***************************************************************** 12/05/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.315 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 POETIC LICENCE: *Inspecting Iraq 2 US: NRC Withdraws Direct Final Rule Clarifying Use of Electronic 3 US: NRC Issues Final Rule on Material Control And Accounting 4 Govt open to foreign investment in nuclear power 5 US: New plant would test nuclear-fuel production 6 US: Ohio Site Chosen for Nuclear Fuel Testing 7 Pyongyang Rejects IAEA Inspection 8 EU Suspends Cooperation with NK 9 Robert Fisk: We are being set up for a war against Saddam 10 Cameco Not a Good Owner for Bruce Power - Watchdog 11 12 US: Group slams N-charge against Pakistan 13 US 'losing favour around world' 14 US: DNFSB nuclear safety 15 Nuclear referendum group gets backing from DPP NUCLEAR REACTORS 16 US: DAVIS-BESSE *Regulators clueless to leak extent* 17 US: Court won't allow Three Mile Island lawsuits to be revived* 18 US: NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings on Davis-Besse Reactor 19 US: National Guard will stay at nuclear plant (limerick) 20 US: Limit on Davis-Besse costs hinted 21 US: Nuclear regulators plan hearing on PG&E's financial standing 22 Armenia reinforces protection of nuclear power plant NUCLEAR SAFETY 23 US: [radiation-survivors] Court won't allow Three Mile Island 24 US: Postal Service Decision to Issue Potassium Iodide Highlights Nuc NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 25 [radiation-survivors] Court papers filed against Yucca Mountain 26 Court papers filed against Yucca Mountain plan 27 US: Minnesota fight looms over Xcel nuclear waste plans* 28 US: Nuclear waste may be coming our way* 29 Uranium plant workers glad to carry on tradition of providing 30 US: Xcel wants extension on storing nuclear fuel rods at Prairie Isl 31 Rail bridge decision due soon 32 US: County sets workshop on Diablo dry cask storage proposal 33 US: EPA to review possible pollution at Wingfoot 34 Centrifuge gives Piketon a new future - 35 Southern Ohio gets boost 36 USEC Announcement - 37 What does the USEC announcement mean? 38 Replacing USEC jobs - 39 Welcome to Yucca Mountain Update 40 Torness nuclear power station illegally dumped radioactive waste int 41 Bill seeks to solve storage problem 42 Editorial: Whole U.S. served by state's suit 43 State's chief anti-Yucca lawyer sure of victory 44 Piketon plant welcomes new work 45 USEC deal moving fast 46 USEC chooses Ohio NUCLEAR WEAPONS 47 Costs soar at UK nuclear submarine facilities - report* 48 US: Students bring ?UC Nuclear Free? campaign to UCLA 49 US: How Clinton came close to bombing 50 FREE GRIGORY PASKO NOW! 51 Nuclear weapons to stay, North Korea tells UN body* US DEPT. OF ENERGY 52 Lab Whistleblower Complaint Upheld* * 53 Bidding Begins for Oak Ridge Cleanup Project* 54 Public has another month to comment on new, stricter Rocky Flats 55 Nickel disposal meeting called - 56 IEER | Comments on the Modern Pit Facility 57 Remarks by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Plenary Session of 58 Energy Secretary Comments on United States Enrichment Corporation 59 Department of Energy Awards Miamisburg Closure Project Cleanup 60 DOE: Transfer of Horizon Center looks like a go 61 CROET gives up east-end transfer, going great guns at ETTP OTHER NUCLEAR 62 GLOBAL SURVEY FINDS EVEN ALLIES SHARPLY CRITICAL OF U.S. ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 POETIC LICENCE: *Inspecting Iraq Daily Times /Khidhir Hamza On December 8, Iraq is obliged to declare formally its full weapons programme. We can expect the inspectors to be flooded with information about everything but the actual weapons. It is will be vintage Saddam: diversion with no real revelations/ The UN weapons inspectors are now at work in Iraq, trying to determine how many weapons of mass destruction have been developed in the last four years. If the track record of previous inspections holds true, Iraq will not come clean, and the inspectors will have to work their way through a maze of deception and distortion. In 1991, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited Tarmiya to check out rumours that the site was part of Iraq?s nuclear weapons programme. According to Dr. Abdul-Qadir Ahmed, the Iraqi official in charge that day, the huge magnets attached to giant spools of copper wire were simply part of the maintenance equipment for Iraq?s power stations. How else could Iraq have managed to put its power stations back in production after the Gulf War? The inspectors looked over the huge winding machine and concluded that there were really no grounds for the rumours. At the same time, however, a defector was telling a different story to US intelligence. Having been refused permission to transfer out of the clandestine nuclear weapons programme, Dr. Ibrahim Bawi had put his family in his government-supplied car and driven north. He wound up at the American Air Force base in Incirlik in southern Turkey. From there, he was whisked to the US to begin his debriefing. Soon thereafter, the inspectors returned to Tarmiya. This time, they knew exactly what the huge magnets were for: to produce weapons grade nuclear materials. This time, Dr. Ahmed, the Iraqi counterpart, realised the game was up. Some of the inspectors he knew well, having dined with them on collegial terms during visits to Vienna. That he would lie to them so brazenly was incomprehensible to his friends on the inspection team. Nothing personal, he told them, he was under orders. The word had come down: a lie under orders is not a lie, it is just following orders. In fact, the much-touted accomplishments of both the IAEA and UN inspectors came only after major defections from within the Iraqi weapons programme and a lot of follow-up by the inspection teams. Though the teams were staffed by capable weapons experts on loan from their governments, it still took four years to force Iraq to admit to conducting a biological weapons programme. Only the 1995 defection of Saddam?s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, brought definitive proof of the existence of Iraq?s huge nuclear weapons programme. Hans Blix, the director of the new inspections effort, has been fooled twice before by the Iraqis. In 1990, before Iraq?s invasion of Kuwait, he declared that there was no nuclear weapon?s programme in Iraq. In 1994, Blix accepted the Iraqi story that there was no real nuclear weapon programme, only a small research effort. The huge Iraqi uranium enrichment programme was only meant to produce fuel for future nuclear power stations. Of course, the story changed after Hussein Kamel?s defection. The problem now is that Kamel was the last major defector to come out of Iraq. None of the inspections or gadgetry can match the value of an insider who changes sides. The inspectors have very little information, and Iraq has the upper hand. All the research and production facilities are under Iraqi, not UN, control. British and American intelligence can only provide circumstantial evidence of what Iraq is doing in the weapons area. For inspections to work, the UN will have to get inside information. Accounting for this information gap, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 empowers the inspectors to talk to Iraqi scientists without government minders, outside of Iraq if necessary, and accompanied by their families. Most Iraqi scientists I knew would consider this a blessed opportunity to escape the confinement and threats that shadow their lives. Saddam is aware of their value to the UN and recently ordered the resettlement of their families to high-security camps. Incredibly, the UN inspection team leaders indicate that they do not plan to take the scientists out of Iraq. They will rely for now on physical inspection, not private interviews with the people most directly responsible for building Iraq?s weapons. The new inspections regimen has already been compromised by its passive approach. To join the inspectors, weapons experts are obliged to resign from their national postings, but few are ready to give up their careers to work in the UN bureaucracy. Thus, the UN team is much smaller and less experienced than its predecessors, and faces Iraqi counterparts steeped in the art of deception. I fear that the inspections effort is not intended to uncover the full extent of Iraq?s illegal weapons programme. The Europeans are treating Iraq as a prize to be denied the US, not as a strategic danger. What drives the inspections is fear of an American invasion. The Americans will be accommodated up to the point that their attack is forestalled. On December 8, Iraq is obliged to declare formally its full weapons programme. We can expect the inspectors to be flooded with information about everything but the actual weapons. It is will be vintage Saddam: diversion with no real revelations. The real test will be for the Americans. Either they get the information they need, or the game will be over. Saddam will be the winner, ready to play another day. ?DT_PS *Khidhir Hamza is a former Advisor to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Organization and former Director of Iraq?s Nuclear Weapons Programme. He is the co-author of ?Saddam?s Bombmaker.?* Daily Times - All Rights Reserved Site developed and hosted by WorldCALL Internet Solutions ***************************************************************** 2 NRC Withdraws Direct Final Rule Clarifying Use of Electronic Communications with Agency NRC: News Release - 2002-138 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] www.nrc.gov No. 02-138 December 4, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has withdrawn a direct final rule that would have amended its rules to clarify when and how licensees and other members of the public might use electronic means to communicate with the agency. The NRC is taking the action because it has received a significant number of adverse comments on the rule. These comments will now be considered regarding an identical proposed rule published concurrently with the direct final rule. They will be addressed by the NRC in a later final rule. Last September, the agency published a direct final rule in the Federal Register amending its regulations to clarify when and how all members of the public might communicate with it through use of electronic media. The rule included guidance on how to submit documents to the agency electronically. The direct rule and guidance were scheduled to become effective on December 5. The NRC also concurrently published for comment an identical proposed rule on September 6, which stated that if any significant adverse comments were received, timely notice of the withdrawal of the direct final rule would be published in the Federal Register. In addition, it noted that no rule and guidance would take effect until the comments had been addressed and text of the rule revised, if necessary. The NRC, in fact, received several adverse comments on the rule and, as a result, is withdrawing the direct final rule. Neither the rule nor the guidance appended to it will take effect on December 5. The agency will now treat the comments on the proposed companion rule and address them in a later final rule. The NRC will not initiate a second comment period on the rule. For more information about the withdrawal, please contact John Skoczlas at 301-415-7186, e-mail EIE@nrc.gov [EIE@nrc.gov] , or Brenda Shelton, at 301-415-7233, e-mail bjs1@nrc.gov [bjs1@nrc.gov] . Wednesday, December 04, 2002 ***************************************************************** 3 NRC Issues Final Rule on Material Control And Accounting Regulations NRC: News Release - 2002- 139 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov [opa@nrc.gov] www.nrc.gov No. 02-139 December 4, 2002 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is issuing a final rule on its material control and accounting regulations for nuclear power plants, fuel cycle facilities and other licensees that possess 350 grams or more of special nuclear materials (uranium-233, enriched uranium, or plutonium). The amendments are procedural in nature, and of themselves, have no significant impact on public health and safety, the environment, or common defense and security. The rule is designed to streamline the regulatory process and provide additional flexibility to licensees. It amends the frequency and timing of reporting requirements for certain licensees for submitting material balance and inventory composition reports. The rule does not impact efforts to fulfill the requirements of the safeguards agreement between the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Prior to the rule, most licensees who possessed 350 grams or more of special nuclear material were required to file two reports each year, for the periods ending March 31 and September 30. The final rule requires those licensees to file the report only once a year, within 60 days of conducting a physical inventory. The rule also broadens the previous exclusion from the requirement to perform an environmental assessment. Currently, no such assessment is needed for the initial approval of safeguard plans; however, the rule does not specifically exclude amendments to those plans. The final rule adds language to clearly state that no environmental assessment is needed before approving an amendment for a safeguards plan to rectify this omission. In addition, the rule seeks to develop risk-informed safeguards requirements for certain types of facilities licensed to possess and use between one and five kilograms of moderate to highly enriched special nuclear material. Currently, there is only one such facility in this category, General Atomics Inc. of La Jolla, Calif., which is undergoing decommissioning. Previously, some requirements for these facilities were more restrictive than those for facilities licensed to possess larger amounts of highly enriched nuclear materials. With the new rule, material control and accounting requirements will be more consistent with the safeguards risk posed by the various types of facilities. A proposed rule on this subject was published in the Federal Register last May. The comment period closed the following August, and a total of four comment letters were received from the industry, the Nuclear Energy Institute and a consulting firm. Wednesday, December 04, 2002 ***************************************************************** 4 Govt open to foreign investment in nuclear power December 05, 2002 | 15:38 IST The government is open to specific offers of foreign investment in the nuclear power sector, Minister of State for Atomic Energy and Space Vasundhara Raje said on Thursday. She informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply that the government would allow specific investment offers from the Indian private sector as well in the nuclear power sector. However, the government has not received any concrete proposals to set up nuclear power plants in the country. ''Such offers, when received, would have to be considered under the prevalent rules and regulations,'' she said. Source: UNI ALSO READ: [http://www.rediff.com/money/index.htm] [rediff.com]   © 2002 rediff.com India Limited. