evacuating school kids in a non-emergency situation and you get in a wreck . . . you see what I'm saying." Hunt certainly isn't alone. Although some communities include citizen evacuation as part of their disaster planning for nuclear accidents, most Florida emergency planners and experts interviewed last week supported Hunt's theory. "If you get a couple hundred citizens and they get out here and get in a wreck, the liability issue would be great," Hunt said. Even if liability and practicality weren't issues, a practice evacuation still isn't necessary, he argued. "I think one of the biggest things is every year we have to evacuate because of flooding or storms or whatever, so people are used to evacuating. You're basically testing your plan already," Hunt said. "So to try to get people involved, to see if they do or they don't evacuate" isn't workable. Lt. Chip Wildy, emergency management director for Marion County, has more than a passing interest in Florida Power's plant. Marion is well within the plant's 50-mile radius. And his county certainly would be a destination if people who live within 10 miles of the plant were ordered to flee. Still, Wildy's not concerned that Citrus' practice drills don't include evacuation. A veteran law officer with a patrol background, Wildy said his experience tells him most people wouldn't participate. Besides, "you find that, even the best laid plans, when the actual thing goes down," don't work. More useful, he said, would be targeting a specific building for a practice evacuation. Marion County did that with a nursing home during a mock chemical spill. All the residents and staff were alerted ahead of time. The federal Department of Education recommends that schools conduct drills for major disasters and that children be included in community emergency drills. Some parents in Martin County agreed and took matters into their own hands. Worried about the nearby St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant on Hutchinson Island, they organized an evacuation drill at two elementary schools. Other communities have found that their residents don't know much about the disaster plans, even though government was diligent in preparing them, and that practice helped everyone better understand what to do. In Vermont, for example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was unhappy with the results of a drill revolving around a nuclear power plant. So another drill is planned, and in this one, more than 10,000 residents are expected to evacuate to a staging center set up at a local high school. Still, Bill Johnson, assistant director of the Miami-Dade office of emergency management, said his county does not include citizen evacuation when it stages drills related to the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant in deep southeastern Miami-Dade County. "Evacuation drills are not without risks," Johnson said. "The return on your investment is pretty minimal. It just doesn't really lend itself to giving you any meaningful information. "I don't have any scientific data to support my opinion, but my opinion is the benefit is not going to outweigh the risks because you always run into that situation, no matter how much we try to work with the media and get information out, you still run into people who didn't get the information, or didn't get it right," he said. John Tatum, a recovery and mitigation program manager for Palm Beach County's division of emergency management, used to work for the New Jersey state office of emergency management. He said his office's operations never included citizen evacuation, and he hadn't heard of any offices that did. "Probably the best thing you can do is educate the public," Tatum said. "We don't even do it for hurricane drills," said Joe Carusi, a planner for Palm Beach County. "There are so many problems when you conduct an actual evacuation." Carol Lehtola, an assistant professor in the University of Florida's department of agricultural and biological engineering, agreed that logistics probably are among the biggest hurdles. "Part of it is just because of the monumental task of doing so," she said. [http://www.digitalcity.com/tampabay/news/] ***************************************************************** 8 Police stop scavengers taking polluted metal from Chernobyl online.ie : News: World News online.ie 04 May 2002 Ukrainian police stopped three men who tried to take about a ton of highly radioactive scrap metal from near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Police detained the three, all Ukrainian citizens, in the Polissia area near the capital Kiev, the Interfax news agency said. The men meant to sell the metal as scrap. Chernobyl nuclear power plant was site of world's worst nuclear accident in 1986, and it was closed down in 2000. The metal taken was from within the 18-mile so-called exclusion zone around the plant that is considered highly contaminated and closed to visitors. Scavengers hunting for scrap metal to sell are common in Ukraine, often damaging vital equipment or selling contaminated metals and even unexploded World War II shells. ***************************************************************** 9 Cyrstal River: Key people omitted from drills: the public [St. Petersburg Times Online: Citrus County news ] [http://www.tampabay.com/] By GREG HAMILTON © St. Petersburg Times published May 5, 2002 Florida Power is holding a series of drills this month focusing on how well workers would deal with an emergency at its nuclear power plant. The Sheriff's Office, the American Red Cross, local police and federal officials will take part. Noticeably absent will be a segment of the community that would be directly affected by such a disaster: You, the public. The exercises, the largest such drill held at any nuclear plant in the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, will be broader than those typically conducted at the Crystal River complex. The scenario will envision a radiation release that would spread 50 miles, an emergency that would call for the evacuation of tens of thousands of terrified people. The county has a detailed plan for what the public should do if the nuclear alert sirens were ever to sound for real. But we won't get to practice our roles in that plan because we're not invited to take part in the upcoming exercises. Emergency workers will participate, and so will a handful of Citrus County school system administrators, but not the staffs at the schools who, in a nuclear emergency, would be expected to evacuate thousands of frightened children quickly and efficiently. Officials with Florida Power and the county's emergency services told the Times this week that the public doesn't need to be involved in the drills. Because they deal with the threat of hurricanes every year, Floridians already know how to evacuate their homes, they said. Hurricanes, of course, come after many days of warning; in a nuclear emergency, the notice is measured in minutes. In a hurricane evacuation, coastal residents move to inland shelters; in a radiation leak covering 50 miles, those shelters would be useless. In a hurricane, heroic volunteers and emergency workers often go back into danger zones repeatedly to rescue trapped residents. In a nuclear disaster, well, good luck. As for Floridians knowing how to evacuate their communities quickly, you need only recall the craziness of 1998 when hundreds of thousands of people tried to flee raging brushfires along the state's east coast and managed to clog every road and highway. And who can forget the "no-name storm" of 1993 that crept up on Citrus County overnight, stranding hundreds of coastal residents and revealing a host of serious problems with our storm plans? The other reason given for excluding the public from the drills is the all-purpose liability concern. Someone could get hurt or bang up a car. Who would pay for the damage? The idea of involving the public in such exercises is absurd, it would seem. Except that it happens in towns around this country and the rest of the world. * From the Palm Beach Post: Parents and school staff in Martin County, concerned after Sept. 11 about the threat of a terrorist attack on the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant on nearby Hutchinson Island, organized an evacuation drill in March at two elementary schools. The Jensen Beach Elementary School Advisory Council wanted to see how long it would take to get kids from their classrooms to Martin County High School -- about 5 miles to the south -- in case of a nuclear disaster. The drill is a measure of the uneasiness some of the estimated 180,000 residents living within 10 miles of the St. Lucie plant still feel about being near what could be an attractive terrorist target. Lorie Shekailo, co-chairwoman of the committee that proposed the drill, said many parents were worried about whether buses could whisk their children to safety in the event of an emergency. "The drill definitely will alleviate their fears," she said. * But that was a fairly modest drill organized by a couple of overprotective mothers, you say. It did not involve the entire community. No one would try to do a larger drill, right? Wrong. * From the Associated Press, March 29: The state and about 250 volunteers last week practiced what they would do if there was a radiation leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Because of serious deficiencies revealed by the drill, mainly that people contaminated by radioactivity were not processed fast enough, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ordered the state to repeat the drill. Under the Vermont Yankee emergency plans, more than 10,000 residents are expected to evacuate to the Bellows Falls Union High School. The staging center is expected to be able to treat people contaminated with radiation, as well as reunite families separated by a mass exodus from any accident at the nuclear power plant. According to federal guidelines, 9,005 people in the 5-mile evacuation zone around Vermont Yankee must be scanned for possible radioactive contamination within 12 hours. Officials determined that the process was going too slowly, and Westminster Town Manager Glenn Smith said the drill would be repeated within 120 days. * Okay, so they practice evacuations in Vermont. Big deal. They're a little weird up there in snow country. No one else thinks like that, right? Wrong again. * From the Associated Press: Workers at Wolf Creek nuclear power plant near Wichita, Kan., and neighboring emergency officials began a mass evacuation drill on Nov. 14. The drill, two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, came at a time when nuclear plants are generating anxiety along with power. Plant and emergency officials practiced a quick evacuation of all residents within 10 miles of the plant, and monitored radioactive fallout as far away as 50 miles. The specific accident scenario was kept secret until the start of the drills, which lasted two days. Critics of the nuclear industry contend the plants make a tempting target for a terrorist attack, one that the nation is ill prepared to prevent. * Communities around nuclear plants, of course, aren't the only places where prudent people prepare for the worst. Throughout the world, folks who live with the threat of nature's fury take steps to ensure their safety by practicing widespread evacuations. In Boulder, Colo., the city and county hold annual flood evacuation exercises. Sirens go off, and officials use a phone alert system to call about 1,100 homes. The city also practices evacuating municipal buildings along Boulder Creek, while county crews work through a mock flood disaster based on Barker Dam. Every April, the entire state of California holds a statewide Duck, Cover &Hold Drill to prepare for earthquakes. Activities range from information fairs to drills. The cities of Campbell and Berkeley hold citywide earthquake drills, while in Albany, neighborhoods practice simulated catastrophic events. The entire student body of Cal State Fullerton, 20,000 people, takes part in an evacuation drill. In 1995, Oregon ordered coastal communities and schools to practice evacuations based on the threat of tidal waves, or tsunamis. In Japan, 7,000 people living near the Sajurajima volcano take part in annual evacuation drills. Following the World Trade Center attacks, workers in skyscrapers around the world are holding evacuation drills. From the Sears Tower in Chicago and the 64-story USX Tower in Pittsburgh to the One Canada Square building in London, Britain's tallest building, workers are giving up their time to become familiar with escape routes. At Southeast Missouri State University, more than 6,000 students and staff took part in an evacuation drill. Outside Anchorage, Alaska, dozens of residents evacuated their homes last fall in a brush fire drill that showed several glaring problems with their community's emergency plan. Residents said evacuation instructions weren't clear. Some followed fire engines and ended up at a staging area far away from their assigned shelter. A helicopter pilot juggled nine radio frequencies as he tried to stay in touch with agencies on the ground. Firefighters had trouble locating specific homes because of confusing house numbers. The list of these community drills goes on and on. * Forward-thinking communities recognize that even the best plan is no good if the people who are supposed to follow it don't know about it. In November, the Citrus Times published a series of stories about our county's nuclear emergency plan. In talking to residents, it was obvious that few people knew what to do in the event of such an emergency. The details, such as they are, are in your phone book. Bet you didn't know that was the first place you're supposed to look when the sirens start howling. * People living near the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York realized just how uninformed they are about their community's emergency plan through a survey conducted in November for an environmental group known as Riverkeeper. According to The Journal News of Westchester, the survey showed: 72 percent of those who live within 10 miles of the plant were not familiar with the evacuation plans; 73 percent of the people would try to reach their children at their schools and not go to assigned retention centers, severely complicating efforts to move people out of the region; only 43 percent of the people had received a copy of the plan. Additionally, only 