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 New plant would test nuclear-fuel production The Plain Dealer 12/05/02 From staff and wire reports Ohio will be the site of a $150 million facility that will test a new way to produce nuclear fuel, the project operator said yesterday. USEC Inc. also had considered Kentucky for the work on centrifuge technology, which was tested by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1980s before being abandoned. The company said it chose its Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio in part because the plant has buildings from previous testing, which saves time and money. The Ohio site also has less risk of an earthquake because USEC's sister plant in Paducah, Ky., is near the New Madrid, Mo., fault. USEC President William Timbers would not release details on what each state offered. The company plans to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the test facility early next year. Construction on the plant in Piketon, Ohio, would begin in 2004 with operations starting in 2005. The test project would bring about 50 new jobs, USEC said. USEC has pledged to build a permanent plant by 2010 that would use the new technology to process uranium into nuclear fuel for use at commercial power plants. A permanent operation would employ 500 to 600 people and cost up to $1.5 billion. USEC, a privatized federal corporation, ceased uranium-enrichment production at its southern Ohio plant last year and consolidated operations at Paducah. The Ohio plant remains on standby, with 1,350 workers maintaining it. The Energy Department funds the standby operations and cleanup work. U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, who joined Timbers in making the announcement, said the test project is good news for a community that has been devastated by job losses. "The issue of the Portsmouth facility has been an up and down bumpy road over the years," he said. "The future of nuclear fuel belongs in Piketon and this test plant will give us the chance to prove it." In centrifuge processing, which is used in several other countries, uranium molecules are separated by gravity in tall, spinning cylinders, allowing technicians to extract enriched uranium and waste. The method uses 10 percent of the power needed for the 1940s-era gaseous diffusion process and produces much less waste. Centrifuge technology was tested briefly at the Piketon plant before the government predicted laser technology would be the future of uranium processing. The Bush administration has pledged $70 million for fiscal year 2004, which starts in October, to clean up the never-opened Piketon plant. Dan Stout, director of enrichment technology at USEC's headquarters in Bethesda, Md., said this commitment helped Ohio's bid. © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. ***************************************************************** 6 Ohio Site Chosen for Nuclear Fuel Testing Las Vegas SUN: December 04, 2002 By MALIA RULON ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON- Ohio will be the site of a $150 million facility that will test a new way to produce nuclear fuel, the project operator announced Wednesday. USEC Inc., a Bethesda, Md.-based company, had also considered Kentucky for the work on centrifuge technology, which was tested by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1980s before being abandoned. USEC was once part of the Energy Department before being privatized. "The proposals by Kentucky and Ohio offered substantial incentives and strong community support," said William Timbers, USEC president and chief executive. He would not release details on what each state offered. The company said it chose its Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southern Ohio in part because of existing buildings from the previous testing. The Ohio site also has less risk of an earthquake because USEC's sister plant in Paducah, Ky., is near the New Madrid fault, which could mean a bigger price tag for a plant. USEC ceased uranium-enrichment production at its southern Ohio plant last year and consolidated operations at Paducah. The Ohio plant remains on standby, with 1,350 workers maintaining it, doing environmental cleanup, and transfer and shipping work. The Energy Department funds the standby operations and cleanup work. The company planned to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the test facility early next year. Construction of the plant, located in Piketon, Ohio, would begin in 2004 with operations starting in 2005. The test project will bring about 50 new jobs, USEC said. The company has pledged to build by 2010 a permanent plant that will use the new technology to process uranium into nuclear fuel for use at commercial power plants. A permanent operation would employ 500 to 600 people and cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion. The state that is host to the test project would be in a good position to be chosen for the permanent plant. In centrifuge processing, which is used in several other countries, uranium molecules are separated by gravity in tall, spinning cylinders, allowing technicians to extract enriched uranium and waste. The method uses 10 percent of the power needed for the 1940s-era gaseous diffusion process and produces much less waste. Centrifuge technology was tested briefly at the Piketon plant before the government predicted laser technology would be the future of uranium processing. USEC will continue to employ 1,000 workers and spend $500 million a year on its Kentucky plant for the next decade, Timbers said. The Paducah plant will help the company keep its market share and maintain national security while it is building the permanent centrifuge plant, he said. On the Net: [http://www.usec.com] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 7 Pyongyang Rejects IAEA Inspection Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English Updated Dec.5,2002 15:55 KST In a show of defiance, Pyongyang has turned down demands by the UN nuclear monitoring agency for inspections on all its nuclear activities. Tension in the region is escalating amid the rejection of last week's call by the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Stalinist regime to halt all activities related to an atomic weapons program, and to open "all relevant facilities to IAEA inspection and safeguards." Pyongyang's stance on the issue was made public via its official Korea Central News Agency on Wednesday, along with accusations that the agency's demand was quote "extremely unilateral" and highly reflected Washington's hostility towards the country. The report was based on a letter dispatched on Monday from Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun to the UN nuclear watchdog's director-general Mohamed El Baradei. According to IAEA officials Minister Paek's reply failed to confirm nor deny the existence of an undeclared uranium enrichment program, but did insist that the North has a right to operate such a project, especially in light of threats from the United States. (Arirang TV) ***************************************************************** 8 EU Suspends Cooperation with NK Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English Updated Dec.5,2002 17:18 KST by Kwon Kyung-bok (kkb@chosun.com) European Union Ambassador to Seoul Dorian Prince said Thursday, North Korea's confession that it had a secret uranium enrichment program meant planned cooperation with Pyongyang, including the transfer of technology and the introduction of North Korean products to the European market, had been suspended. Ambassador Prince told a press conference at the Lotte Hotel that future cooperation with the EU would only be possible when the North scraps the nuclear program. He noted the EU, which has endeavored to get North Korea to join the international community since 1999, was shocked by North Korea's admission that it was developing a nuclear program in head-on violation of international agreements, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Prince said, however, the EU supports settlement of the problem through dialogue, and for this will continue to provide humanitarian assistance and food aid while opening the door to talks with the North. Many European businesses are interested in the North Korean economy, Ambassador Prince said, but the uncertainty of North Korea's political situation and reliable economic statistics were problems. ***************************************************************** 9 Robert Fisk: We are being set up for a war against Saddam Independent.co.uk 4 December 2002 15:01 GMT The inspections are going unhindered. And what does Bush tell us? 'The signs are not encouraging' In North Carolina last month, a woman attending a lecture I was giving asked me when America would go to war in Iraq. I told her to watch the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post for the first smear campaigns against the UN inspectors. And bingo, right on time, the smears have begun. One of the UN inspectors, it's now stated ? a man appointed at the behest of the State Department ? is involved with pornography. Another senior official, we're now told ? again appointed at the urging of the State Department ? was previously fired from his job as head of a nuclear safety agency. Why, I wonder, did the Americans want these men on the inspection team? So they could trash it later? Actually, the official drubbing of the UN inspectors began way back in September when The New York Times announced, over Judith Miller's by-line, that the original inspections team may be on a "mission impossible". The source was "some officials (sic) and former inspectors". Now President George Bush is banging on again about the Iraqi anti-aircraft defences firing at American and British pilots ? even though the no-fly zones have nothing to do with the UN inspections nor, indeed, anything to do with the UN at all. The inspections appear to be going unhindered in Baghdad. And what does George Bush tell us? "So far the signs are not encouraging." What does this mean? Simply that America plans to go to war whatever the UN inspectors find. The New York Times ? which is now little more than a mouthpiece for scores of anonymous US "officials" ? has persuaded itself that Iraq's Arab neighbours "seem prepared to support an American military campaign". Despite all the warnings from Arab leaders, repeated over and over again, month after month, urging America not to go to war, this is the kind of nonsense being peddled in the United States. And now the British government has come up with another of its famous "dossiers"on Saddam's human rights abuses. Yes, again, we all know how vicious Saddam is. We knew about his raping rooms and his executions and his torture when we eagerly supported his invasion of Iran in 1980. So why is it being regurgitated all over again? Just take one little point in the latest British "dossier". It reveals that a certain Aziz Saleh Ahmed, a "fighter in the popular army", held a position as "violator of women's honour". Now I happen to remember that name. Was this not the same Aziz Saleh Ahmed who turned up on page 287 of a book published back in 1993 by Kanan Makiya, who formerly called himself Samir al-Khalil? Why, indeed it was. Aziz Saleh Ahmed is listed as a "fighter in the popular army" and ? you've guessed it ? "violator of women's honour". There was a controversy about the translation back at the time, but I've no doubt that there are raping rooms in Saddam's Iraq. I went inside one in the northern city of Dohuk in 1991, women's underclothes still lying on the floor. But the point is, what are we doing rehashing the Aziz Saleh Ahmad story all over again as if we've just discovered it when it's at least eight years old and ? according to Makiya ? was first seen more than a decade ago? And yet again, the Americans are trying to establish links between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in a desperate attempt to hitch the "war on terror" to the war for oil (which is what, of course, the Iraqi "crisis" is all about). Vice President Cheney has been parroting all the same nonsense about "terror" leaders and Saddam, even though Bin Laden loathes the Iraqi leader. No one ? absolutely no one ? has produced the slightest evidence that Saddam had anything to do with the international crimes against humanity of 11 September. But still we are forced to listen to this trash. Before Christmas or afterwards? I don't know. I do believe that the US 1st Infantry Division will cross the Tigris bridges into Baghdad within one week of an invasion. The first photos will show Iraqis making V for victory signs at the American tanks. The second batch of pictures will show Baath party members strung up from lamp-posts by the population they have suppressed for so many years. We will presumably use depleted uranium munitions against Iraqi armour ? the same depleted uranium that was used 11 years ago in the deserts of southern Iraq, where children are now ravaged by strange and unexplained cancers. And we will not ? repeat this one hundred times ? we will not mention oil. The most the Iraqi army will do in response to an invasion ? always assuming they don't have nuclear or chemical weapons ? will be to score a stray hit on a Stealth bomber. Who, it is worth asking, knows the name today of Sgt Zoltan Bercik, the Yugoslav Hungarian from Vojvodina who single-handedly fired a liquid-fuelled Neva missile at an American Stealth bomber over Serbia on 27 March 1999? The only man to bring down a Stealth ? and still his name remains unpublished, his story unknown. But that's remembering another war in which the cause of the conflict ? the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovo Albanians ? subtly changed shape once the war had begun and the ethnic cleansing was under way. In the meantime, Mr Bush's foreign policy advisers are busy hatching up the conflict of civilisations. Take Kenneth Adelman, who is on the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board. He's been saying that for Mr Bush to call Islam a peaceful religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make". Islam is "militaristic" in the eyes of Mr Adelman. "After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus." Then there's Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, who is also on the Pentagon board. He now argues that the "enemy" of the United States is not terrorism but "militant Islam". Mr Adelman and Mr Cohen have not vouchsafed their own religion, but Islam is clearly being targeted. Pat Robertson, the religious broadcaster ? who used to run a vile radio station in southern Lebanon which uttered threats against Muslim villagers and UN troops ? says that "Adolf Hitler was bad but what the Muslims want to do to Jews is worse." Jerry Falwell, one of the nasties of the religious right, called the Prophet a "terrorist", while Franklin Graham, son of the same Billy Graham who made those anti-Semitic remarks on the Nixon tapes, has called Islam "evil". And Graham, remember, spoke at Bush's inauguration. We ignore all this dangerous rhetoric at our peril. Does Mr Blair ignore it? Isn't he aware that there are some very sinister people hovering around George Bush? Does he really think Britons are going to be cheer-led into war by "dossiers" and the constant reheating of Saddam's crimes? Don't we want the UN inspectors to do their work? No, I rather think that we are being set up for war, that Britain will join America in invading Iraq, whatever the inspectors discover. In fact, we are being prepared for the awful, incredible, unspeakable possibility that the UN inspectors will find absolutely no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That will leave us with only one conclusion: they were no good at their job. They should have been in the oil business. , which wants to increase its stake in Ontario's Bruce Power nuclear generator, is not a viable candidate as it has no experience running nuclear stations. Toronto-based Energy Probe said it has written to Canada's nuclear watchdog to protest against the possible takeover of Bruce Power by a Cameco-led consortium from cash-strapped British Energy Plc . Cameco, the world's biggest uranium producer, owns 15 percent of Bruce Power and is looking to increase its stake to about 50 percent. Media reports speculate Cameco will likely partner with TransCanada PipeLines and merchant bank Borealis Capital Corp. to buy out the 82 percent stake held by British Energy. "We believe these parties are not competent to be responsible for the nuclear facility," said Tom Adams, executive director of Energy Probe, which informs consumers on energy-related issues. "We don't think they should be granted a license until they have demonstrated competence. And we don't see them doing that any time soon." Adams said Energy Probe has written a letter to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), an independent federal agency that is the country's nuclear regulator, asking it to intervene in the sale of British Energy's stake. "Just as CNSC has recognized that even a well-regulated and shut down nuclear station cannot be safe in the hands of an insolvent operator, we would urge you to recognize that even a well-regulated nuclear station cannot be safe in the hands of an