45 percent of those living within the 10-mile zone said they knew where they were supposed to go in the event of an emergency. an emergency would trigger mass evacuations well beyond the 10-mile radius that governments prepare for. Sixty percent of the residents within 50 miles of the plant would try to evacuate. That zone, which includes New York City, contains 8 percent of the population of the United States. The Indian Point plan calls for the use of police departments that no longer exist and relies heavily on Good Samaritans and volunteers. It calls for teachers and school bus drivers to risk their lives and not protect their families. Teachers are required to stay with their students until all are safely out of the school, while bus drivers are required to drive into the danger zone three separate times and fight traffic to leave the zone three times before the evacuation is complete. "It is clear that chaos would reign," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper. State legislator Tony Hay was equally worried. "I know a tremendous amount of work has been put into this plan, but it wouldn't work. One car accident on the highway, one fender bender, and the plan is history. . . . It's a doomsday scenario." * While we in the United States talk about the potential for nuclear plant disasters, Japan speaks from experience. Besides being the only nation to ever suffer a nuclear attack during wartime, Japan also was the site of one of the worst atomic energy plant disasters in recent years. A radiation leak at a fuel-reprocessing plant in Tokaimura on Sept. 30, 1999, killed two workers and affected hundreds of others. The government and the company that owned the plant admitted that lack of planning contributed to major problems. The center where people were sent had no drinking water, food, radiation-protective clothing or masks, or iodide tablets. Emergency services called to the scene were not told that there had been an accident and they arrived without appropriate safety suits or equipment. After the incident, the community held demonstrations protesting the lack of information given to the public and the slow and incompetent reaction by the management and government. In response, a law was passed mandating special measures against nuclear disasters. And the government began scheduling community evacuation drills. Last October, hundreds of Self-Defense Force personnel and residents held an evacuation drill at the Global Nuclear Fuel Japan Co. in Yokosuka. In Tokaimura, the site of the disaster, about 2,600 people took part in a similar exercise. * Let's assume for the moment that it's impractical to hold a mass evacuation drill in Citrus County. You really can't expect to shut down businesses, close schools and empty homes and highways all at once. Such a drill would show how difficult it would be to implement the disaster plan in the event of an actual emergency, when you would expect people to panic and disregard the plan as they try to save themselves and their loved ones, but a communitywide drill may well be unrealistic. Is the only other option, then, to do nothing at all? Is there no advantage to having community information fairs on emergency procedures? Would it really be a waste of time to hold drills at schools so teachers, parents, students and bus drivers would know their roles? Is there no value to setting up practice washdown stations and potassium-iodide pill distribution sites so the thousands of people who live close to the nuclear plant, and the emergency workers themselves, can practice for an emergency? Or is it better to just assume that everyone knows what to do and how to do it? Since Sept. 11, communities everywhere have begun to take this issue seriously. The U.S. Education Department recommends that schools nationwide conduct drills for major disasters and that children be included in community emergency drills. The recommendation was shared by the governments of Canada, France, Japan, Israel, Mexico, Ireland, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Ensuring safety when crisis hits takes practice, says Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based firm specializing in crisis preparedness in schools. "Go in and ask the administrator, "Do you have a plan?' The answer is yes. Then you go in and ask the custodian and the classroom teacher, and many of them haven't heard of it," Trump told the Newhouse News Service. "It certainly hasn't been tested or exercised." Avery Vise, editorial director of Commercial Carrier Journal, a trade publication for the trucking industry, said we can all learn a lesson from Sept. 11. "Morgan Stanley had about 2,700 employees in the south tower of the World Trade Center. On Sept. 11, only six died. It was a miracle, but it was no accident. Shaken by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the company had been conducting regular evacuation drills for about eight years. Almost by instinct, Morgan Stanley employees knew what to do when the airliner hit that morning." We in Citrus County have a plan; it's just that we've never bothered to practice it. But why should we worry? There's no chance that someone could hijack an airliner out of Tampa or Orlando and crash it into the nuclear power complex, right? That's as crazy as thinking that a hijacked jetliner would ever hit something like the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. That could never happen in this country. Except that it did. In any case, our nuclear plant is rock solid. (Okay, so they're replacing the huge lid on the reactor. No big deal -- those things are bound to wear out eventually.) And it's not as if the Crystal River plant has ever had a significant emergency. There's no chance we could have a Three Mile Island-type disaster here. Except that we did. On Feb. 26, 1980, just a few months after the TMI emergency in Pennsylvania, 43,000 gallons of radioactive liquid spilled at Crystal River Unit III. No, nothing like that will ever happen here again. That is, until it does. And, of course, we'll all be ready. Right? [http://www.digitalcity.com/tampabay/news/] ***************************************************************** 10 UAE draws up plan to handle disasters Gulf News; May 5, 2002 BY A STAFF REPORTER The UAE has drawn up a comprehensive federal emergency plan to deal with chemical or nuclear attacks, tremors, floods, pollution and other possible disasters. According to officials, the strategy gives priority to the protection of human lives. The Civil Defence, the Armed Forces and at least ten federal ministries besides environment authorities and other bodies concerned are involved in the plan, which also assigns a vital role for the Information and Culture Ministry in cases of emergency. Securing financing for rescue operations is not a problem in the plan as it stipulates the allocation of emergency funds from the federal budget, in addition to personal donations. The Arabic language Akhbar Al Arab newspaper published details of the "Federal Plan to Face Emergency and Disasters", which emphasises coordination between the Civil Defence, the Armed Forces and all parties involved in rescue operations. "The plan gives priority in rescue operations to saving human lives with the exception of cases related to national security," a Civil Defence official was quoted as saying. The plan has been drawn up to deal with all types of emergency and catastrophes, including floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, oil accidents, aircraft incidents, explosives, conventional war, deployment of weapons of mass destruction and other types of unconventional wars, mass evacuations and other emergency cases. The plan involves the establishment of a joint operation room at the Civil Defence to coordinate rescue efforts by all parties and ensure all necessary rescue equipment. An ad hoc database will also have to be set up at the Civil Defence to provide information about the size of the disaster, location, the site's population and available resources, rescue efforts and other necessary information. The plan envisages a specific role to be played by each relevant party, with the Civil Defence assigned the leading role in most emergency cases. In air accidents, the Civil Defence will play a supporting role by ensuring access to rescue and other facilities. In oil accidents and other pollution and chemical disasters, the Federal Environment Agency should play a key part in rescue operations by locating affected areas and the extent of pollution as well as radiation, chemical and biological pollution levels across the border whether in peacetime or in emergency and wars. ***************************************************************** 11 Nuclear liability New Scientist There has been concern because a reference to liability insurance as part of the external costs of nuclear power appears to have been removed from the final version of the British government's draft energy review, apparently because of "the difficulty of quantifying the possible costs of accidents" (16 March, p 57, and 6 April, p 50). But if British Nuclear Insurers is prepared to use its unique experience for the public interest by estimating monetary values for environmental risks for new nuclear plants, then there is a good chance of overcoming these difficulties. I suggest a challenge for BNI. Estimate the possible range of premiums required to provide a selection of realistic limits for nuclear liability insurance for new plants: say £5 billion, £10 billion, £20 billion, £50 billion and £100 billion. State the difficulties involved in making the estimates. Then collaborate with manufacturers in assessing how insurance costs could be reduced by better plant design. Nuclear power, like all other existing generation technologies, only has a sustainable future if it can face up to its true external costs and then adapt to reduce them to levels which reflect the value of the power it generates. Jon Gibbins Imperial College, London ***************************************************************** 12 Plan Urged For 'Dirty' Explosive (washingtonpost.com) By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, May 4, 2002; Page B01 A private analysis conducted for Washington area government officials warns that a truck bomb laced with radioactive materials and detonated in downtown Washington could disable many of the region's emergency workers within days and trigger a spontaneous evacuation by fearful residents. The report, prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, concludes that police and fire agencies must develop plans to protect initial responders from radiation, stagger rescue crews to prevent overexposure and ensure that protective gear and equipment can be rushed in from regional sources. It also suggests that authorities consider ways to exercise emergency powers quickly to prevent panic and recommends disseminating information in advance to educate the media and the public about the risks. The center's study is based on the assumption that an attack with a "dirty bomb" -- a low-grade, relatively easy-to-assemble weapon that would scatter small quantities of radioactive material -- is more likely than the detonation of a stolen nuclear device, the release of smallpox or an attack on a nuclear power plant. While a dirty bomb could kill people after prolonged exposure, federal officials have said, the broader impact would be psychological. As a result, planning for such an attack includes managing its after-effects. The report was based in part on a March 21 workshop, in which the center posed a specific dirty-bomb scenario and asked local public safety officials to describe their probable responses. A copy of the 13-page report summarizing the workshop findings was provided to The Washington Post by a person who believed it warranted public discussion. Center spokesman Jay C. Farrar confirmed the workshop but declined to comment. "While we would all like to believe that the scenario described herein represents a remote possibility, the evidence points to the contrary," wrote report author Philip Anderson, senior fellow for homeland security initiatives at the center, a think tank that also conducts simulation exercises for government and industry. "The presence of radioactivity was an issue that the participants clearly were not prepared to deal with," the report concluded. "The means to develop greater public awareness and acceptance of risks should be considered." Michael C. Rogers, executive director of the council of 17 Washington area governments, cautioned that the seminar was not a full indicator of the region's readiness. Participants included about 40 representatives of area police, fire, emergency management and health agencies and utilities but not top-level decision-makers or their most expert aides, Rogers said. Washington has conducted drills simulating a dirty-bomb attack with federal and local agencies. Peter G. LaPorte, director of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency, acknowledged the challenges posed by a dirty bomb, but he said authorities have "come a long way in preparing for them." Federal officials have deployed radiation sensors around the capital, placed a commando unit on standby alert and tested scenarios based on a presumed attack by boat on the Potomac River or by truck on Interstate 95. It is believed that the al Qaeda terrorist network has acquired lower-level nuclear materials that can be scattered by conventional explosives. Locally, the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department is spending $6 million in federal aid and will install radiation monitors in all its 34 firehouses by this fall. The department is buying protective equipment and hopes to train 1,200 fire and rescue workers for radiological hazards, an official said, although hazardous-material officers say they are still not well prepared for a dirty-bomb scenario. TheD.C. Department of Health is spending $12 million for a mobile laboratory, air-monitoring devices and personal protective equipment. Fairfax County police and fire departments are receiving $12 million in federal aid, money that will be used to double the quantity and duration of protective gear for police, to 48 hours. Montgomery and Prince George's counties and other jurisdictions are receiving similar grants. The center's scenario was based on a 4,000-pound bomb detonating in a bus parked at the Mall. The report said the radiation would contaminate about 20 percent of downtown but would present a long-term risk of increased cataract or cancer rates for only a few blocks around the blast site. A low-level radioactive element could expose the first wave of police and fire crews beyond the maximum safe dosage in about one hour, and the time needed to detect and diagnose a radiological attack would require a second wave of responders to come to their relief, the report said. Recovery workers would need to replace equipment and protective suits at regular intervals, straining hazardous-material units at local agencies, it added. The scenario raised complex issues of public and media reaction. First reports of the presence of radiation could trigger speculation about a fizzled nuclear device that could spread dangerous radiation in a five-mile radius, for example. Rapid delivery of radiological information from authoritative sources and accurate computer modeling might calm fears, the report said. Legal and political authority also would be tested. Federal officials would have to decide quickly whether to evacuate downtown workers or to shelter them where they were. While the latter is preferred by experts to prevent the spread of contamination, the report said that police do not have authority to use force to prevent people from evacuating. A presidential declaration of martial law or a mayoral declaration of a state of emergency would take time, the report said. A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman who reviewed the report said the agency is working closely with the governors of Virginia and Maryland and with D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to respond to all threats and has a national capital region emergency response team available within two hours at all times. "There is a possibility that something like this could happen in the District," the spokesman said. "We . . . certainly support the strengthening of all plans for any kind of terrorist threat in the District." Staff writer David A. Fahrenthold contributed to this report. © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 13 Serious Safety Precautions (washingtonpost.com) Sunday, May 5, 2002; Page B06 I am responding to the piece by former Nuclear Regulatory commissioner Victor Gilinsky [Outlook, April 28] concerning corrosion on the head of the reactor pressure vessel at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio. We agree the incident was significant. But we disagree that it has not been treated appropriately by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). While there was no accident, no injury and no release of radioactivity as a result of the corrosion, there was a potential for a loss-of-coolant accident. On learning of the corrosion, the NRC sent a team of specialists to the site to assess the problem and its causes. We informed all owners of the 68 pressurized water reactors of the incident and directed them to provide us information to ensure their plants were not experiencing similar corrosion. None was. The NRC also assembled a special oversight panel to monitor all corrective measures at Davis-Besse. The plant will not go back into service until the NRC is satisfied that everything that needs to be done has been done. z Contrary to Mr. Gilinsky's assertions, the NRC has sought to inform the public fully. We have issued seven press releases, held six public meetings, answered scores of reporters' inquiries and established a special Web site to provide timely, accurate information. We recognize the need to keep the public informed and we have done so. Readers should be reassured that the NRC takes its responsibility to protect public health and safety very seriously. RICHARD A. MESERVE Chairman U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Rockville © 2002 The Washington Post Company ***************************************************************** 14 A fax, Fayed and enriched uranium news.telegraph.co.uk - By Chris Hastings, David Bamber and Adam Lusher in Porto (Filed: 05/05/2002) IT sounds like something out of the pages of an Ian Fleming novel: an Egyptian magnate, a plot to smuggle enriched uranium used in the making of nuclear weapons, and a mystery fax that no one will admit to sending. It is, in fact, just the latest intrigue involving Mohamed Fayed, the owner of Harrods, whose long-running, but doomed, attempts to get the Government to give him a British passport have been headline news for years. Mr Fayed's name has emerged in foreign press reports of a French police investigation into a plot last summer to smuggle uranium from Russia to Osama bin Laden's mountain lair. The French authorities are examining a fax allegedly addressed to the Egyptian businessman which was found in the Portuguese property of one of those alleged to be behind the smuggling operation. Last night, Mr Fayed's spokesman said: "The only thing we know is what we have read in the foreign press. "We will, of course, co-operate with any of the appropriate authorities should they seek to question us about this. Mr Fayed has got nothing to do with this operation. He also does not know any of the people involved." The story centres on an ongoing investigation by French detectives into the shipment from Russia to Afghanistan of enriched uranium destined for al-Qa'eda terrorists. Inquiries began in Paris last June when police arrested three men following a surveillance operation. Raymond Lobe, Serge Salfati and Yves Ekwalla were found to be in possession of five grammes of uranium 235 and plane tickets to Kazakhstan. The stolen uranium is believed to have come from a decommissioned Soviet-era Russian nuclear submarine. Five grammes would not be enough to produce a nuclear bomb, but could be used as a so-called "dirty bomb" - a device which uses traditional explosives to spread radioactive material over a large area, rendering it uninhabitable. Detectives suspected that the uranium was to be used in an attack on a European city to coincide with the September 11 attacks on the United States. The three men arrested in France were believed to have travelled to Russia to obtain the material. At the time of their arrest they were preparing to travel to Afghanistan through Kazakhstan. The uranium, which was held in a glass phial in a protective lead cylinder, was later analysed and found to be "weapons-grade" - sufficiently refined to as to be used in a bomb. Last month the police investigation shifted to Porto in Portugal after one of those arrested alleged that a middleman named Jose Dos Santos Ferreira was one of the masterminds of the plot. It was during a search of one of Mr Ferreira's premises that the fax was discovered. It is said to carry the fax number of an office at Harrods and apparently urges Mr Fayed to make contact. Investigating authorities have no idea if Mr Fayed knew of the fax's existence or even if it was sent. Mr Ferreira, who runs a colourful religious order in Portugal called Igregus Kharisma, said last night: "I would never become involved in any operation involving uranium. Police are examining a fax found in an office I use. I am, however not the author of it. "I was very surprised when police came to my house. They said they were investigating the traffic of illegal substances. I did not know it was uranium. I am co-operating with them fully." Mr Ferreira said that he had never met Mr Fayed and is not connected with any of his businesses either directly or indirectly. He admitted, however, to being a former associate of Lobe, one of the people arrested in Paris. He said: "I know Raymond Lobe personally. "We were trying to create a company. It worked for about three to four months then it collapsed. It was to my utter surprise last summer that he was in jail." Mr Ferreira has subsequently told a Portugese newspaper that Mr Lobe once told him he was an associate of Mr Fayed. He told The Telegraph: "I do not know Mr Fayed. I think someone is trying to smear him or divert attention from what is really going on. It seems to be a very complicated affair." A friend of Mr Fayed dismissed the uranium allegations as "fantasy": "This sounds like fictitious nonsense made up to discredit someone who has done absolutely nothing wrong." + Additional reporting by Jessica Berry and Kim Willshire. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002. Terms &Conditions ***************************************************************** 15 Waste Plan Under Attack May 5, 2002 THE NATION Politics: Democrats criticize Republicans for forging ahead with a Nevada nuclear dump. By MEGAN GARVEY, TIMES STAFF WRITER WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON -- Democrats used their weekly radio address Saturday to lash out against the Bush administration's plan to store the nation's nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. "The state of Nevada has vetoed this plan ... but now the president and the Republican leadership in Congress have indicated that they are going to move ahead with the plan anyway," said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.). The Democrats' decision to use their radio platform to press the issue--the latest move in a furious campaign on both sides of the debate --appears to reflect the position of Democratic Party leaders, however, more than the anticipated votes of the party's rank and file. Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, a Republican, last month vetoed the federal plan to ship 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste from across the nation for storage at Yucca, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. A House committee voted, 41 to 6, to override Guinn's veto, and 17 Democrats voted with the majority. The six opposed were all Democrats, including three from California. The House is expected to back the White House plan by a wide margin when it comes to a vote, likely this week. Those opposed to the Yucca site believe their best chance for success lies in the Senate, where 51 votes to uphold Guinn's veto would kill the plan. President Bush in February signed off on the Yucca Mountain plan, saying it was "important for our national security and our energy future." Those opposed to using Yucca Mountain warn that it sits in an earthquake zone. They caution against going forward with the plan before all scientific studies are completed. "An even more devastating incident would be a terrorist attack," Berkley said in Saturday's address. "We already know that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are looking for a 'dirty bomb.' These waste transports are exactly the type of target-rich environment they are looking for." To get the votes needed to block the plan, the anti-Yucca forces have said they would need to sway about 15 senators. They have conceded that the task will be difficult, despite having Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, who serves as whip, leading their side. The anti-Yucca effort suffered a serious setback in March when Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who had vowed to use procedural delays to block it if necessary, learned that a statute regarding votes in nuclear matters barred him from doing so. In recent weeks lobbying by both sides has intensified. Public Citizen, a Washington-based advocacy group, on Friday chided staff members from 22 congressional offices for taking part this weekend in a trip to Las Vegas sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute. The trip, they said, includes a visit to the site, as well as a stay at the Four Seasons Hotel. "I did not hear Public Citizen whining when the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun [who is opposed to the plan] was overnighting in the Lincoln Bedroom when President Clinton was in office," said NEI spokesman Steve Kerekes. In 2000, Clinton vetoed a Republican-led bill designating Yucca Mountain as the nuclear waste repository. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 16 Taiwan: Government to set up commission to deal with island's radioactive waste The Taipei Times Online: 2002-05-05Sunday, May 5th, 2002 By Ko Shu-ling STAFF REPORTER Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (ªL¸q¤Ò) yesterday apologized to the residents of Orchid Island for the government's failure to remove nuclear waste from their island and pledged to form a Cabinet-level commission within a month to tackle the relocation project. "We're sorry to have disrespected the human rights, living rights and environmental rights of the Tao tribe and the people of Orchid Island," Lin told a press conference held at the Cabinet's Government Information Office last night after returning from his trip to Orchid Island. He said another committee would be created within a month to oversee the restoration of the site where the radioactive waste is being stored to its original condition. Lin made a one-day trip to the island to discuss the matter with about 30 representatives of the islanders, while about 1,000 others staged a protest outside the storage site. Lin said the Cabinet will establish a commission to take charge of the relocation project of the roughly 98,000 barrels of low-level nuclear waste. "One-third of the commission will be composed of Orchid Island residents, while the remaining will be Aboriginal legislators, government officials, environmentalists, academics and experts," he said. Lin, however, failed to specify a timetable about when the radioactive waste would be removed. "We won't know when or to where the nuclear waste will be relocated until we sit down and talk about it," Lin said. "The government understands how you feel," he said, standing on top of mock yellow barrels of nuclear waste that had skulls and crossbones spray-painted on them. Some Tao Aborigines stood by wearing traditional loin cloths and wooden hats. Many clapped when Lin apologized, while others remained silent. Lin Wen-yuan (ªL¤å²W), chairman of the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, ¥x¹q), however, said that his company has been considering potential relocation sites both in Taiwan and overseas. "The Environmental Protection Administration is conducting an environmental impact assessment on Hsiaochu (¤pËú), a small islet off the Matsu islands," Lin said. "We've also contacted China, North Korea, the Solomon Islands and Russia." Lin said that the situation had been complicated by Taipower signing a memorandum of understanding with a private company in China to take care of the radioactive waste stored