inexperienced operator with no demonstrated competence in this field," the letter reads. Cameco said Energy Probe's argument is a red herring because the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based company sees ownership and operation as two different issues. "We believe our task is to secure financing. Nothing will change in terms of management or operations," Cameco spokesman Jamie McIntyre said. The CNSC, which has the power to deny operating licenses for nuclear stations, did not comment on the viability of Cameco but said the agency makes sure that operators of nuclear stations know how to do their jobs safely. "We work to ensure that operators of nuclear power plants are compliant with regulations," Tim O'Connor, a spokesman for the CNSC, said. Bruce Power, a 6,140 megawatt nuclear station on Lake Huron, northwest of Toronto, provides about 15 percent of the electricity used in Ontario, the corporate and industrial heartland of Canada. British Energy said last week it might have to start insolvency proceedings if it could not meet deadlines to reach deals with creditors and dispose of assets. The firm is currently maintaining operations through a mass infusion of cash from the British government. British Energy's stake in Bruce Power is estimated to be worth between C$1.5 billion and C$2 billion ($960 million and $1.3 billion). Bruce Power said on Tuesday that new owners could be found before Christmas, well ahead of a mid-February deadline for British Energy to offload its stake. ($1=$1.56 Canadian) Copyright © 2002 Morningstar Research Inc. ***************************************************************** 11 Reuters AlertNet - Pyongyang on 'dangerous course' to nuclear arms-US [Hidden Link to skip straight to Top Navigation menu] [Hidden Link to skip straight to Left Navigation menu] [Hidden Link to skip straight to Main Content area] [Reuters Foundation Logo] [AlertNet banner image] [Right hand side of AlertNet banner] About AlertNet | Contact Us | Feedback Sunday, 8 December 2002 Search [Breadcrumb indicator] Home > the News > Newsdesk > Pyongyang on 'dangerous course' to nucle ... Log in Need a password? Self Registration How to post Become member NGO Get weekly email THE NEWS Newsdesk From the Field THE FACTS Relief Resources Country Profiles Satellite Images THE PEOPLE Members Suppliers Suppliers Reports Jobs THE EVENTS Diary Training --> VIEWPOINT Sanctions are ruining Iraq's water supplies --> --> SPOTLIGHT CESVI: helping Afghans get back their lives --> --> APPEAL OF THE WEEK HIV/AIDS stigma -- what can we do? --> NEWSDESK 05 Dec 2002 18:38 Pyongyang on 'dangerous course' to nuclear arms-US ----------------------------------------------------------------- By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday that the situation in North Korea was "very serious" and that Pyongyang had embarked on a dangerous course after defiantly violating agreements not to develop nuclear arms. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jun and they spoke with reporters a day after the North rejected a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency to open its nuclear arms program to inspections. Rumsfeld said the defense chiefs discussed military contingency plans for the tense peninsula, but refused to give details. They stressed that the crisis should be resolved using combined political pressure on North Korea from Washington, Seoul, Japan, Russia, China and the European Union. "There is no question but that the situation in North Korea is very serious. They have violated several agreements and proceeded on a very dangerous course," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon media briefing after an annual Security Consultative Meeting with the South Koreans. The United States says North Korea admitted in October to enriching uranium secretly for a weapons program. Pyongyang will neither confirm nor deny whether it actually has nuclear weapons. But it says it is entitled to have them despite treaty pledges to stay nonnuclear because it is under nuclear threat from Washington, which has branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil." THREATENS WORLD PEACE - LEE "The North Korean nuclear issue is a serious problem that threatens peace on the Korean Peninsula, in Northeast Asia and the world. And this can be tolerated under no circumstances," Lee told reporters. "Now that North Korea has confessed to developing nuclear weapons I believe that (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-il must assume full responsibility in resolving this issue in a verifiable manner." He also said that the North had in ongoing discussions with Japan suggested that it might back away from earlier assurances and resume testing of its Taepodong-2 long-range ballistic missile. But in response to U.S. pressure on Seoul to curb ongoing cooperation with the North in a number of domestic areas in order to increase pressure on Pyongyang over the nuclear issue, Lee said that such ties were needed to maintain dialogue. "With regard to various ongoing exchanging cooperation projects with North Korea, I told my counterpart Secretary Rumsfeld that we have to maintain these projects because they allow us to maintain a dialogue channel with North Korea," he said. "While we should exert pressure, we must also seek to devise a harmonious resolution." Rumsfeld was asked if the two men discussed contingency plans in view of the escalating tension over the nuclear issue. DO NOT DISCUSS PLANNING "The answer is yes," he said, adding that "we don't discuss contingency plans publicly." "Our job at defense ministries is to plan. It is to be arranged to deter and to defend our people. It means we need to plan and be arranged for any conceivable contingency. And that is what we have done successfully for some 50 years. That's what we're doing today and that's what we will do in the future." North Korea said on Wednesday that the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, was supporting U.S. policy toward the North. Any nuclear weapons program violates the terms of Pyongyang's membership in the IAEA and several treaties and agreements signed with the United States and South Korea. Rumsfeld and Lee on Thursday also discussed the so-called Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Seoul which governs the legal handling of U.S. troops in South Korea who are accused of committing crimes there. Rumsfeld said he did not see any need for change in the most recent agreement, which was signed two years ago. But told Lee "how profoundly we regret" the deaths of two South Korean teen-age girls killed in a traffic accident in June by a U.S. Army vehicle. That accident has sparked public rallies in South Korea demanding that the soldiers involved in the accident be punished under Korean criminal law after they were acquitted in a U.S. military court martial. ----------------------------------------------------------------- [Print this story] Printable view [email to a friend] Email this article [give us some feedback] Send comments AlertNet news is provided by COUNTRIES More > [Bullet point] China [Bullet point] Korea (South) [Bullet point] North Korea FROM THE FIELD More > [Bullet point] AIDS awareness programmes in China [Bullet point] Impact of AIDS worsens African famine [Bullet point] ICRC Press release No. 02/71 [Bullet point] Commission provides humanitarian aid worth EUR 1.72 million for China [Bullet point] Landslides crush villages in Wuding County of Yunnan Province NEWSDESK More > [Bullet point] U.S. to hold senior talks with Chinese military [Bullet point] U.S. envoy to talk on Iraq, North Korea in Asia [Bullet point] Six killed, six injured in S.Korea inn fire [Bullet point] Hong Kong shapes up to beat economic woes [Bullet point] China blames crash on passenger, hails air police Legal | Partners | Contact Us ***************************************************************** 12 Group slams N-charge against Pakistan Daily Times /Staff Report/ WASHINGTON: The Association of Pakistani Professionals, a New Jersey-based organisation of Pakistani-Americans, has condemned the ?recent propaganda against Pakistan? that it supplied uranium enrichment technology to North Korea in exchange for missiles. S. Asif Alam of the Association said in a statement, ?Some members of Congress have started talking about sanctions against Pakistan. These critics have emerged prior to any fact-finding by any authorised investigatory body, and despite firm denials by both the government in Islamabad and the Pakistani Embassy. President Musharraf has assured the United States that exchange of such information is not now taking place. Even, if it did take place once, the world should not be led to believe that Pakistan did so out of spite for the West. Indeed, given its location and the neighbourhood it lives in, the exchange, in case it ever took place, may well have been justified.? Alam said American leaders should act responsibly and not let America?s political course be steered by emotion divorced from factual information. Pakistan could not afford another extended period of disengagement or Pressler-style sanctions. It was entirely that kind of cold shouldering which created a climate in Pakistan that made people believe that America simply doesn?t care about such a good friend and ally, he added. He said the Association had started a drive which includes letters to the Secretary of State urging him and his Department to ?act sensibly and rationally? towards Pakistan. Daily Times - All Rights Reserved Site developed and hosted by WorldCALL Internet Solutions ***************************************************************** 13 US 'losing favour around world' Daily Telegraph: [05dec02] Source: AFP By Erika Pontarelli in Washington THE United States' image around the globe is eroding, particularly in Muslim nations, according to an international poll. The Pew Global Attitudes survey of more than 38,000 people in 44 nations found the US image was worse in 2002 than it was two years ago in 19 of the 27 nations for which data was available for both years. It also found there were deep concerns over a potential war with Iraq. In Turkey, the number of people with a positive view of the United States was down 22 percentage points from 1999-2000, to 30 per cent. In Pakistan, the figure plunged 13 points, to 10 per cent. Some 69 per cent of those polled in Egypt had an unfavourable view of the United States, as did 75 per cent in Jordan. "The most serious problem facing the US abroad is its very poor public image in the Muslim world," the Pew study of "What the World Thinks in 2002" declared. The United States made gains, however, in Nigeria, where it added 31 "positive" points to 77 per cent; in Uzbekistan, where it gained 29 points, to 85 per cent; and notably in Russia, where it picked up 24 points, to 61 per cent. President George W. Bush sought to defend the United States in the face of the unfavourable findings. "The Muslim world will eventually realise, if they don't now, that we believe in freedom. And we respect all individuals," he said at the White House today. "The best thing we can do is to show results from our activities and be able to point to the fact that not only did we liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban, we remain in place with a lot of aid and a lot of help. "And the suffering of the human condition is improving. And suffering is less because of the United States of America." In keeping with sentiments aired at the United Nations and on the international stage, the poll found majorities in France, Germany and Russia opposed ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein militarily. More than three-quarters of those polled in Russia and France felt that oil was Washington's main motivation for mulling a war with Iraq. The poll showed Washington's allies still viewed it in a largely positive light, though the figures were declining. In Britain, Canada and Italy, at least 70 per cent of those polled looked favourably on the United States, while about 60 per cent in France and Germany did. In the majority of cases, however, US favour had deteriorated over the past two years. "We have to listen to what is coming from these countries and get a better sense of what the issues are," urged former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright. "It is still in the US national interest to understand what others think about us." © Mirror Australian Telegraph Publications ***************************************************************** 14 DNFSB nuclear safety FR Doc 02-30837 [Federal Register: December 5, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 234)] [Notices] [Page 72413-72417] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05de02-28] DEFENSE NUCLEAR FACILITIES SAFETY BOARD [Pub. L. 106-554] Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Disseminated Information AGENCY: Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. ACTION: Notice. SUMMARY: The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB or Board) implements these Guidelines pursuant to Section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001, Public Law 106-554, and government-wide Guidelines issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), OMB Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies, 67 FR 8452 (Feb. 22, 2002) (OMB Guidelines). The purpose is to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, including statistical information, disseminated by Federal agencies that are subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act, 44 U.S.C. 3502(1). As is the intent of OMB's Guidelines, DNFSB's Guidelines will focus primarily on the dissemination of substantive information rather than information pertaining to basic agency operations. The Guidelines also apply to information other parties provide to the Board, if the other parties seek to have the Board rely upon or disseminate this information or if the Board decides to rely upon or disseminate the information. These Guidelines are suggestions, recommendations, and policy views of the DNFSB. They are not intended to be, and should not be construed as, legally binding regulations or mandates. They do not create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity, by any party against the United States, its agencies (including the Board or DNFSB), officers, or employees, or any person. Changes to the final Guidelines in this notice have been made in response to OMB's comments on the Board's draft Guidelines issued September 17, 2002. No public comments were received by the Board. DATES: The Guidelines are effective October 1, 2002. ADDRESSES: The Board will publish its information quality standards on its Web site: http://www.dnfsb.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.dnfsb.gov] . FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Joseph Neubeiser, Chief Information Officer, Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 625 Indiana Avenue, NW., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004-2901, (202) 694-7000. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Table of Contents: I. Definitions II. Information Quality Principles III. The Board's Role in Public Information Dissemination IV. The Board's Commitment to Quality Information Dissemination V. Pre-Dissemination Information Quality Review VI. Development of Quality Information and Data VII. Transparency of Underlying Data and Methods VIII. Integrity of Board Information and Data IX. Documentation X. Administrative Mechanism for Seeking Correction of Information XI. Compliance, Reporting, and Effective Date Appendix A. Section 515 Administrative Correction Mechanism I. Definitions The definitions set forth below are consistent with the definitions provided in the OMB Guidelines. Unless otherwise stated, information dissemination outside the scope of these definitions is not subject to these Guidelines. A. ``Information'' means any communication or representation of knowledge such as facts or data, not opinion, in any medium or form. Information includes textual, numerical, graphic, cartographic, narrative, or audiovisual forms. This definition also includes information that the Board disseminates from its Web page, but does not include the provision of hyperlinks to information that others disseminate. This definition does not include Board opinions or conclusions. This definition also does not include information that the Board has indicated is someone's individual opinion. B. ``Dissemination'' means agency initiated or sponsored distribution of information intended for the public; excluding: 1. Information not intended for public dissemination; 2. Distribution intended only for government employees or contractors; 3. Procedural, operational, policy, and internal documents prepared for the management and operations of the Board that are not primarily intended for public dissemination; 4. Information designated as ``Classified,'' ``Unclassified Controlled Nuclear Information,'' or ``Official Use Only''; 5. Outdated or superseded information; 6. Government information intended for intra- or inter-agency use or sharing; 7. Information items intended for inter-agency transmittals or congressional compliance and provided to members of the public as a courtesy (e.g., weekly site representative reports, technical reports, letters); 8. Responses to requests for agency records under the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act or other similar law; 9. Other correspondence with individuals or persons not intended for public dissemination, including, but not limited to, written agreements with particular entities or parties, responses to specific requests for advisory opinions or other advice; 10. Press releases, fact sheets, press conferences or similar communications in any medium that announce, support the announcement, or give public notice of information the Board has disseminated elsewhere; 11. Archival records (e.g., library materials); 12. Public filings, including, but not limited to, submissions in rulemakings or other Board proceedings or matters, requests, petitions, applications, supporting materials, etc. The Guidelines do not apply when the Board distributes this information simply to provide the public with quicker and easier access to materials submitted to the Board that are publicly available. This will generally be the case if the Board has not authored the filings, is not distributing the information in a manner that suggests that the Board endorses or adopts the information, and does not indicate in its distribution that it is using or proposing the use of the information to formulate or support a regulation, guidance, or other Board decision or position; 13. Opinions presented to Congress in response to Congressional requests or statutes and not intended for dissemination to the public; 14. Subpoenas or discovery orders issued in proceedings or court litigation, Orders, opinions, amicus, and other briefs. Adjudicative processes also include factual allegations by the staff during the investigative and litigative [[Page 72414]] phases of cases brought by or participated in by the Board. Because there are well-established procedural safeguards and rights to address the quality of factual allegations and adjudicatory decisions, and to provide persons with an opportunity to contest decisions, these Guidelines do not impose any additional requirements on the Board during adjudicative proceedings and do not provide parties to such proceedings any additional rights of challenge or appeal; 15. Legally required disclosures, notices, or other information disseminated by persons or entities other than the Board, where the text of such disclosures, notices, or information is not explicitly prescribed or specified by the Board itself; and 16. Studies, statements, other issuances, or publications by Board employees, officials, contractors, consultants, or others who may be or have been paid, employed, or retained by the Board, where the issuance or publication is not represented as being an official position of the Board or used by the Board in support of its official position. Conversely, if the Board has directed a third party to disseminate information or retains the authority to review and approve the information upon release, then the Board has sponsored the dissemination of the information and the information may be considered a Board dissemination. C. ``Information dissemination product'' means any book, paper, map, machine-readable material, audiovisual production, or other documentary material, regardless of physical form or characteristic, the agency disseminates to the public. This definition includes any electronic document, storage media, or Web page. D. ``Quality'' is an encompassing term comprising utility, objectivity, and integrity. E. ``Utility'' refers to the usefulness of the information to its intended users, including the public. When transparency of information is relevant for assessing the information's usefulness from the public's perspective, transparency is addressed to the extent practicable and appropriate in the Board's review of the information. There may be legal limitations, however, on the Board's ability to make publicly available the data or methods underlying a particular information dissemination product, and persons seeking access to such data or methods must comply with certain Board requirements and procedures for requesting such access. F. ``Objectivity'' involves two distinct elements, presentation, and substance: 1. ``Objectivity'' includes whether disseminated information is being presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner, including whether the information is presented within a proper context and identifying the source of the disseminated information to the extent possible in light of confidentiality protections, if any. In a scientific, financial, or statistical context, the Board may make supporting data and models publicly available so the public can assess whether there may be reasons to question the objectivity of the sources. Where appropriate, data should have full, accurate, transparent documentation, and error sources affecting data quality should be identified and disclosed to users, subject to any applicable restrictions on disclosure. 2. ``Objectivity'' also involves a focus on ensuring accurate, reliable, and unbiased information. In a scientific, financial, or statistical context, original and supporting data are normally generated, and the analytic results are normally developed, using sound statistical and research methods. 3. To ensure ``objectivity'' in instances where the Board is responsible for disseminating ``influential scientific, financial, or statistical information,'' the Board shall ensure transparency of data and methods to facilitate the reproducibility of such information by qualified third parties, consistent with any applicable limitations on disclosure. 4. When relying upon third party information, the Board will notify the public if the disseminated information has not been reviewed by the Board, but that the third party attests that the quality of the information is consistent with the Data Quality Act and the OMB Guidelines; G. ``Integrity'' refers to the security of information, i.e., protection of the information from unauthorized access or revision, to ensure that the information is not compromised through corruption or falsification. H. ``Influential,'' when used in the phrase ``influential scientific, financial, or statistical information,'' means that the Board can reasonably determine that dissemination of information, prepared for public distribution, will have or does have a clear and substantial impact on important public policies or important private sector decisions. Whether a particular Board information dissemination product is ``influential'' will depend on the nature of the issues for which the Board is responsible and the relationship of the information dissemination product to those issues. In non-rulemaking contexts, the Board will consider two factors- breadth and intensity-in determining whether information is influential. The Board will consider whether the information affects a broad range of parties. Information that affects a broad, rather than narrow, range of parties is more likely to be influential. The Board will also consider the intensity of the information's impact. Information that has a modest impact on affected parties is less likely to be influential than information that can have a significant impact. The definition applies to ``information'' itself, not to decisions that the information may support. Even if a decision or action by the Board is itself very important, a particular piece of information supporting it may or may not be ``influential.'' I. ``Reproducibility'' means that the information is capable of being substantially reproduced, subject to an acceptable degree of imprecision. As provided in the OMB Guidelines, this standard does not apply to all agency information or data, but only to ``influential scientific or statistical information,'' if any, disseminated by DNFSB. 1. Original or supporting data: The Board may identify and/or limit the specific types of such data that can practicably be ``reproduced,'' given ethical, feasibility, or confidentiality constraints and, in doing so, may consult, as needed, with relevant scientific and technical communities. The Board shall assure reproducibility for those kinds of original and supporting data according to commonly accepted scientific, financial, or statistical standards. 2. Analytic results relating to original or supporting data: All analytic results shall undergo robustness checks through the Board's rigorous internal quality review process. 3. Analysis of risks to human health, safety, and the environment disseminated by the Board, if any: The Board will apply, as appropriate and feasible, the standards set forth in the Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 300g-1(b)(3)(A), and when promulgating regulations the Board will apply, as appropriate and feasible, the standards set forth in the Safe Drinking Water Act, 42 U.S.C. Section 300g- 1(b)(3)(B). J. ``Affected persons'' are people who may use, benefit from, or be harmed by the disseminated information. [[Page 72415]] II. Information Quality Principles The following quality principles apply as a matter of policy to information disseminated by the Board: A. Information that the Board prepares for public dissemination, including factual or statistical data, shall meet basic standards of quality, including objectivity, utility, and integrity. B. The Board treats information quality as an integral part of achieving its performance goals and shall take appropriate steps to incorporate information quality criteria into information dissemination practices. C. The specific quality standards that the Board adopts in a particular case shall be appropriate for the type of information being disseminated. These Guidelines explain how the Board achieves information quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity. The Guidelines also describe the administrative mechanism by which affected persons may seek correction of Board disseminated information that they believe does not comply with Section 515, OMB Guidelines, or Board Guidelines. III. Board's Role in Public Information Dissemination Section 315 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, 42 U.S.C. Section 2286d requires the Board to: (a) Public availability and comment. Subject to subsections (g) and (h) and after receipt by the Secretary of Energy of any recommendations from the Board under section 2286a of this title (section 312 of the Atomic Energy Act), the Board promptly shall make such recommendations available to the public in the Department of Energy's regional public reading rooms and shall publish in the Federal Register such recommendations and a request for the submission to the Board of public comments on such recommendations. Interested persons shall have 30 days after the date of the publication of such notice in which to submit comments, data, views, or arguments to the Board concerning the recommendations. (b) Response by Secretary. (1) The Secretary of Energy shall transmit to the Board, in writing, a statement on whether the Secretary accepts or rejects, in whole or in part, the recommendations submitted to him by the Board under section 2286a of this title (section 312 of the Atomic Energy Act), a description of the actions to be taken in response to the recommendations, and his views on such recommendations. The Secretary of Energy shall transmit his response to the Board within 45 days after the date of the publication, under subsection (a) of this section, of the notice with respect to such recommendations or within such additional period, not to exceed 45 days, as the Board may grant. (2) At the same time as the Secretary of Energy transmits his response to the Board under paragraph (1), the Secretary, subject to subsection (h) of this section, shall publish such response, together with a request for public comment on his response, in the Federal Register. (3) Interested persons shall have 30 days after the date of the publication of the Secretary of Energy's response in which to submit comments, data, views, or arguments to the Board concerning the Secretary's response. (4) The Board may hold hearings for the purpose of obtaining public comments on its recommendations and the Secretary of Energy's response. (c) Provision of information to Secretary. The Board shall furnish the Secretary of Energy with copies of all comments, data, views, and arguments submitted to it under subsection (a) or (b) of this section. IV. The Board's Commitment to Quality Information Dissemination In carrying out its functions, the Board strives to ensure that the information it prepares for public dissemination reflects a level of quality appropriate to the anticipated use of the information. The Board disseminates information consistent with applicable disclosure restrictions (e.g., classified information). V. Pre-Dissemination Information Quality Review The Board will review the quality (including objectivity, utility, and integrity) of information before it is disseminated and treat information quality as integral to every step of the Board's development of information, including creation, collection, maintenance, and dissemination. When appropriate, the Board will demonstrate in its Paperwork Reduction Act clearance packages that each information collection will result in information that will be collected, maintained, and used in a way consistent with the OMB and Board information quality standards. Internal agency review: The Board performs robust internal reviews to ensure information quality--including objectivity, utility, and integrity--before such information is disseminated. 1. Information disseminated to the public by the Board is normally subject to one or more levels of internal staff, supervisory, or Board review for quality before such information may be disseminated. 