on Orchid Island. "While we're authorized by the government to sign the memorandum, we have no idea whether they were too," Lin said. "China seems a sound relocation place because the company we contacted has the dumping site, technology and equipment available." No matter where the radioactive waste will eventually end up, Lin said, the government's stance is clear. "The bottom-line is that we won't move the nuclear waste anywhere else in Taiwan until we receive the consent of the people of the potential dumping site," Lin said. This story has been viewed 176 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/05/story/0000134651] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 17 Taiwan: Government to set up commission to deal with island's radioactive waste The Taipei Times Online: 2002-05-05 Sunday, May 5th, 2002 By Ko Shu-ling STAFF REPORTER Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (ªL¸q¤Ò) yesterday apologized to the residents of Orchid Island for the government's failure to remove nuclear waste from their island and pledged to form a Cabinet-level commission within a month to tackle the relocation project. "We're sorry to have disrespected the human rights, living rights and environmental rights of the Tao tribe and the people of Orchid Island," Lin told a press conference held at the Cabinet's Government Information Office last night after returning from his trip to Orchid Island. He said another committee would be created within a month to oversee the restoration of the site where the radioactive waste is being stored to its original condition. Lin made a one-day trip to the island to discuss the matter with about 30 representatives of the islanders, while about 1,000 others staged a protest outside the storage site. Lin said the Cabinet will establish a commission to take charge of the relocation project of the roughly 98,000 barrels of low-level nuclear waste. "One-third of the commission will be composed of Orchid Island residents, while the remaining will be Aboriginal legislators, government officials, environmentalists, academics and experts," he said. Lin, however, failed to specify a timetable about when the radioactive waste would be removed. "We won't know when or to where the nuclear waste will be relocated until we sit down and talk about it," Lin said. "The government understands how you feel," he said, standing on top of mock yellow barrels of nuclear waste that had skulls and crossbones spray-painted on them. Some Tao Aborigines stood by wearing traditional loin cloths and wooden hats. Many clapped when Lin apologized, while others remained silent. Lin Wen-yuan (ªL¤å²W), chairman of the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, ¥x¹q), however, said that his company has been considering potential relocation sites both in Taiwan and overseas. "The Environmental Protection Administration is conducting an environmental impact assessment on Hsiaochu (¤pËú), a small islet off the Matsu islands," Lin said. "We've also contacted China, North Korea, the Solomon Islands and Russia." Lin said that the situation had been complicated by Taipower signing a memorandum of understanding with a private company in China to take care of the radioactive waste stored on Orchid Island. "While we're authorized by the government to sign the memorandum, we have no idea whether they were too," Lin said. "China seems a sound relocation place because the company we contacted has the dumping site, technology and equipment available." No matter where the radioactive waste will eventually end up, Lin said, the government's stance is clear. "The bottom-line is that we won't move the nuclear waste anywhere else in Taiwan until we receive the consent of the people of the potential dumping site," Lin said. This story has been viewed 173 times. URL=[http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/05/story/0000134651] Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 In radio address, Nevada congresswoman opposes nuclear dump Las Vegas SUN May 04, 2002 WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is risking environmental disaster and setting up a fat target for terrorists with its plan to store the nation's nuclear wastes in Nevada, a congresswoman from the state said Saturday. Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, in her party's weekly radio address, said the only method of nuclear waste disposal ever seriously studied by Washington is "sweeping it under the carpet near my hometown of Las Vegas." The House is expected to vote next week on a plan to build a permanent nuclear waste dump in Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. President Bush decided on the location in February. If the plan is approved, 77,000 tons of waste would be brought to the site over a quarter-century, beginning in 2010. Most of it would come from long distances because the bulk of nuclear reactors are in the East. Not only could an accident cause a deadly radioactive release, Berkley said, but the shipments would be tempting to terrorists who are known to be looking for material to make a "dirty bomb." "These waste transports are exactly the type of target-rich environment they are looking for," she said. "If we can't move the waste safely, then we shouldn't move it at all." The plan has strong support from both parties in the House; opponents believe prospects of stopping it are stronger in the Senate. Advocates say it is safer to entomb waste in one central repository than leave it buried at places across the country. Berkley said scattered sites are inevitable because in 2036, when Yucca Mountain would be filled, 44,000 tons of waste would still be at reactor sites. "There is no consideration at all for sound science, public policy, the consequences of our actions, or even for maintaining a reasonably healthy environment," Berkley said. For the plan to proceed, Congress must vote to override the Nevada government's objections. A House committee voted 41-6 last week to do that. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 No hope for Nevada in this week's House vote on Yucca Mountain Las Vegas SUN May 04, 2002 WASHINGTON (AP) - The numbers do not lie in Nevada's uphill battle in Congress against the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on the project and only the margin of Nevada's defeat remains in question. The small state with just two members in the House has no chance when representatives from 35 states with 77 nuclear waste sites see an opportunity to ship their radioactive waste elsewhere, academics and dump opponents said. "There is a major incentive for the people who have those reactors to get rid of the waste," said James Thurber, an American University political scientist who has written about the politics of the nuclear waste issue. For good measure, toss in the most important number - No. 1. Speaker of the House Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., who represents a state that has seven nuclear waste sites, is one of the most vocal supporters of the Yucca Mountain project. Republicans who are considering opposing the Nevada site know that Hastert and President Bush, who formally recommended it in February, are on the other side. Lisa Gue, who heads the opposition to the project for the nonprofit group Public Citizen, said she would be happy with 100 votes in the House against Yucca Mountain. "Under this leadership, we don't have too many false hopes about what will happen in the House," Gue said. The House Democratic leadership, generally opposed to the project, is not organizing opposition because many Democrats support the Nevada site. "We've given up over there," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of the House vote expected Wednesday or Thursday. Reid acknowledged that the magnitude of victory in the House could affect Nevada's chances later in the Senate. "They're not blind," Reid said of his Senate colleagues who could take their cue from their states' House delegations. "It's too bad, but I think it will have some impact." In the Senate, opponents count Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., as an ally. And Reid, Daschle's deputy, is leading the fight against Yucca Mountain in Congress. Even so, fewer than three dozen Democrats and just two Republicans can be counted on as probable votes against the project. If Congress overrides Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the Yucca Mountain recommendation this summer, up to 77,000 tons of waste would be shipped from the nation's commercial nuclear power plants and defense facilities. Under current law, the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas would open in 2010 and accept radioactive waste for 24 years. Nevada faces a situation not much different from 1987, when Congress first voted to make the state the only one to be considered as a long-term home for the nation's radioactive waste. At the time, Nevada was one of three states with sites under consideration to serve as the permanent home for spent fuel rods from power plants and other materials. Texas and Washington were the other two. When Congress first passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, western lawmakers swallowed hard and accepted the potential for a burial site in their states with the promise that elected officials in the East would be asked to make the same sacrifice. But in 1985, eastern lawmakers succeeded in eliminating their states from consideration. Quick work by powerful lawmakers from Texas and Washington left Nevada isolated in 1987. "All those powerful congressmen ... said, 'We'll pass the nuclear queen of spades to the state of Nevada,'" said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has been in Congress since 1977. Lawmakers working out the details of a huge year-end budget bill inserted language that dropped the sites in Texas and Washington from consideration. Yucca Mountain was left as the only site to be studied. Rep. Jim Wright, D-Texas, was speaker at the time and Rep. Tom Foley, D-Washington, was the House majority leader. Both men had representatives in the room when the details were settled, said Thurber, who said he has interviewed all the participants. Then-Sen. Brock Adams, D-Wash., summed up the views of those whose states would not host a radioactive repository. "The nuclear waste program may be going down the wrong track," Adams said at the time, "but at least that track won't go through the state of Washington." On the Net: Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov [http://www.ymp.gov] Nevada opposition: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste [http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 20 Utah next market for anti-Yucca ads Sunday, May 05, 2002 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Commercial tells Utahns majority of radioactive shipments to pass through their state By STEVE TETREAULT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Nevada leaders have targeted neighboring Utah for the next round of television commercials aimed at building opposition to the Yucca Mountain Project, sources said. The commercial will tell Utahns their lives would be disrupted more than those of residents in any other state. This is because a majority of the 10,000 shipments of high-level spent nuclear fuel would cross Utah by train or truck on the way to the repository that is planned 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The commercial tentatively was planned to begin running later this week. One official familiar with the advertising buy said the start date still is uncertain. Additional details about the size and cost of the planned campaign couldn't be learned on Saturday. State officials have said money is a big factor in building an anti-Yucca campaign because Nevada has limited resources in a state-authorized "protection fund" to press its case. The Utah ad is aimed at building pressure on Republican senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett. The Senate is expected to vote before the end of July on a resolution to finalize Yucca Mountain's selection as a repository site. Hatch plans to vote for the Yucca Mountain Project, his spokesperson told The Deseret News last week. Bennett has said he is leaning toward voting for the project as well. Nevada's effort in Utah aims to capitalize on residents' growing wariness of nuclear waste storage in their own back yard. A consortium of nuclear utilities has joined with the Goshute Indians to seek a license for temporary above-ground storage for 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel at the tribe's Skull Valley reservation in Tooele County. Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and the state's congressional delegation actively have opposed the Goshute project but most have remained reticent about joining the Nevada fight. Nevada and several environmental groups spent $300,000 to produce and place a 30-second commercial on television stations in Vermont for two weeks during April. The commercial, which played up the potential hazards of transporting nuclear waste, caught the attention of Democratic senator Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords, an independent. The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is located at Vernon, 10 miles south of Brattleboro. Jeffords has said he still probably will vote to send nuclear waste to Nevada rather than risk it remaining at Vermont Yankee, which sits near the banks of the Connecticut River. Leahy supports a national repository, but wanted the Bush administration to provide more information about how it planned to transport spent fuel, his spokesman said at the time. Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2002 ***************************************************************** 21 Taiwan sorry for nuclear waste failure BBC News | ASIA-PACIFIC | Sunday, 5 May, 2002, 07:00 GMT 08:00 UK The government of Taiwan has apologised to the residents of a small island for years of failure to remove nuclear waste stored on the island. Speaking at a news conference after visiting Lanyu Orchid Island, the Taiwanese Economics Minister, Lin Yi-fu, said his government had been disrespectful of the human rights and environmental rights of the islanders, including members of the indigenous Tao tribe. Mr Lin said he would form a commission to oversee the removal of about 98,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste from the dump, which is the repository for byproducts from Taiwan's three nuclear power plants. The government has pledged to close the dump by the end of this year, but has not settled on a new location for the waste. From the newsroom of the BBC World Service ***************************************************************** 22 N-Waste Cask Designers, Foes Wrangle on Safety The Salt Lake Tribune -- Sunday, May 5, 2002 BY JUDY FAHYS Owners of a nuclear-waste container company have testified they stand to make a lot of money if the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses a $3.1 billion waste-storage facility in Skull Valley. Speaking at federal licensing hearings last week, two founders of New Jersey-based Holtec International conceded their company can expect "hundreds of millions of dollars" in cask sales if regulators approve plans by Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of out-of-state utilities, to store 44,000 tons of spent fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. Assistant Utah Attorney General Jim Soper highlighted their financial interests as the executives, appearing as witnesses for the consortium, vouched for their products, which account for about $1.8 billion of the storage site's price tag. Questions about durability of Holtec's 180-ton casks and the rest of the 100-acre facility occupied the first week of what the U.S. Atomic Safety and Licensing Board expects to be four weeks of discussions on the facility's ability to endure a big earthquake without releasing its deadly radioactivity. The board began its Salt Lake City hearings last month. An independent arm of the nation's commercial nuclear regulatory program, it has spent two days fielding public comments. The rest of the licensing hearings have involved painstaking legal and scientific jousting over possible aircraft crashes, groundwater pollution and wilderness impacts at the proposed facility. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff analyzed the consortium's storage proposal for more than five years and have recommended granting a license. The licensing board is double-checking the staff's conclusion, based on the many criticisms the state of Utah has peppered the project with from the start. To thoroughly review the concerns, the board last week announced the hearings would be extended another two weeks, beginning with a week in Salt Lake City next month, followed by a week in Washington. The state's lawyers contend that with the Stansbury Fault running through Skull Valley, the facility cannot weather the expected earthquakes the size of the temblor that shook Seattle last year and that rattled Oakland, Calif., in 1989. They question federal engineering standards for earthquakes, the regulators' independence and the likelihood the casks can hold up in a real-world catastrophe. Meanwhile, proponents insist they triple-checked their computer models to ensure the facility will be safe. They showed computer simulations of nearly a dozen seismic scenarios in which the casks jostled like pop cans on a picnic table. Krishna Singh, president and CEO of Holtec International, accompanied by the company's vice president for engineering, Alan Soler, fielded questions about the containers and the train-to-truck cask-transfer building Holtec has contracted to build for the Skull Valley facility. The containers are 20 feet tall and 11 feet in diameter, with 30-inch-thick concrete walls swathed in steel. Full, they weigh 180 tons. "The cask is designed to withstand extreme natural phenomena, including strong earthquakes," and are tougher than the government requires, said Singh. The consortium's plan to put 4,000 casks in groups of eight on cement-treated soil pads, 30 by 67 feet, has been tested by the company and Sandia Laboratory, which both affirmed the casks will not tip over or crash into one another during quakes, but would just jog a few inches, he said. Reams of engineering numbers seemed to blur for a moment, though, when state's attorney, Soper, pointed out Holtec has a huge stake in helping the storage facility get its license. He established that Singh, Soler and one other executive are sole owners of the Marlton, N.J., company, which has sold only 27 of the waste casks since going into business in 1986. The casks Holtec executives described to the licensing board would no doubt benefit the company owners, Soper jabbed. "There are always questions" about contracts, cautioned Singh, whose company plans to manufacture the outer casks in Utah. "I see the dry storage companies that have preceded us -- practically everyone has gone out of business," he said. "You know, whether we successfully produce or make money is very different from selling a contract, but it's not always a guaranteed income. "Believe me, I'm in the trenches. I know." © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune ***************************************************************** 23 Hauling a secretive business Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ajc.com: Charles Seabrook - Staff Sunday, May 5, 2002 If the Energy Department has its way, tractor-trailer rigs hauling radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium from Colorado to South Carolina will begin rolling within the next few weeks through several states, including Georgia. While the exact routes are secret, the trucks most likely would come through metro Atlanta, say Georgia emergency management officials. There would be no notification to local authorities of when they entered or exited the state. "Obviously, this is for security reasons," said Ken Davis of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. Also to maintain security --- plutonium could be a target for terrorist theft --- the rigs would be accompanied by heavily armed escorts riding in inconspicuous vehicles. Anti-theft plans have been reviewed and amended since Sept. 11, officials said. The plutonium would be shipped from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site near Denver to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, just across from the Georgia border near Augusta. Other radioactive materials --- mostly low-level, nonweapons-grade wastes tainted with plutonium --- has been moving through Georgia during the past two years. The wastes are being transported from Savannah River to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. The waste-hauling trucks mainly follow I-20 through Georgia and I-285 around Atlanta. Local law enforcement agencies, emergency management teams, hospitals and other groups along those routes have been "highly trained" to deal with possible accidents involving the radioactive material, Davis said. That training also is effective enough for dealing with mishaps involving plutonium, he added. However, notification procedures are different. When shipping the low-level wastes, Energy Department officials notify Georgia authorities when the trucks are entering the state and leaving it. "The trucks are inspected before they come into the state, and we get updates as they move through and out of the state," Davis said. The plutonium shipments would be secret, and the state will get no notice, he said. Energy Department officials point out that radioactive materials have been moving around the nation for years by truck and rail without any significant problems. During the height of the Cold War, nuclear weapons and their components were moved regularly across the country and the public was never told. Some environmental groups, though, are calling the plutonium shipping containers unsafe. Citing federal documents it reviewed, Tri-Valley CARES of Livermore, Calif., says the containers could be crushed in a highway accident. "That could disperse plutonium across the highway and into the atmosphere," said Marylia Kelley, director of the group. Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said all plutonium coming from Rocky Flats would be safely packaged and protected. "We have multiple layers of protection with respect to these shipments," he said. © 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ***************************************************************** 24 Lawsuit pits S.C. governor vs. 6 tons of plutonium Atlanta Journal-Constitution: ajc.com: Charles Seabrook - Staff Sunday, May 5, 2002 Rocky Flats, Colo. --- At the peak of the Cold War, 8,000 workers labored round the clock in top-secret buildings on the windswept prairie west of Denver to build the deadliest devices ever invented --- thermonuclear bombs. Now, with Russia and the United States cutting their nuclear arsenals, the fortresslike Rocky Flats site --- once one of the world's most dangerous bomb plants --- will shut down by 2006. Its grounds will become a wildlife refuge. First, though, the government must level hundreds of buildings and remove a huge volume of highly radioactive material left from decades of making hydrogen bombs. Crews are sending tons of this waste to disposal, storage and recycling sites around the country. The most dangerous material --- more than 6 tons of heavily guarded plutonium suitable for use in H-bombs --- is destined for the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, 175 miles east of Atlanta. There, if all goes according to plan, it would be recycled into fuel for electricity-generating reactors. Plutonium shipments to Savannah River, which are likely to traverse Georgia in tractor-trailers --- exact routes are secret --- could begin anytime after May 15. But getting the substance across the South Carolina border is becoming a political and public relations headache for the Energy Department. South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges pledges to use state troopers --- even lie down in the road, if necessary --- to turn away plutonium-hauling trucks unless he can be convinced the feds won't leave the plutonium in his state permanently. So far the Energy Department's promises have left him unconvinced. "The federal government is asking us to take them at their word," Hodges said. "Given their track record, that's not good enough." On Wednesday the governor sued the Energy Department, asking a federal court to block the plutonium shipments until Washington studies the impact on public health and the environment. Hodges' stance has thrown the Energy Department, and some Coloradans, into a tizzy. The Energy Department says sending the plutonium to Savannah River is a major step in its plans to close Rocky Flats. If the plutonium does not begin moving out of Colorado soon, the department will miss its 2006 deadline for closing Rocky Flats, the agency says. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham says he fears the Russians may lose interest in cutting weapons if the United States cannot show it is making progress in getting rid of its nuclear material. Denver's newspapers have called Hodges "silly" and likened him to a Confederate rebel. Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), who introduced the bill to make Rocky Flats a wildlife refuge, says Hodges will be to blame if plans fall apart. "As a result of his dangerous gamesmanship, our national security and our nation's environmental security have been placed at risk," Allard said in a recent committee hearing on Capitol Hill. His press secretary has referred to Hodges, a Democrat, as an "Elmer Fudd." Both Allard and Hodges are running for re-election, raising the possibility that their battle has as much to do with politics as protecting their states from nuclear hazards. Though the Savannah River Site is only a few miles from the Georgia border, Gov. Roy Barnes has stayed out of the argument, supporting neither the federal plan nor Hodges' objections. States challenge feds The plutonium from Rocky Flats is just the first part of more than 34 tons of the radioactive metal --- enough to make thousands of H-bombs --- that will be shipped to the Savannah River Site from Energy Department sites over the next several years. Much of the plutonium comes from dismantled bombs. Russia has agreed to dispose of a similar amount of the material. The plutonium would be stored in the same Savannah River structure in which much of the material was made, the old K-reactor building. During the Cold War it housed one of five reactors that churned out hundreds of tons of plutonium and other nuclear material for weapons. The plutonium shipped to Savannah River would be reprocessed into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. When that fuel is spent, it would be disposed of at a planned repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. To reprocess the plutonium, the Energy Department plans to spend $3.8 billion to build and operate two massive structures at Savannah River. Hodges' fear is that the structures won't be built and the plutonium will sit indefinitely. The feud between Energy Department and South Carolina underscores the enormous and politically difficult task of cleaning up the nation's nuclear weapons sites, some of the most polluted places on earth. The standoff also reflects growing tension between the federal government and states over the transporting, handling and storing of nuclear material. Nevada is fighting the planned Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste. Idaho has had a running battle with the Energy Department to clean up plutonium-contaminated waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) has protested a plan to ship 2 metric tons of nuclear waste, from Rocky Flats and elsewhere, to his state for storage. Raided by the FBI The cleanup and closure of the 6,500-acre Rocky Flats facility, once one of the world's filthiest bomb factories, will set the tone for other such projects to come, nuclear experts say. At a cost of more than $7 billion, the effort at Rocky Flats is one of the biggest public works projects in the nation's history and the first of its kind --- the complete dismantling of a major nuclear weapons plant --- in the world. The Atomic Energy Commission began building Rocky Flats in 1951, when President Harry S. Truman ordered up a nationwide complex to make thermonuclear bombs as a deterrent to the Soviet Union. Rocky Flats took plutonium, produced by reactors at Savannah River and the government's Hanford plant in Washington state, and turned it into plutonium "pits," or triggers for nuclear bombs. A hollow sphere that varies in size from a grapefruit to a soccer ball, a plutonium pit explodes with the power of the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima during World War II. But in thermonuclear weapons, the pit serves mainly as a starter --- the pit is a compact atomic bomb that detonates the larger hydrogen bomb. Pits made at Rocky Flats can trigger weapons 600 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which itself was the explosive equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. Declassified reports reveal that Rocky Flats made about 70,000 pits in 36 years. Manufacturing at the site came to an abrupt halt in 1989 when the FBI raided the factory for alleged environmental crimes. An Energy Department contractor agreed to pay more than $18 million in fines --- at that time the largest environmental penalty in U.S. history. Because of numerous environmental and safety deficiencies, Rocky Flats never resumed operations. In 2000 the Energy Department signed a contract with Kaiser-Hill, an environmental restoration company, to clean up the site, tear down its hundreds of structures and close it down by the end of 2006. Energy Department officials say they are now about a third of the way through the cleanup. Grassy areas and piles of rubble now mark the spots where some of the plant's support buildings and laboratories once stood. Nearly every day, tractor-trailer rigs loaded with radioactive waste in huge shipping casks depart for the various storage sites around the country. Rocky Flats' remaining plutonium pits already have been sent for storage at the government's Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas, where nuclear bombs were assembled. And the remaining enriched uranium has been hauled to Oak Ridge, Tenn., for storage. "We have more than 700 buildings here, large and small, and every one of them will be decontaminated and torn down," said Pat Etchart, a Rocky Flats spokesman, as he drove a visitor through the complex recently. Some of those buildings cover the equivalent of three football fields and have walls more than 5 feet thick. Tearing down such massive structures would be a major feat under even ordinary circumstances. But the dismantling job becomes immensely more complex when workers are required to dress in bright yellow moonsuits and follow precise, detailed safety steps to protect themselves from dangerous nuclear materials and radiation in the buildings. One building was so heavily contaminated when some plutonium caught fire in 1969 that bomb plant managers finally gave up on trying to clean it and instead built a false ceiling to trap the radioactivity. Most of the demolition wastes are assumed to be contaminated, and must be carefully packaged and hauled off to secure storage sites. Notorious building During the peak of Rocky Flats' bomb-making activity, several of its structures were widely described as some of America's "most dangerous buildings." Perhaps the most notorious of them is Building 771, a windowless, two-story concrete edifice built into a hillside in 1951. It is where almost every nuclear weapon ever made by the United States started. Building 771 shaped plutonium into gray ingots the size of a hockey puck. Purifying the plutonium required vast amounts of nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride and other caustic liquids. The workers' greatest fear was leaks from valves and pipes. The more than 6 tons of plutonium --- the exact amount is classified --- now awaiting shipment to Savannah River is stored in heavily guarded Building 371, the only structure at Rocky Flats that still contains the material. At one time, seven buildings held the substance. Energy Department officials say they could speed the cleanup if they could get rid of the plutonium. Providing security for it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, funds that could be applied to the cleanup effort if the plutonium were gone, they say. Seeking resolution At the Justice Department, lawyers are looking at whether to send federal marshals along with the shipments to South Carolina, and studying the law about whether Hodges can block the shipments. The Energy Department is hoping for a congressional solution that would avert prolonged legal action. Abraham, the energy secretary, said Friday that Hodges' lawsuit was "ill-timed, unnecessary and counterproductive." "We have engaged, for months, in bipartisan negotiations with South Carolina leaders to bring this matter to resolution," Abraham said. "Unfortunately, the filing of a lawsuit by Governor Hodges runs completely counter to any effort to work together to reach a solution." On Thursday, the day after Hodges filed his lawsuit to halt the plutonium shipments, Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill under which the Energy Department would be fined $1 million a day starting in 2011 if at least 1 ton of Savannah River plutonium had not been made into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. The government would have to move the plutonium or speed up the conversion to stop the fines. Hodges, however, calls the bill unacceptable. Missing from the legislation, he says, is a firm commitment by the Energy Department to fund the $3.8 billion plutonium reprocessing plant at Savannah River. He says the $1 million per day fine, which would be capped at $100 million, will not be a strong enough penalty to force the Energy Department to stick to its promises. © 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ***************************************************************** 25 Field Workers Finally Win Fight With Dump May 5, 2002 THE STATE Environment: Shipments of radioactive waste to halt. Operator says facility poses no threat. By JOHN JOHNSON, TIMES STAFF WRITER BUTTONWILLOW, Calif. -- When the dust blows hard across the brown flatlands around here, people cover their eyes and wonder what foul things are in it. For a decade, the farm laborers who live in this eye-blink of a town west of Bakersfield have fought a losing battle against a nearby hazardous waste dump. It isn't right, they argued, to put poisons in the ground just a few miles from houses. Especially trainloads of radioactive debris from atom bomb factories. Especially when the dump sits on an aquifer and is less than a mile from the California Aqueduct, which sends Southern California most of its water. If they weren't poor and Latino, they suspect, the big corporation that owns the dump wouldn't get away with it. Kern County bureaucrats repeatedly said there was no danger, even after the operator--Safety-Kleen Corp.--filed for bankruptcy protection, falling $1.6 billion into debt. The dump is safely lined, they said. Buttonwillow was chosen because it was once remote, not because the neighbors were poor or Latino. But Buttonwillow's field workers, many of them first-generation immigrants, carried on their fight. So much time passed that people measured their lives against the war on the dump. Francisco Beltran, 49, says his daughter Griselda was 8 when he took her to her first protest. She's 18 now, a grown woman studying to be an engineer. Recently, a resolution surprisingly appeared, largely because both sides say they are exhausted. Safety-Kleen announced that it wouldn't take any more radioactive waste, even if it legally could. "We want to return to doing business and not spend any more resources arguing," said Robert Hoffman, a Sacramento representative for the Columbia, S.C., company. But the waste already buried at Buttonwillow--all of it dangerous if not handled correctly--will stay. In the main, the Buttonwillow dump's business has been disposing of waste from the large oil drilling operations in western Kern County. In fact, the company is the largest recipient of waste oil in America, operating 400 facilities in 47 states. It also operates two of the state's three Class One hazardous waste landfills, which accept the most serious chemical waste allowed to be disposed of in California. The other is in Westmoreland, another small San Joaquin Valley town. The third dump, in Kettleman City just up Interstate 5, is run by Waste Management Inc. For years, the Buttonwillow landfill operated in relative anonymity. Then in 1991, the facility requested permission to expand and take more than oil waste. It might have been a simple procedural matter had the poor of Buttonwillow, aided by a determined environmental activist, not reacted. Beltran said he heard at his daughter's school about plans to expand the dump. Beltran had worked for years in the cotton fields that turn the limitless landscape white in late summer and had proudly made Buttonwillow his home. To him, it was a wonderful, peaceful place, despite, or maybe because of, its high nothing-going-on quotient. Then Luke Cole came to town. An attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Cole is an idealistic, rangy man with boyish features that make him look more like a Scout leader than the trouble-stirring outsider his opponents see. He helped organize the worried people of Buttonwillow, and offered his advice and expertise on how to petition the local government for redress. To Cole, it was a matter of simple justice. Big corporations are used to running over the powerless, he says, especially when they live in places whose only apparent virtues are serving as burger and taco stops on the road to somewhere else. Cole, who included a chapter on Buttonwillow in his book on environmental racism, believed it was no coincidence that all three Class One hazardous waste dumps in California were near small towns that just happen to have minority majorities. "Kettleman City is 95% Latino," Cole said. "Buttonwillow is 55% Latino and 10% black. Westmoreland is 85% Latino. Just by coincidence, 100% of the toxic waste disposed of in California is in farm-worker communities." Cole was talking at the kitchen table in Francisco Beltran's tidy rented bungalow on a dirt lot near the edge of town. Sitting alongside him were Beltran and another longtime soldier in the dump war, Eduardo Montoya. Cole is widely known and feared by those who defend the Safety-Kleen dump. But the thing that really gets them worked up is their conviction that he has misled and exploited the very people he supposedly cares about. "This is pure politics on Luke's part," said John Kyte, a Washington, D.C., attorney for Safety-Kleen. "He's wrong on the science, the law and the facts. It's deliberate fear-mongering." Beltran disagrees, saying the people of Buttonwillow made up their own minds. "The more we learned, the more we worried," he said. After Cole's arrival came meetings, speeches and marches through town. The tiny town boiled with activity. "We used to go door-to-door talking to people," Beltran said. They lost the first big battle in 1994, when the Kern County Board of Supervisors approved the dump's expansion. The folks in Buttonwillow appealed under something called the Tanner Act, kicking off hearings that are still going on today. More controversy arrived years later, when it was discovered that the Buttonwillow dump accepted 2,200 tons of radioactive waste from Tonawanda, N.Y., one of the nation's first atomic bomb factories. Even though Buttonwillow was not licensed as a radioactive-waste dump, it was able to accept the bomb factory material because of a technicality that had nothing to do with any danger the waste might pose. Because the waste was produced before 1978, when the federal government gave authority over radioactive materials to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it was left for the Energy Department to oversee. And the Energy Department decided Buttonwillow was safe. After years of fruitless struggle, a kind of despondency crept over dump opponents. Beltran's once formidable army of protesters has dwindled to five families who spend each Mother's Day together at a picnic. "Everybody else lost interest; they felt there was no way we could win," said Montoya, 46. Some moved away to escape the perceived threat to the west. Beltran didn't quit. He got mad. "When I came to this country, I was 18," he said. "I always heard about how the U.S. [protected the little guy]." Cole also was upset by what he perceived as the brushoff being given to the townspeople. "I've been appearing on this issue for 10 years," he said. "At every stage of the game the people from Buttonwillow have been locked out." But Cole hadn't given up. He even came up with a new line of attack, charging that the company's bankruptcy over accounting irregularities posed a new threat. Kyte, of Safety-Kleen, strongly denied that filing for reorganization under Chapter 11 would cause dump operators to skimp on safety. The company has obtained new financing and will be in the black soon, he said. "It makes a great sound bite," he said. "'Do you want a toxic waste company in bankruptcy?' But that is fear-mongering. That's a disservice." The dump poses no threat to anyone's health, he argued. It's even a gross exaggeration to label as "low-level" the radioactive waste shipments it received. "What we have taken is soil and building debris that contains very, very low concentrations of radionuclides," he said. Nonetheless, Safety-Kleen officials announced two weeks ago that they are not interested in taking any more radiation waste. The company even signed on as a sponsor of legislation (SB 1623) by state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) banning even the most inconsequential radiation waste from landfills such as Buttonwillow. That announcement came just after a Superior Court judge in Sacramento ruled that radioactive waste should go only into landfills designed for it. For both sides, it is something of a deal with the devil. For Safety-Kleen, the advantage is that Romero's bill exempts from regulation naturally occurring radiation. That would include wastes from oil and gas exploration, the bulk of Safety-Kleen's business, even though those materials can be as radioactive as bricks from an old nuclear facility. Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times ***************************************************************** 26 State Officials want Federal Help for Hematite Plant Clean-up KSDK NewsChannel 5 - News Article 5/5/2002 7:18:44 AM State officials want federal help with cleanup at a former nuclear plant in Jefferson County. The plant is in Hematite about 35 miles south of St. Louis. Recent tests near the facility found contamination in six private drinking wells. The wells contained cleaning agents linked to cancer and other health problems. The Hematite plant opened in 1956 and began producing highly enriched uranium for nuclear submarines. The plant also processed fuel rods for commercial nuclear reactors. Missouri environmental officials want the U.S. Department of Energy to help previous owners clean up the plant, since the uranium in the early days was used by the military. All Material Property of KSDK-TV ©2002 ***************************************************************** 27 Papal visit nuke threat Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 11:41:26 -0500 (CDT) Friday, May 3, 2002 Papal visit nuke threat Al-Qaida fears tied to ship container checks By TOM GODFREY, TORONTO SUN Canada Customs officials say hundreds of ship containers that will arrive here with supplies for the visit of Pope John Paul will undergo strict checks for "nuke-in-a-box" weapons. The security concerns stem from a 1995 plan by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, Mohamad Jamal Khalifa, to assassinate the Pope during a visit to the Philippines. The Pope plans to visit Toronto in July as part of World Youth Day ceremonies. About 1,000 police officers are assigned to protect the pontiff while he's here. Canadian police are concerned terrorists might try to smuggle a nuclear device in a container during a July 28 papal mass at Downsview military base. The plan to kill the Pope surfaced after a U.S. charity, Benevolence International Foundation of Chicago, which has a branch in Waterloo, Ont., was raided by the FBI. Group members, and its executive director, Enaam Arnaout, were charged with lying to police about their alleged involvement with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Customs spokesman Mark Butler said yesterday security checks on cargo containers have increased since Sept. 11. "There is an incredible amount of containers and people coming into the country for that event," Butler said. "Everything will be looked at by Customs." U.S. and Canada Customs agents have been issued pager-like devices that beep when they come in contact with radioactive goods. "Everything designated to the Pope's visit will undergo special checks," Butler said. He refused to comment on a "nuke-in-a-box" threat. That threat is so real that U.S. Customs agents have been deployed to Canada to pre-screen containers before they enter the U.S. The FBI, in an affidavit released Wednesday, claimed the charity was involved in the 1993 WTC bombing and a 1994 plot to bomb 12 planes over U.S. cities. The charity is also accused by the FBI of passing $685,550 US to Islamic guerrillas trained by bin Laden and fighting the Russians in Chechnya. http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoNews/ts.ts-05-03-0033.html ***************************************************************** 28 Nuclear subs sail on as U.S. rethinks operations ON PATROL UNDER THE SEA [http://dailypress.com/] By Michael Fabey Daily Press May 5, 2002 ABOARD THE USS MAINE -- Submariners hate it when the boat is bobbing on the surface in the middle of the ocean, like some dizzy black-steel whale. That's when the sub is the most vulnerable - even an 18,000-ton Trident full of nuclear-missile tubes and the most sophisticated gadgetry in the sea. "Please hurry, sir," commands a young sailor, ushering a visitor into an open hatch the size of a tractor tire, past an armed sentry with a firearm that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger envious. Through the hatch and down a ladder. Ladders everywhere. Steep stairs. Hatches. It's a bit like moving through a jungle gym as tall as a six-story building and nearly as long as two football fields. Visitors are finally making their way back onto Navy subs, after tighter security following September's terrorist attacks and a closed-sub policy after the collision with the Japanese fishing boat near Hawaii. Part of the reason for the surfacing public relations is that the Navy is in the hunt for defense bucks. While the federal government's dipping deeper for military money, the United States is spreading itself thin with the war on terrorism and trying to finance the rest of its ships, planes and bases. And few Navy vessels evoke as much emotion, for or against, as do Trident subs. Built through the 1980s and 1990s to be the ultimate deterrent in the great Cold War chess game between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the boats have become pawns in a new game whose goal still seems unclear. In a world without sinister Soviets and full of tough terrorists, opponents argue that there's no room or need for such subs, whose main mission is to silently wait and, if the worst comes to the ultimate worst, launch dozens of strategic nuclear-armed missiles. Tridents, though, are survivors. They're experts at sticking around, unnoticed. Ready to strike. And strike they have. While other Navy programs have invested millions, if not billions, in technology seemingly out of a Tom Clancy novel, sub-program managers have taken another tactic: They've developed a way to turn older Tridents into special-operations boats and shoreline street fighters, using proven technology and weapons. Part of that transformation work is slated to be done in Hampton Roads. The Navy is also looking at the way the Tridents are maintained and operated because it might decide to operate its next class of attack subs the same way. And the construction of those attack subs - the Virginia class being built in Newport News and Groton, Conn. - might serve as a model for future Trident construction. For now, though, it's enough for the Tridents to maintain their current missions. "Welcome aboard the USS Maine, a Trident nuclear submarine," boat executive officer Lt. Cmdr. James E. Horten said. "It is the most complex machinery ever built by man." He sounds more like a museum guide than the second in command on one of the most lethal vessels in the world. When he speaks, though, sailors listen and obey. Smartly. He's near the top of the pecking order in a small world, the closed society that lives, breathes and works in the bowels of a nuclear sub patrolling the dark currents of the deep ocean. Slightly more than 155 sailors and officers man the boats. They spend their days and nights - both look the same under the sea - training and practicing to operate the sub and its weapons. "I have to get my qualifications," says Joseph Brugeman, a 20-year-old seaman from Virginia Beach. That's the life of a sailor on board - to get qualified, to learn how to operate the machinery and parts of the sub that he was trained for. Then he'll have to train those coming up the ladder. When they aren't working, the sailors are studying - manuals and other books as thick as city telephone directories. The first test is to get their "dolphins," the breast patch - pewter for enlisted, gold for officers - that symbolizes their entry into one of the world's most elite clubs. These are boats of thinkers. The average age of those on board is that of a traditional college graduate or slightly older. That's compared with the age of sailors on, for instance, an aircraft carrier, who are typically the age of high school graduates. The Navy screens these men - and they are all men - carefully. Moving up the chain of command is difficult. To earn the dolphins, raw submariners have to familiarize themselves with just about every bit of the sub and how it operates, the traditions underlying the service and even the sub's own background. To earn their dolphins patch, most sailors forgo the little luxury of seeing one of the taped movies during a tour. "It's their movie pass," one sailor said. Engineer seaman Karl Struckhoft earned his dolphins the last weekend of April. As part of the ceremony attended by officers and crew, Struckhoft read the story of the USS Bull Head, the last U.S. sub lost in World War II. It's tradition to read such a story at such a moment, out of respect and humility. USS Maine commanding officer Kevin S. Zumbar read another tale, though, from the book "Clear the Bridge: the War Patrols of the USS Tang." The U.S. sub came out the victor in that story. "If you don't plan well," the sub's captain told his men, "the plan may not be done as expected." An understatement from an understated man. Sub captains, especially Trident sub captains, represent the cream of the Navy sub crop. The position immediately commands respect, and Zumbar's often-quiet manner belies his authority. Sailors approach him as if he were royalty. He speaks orders as calmly and quietly as someone forecasting the weather, but the officers and crew snap to the commands. "The plan" for a Trident sub starts in the control room, the boat's brain. At first glance, it's a jumble of gray machinery, pipes, wires, plugs and other equipment, packed with blue-suited sailors elbowing and bumping their way from one part of the room to another. But it's here that the officers and crew target and track anything that comes near the sub. In the nearby radio and sonar rooms, the boat keeps in touch with the outside world, waiting for orders that even some of the most seasoned officers say they hope never come. In the green snow of the boat's sonar, a sailor sites a contact. Foxtrot 1. Zumbar hugs the periscope and waltzes it around to take a look. It's an aircraft carrier, a dark gray bump on the horizon sighted through the cross hairs. Officers and crew consult a Jane's ship guide, the bible of ship identification. "It's the George Washington," a sailor confirms. "That's a pretty picture," Zumbar said. "Sometimes, I'll take a picture and send it to surface ships." Stephen Petenbrink, the boat's main electrician, took a periscope peek. "Bang, bang," he said, wryly. The meaning is clear: To submariners, any surface ship - a carrier included - is a target. So close to the surface, a sub can be a target, too. In preparing to dive, the boat pressurizes. It's like being in a plane that's ascending with the trajectory of a rocket. Once the dive starts, it's a bit like a commercial jet coming in for a landing. But once submerged, it's as level as a balanced pool table. Being in a Trident sub running underwater is a bit like being in a cramped, noisy office building awash in the constant hum of fans and other machinery. "We go 4 knots to nowhere," seaman Deryl Jones said. "You could walk faster than this sub goes." You wouldn't walk very far. Submariners rarely get to see more than a few feet ahead of them at any one time. It affects their long-distance depth perception. Many sailors, when they first get back home, have trouble driving their cars, in judging when to stop. That's what happens when sailors spend months at sea locked up in a steel cylinder. Contact with the outside world is often not an option - any kind of communication could destroy a sub's main attribute, its stealth. It's a tough life, but many submariners would have no other. "I've been at sea all my life," assistant weapons officer Nicholas Lutes said. "This is my fifth sub." Then, a moment of contemplation. He has two kids, a teen-ager and a toddler. "I've missed a lot," he said. Each missile aboard the Maine has multiple warheads. Sailors bunk between the silo tubes - tubes as wide as large saunas and which might or might not be loaded. "I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons on this submarine," Chief of the Boat Kenneth Holland said. But, just in case, the boat practices firing the missiles. "Con, weapons. Weapons system ready," barks Lt. John Gerken, the weapons control officer, or WEPS, into the microphone strapped around his neck. "Designate tubes one to 24 as flight alpha." A series of high-pitched beeps. A safe opens. Two keys appear. In the movie "Crimson Tide," a sub nearly mistakenly fires nuclear-armed missiles. USS Maine officers say the movie's good fiction. But there are too many checks and balances built into the operation, they say, to make sure that such a mistake never occurs. "You prepare for this, so it never has to happen," Lutes said. "How would I feel if it did happen? Shock - our system would have failed." Gerken said, "You hope it doesn't happen." But, Lutes added, "If it does, we'll do our jobs." Right now, those jobs are being questioned in some quarters. And with talks of cutting the Trident fleet size, the Navy has been looking at converting some of the older subs. It plans to remove the nuclear-armed missiles and put in special-operations forces and other non-nuclear weapons. The Navy brass says this is truly transformational. "It's exciting," said Zumbar, the captain. Some of his sailors have expressed an interest in transferring to the new boats. He himself smiled at the thought of commanding such a vessel. He simply wants to be at the helm of a Navy sub. "I'm happy with any command." Michael Fabey can be reached at 247-4965 or by e-mail at [mfabey@dailypress.com] Copyright © 2002, [http://www.dailypress.com] Copyright ©2002 The Daily Press ***************************************************************** 29 Govt mulls a nuclear command The Times of India; May 5, 2002 BY SRINIVAS LAXMAN MUMBAI: Four years after successfully conducting five nuclear tests at Pokhran, the central government recently approved the formation of a strategic nuclear command, defence expert Bharat Karnad said. The country’s nuclear forces will not command under the purview of the command, said Mr Karnad, who played a key role in framing India’s nuclear doctrine. These forces include the nuclear-capable intermediate range ballistic missile Agni, the Russian-made Tupolev bomber that the Indian Navy is planning to acquire, aircraft of the Indian Air Force having nuclear capability and also spacebased communication and reconnaissance systems. The Indian Space Research Organisation last October placed in orbit the technology experiment satellite, which has military applications. It was launched by the Polar satellite launch vehicle from Sriharikota. Mr Karnad said that the nuclear unit would be managed by an integrated defence structure, which would be controlled by the chief of defence staff. On Thursday, the Centre informed Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence about the formation of the new nuclear command, Mr Karnad said. The members of the group include Raja Ramanna, the father of India’s atomic bomb programme. Mr Karnad said the formation of the command was a direct outcome of India’s nuclear doctrine, which was framed after the May 1998 Pokhran tests. According to the document, "India’s nuclear forces will be effective, enduring, diverse, flexible, and responsive to the requirements in accordance with the concept of credible minimum deterrence." The document further states that the country’s nuclear forces will be based on a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets. "Survivability of the forces will be enhanced by a combination of multiple redundant systems, mobility, dispersion and deception," it states. The doctrine envisages "assured capability to shift from peacetime deployment to fully employable forces" in the shortest possible time. It states that nuclear weapons shall be tightly controlled and released for use at the highest political level. ***************************************************************** 30 No Evidence of Bomb at Tenn. Plant Las Vegas SUN May 04, 2002 OAK RIDGE, Tenn.