2. The number of levels of internal quality review applied in a particular case depends on the nature, scope, and purpose of the information to be disseminated. Public comment: In rulemakings and certain other agency matters (e.g., Recommendations), information or data may also be subject to public comment. This public comment process provides an opportunity for interested parties, including persons who may be most affected by the dissemination, to corroborate or dispute the objectivity, utility, or integrity of the information or data. In these cases, the Board may provide public access to the underlying data or methods used by the Board (e.g., statistical models, assumptions), to the extent the Board deems relevant to information quality and consistent with controlling law. VI. Development of Quality Information and Data Information quality is integral to the development of information that will ultimately be disseminated, including its creation, collection, and maintenance. This process shall enable the Board to substantiate the quality of the information it has disseminated through documentation or other means appropriate to the information. The strategies that the Board employs to develop quality information and data include, for example: A. Using a variety of methods and sources to solicit relevant and reliable information, such as: 1. Voluntary and compulsory methods; 2. Invitations for public comment; 3. Public hearings; and 4. Meetings with public groups, labor representatives and organizations, and industry and professional groups. B. Soliciting public comment specifically on paperwork burden estimates of information collection activities sponsored by the Board and subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act, if applicable. C. Conducting independent legal, economic, or statistical research as the Board deems appropriate, using an array of government and private commercial and non-profit databases, agency surveys and questionnaires, etc. VII. Transparency of Underlying Data and Methods Consistent with applicable laws, regulations, orders, and policies, the Board shall make underlying data and methods (e.g., sources and assumptions) used for ``influential scientific or statistical information'' available to the public as is appropriate. OMB Guidelines, para. V.3.b.ii. Where public access to ``influential scientific or statistical'' data and methods will not occur due to other compelling interests, the Board shall [[Page 72416]] apply rigorous checks to analytic results and document what checks were undertaken. The types of these checks, and the level of detail for documentation thereof, shall depend on the nature of the issues for which the Board is responsible. OMB Guidelines, para. V.3.b.ii.B.ii. To the extent that underlying data or methods are not part of the Board's public record or otherwise published or publicly available, persons seeking access to such data or methods are required to follow applicable Board requirements and procedures for seeking such access. In all cases, the interest in the transparency of the Board's data and methods shall not override other compelling interests such as national security, privacy, trade secrets, intellectual property, and other confidentiality protections. OMB Guidelines, para. V.b.3.ii.B.i. VIII. Integrity of Board Information and Data To preserve the integrity of information and data that the Board may ultimately disseminate, the Board takes appropriate measures to ensure that the security of information and data is not compromised while it is being collected, maintained, or used by the agency. OMB Guidelines, para. V.4. These measures are intended to be consistent with legal requirements such as the Computer Security Act, 40 U.S.C. 759; the Government Information Security Reform Act, 44 U.S.C. 3531, et seq.; the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. Section 552a; and any other applicable laws, regulations, orders, agreements, or guidance. These measures extend to Board contractors, consultants, experts or others to the extent such information or data are shared with them on a non-public basis. IX. Documentation When necessary or appropriate, the Board substantiates the quality of the information it has disseminated through documentation or other means appropriate to the information. OMB Guidelines, para. III.2. With respect to pre-dissemination review, this documentation may include intra-or inter-agency memoranda or communications, or other records or materials, including, where applicable, underlying data or methods, demonstrating that the information has been reviewed internally by appropriate agency staff or officials before it is disseminated to the public. As provided in the OMB Guidelines, the Board will submit a report to OMB describing the number, nature, and resolution of information correction requests by each January 1, beginning in 2004. X. Administrative Mechanism for Seeking Correction of Information The Board shall provide and maintain a mechanism in compliance with the OMB Guidelines by which affected persons may seek timely correction of information maintained and disseminated by the Board. See Appendix A for details. XI. Compliance, Reporting, and Effective Date The Board's Chief Information Officer, or other designated Board official, shall be responsible for agency compliance with these Guidelines. The Board shall respond to complaints in a manner appropriate to the nature and extent of the complaint. Examples of appropriate responses include personal contacts via letter or telephone, form letters, press releases, or mass mailings that correct a widely disseminated error or address a frequently raised complaint. The Board shall submit (and, when required, post on its Web site, publish in the Federal Register, or otherwise make available) all reports, or notice thereof, required by Section 515 and the OMB Guidelines. Such reports shall include an annual fiscal year report submitted to the Director of OMB on the number and nature of complaints, if any, received by the Board regarding agency compliance with the OMB Guidelines and how the agency resolved such complaints. This annual report is to be submitted no later than January 1 following the end of the relevant fiscal year, with the first report due January 1, 2004. Effective Date: Pursuant to Section 515 and paragraph III.4. of the OMB Guidelines, these Board Guidelines shall become effective October 1, 2002. Previously released information that does not meet the information dissemination requirements of these Guidelines are considered archived information and are not subject to these Guidelines (e.g., DNFSB files, publications available on the Web site). If a particular distribution of information is not covered by these Guidelines, the Guidelines may still apply to a subsequent distribution of the information in which the Board adopts, endorses, or uses the information to formulate or support a regulation, guidance, or other Board decision or position. A. To the extent these Guidelines prescribe procedures for the pre- dissemination quality review of Board information, such procedures shall apply only to information that the Board first disseminates on or after that date. B. The Guidelines do not apply to outdated or superseded Board information that is provided as background information but no longer reflects Board policy or influences Board decisions. C. To the extent these Guidelines prescribe a Board administrative mechanism for affected persons to seek correction of information disseminated by the Board, that mechanism shall apply only to information that the Board disseminates on or after that date, regardless of when the Board first disseminated the information. Appendix A Administrative Correction Mechanism The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB, Board) strives to ensure that the information it disseminates to the public is of the highest quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity. To this end, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the DNFSB have issued Guidelines for ensuring and maximizing the quality of information disseminated by the DNFSB, and in accordance with Section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001, Public Law 106-554 (Section 515). You may view these Guidelines through the following Web link: http://www.dnfsb.gov [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.dnfsb.gov] . Persons affected by non-exempted Board information disseminated on or after October 1, 2002, may request that the Board correct allegedly incorrect information. How To Seek Correction of Board Information Dissemination Products: If you are seeking to obtain correction of information disseminated (as defined by the Board's Information Quality Guidelines) by the Board on or after October 1, 2002, because you believe the information does not comply with the Information Quality Guidelines issued by OMB or DNFSB, please submit your request, with the subject ``Section 515 Request,'' by e-mail to: MAILBOX@DNFSB.gov [MAILBOX@DNFSB.gov] If you send the Board an e-mail, you should know that e-mail is not necessarily secure against interception before it reaches the Board's e-mail system. Therefore, you may prefer instead to deliver or mail your Section 515 request to the following address: Chief Information Officer, C/O Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, 625 Indiana Avenue, NW., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20004. Whichever method you use, your request must specifically: [sbull] Identify the information you believe does not comply with the OMB or Board Information Quality Guidelines; [sbull] Explain why you believe the information should be corrected. If possible, provide specific recommendations for how the information should be corrected; and [sbull] Describe how you are affected by the alleged information error. [[Page 72417]] Requests for correction that are specific and provide evidence to support the need for correction will enable a timely response. Requesters should be aware that they bear the ``burden of proof'' with respect to the necessity for correction as well as with respect to the type of correction sought. To learn how we may disclose any information that you provide, please read our Privacy Policy at http://www.dnfsb.gov/privacy.htm [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leaving FR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.dnfsb.gov/privacy.htm] . To submit a correction request through this process, you must be an ``affected person'' (i.e., someone who may use, benefit from, or be harmed by the disseminated information) and your request must relate to ``information'' that is ``disseminated'' by the Board within the meaning of the Board Guidelines. You may not use these procedures to request correction of matters which are not ``dissemination'' of information as outlined in Section I.B. of the Board's Guidelines. How We Will Handle Your Section 515 Request? Processing Your Initial Request Once the appropriate Board staff member has received your request, the Board will provide an initial response to your request within 60 calendar days. If the Board is unable to provide an initial response within the 60 day period, the Board will notify you of the estimated date for an initial response. The Board will also provide you with an explanation of why its determination is delayed. Delay in the Board's response may be required if you modify your original request, if we need to clarify your request, or if we need to consult with other offices or agencies that may have an interest in the matter. The Board shall be solely responsible for determining how to respond to your request. Initial Board Response The Board's initial response will either grant or deny your request, in whole or part, and make appropriate corrections, if any. If your request relates to information in which there is an opportunity for public comment (e.g., Recommendations), you may be required to seek correction of the information through public comment, and your request will be referred to the responsible Board staff for consideration and incorporation into the record of the relevant proceeding. When appropriate, in lieu of an individualized response to your request, the Board may issue or provide you a form letter, press release, or mass mailing that corrects a widely disseminated error or that addresses a frequently raised complaint. Responses may also be posted on the Board's Web site. In all cases, the correction process shall serve to address the genuine and valid needs of the Board and its constituents without disrupting Board processes. The Board may reject claims that are made in bad faith, without justification, unlikely to have substantial future impact (e.g., harmless error), frivolous, or speculative. The Board shall undertake only the degree of correction that the Board concludes is appropriate for the nature of the information involved. In making this determination, the Board will consider such factors as the significance of the error on the use of the information and the magnitude of the error. The Board will also consider the error's relationship to Board priorities. The Board is not required to change, or in any way alter, the content or status of information simply based on the receipt of a request for correction. The Board need not respond substantively to frivolous or repetitive requests for correction. Furthermore, the Board may not respond to requests that concern information not covered by the Guidelines or from a person whom the information does not affect. Seeking Reconsideration of the Initial Response If you disagree with the Board's initial response, you will have 30 calendar days to appeal (i.e., file for reconsideration within the agency). The Board will provide a response to your request for reconsideration within 60 calendar days, unless it notifies you of a later date and explains the reason(s) for the delay. The official conducting the second level of review shall not be the same official that responded to the initial request for correction or that prepared the subject information. If the Board agrees with the appeal, it will also take steps to notify the public of its decision. Certain disseminations of information include a comprehensive public comment process (e.g., Recommendations, notices of proposed rulemaking, regulatory analyses, and requests for comment on an information collection subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act). The administrative correction mechanism described in these Guidelines does not apply to dissemination of such a document. Persons questioning information disseminated in such a document must submit comments as directed in that document. However, if the public comment process for the document will take a long time, the Board may consider complaints regarding the quality of disseminated information (as defined by the Board's Guidelines) for review under this administrative correction mechanism. When engaged in rulemaking, the Board will utilize the notice and comment process required by the Administrative Procedure Act. This process will satisfy the Section 515 administrative correction mechanism requirement. Affected persons must address any correction requests through the rulemaking comment process. Correction requests made through the Section 515 mechanism will not be considered. Information or studies relied upon and cited in rulemaking will be addressed through the rulemaking notice and comment process. If there is an existing process for reconsideration of a particular sort of information dissemination by the DNFSB, DNFSB will make use of that process. The Guidelines are not intended to and do not provide any right to judicial review. Availability of Section 515 Reports No later than each January 1, beginning in 2004, the agency is required to submit an annual fiscal year report to the OMB Director on the number and nature of Section 515 correction requests received by the Board and how the agency resolved those requests. Copies of these reports will be made publicly available through the Board's Web page. Dated: December 2, 2002. John T. Conway, Chairman. [FR Doc. 02-30837 Filed 12-4-02; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 3670-01-P ***************************************************************** 15 Nuclear referendum group gets backing from DPP Taipei Times - archives Thu, Dec 05, 2002 [http://www.taipeitimes.com/News] By Melody Chen STAFF REPORTER The Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association yesterday alleged that KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Jun-ying (¶À«T­^) lied when the group appealed for his support for a referendum on the fourth nuclear plant issue. In a bid to promote a referendum on the fourth nuclear plant, the association has been seeking support from mayoral candidates in Taipei and Kaohsiung over the past two weeks. Iap Phok-bun (¸­³Õ¤å), a member of the association, said they traveled to Huang's election headquarters to plead with him to sign an agreement to back the referendum on Nov. 23. Iap said Huang's staff told them Huang was unable to sign the agreement because he was out of the office. "As our volunteers were distributing our flyers in Huang's headquarters, one of them discovered Huang was actually presiding over a meeting there," Iap said. "It wasn't necessary for him to sign the agreement, but we were very disappointed with his dishonest attitude," Iap said. Taipei's Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (°¨­^¤E) also refused to sign the agreement, said Harch Hong (¬x²M®p), another association member. "Ma's reason for not signing the agreement is because the KMT does not support the referendum," Hong said. Meanwhile, DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Lee Ying-yuan (§õÀ³¤¸) and three other Kaohsiung mayoral candidates have said they would support a referendum. Kaohsiung Mayor Frank Hsieh (Áªø§Ê) welcomed the referendum, as did independent candidates Chang Po-ya (±i³Õ¶®) and Shih Ming-te (¬I©ú¼w). "Hsieh, although extremely busy when we visited his election headquarters, rushed back to receive us and sign the agreement," Iap said. "What moved us most is that apart from pledging to back the referendum, Hsieh also told us he would keep his word to show his determination in supporting the referendum," Iap said. This story has been viewed 203 times. Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 DAVIS-BESSE *Regulators clueless to leak extent* Thursday, December 5, 2002 *After year, NRC explains delay in shutdown order* By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER OAK HARBOR - Senior Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials suspected there might be minor leakage on the reactor head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, but they rejected a staff recommendation that the plant shut down immediately late last year because they considered the public risk "acceptably small," according to a report released yesterday. In hindsight, the agency has repeatedly admitted, it was caught off guard by the magnitude of the what was found during an inspection after the reactor was shut down Feb. 16 for refueling: the most serious corrosion ever seen on a reactor head in the United States. The extent of the damage was so severe that the NRC and other nuclear experts have since concluded that deterioration at Davis-Besse was the nation?s closest brush with a major nuclear accident since Three Mile Island in 1979. Davis-Besse?s carbon steel reactor head had been eaten away in one-half-foot area to the point that only a stainless steel liner less than a quarter of an inch thick had prevented a disastrous leak of the reactor?s radioactive steam into the concrete containment building - the last line of defense protecting the public. The discovery was made almost three weeks after FirstEnergy Corp. shut down the plant for refueling on Feb. 16, a date which utility officials had successfully negotiated after being threatened last November with what would have been the government?s first emergency shutdown order of a nuclear plant since 1987. Now, a year after the decision to allow the utility to keep operating until early 2002 - and after a great deal of prodding by anti-nuclear activists, some members of Ohio?s congressional delegation and concerned residents - the NRC has put in writing its technical justification for making that compromise. The report shows NRC officials suspected there might be some type of minor leakage with one or two of the 69 reactor-head nozzles. Uranium?enriched fuel rods are lowered and raised in the reactor to control the nuclear fission process. But the NRC report contends the agency did not have a clue as to the extent of the corrosion from boric acid leaking out of the nozzles and onto the reactor head. "To their credit, they based it [the report] on what they knew then," said David Lochbaum, a nationally recognized nuclear-safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists.. But he added yesterday?s report did little to convince him that the NRC lived up to its mandate to ignore economic considerations and hold safety tantamount. Mr. Lochbaum is one of several activists long convinced that FirstEnergy?s intensive lobbying efforts in Washington last fall persuaded the NRC to back off an immediate shut down as recommended by the staff. Instead, the NRC let Davis-Besse keep running until Feb. 16, a date they view as an arbitrary halfway mark between the proposed Dec. 31 shutdown date and the normal refueling outage cycle that the company had originally planned for March 30. "I think they just didn?t have the spine to back up their order to shut down the plant," Mr. Lochbaum said. Paul Gunter, spokesman for the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, agreed. "These are the same excuses the agency offered previously," said Mr. Gunter, who lobbied the NRC for months to put its rationale in writing. The NRC?s criminal investigation unit, as well as its Office of Inspector General, are among those still trying to determine what the NRC knew in advance of the shutdown and whether FirstEnergy illegally withheld photographs of the corrosion and other information so that the plant could remain open. FirstEnergy has denied such assertions. Richard Wilkins, FirstEnergy spokesman, said the utility knew it had a leak but that it was "under technical specifications" allowed by the NRC. "We assumed the risk to be minimal," he said. Another internal probe by a special NRC panel called the "Lessons Learned Task Force" said in a report released in October that the agency failed to live up to a commitment to document its reasoning for the February shutdown date. NRC spokesman Jan Strasma had little to say when asked why the explanation took a year to put in writing other than to state that yesterday?s report was not in response to any single occurrence. "When we notified them [FirstEnergy] we were extending the time period, we said we would be providing the NRC?s rationale in separate correspondence. That was never done. So this completes the commitment we had in that letter and also responds to requests from various stakeholders," Mr. Strasma said. NRC staff members had wanted Davis-Besse shut no later than Dec. 31 because they feared Davis-Besse might have a problem much more subtle and different than a thinned-out reactor head: tiny, circumferential cracks in reactor-head nozzles. Those type of cracks had not been seen in the industry until the spring of 2001, when they were found at a South Carolina plant manufactured by the same company that designed Davis-Besse. They are potentially more troublesome than vertical cracks because of their potential to weaken nozzles to the point they could pop off the reactor head like champagne corks, allowing radioactive steam to fill up the containment building, officials have said. As it turned out, Davis-Besse had several axial cracks and at least two of the more dangerous circumferential type, according to laboratory results and government records. The plant was one of a dozen identified by an industry group a year ago as being most susceptible to having circumferential cracks in its reactor-head nozzles. ©2002 The Blade. Privacy Statement . By using this service, The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660, (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 17 Court won't allow Three Mile Island lawsuits to be revived* December 04, 2002 *For the second time, a federal appeals court has rejected an attempt to resurrect lawsuits filed by more than 2,000 people who feared they were harmed by radiation leaking from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.* The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a lower court was correct in saying that a 1996 court ruling in favor of the plant's owners barred neighbors from introducing new medical evidence and theories to revive their claims. The court had issued a similar opinion last year, but remanded the case to a federal district court to resolve a few remaining appeal issues. During the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, a combination of mechanical and human error allowed the reactor core to lose cooling water and partially melt. Some radioactive gases were released. After thousands of people sued, saying the radiation had caused cancer and birth defects, a judge selected 10 cases to be tried first as a test of whether any of the claims were legitimate. U.S. District Chief Judge Sylvia H. Rambo ruled on behalf of the plant in the test case in 1996, and dismissed all of the suits as a result. /©NEPA News 2002/ ***************************************************************** 18 NRC Oversight Panel to Hold Two Meetings on Davis-Besse Reactor Vessel Head Damage in Port Clinton, OH NRC: News Release - Region III - 2002- 064 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region III 801 Warrenville Road, Lisle IL 60532 www.nrc.gov No. III-02-064 December 4, 2002 CONTACT: Jan Strasma (630) 829-9663 Viktoria Mitlyng (630) 829-9662 E-mail: opa3@nrc.gov [opa3@nrc.gov] The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold two meetings on Tuesday, December 10, to review the status and adequacy of recent activities at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station as a result of the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head. The plant, which has been shut down since February 16, is operated by FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company. Both meetings will be at the Camp Perry Clubhouse, 1000 Lawrence Road, Bldg. 600, in Port Clinton. The first meeting will begin at 2 p.m. (EST), when the NRC oversight panel, set up to coordinate the agency's activities associated with the corrosion damage to the reactor vessel head, will meet with utility officials. The meeting will focus on the status of repairs at the plant, results of recent NRC inspections and upcoming activities. The public is invited to observe the business portion of the meeting and will have an opportunity to make comments and ask questions of the NRC staff before the meeting is adjourned. The second meeting will begin at 7 p.m. (EST) to update the public on NRC's activities related to the reactor vessel head degradation and will provide a summary of the earlier meeting. The public will be invited to ask questions and make comments. Transcripts of both meetings will be posted on the NRC's web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head- degradation.html. The NRC oversight panel, created on April 29, includes NRC management and staff from its Region III office in Lisle, Illinois; the NRC Headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland; and the NRC Resident Inspector Office at the Davis-Besse site. Documents on the Davis-Besse corrosion issue, including further details on NRC's oversight panel activities, are posted on the NRC's web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/ops-experience/vessel-head- degradation.html. Wednesday, December 04, 2002 ***************************************************************** 19 National Guard will stay at nuclear plant (limerick) By: JOHN GENTZEL, For The Times Herald December 05, 2002 *LIMERICK - They've been a constant presence at Exelon Nuclear's Limerick Generating Station since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and thanks to a recent gubernatorial order, the National Guard will continue to join state police in protecting the nuclear facility at least until March. * On Tuesday, Gov. Mark Schweiker extended the high security presence at the state's five nuclear power plants until March 4. This is the fifth time Schweiker has extended the disaster-emergency proclamation first ordered in November 2001 - a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "As our nation continues to prepare for unknown threats of terror, we need to ensure that Pennsylvania's most sensitive facilities receive the highest level of protection we can provide," Schweiker said. "By extending the Sept. 11 disaster proclamation, we are making sure that Pennsylvania continues to do all it can to protect the safety and security of our citizens, and that funding is available to respond if we need to." Despite the constant presence of heavy artillery at the facility during the last year, plant spokeswoman Lisa Washak said the additional troop placement was not a distraction and did not disrupt plant operations. "While Exelon has every confidence in our own security force's ability to protect Limerick Generating Station, we appreciate the additional measure of security that the National Guard provides us and we welcome their continued support for as long as necessary," Washak said. In the proclamation announcing the extension, Schweiker also made an additional $300,000 in emergency funds available to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. The money may be used for disaster-related expenses incurred by state agencies and departments. "Even before Sept. 11, this administration was working with the operators of the state's nuclear facilities to ensure they are fully prepared to handle long-term security concerns," Schweiker said. "Pennsylvanians can rest assured that we'll continue to work with plant operators to ensure these facilities remain secure today and into the foreseeable future." /©The Times Herald 2002/ ***************************************************************** 20 Limit on Davis-Besse costs hinted Plain Dealer 12/05/02 John Funk and John Mangels Plain Dealer Reporters There are limits to how many millions FirstEnergy Corp. is willing to spend to repair the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant before the company "considers the alternatives," Chief Executive Officer Peter Burg said yesterday. "We are not going to allow Davis-Besse to become a black hole for FirstEnergy," Burg told financial analysts in New York City. Idle since February for extensive repairs, including a new reactor lid, Davis-Besse will have cost the Akron-based corporation nearly $400 million for repairs and replacement power by year's end. And while the company still believes it will have the reactor ready to restart in February or March and expressed confidence yesterday in the progress of the repair, federal regulators have the final say, meaning the plant could remain down for additional months. Burg concedes that Davis-Besse has had a "significant impact on our company." But he said, "This situation cannot go on indefinitely. If we are not convinced that the plant can return to service safely, reliably and profitably, we will consider the alternatives." Burg did not say what those alternatives might be, but corporate spokeswoman Kristen Baird said they would include closing, selling or leasing the plant. Baird and Davis-Besse spokesman Todd Schneider could not say what the limits to spending might be, nor did Burg in his remarks to the analysts. "I don't believe [sale or closure] is going to happen, but I think it is important for us to make that point to you here," Burg said. "In fact we are confident in terms of the progress we are making at that facility." Schneider echoed that confidence. "We are making good progress," he said. "And we expect to return Davis-Besse to safe and reliable operations." Meanwhile, the federal criminal probe into whether FirstEnergy Corp. tried to mislead the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last fall about the condition of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant is nearly over, said another top FirstEnergy executive. "It is our understanding that the investigation will be wrapped up early next year," Gary Leidich, executive vice president of FirstEnergy's nuclear operating division, told the analysts. Leidich said the company wants the criminal investigation by the NRC completed before it asks the NRC for permission to restart Davis-Besse. The company has insisted it did not break the law when it presented a more rosy than real picture of the reactor's condition last November to persuade the NRC to allow the plant to operate six weeks beyond an inspection deadline. Leidich said what happened at Davis-Besse has sparked a reform of the FirstEnergy's entire nuclear operating division in an effort to change the culture of the workplace not only at Davis-Besse but also at sister plants in Perry, Ohio, and Shippingport, Pa. FirstEnergy's stock closed yesterday at $30 a share, down $1.13. After the market closed Tuesday, the company revised downward its 2003 earnings projection to a range of $3.35 to $3.55 from a range of $3.70 to $3.90 a share. To reach these Plain Dealer reporters: jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138 jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842 © 2002 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission. ***************************************************************** 21 Nuclear regulators plan hearing on PG&E's financial standing San Luis Obispo Tribune | 12/04/2002 | [sanluisobispo.com - The sanluisobispo home page] Nuclear regulators plan hearing on PG&E's financial standing Panel wants to know if company can afford dry cask storage facility David Sneed The Tribune SAN LUIS OBISPO - A federal review panel has agreed to hold a formal inquiry into whether bankrupt Pacific Gas and Electric Co. can afford to build and maintain a new storage facility for highly radioactive waste at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The hearing will be held in or near San Luis Obispo, but no date has been set. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, a 3-man panel made up of Nuclear Regulatory Commission employees, made the announcement earlier this week. The board also announced it will not hold hearings on a variety of other issues raised by local environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists regarding the above-ground facility. These include inquiries into the vulnerability of the facility to terrorist attacks and earthquakes and the environmental consequences of transporting the spent fuel to a central storage facility. ***************************************************************** 22 Armenia reinforces protection of nuclear power plant Interfax: December 5, 2002 3:04am Work is in progress under the TACIS-2000 program, which is aimed at improving the security of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, YEREVAN. Dec 3 (Interfax) - Armenia is making major efforts to improve protection of the country's nuclear power plant in light of the increasing terrorist threat, President Robert Kocharian told the Security Council meeting on Tuesday. Advertisement: Explore Within This Space Kocharian said. He regretted that the organization has not appropriated any finds for the plant in 2003. At the meeting, it was reported that the plant, which has been operating at 84% of its capacity, generated 2,280 million kilowatt hours of energy in the first ten months of 2002. Repairs at the plant will be completed within ten days. The second power unit, whose capacity is 400 MW, was stopped two months ago for routine maintenance and fueling. [AM ASIA EMRG ELG CRIM] ap mg <> Copyright © 2002 Interfax News Agency. Source: Financial Times ***************************************************************** 23 [radiation-survivors] Court won't allow Three Mile Island Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:55:32 -0600 (CST) http://pennlive.com/newsflash/pa/index.ssf?/newsflash/get_story.ssf?/cgi-fre e/getstory_ssf.cgi?d1159_BC_PA--ThreeMileIsland-L&&news&newsflash-pennsylvan ia The Associated Press 12/4/02 6:56 PM PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- For the second time, a federal appeals court has rejected an attempt to resurrect lawsuits filed by more than 2,000 people who feared they were harmed by radiation leaking from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a lower court was correct in saying that a 1996 court ruling in favor of the plant's owners barred neighbors from introducing new medical evidence and theories to revive their claims. The court had issued a similar opinion last year, but remanded the case to a federal district court to resolve a few remaining appeal issues. During the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, a combination of mechanical and human error allowed the reactor core to lose cooling water and partially melt. Some radioactive gases were released. After thousands of people sued, saying the radiation had caused cancer and birth defects, a judge selected 10 cases to be tried first as a test of whether any of the claims were legitimate. U.S. District Chief Judge Sylvia H. Rambo ruled on behalf of the plant in the test case in 1996, and dismissed all of the suits as a result. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: radiation-survivors-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ----- Are you looking for a good computer help list? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ComputersForSeniors/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ [demime 0.98e removed an attachment of type application/octet-stream which had a name of PennLive.com NewsFlash.url] ***************************************************************** 24 Postal Service Decision to Issue Potassium Iodide Highlights Nuclear Risks* */Dec. 4, 2002/* */Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director, Public Citizen?s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program/* Public Citizen applauds the recent decision of the United States Postal Service to provide all of its employees with potassium iodide (KI) pills as a protective measure in the event of a radiological release, be it a terrorist attack or a disastrous accident. The Postal Service?s action indicates appropriate concern for the vulnerabilities of its 750,000 employees nationwide. However, KI pills offer only a very limited form of protection because they block only radioactive iodine from being absorbed into the thyroid gland, and block it only for about a day after the tablet is taken. The pills offer no protection from other radioactive isotopes. So, while distributing KI pills as a safeguard in the event of a radiological emergency is a reasonable precaution, more must be done to reduce the threat of a catastrophic accident or attack at U.S. nuclear power plants ? a threat that poses risk to millions of people, not just postal employees. We know that nuclear power plants are vulnerable to attack. The last time the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) conducted mock terrorist assault tests on the nation?s reactors, operators of nearly half failed to protect vital systems that are needed to prevent a meltdown. Yet, more than a year since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress still has not enacted any legislation to reduce the risk of assault at commercial nuclear facilities ? an inexcusable lapse that leaves the public vulnerable. Lawmakers should prioritize nuclear security in the 108^th Congress. Evacuation plans around nuclear power plants also must be reviewed and improved. At some, such as New York?s Indian Point, a safe, rapid evacuation would not be feasible under current plans. The NRC?s woefully lax oversight exacerbates the threat. As recently as this spring, the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio was brought to the brink of disaster not only because of FirstEnergy?s (Davis-Besse?s operating company) admitted emphasis on production over safety, but also as a result of the NRC?s weak approach to regulation and proclivity to cut deals with the nuclear industry. While prudent in the interim, distributing KI is a Band-Aid approach to a much bigger problem. Ultimately, the best way to guard against nuclear threats is to phase out this inherently dangerous energy source, and move toward clean, safe and affordable alternatives. Public Citizen ***************************************************************** 25 [radiation-survivors] Court papers filed against Yucca Mountain Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 23:56:58 -0600 (CST) http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2002/12/04/build/safety/yuccamt.php?nnn= 5 Court papers filed against Yucca Mountain plan By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press WASHINGTON - A decision to bury thousands of tons of nuclear waste in Nevada should be overturned because the government cannot assure the site's geology will keep radiation from seeping into the environment, the state of Nevada argues in a court filing. The brief, filed in a suit challenging the decision to entomb the waste at Yucca Mountain, maintains that the Energy Department violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act by resorting to "engineered barriers" to contain the waste. In papers filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, the state argues that the Bush administration was "essentially abandoning" the 1982 law's "mandate that the site's geology form the primary isolation barrier" in selecting the Yucca Mountain site for waste burial. The mountain is a ridge of volcanic rock and ash about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, adjacent to the Nevada Test Site. Last February, President Bush declared it scientifically suitable and safe as the nation's central repository for 77,000 tons of waste from commercial reactors and the government's nuclear weapons program. After Nevada challenged the decision, Congress endorsed the president's declaration in July and overturned what could have been a veto of the site by Nevada. The Energy Department is seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and hopes to open the waste repository by 2010. But Nevada, joined by the city of Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, has promised to continue the fight in court and filed a number of lawsuits challenging the project. In a 100-page filing in support of its lawsuit before the appeals court, Nevada contends that the 1982 law that directed construction of a federal nuclear waste repository specifically required that natural geology at the site "form the primary barrier keeping waste from people and the environment" over tens of thousands of years. The suit also argues that the Energy Department conducted a "flawed environmental review" of the Yucca site, disregarded procedures required under the law in determining the site's suitability and failed to assess adequately problems involving the transportation of waste to the site. Yucca Mountain initially was chosen because Energy Department scientists believed it had the geology required to contain the waste. They later found it did not and adopted a "total system performance" approach in violation of the 1982 law, the state argues in its suit. The Energy Department had no immediate response to the Nevada court filing. Thursday, December 5, 2002 To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: radiation-survivors-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com ----- Are you looking for a good computer help list? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ComputersForSeniors/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ [demime 0.98e removed an attachment of type application/octet-stream which had a name of Court papers filed against Yucca Mountain plan.url] ***************************************************************** 26 Court papers filed against Yucca Mountain plan http://www.mtstandard.com/> Montanaforum.com /By H. JOSEF HEBERT Associated Press / WASHINGTON ? A decision to bury thousands of tons of nuclear waste in Nevada should be overturned because the government cannot assure the site?s geology will keep radiation from seeping into the environment, the state of Nevada argues in a court filing. The brief, filed in a suit challenging the decision to entomb the waste at Yucca Mountain, maintains that the Energy Department violated the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act by resorting to ?engineered barriers? to contain the waste. In papers filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, the state argues that the Bush administration was ?essentially abandoning? the 1982 law?s ?mandate that the site?s geology form the primary isolation barrier? in selecting the Yucca Mountain site for waste burial. The mountain is a ridge of volcanic rock and ash about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, adjacent to the Nevada Test Site. Last February, President Bush declared it scientifically suitable and safe as the nation?s central repository for 77,000 tons of waste from commercial reactors and the government?s nuclear weapons program. After Nevada challenged the decision, Congress endorsed the president?s declaration in July and overturned what could have been a veto of the site by Nevada. The Energy Department is seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and hopes to open the waste repository by 2010. But Nevada, joined by the city of Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, has promised to continue the fight in court and filed a number of lawsuits challenging the project. In a 100-page filing in support of its lawsuit before the appeals court, Nevada contends that the 1982 law that directed construction of a federal nuclear waste repository specifically required that natural geology at the site ?form the primary barrier keeping waste from people and the environment? over tens of thousands of years. The suit also argues that the Energy Department conducted a ?flawed environmental review? of the Yucca site, disregarded procedures required under the law in determining the site?s suitability and failed to assess adequately problems involving the transportation of waste to the site. Yucca Mountain initially was chosen because Energy Department scientists believed it had the geology required to contain the waste. They later found it did not and adopted a ?total system performance? approach in violation of the 1982 law, the state argues in its suit. The Energy Department had no immediate response to the Nevada court filing. Thursday, December 5, 2002 Copyright © 2000-2002 Montana Standard and Lee Enterprises . ***************************************************************** 27 Minnesota fight looms over Xcel nuclear waste plans* / Thu December 5, 2002 11:45 AM ET / By Leonard Anderson SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Environmental groups in Minnesota pledged to fight Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy's push to store more radioactive waste at its nuclear power plants in the state, a move likely to stir up debate over where to safely store the nation's increasing pile of used atomic fuel. The battle is also expected to be a hot issue in the new Minnesota Legislature convening in January. The nuclear power industry has been searching for a permanent dump site for more than 15 years but has run into tough opposition from environmentalists and state legislatures. A site has been selected in the Nevada desert but faces legal challenges and is not expected to be ready before 2010 at the earliest. Minnesota environmentalists are angry that Xcel XEL.N is campaigning to relax state storage limits it agreed to in 1994, and they are pressing the company to develop more renewable power supplies like wind and solar electricity. Minnesota chapters of the Sierra Club and the Clean Water Action Alliance said they will rally their 85,000 members and other environmental groups to thwart Xcel's effort to win the legislature's approval for more storage at its Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear stations. "This will be a big fight. There is a broad consensus in the environmental community that Xcel has not pushed hard enough to move away from nuclear power and develop more supplies of renewable energy," Scott Elkins, director of the local Sierra Club, told Reuters. PLANTS THREATENED Xcel, in a report to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Monday, said the state's limit on nuclear waste storage imposed in 1994 likely will force the closing of the twin-reactor Prairie Island plant in 2007 and the Monticello single reactor in 2010 if more room is not approved. The two plants produce about 1,700 megawatts of electricity, or power for 1.7 million homes. The stations -- Minnesota's only nuclear units -- account for about 11 percent of the company's total generating capacity at 80 plants it operates in six states. The 1994 Minnesota law limited storage of used nuclear fuel at Prairie Island to 17 above-ground concrete containers known as dry casks, although the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission had permitted up to 48 casks. The casks now are full, but there is still storage space in a waste pool at the plant, an Xcel spokeswoman said. The Monticello plant puts its waste fuel in a storage pool, which will be full by 2010. Like other nuclear plant operators, Xcel had expected used fuel eventually would be shipped to a federal nuclear dump. Nuclear plants, which generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity, have about 44,000 tonnes of waste fuel stored in pools