- A Department of Energy plant once used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons is expected to be back in operation Monday after a bomb threat triggered an evacuation. No bomb was found at the 1,500-acre site known as K-25, or the East Tennessee Technology Park, after the federal agency learned of the threat just before 8 a.m. Friday. Current work at the site involves converting the plant for private use, and cleaning up contaminated areas. Security police and essential personnel were allowed to stay but about 1,000 workers were evacuated and others were turned away as they reported to work, DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said. "We feel like we've taken appropriate steps to check the facilities, and we feel that it's safe to go back to normal operations," Wyatt said. The threat reportedly was made by phone to an emergency responder in Roane County. Wyatt declined to give details. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 31 Ohio weapons plant worker hopes his own fight benefits others 05/05/02 Malia Rulon Associated Press Washington - Sam Ray has been discussed on the Senate floor. His face also is familiar to lawmakers who approved compensation for former nuclear weapons plant workers made ill by their jobs. Ray has testified twice before Congress, describing in his slow, robotlike voice how, after spending 41 years as an instrument mechanic at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, he was diagnosed with cartilage cancer of the larynx and now speaks through a voice box. He's on a first-name basis with Peter Turcic, the Labor Department official who runs the compensation program. "A lot of people on the Hill, when you mention Sam Ray's name, know who he is," said Richard Miller, an advocate for workers at the Washington-based Government Accountability Project. Ray's efforts to obtain a $150,000 lump-sum payment for his illness could affect about 200 others who have the same kind of cancer and have applied for compensation, the Labor Department said. The department is reviewing his application, which initially was denied, and is considering a rule change. It's one of 25,392 claims filed with the department since the program started last July. Of that number, about 2,500 have been denied or recommended for denial. Another 2,500 have been paid a combined $187.3 million. The program, approved by Congress in 2000, provides payments to some workers and survivors of workers who were exposed to radiation, silica or beryllium at weapons plants. Workers from the Piketon plant and three other designated sites are eligible for the payments if they have one of 21 identified cancers, including bone cancer. Ray's problem is a discrepancy in the definition of bone cancer, Turcic said. Using the International Classification of Diseases, a common medical text, the Labor Department determined that certain cartilage cancers grouped under the bone cancer heading qualified for the program. The department said other cartilage cancers - those affecting the larynx, eyelids, earlobes and nose - don't count because they're listed under separate billing codes. "They said it wasn't under the right code," said Ray, 69, who has researched the legislation. "I'm very familiar with the bill and to me, it's very clear. Bone cancer is covered, and then bone cancer is spelled out. . . .There really shouldn't be a problem." Ohio's senators agree. In a statement on the Senate floor, Sens. George Voinovich and Mike DeWine described Ray's illness as one that would be included in the program. In a letter to the Labor Department, the Republicans reiterated their intent: "To see that this man is excluded from benefiting from the very program he assisted in bringing to fruition is very disappointing," they said. "It was always our belief that Mr. Ray would be eligible for the compensation made available to individuals under this act." Turcic said it's up to the National Cancer Institute to determine whether cartilage cancer of the larynx, called chondrosarcoma, is a subset of bone cancer. The institute is expected to decide soon, he said. According to a fact sheet available on the institute's Web site, chondrosarcoma is listed as one of three types of bone cancer. It "arises in cartilage" and tends to occur more often in adults ages 50 to 60. It's a rare form of cancer, though, with just 0.3 new cases per 100,000 people occurring each year. That's compared with 64 new cases of lung cancer for the same population size, according to the institute. Ray's situation is a technicality that is expected to be fixed administratively. If necessary, new legislation could be added to a supplemental spending bill Congress is expected to pass before its Memorial Day recess. "This is far bigger than my situation," Ray said. "To me, it's far more important to make sure that people aren't denied something that they're entitled to. "There are a lot of people slipping through the cracks who aren't as fortunate as me. They don't have the contacts I have. That worries me." © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. © 2001 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 Claims seek DOE fairness The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Sunday, May 05, 2002 Workers, families tell stories, hope for help By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 LANCE DENNEE/The Sun Tough loss ‘compensated’: Anita H. Bean, 82, holds the retirement portrait of her late husband, Charles Arvil Bean, who died in 1978 at the age of 64 after working 24 years at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The U.S. Labor Department has sent Bean two checks. When doctors removed 18 inches of cancerous colon from Berry Craig Jr. six years ago, he had no inkling that exposure long ago at the Paducah uranium enrichment plant might have been the cause. Craig, a Mayfield resident, worked from January 1951 to May 1955 for F.H. McGraw and Co., which built the plant to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel. As personnel manager, he helped hire many of the roughly 22,000 tradesmen and went "from corner to corner" of the 750-acre facility to help ease frequent labor disputes. Yet the four-year stint remained a distant memory well after his bout with cancer, even after Congress passed legislation in 2000 to compensate people sickened from working at the plant. Like many, he assumed the law, effective last July 1, was limited to primary plant workers. A few months ago, his son, Berry Craig III, a Paducah Community College teacher, interviewed Stuart Tolar, director of the local Energy Employees Compensation Resource Center, for a show on the college's community access television channel. The younger Craig learned that McGraw workers also were eligible for help, and told his dad. "I first thought he was pulling my leg," Craig Jr. said. "It had been so long ago." At his son's urging, Craig filed a claim at the center off Blandville Road near the college. If approved, he will receive $150,000 and medical benefits. His cancer is one of 22 types of malignancies the law presumes to have been caused by radiation exposure from working at the Paducah plant or two closed sister plants in Ohio and Tennessee. "God knows I could use the money," said Craig, a 78-year-old retiree whose wife is ill. "I'll be grateful if something happens, and if it doesn't, it just doesn't." || Since the Paducah center opened last fall, it has processed 1,686 claims related to the enrichment plant and paid 246 claims totaling nearly $37 million. But the program probably "has just scratched the surface" of an estimated 10,000 current and former plant workers and perhaps another 30,000 contractors and subcontractors during the plant's 50-year history, Tolar said. "One out of four people has cancer, or will have," he said. "So you can see the magnitude. And this is an entitlement program, which means the money will continue unless the government goes broke or Congress repeals the law." Tolar said Craig is a good example of the many indirect plant workers, including many union tradesmen, who might qualify for benefits. Gary Seay, business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Paducah, said earlier that about 175 union electricians were involved in an upgrade at the plant in the 1970s. He said he knew of 40 to 50 IBEW members who died of cancer after having worked there. "A misconception is that you had to work there a long time or all the time," Tolar said. "Another misconception is that you had to work for a primary contractor like Union Carbide and Martin Marietta. I would say one of the main problems is, people just doubt they're going to get anything." || Anita Bean, 82, Paducah, had plenty of doubts. She developed breast cancer in the late 1970s while her husband, Arvil, was dying of acute leukemia. Both started at the plant in 1952; she quit after five years, and he spent 24 years there as a welder and machinist in some heavily contaminated areas. Like most plant employees during the secretive Cold War era, Arvil Bean told his wife little about how he spent his days. He was 64 when the leukemia killed him in January 1978. "He started having problems in 1966, passing blood through his kidneys, but I didn't know it," she said. "I don't think any of the workers had any idea what was happening to them." Anita Bean joined a $10 billion federal lawsuit against former plant operators, then backed out to file a compensation claim. Like others who got paid, she had to sign a form saying the money settled her health claims. She said the idea of a lump sum and medical benefits outweighed the risk of not getting paid if the lawsuit failed. The Department of Labor sent Bean checks both for herself and her husband because their cancers qualified. She shared the money with her grown children and climbed out of debt for the first time in 24 years. "You can't bring anybody back, and you can't pay anybody enough for losing a loved one," Bean said. "But I'm not bitter. You have to move on." || James Wilkerson, 71, of South Fulton, Tenn., received $150,000 because of having lung cancer, although he was a longtime smoker until a few years ago. Starting in 1953, he worked at the plant for 37 years, some in highly contaminated areas. "I smoked for 50 years and didn't think they were going to pay me, and wouldn't have expected them to," Wilkerson said. "Then I found out that smoking didn't have anything to do with whether I qualified for the money." Tiny, malignant nodules showed up in his lung in August during the last of three CT scans offered free by the Department of Energy to current and former plant workers. The program, overseen by the plant energy workers' union, also offers free physicals and other services. "I really felt super and didn't think I needed the CT scan, but it turned out that I did, and I'm grateful for the program. It's been a lifesaver for me," Wilkerson said. "The compensation was not nearly as important as finding the cancer, but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth." The scan, designed for early detection of lung cancer, is far better than a chest X-ray, said Philip Foley, a plant union official and coordinator for the worker health screening program. He said more than 1,400 physicals have been given. "I think probably the (compensation) law is narrower in scope than it should be, but a year and a half ago, there wasn't anybody receiving anything," he said. "Is the amount enough for your health? No, but you can't put a monetary value on your health." || Former plant worker Don Throgmorton is circulating a petition trying to get Congress to expand the law to give presumptive benefits to people exposed to heavy metals and chemicals. He has received little encouragement from the Kentucky delegation, which had difficulty getting the law passed. Throgmorton has qualified for free monitoring for beryllium sensitivity and has filed a claim, but conflicting test results cloud his chances of collecting. "I’ve talked to a lot of people who have cancer, but it’s not the right type of cancer because it isn’t on the compensation list," Throgmorton said. "We want (lawmakers) to help people who are sick, period, from working at the plant. Tolar said he also would like to see the law expanded but noted that people who have unlisted illnesses should file claims. A worker can collect state workers' compensation benefits if a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) medical panel determines by exposure reconstruction that an illness was probably caused by working in certain areas of the plant known to be unsafe, he said. Tolar said the newer NIOSH process also applies to current and former workers of the Honeywell (formerly Allied Signal) plant in Metropolis, Ill., which makes raw material for the Paducah plant. Of 80 claims filed on behalf of Honeywell workers, 15 have been referred to NIOSH. The institute has 169 claims from the Paducah plant. Although nothing has been paid, NIOSH was not allowed to act on the claims until April 1, when final rules went into effect, Tolar said. Foley thinks NIOSH-related claims will be paid for Honeywell and Paducah plant workers because the law says a qualifying disease is one "as likely as not" to have been caused by plant exposure. The law requires DOE and operators of its facilities not to contest validated claims. "I think there's a misconception that if I don't have a listed disease, I won't get paid," he said. "That's not true in the broadest sense. 'As likely as not' is a far cry from having to prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt." || Contact the resource center at 534-0599 or toll-free, 866-534-0599, for more information. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************