and casks -- enough to cover a football field 15 feet (4.6 meters) deep -- and are producing another 2,000 tonnes of waste each year. NEVADA DUMP FIGHT A $58 billion underground dump is scheduled to open in 2010 at Nevada's Yucca Mountain north of Las Vegas and store up to 70,000 tonnes of radioactive waste for 10,000 years. The state of Nevada, however, has refused to give up a long-running fight to block the waste project and is pursuing court challenges. Xcel and other utilities also are pushing for a private temporary above-ground dump on Indian-owned land in Utah. In Minnesota, the Prairie Island Indian Community, which is next door to Xcel's plant, opposes more storage but said "the tribe has been willing to sit down with Xcel and the state to discuss possible solutions that would address the tribe's health and safety needs, and allow the plant to continue operating." Others, however, insist that Xcel must stick with the 1994 limits. "This debate already happened and a decision was made in 1994 that if there was no storage outside Minnesota, then the plant must shut down," said Diana McKeown, energy program coordinator for Clean Water Action Alliance. McKeown and the Sierra Club's Elkins also said nuclear plants and radioactive waste make tempting targets for terrorists, so Minnesota should develop more safe, clean and renewable energy to displace nuclear power. "Security was not on the radar screen in 1994 when the limits were set. Now it is a major concern," Elkins said. Dave Sparby, vice president of regulatory and government affairs at Xcel, said "we will ask the legislature to act in 2003 because, if nuclear generation is to remain in the state's energy mix, we need to make many decisions soon to keep our two nuclear plants operating in the future." If nuclear is not in the mix, Minnesota will have to line up replacement power, Sparby said. Reuters The Company Products & ***************************************************************** 28 Nuclear waste may be coming our way* www.yourguide.com.au By Adam Joyce Friday, 6 December 2002 AS many as 130 truckloads of radioactive waste could be transported through Bathurst over 12 months on its way to a waste repository in Woomera. Friends of the Earth brought their "Nuclear Free Ways" campaign to Bathurst yesterday, aimed at stopping the transport and dumping of nuclear waste in NSW. The Federal Government is planning to establish a National Radioactive Waste Repository at one of three sites near Woomera. The repository would accommodate low-level radioactive waste from defence, industrial and medical sources across Australia. However, the bulk of materials requiring transportation would be existing stockpiled waste from the Lucas Heights nuclear facility in Sydney. Friends of the Earth nuclear campaigner Loretta O'Brien said the decision to move the waste had been a political one to appease Sutherland Shire residents opposing the construction of a new reactor. She said the Friends' were concerned about the risk of an accident along the route and whether emergency services were prepared to cope with radioactive materials. She said this presented risks of radioactive exposure to people and agricultural land, yet the the Federal Government had failed to tell communities on the transport corridor. Ms O'Brien said burying the waste would contaminate soils and waterways. But former director of the Australian Radiation Laboratory, Dr Keith Lokan, said 30,000 packages of radioactive materials were transported in Australia every year and there had never been a mishap. ***************************************************************** 29 Uranium plant workers glad to carry on tradition of providing nation's fuel MyInKy December 4, 2002 PIKETON, Ohio- Winning a project to test a new way to produce nuclear fuel will enable a southern Ohio uranium plant to continue its long heritage of helping meet the nation's energy and security needs, the plant's union president said. The announcement Wednesday by USEC Inc. that it chose the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant for a $150 million facility to test centrifuge technology also provides a strong financial boost for the region, said Dan Minter, president of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical &Energy union. The plant in Piketon was in competition for the project with a sister plant in Paducah, Ky. Gary Hager, president of the plant's security guard union, said the announcement probably will prevent heavy layoffs of guards planned for next September. The plant now is looking for new guards to hire, he said. "This is a big boost to the whole community," Hager said. The plant's general manager, Patrick Musser, said the project will allow USEC to showcase its ability to enrich uranium. Getting the test project was the Piketon plant's first step toward securing a permanent plant using centrifuge technology, he said. USEC plans to have the testing facility operating by 2005. If all goes well, the Bethesda, Md.-based company plans to build a permanent commercial plant using this technology by 2010. A permanent operation would cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion and bring 500 to 600 jobs to the plant. Gov. Bob Taft said the 50 jobs the test project will provide will have salaries of more than $55,000. "This is tremendous news for the people of southern Ohio and a true boost for the economy that certainly needed a shot in the arm," Taft said. Minter said the facility has plenty to do before it secures the permanent plant. "This announcement did not come without a lot of hard work," he said. "Our future will also require the same team effort." [http://www.myinky.com ***************************************************************** 30 Xcel wants extension on storing nuclear fuel rods at Prairie Island Finance and Commerce [http://www.finance-commerce.com] By Dave Price/F&C Senior Writer December 4, 2002 Expecting to soon run out of room at its Prairie Island generator, Xcel Energy this week said it will seek legislative authority next year to continue storing spent nuclear fuel rods at the plant beyond 2007. As part of 1994 legislation allowing above-ground storage at Prairie Island, Xcel is limited to no more than 17 containers for its nuclear waste. The last of those containers were filled earlier this year, and barring a change in state law, Xcel said late Monday in a filing with Minnesota regulators that Prairie Island would be forced to shut down once the plant’s storage pool is filled to capacity in 2007. Xcel also operates a nuclear generator near Monticello, which together with Prairie Island, supplies about 30 percent of the state’s electricity. The company expects to run out of storage space at Monticello by 2010. The above-ground legislation eight years ago followed months of tough debate by proponents and opponents of nuclear energy, with Xcel’s predecessor company finally accepting a limit on the number of containers in the belief that a national storage site would be operational by early in this decade. Congress earlier this year approved a site in Nevada to collect spent waste, but it is not expected to open before 2010. “We have spent the past eight years working to avoid the need for more casks by advocating alternatives to on-site storage of spent nuclear fuel,” said Dave Sparby, vice president for regulatory and government affairs at Xcel. “While progress is being made both on Yucca Mountain in Nevada and [an alternative private facility] in Utah, these sites will not likely be able to accept enough spent fuel in time to avoid shutdown of the Prairie Island plant in 2007.” Any proposal that could come under consideration by lawmakers next year likely would require support from the Prairie Island Indian Community, whose reservation borders the generator near Red Wing. In a statement Tuesday, the tribe said it remains opposed to adding more waste capacity at the plant but offered to work with Xcel on a possible compromise. Among the tribe’s concerns is the need for an alternative evacuation route from the island, land for tribal members who don’t want to live near the plant, and compensation for emergency planning and preparedness. Copyright © 2002 Finance and Commerce. All rights reserved. A ***************************************************************** 31 Rail bridge decision due soon The Oregonian Clark County News 12/05/02 BILL STEWART VANCOUVER -- As towboat skippers enter the season of swift currents and tricky maneuvering at Vancouver's doorstep, a possible cure to a nagging maritime safety issue languishes in Washington, D.C. The reason for the lack of speed might be the project might not have enough benefits to qualify for federal construction dollars. A decision is expected in late January. The proposal is to move the opening span of the Vancouver railroad bridge one pier to the south. That would give towboat/barge combinations a straighter course if skippers use the Interstate 5 bridge's "hump" channel. Towboat skippers already have been ordered to switch to the bridge hump channel rather than calling for I-5 bridge lifts. The biggest beneficiaries have been freeway travelers who no longer face daily rush-hour bridge lifts. There is plenty of vertical clearance beneath the hump except in extreme floods, but that route requires a tricky "S" maneuver that skippers fear in winter currents. However, the man reviewing the proposal to move the railroad span, Nick Mpras (pronounced Empress), a former Portland-area resident, said he cannot legally consider anything on dry land, including freeway motorists, in justifying the rail bridge remodel. That does not mean resuming I-5 bridge lifts, though. Mpras is the national bridge administrator for the U.S. Coast Guard. "Without (counting the benefit to) the freeway traffic, we may be in trouble, something we've known from the start," said Jerry Grossnickle, who led the push to use the federal Truman-Hobbs Act when he headed the Columbia River Towboat Association. Truman-Hobbs allows federal money to be used once a year on one bridge deemed the most hazardous to maritime traffic. The 1940 law was used in 1989 to convert the St. Johns Railroad Bridge in Portland from turntable style to a lift span weighing nearly 8 million pounds. That conversion cost $38 million and closed the rail line 72 hours. The idea of modifying the Vancouver rail bridge has been inching toward a decision for years. Unlike the St. Johns span, trains crossing the Columbia River have no handy detour. Numerous towboat skippers testified last spring that the white-knuckle course between the bridges -- which are 4,200 feet apart -- is a significant safety hazard. Some tows contain export grain and mixed goods, but others carry ammonia, gasoline, jet fuel and occasionally spent nuclear reactors headed for burial. Official from Portland area Mpras, in a recent phone interview, said he understands the need to straighten out towboat passages. That's in part because he was raised in the Portland area. He was born in Greece, coming to the United States when he was 15. He attended Portland's Grant High School. After getting a degree from Portland State University, he worked as assistant city manager in Beaverton and in public works for Washington County. Mpras joined the Coast Guard 28 years ago. His staff is calculating the cost of closing the turntable span, second from the north shore, and converting the long third span to a vertical lift unit. The proposed modification would be financed by Truman-Hobbs, which is intended to modify bridges posing a threat to mariners. The problem, which the Coast Guard has tried to solve before, is that the law prohibits considering land transportation such as freeway drivers. The bridge office in St. Louis, which does all Truman-Hobbs cases, has been asked repeatedly to find more water-related benefits from fixing the bridge. Even if officials accumulate enough benefits to justify the project, Mpras said, that's no guarantee it will get the money. "Technically, Truman-Hobbs is supposed to fix one bridge per year," Mpras said. "But I don't have any money, and I have approved projects that have been waiting 10 years." Once a bridge is certified, it's up to Congress to find the money. Further complicating the picture is the bistate effort to replace or expand the current I-5 bridge. Austin Pratt, the regional Coast Guard bridge administrator in Seattle, thinks any new freeway bridge should be a high span that does not have to open for shipping. But a high bridge might intrude into the approach and departure paths for nearby Pearson Field airport. Also, a high bridge would be too steep for a proposed light-rail line. The bistate committees also have discussed widening the two-track rail bridge by one or two lines, and perhaps mounting a roadway on top of the 94-year-old bridge. But Truman-Hobbs does not pay for extra capacity, whether it is rail or highway. Any increased rail capacity would have to be financed by Burlington Northern Santa Fe. And any extra capacity has to be duplicated across the Oregon Slough just south of Hayden Island. "We have searched records high and low, looking for a precedent for counting what we have done for freeway traffic," Pratt said. "It seems like there should be some precedent, but we haven't found it." Bill Stewart: 360-896-5722 or 503-294-5900; billstewart@news.oregonian.com THE OREGONIAN © 2002 OregonLive.com. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 County sets workshop on Diablo dry cask storage proposal San Luis Obispo Tribune | 12/04/2002 | Posted on Wed, Dec. 04, 2002 [story:PUB_DESC] David Sneed The Tribune SAN LUIS OBISPO - The county planning department will hold a public workshop Wednesday on the proposed dry-cask facility at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The workshop will start at 7 p.m. at the San Luis Obispo Veterans Hall at Grand and Mill streets. It will be the second workshop the county has held on the PG&E proposal in a year. The meeting was scheduled at the behest of Supervisor Peg Pinard, who wanted to make sure planners are aware of all the public's concerns regarding the high-level nuclear waste installation. Anti-nuclear activists said they have already submitted 17 pages of questions and concerns they want the environmental analysis to address. The county must issue a permit before the facility can be built. The county's analysis will look primarily at the resource impacts of building the facility, while leaving security and safety issues to the lead agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ***************************************************************** 33 EPA to review possible pollution at Wingfoot Beacon Journal | 12/05/2002 | Environmentalist seeks expanded assessment By Bob Downing Beacon Journal staff writer The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is kicking off a review of possible military pollution problems more than 80 years ago at Goodyear's Wingfoot Lake, but one local environmentalist wants to see the assessment expanded into a full-scale cleanup. The U.S. Department of Defense has asked the agency to review previously issued federal reports to determine whether pollution problems exist from when the U.S. Navy owned the blimp hangar property in Suffield Township, said EPA spokesman Rod Beals. Goodyear acquired the lake in 1916 from the Fritch family. But the U.S. Navy owned the property from August 1918 to April 1920, when it was sold back to Goodyear, said Drew Kocher of the EPA. The new study was triggered by a federal desire to take a closer look at old military sites and to determine which ones might need cleanups. Goodyear pledged to cooperate with and assist the review. That review will be similar to preliminary paper reviews of potentially contaminated areas the Ohio EPA routinely does for Superfund sites, Beals said. The yearlong review was not seen as a big deal and officials were not aware of any major remaining pollution problems at Wingfoot Lake, he said. Mary Grimmett Trent of the Concerned Citizens Against Illegal Contamination, a group involved with contamination problems in Springfield and Suffield townships, said she fears the problem around Wingfoot Lake is severe and requires a federal cleanup. She said her research indicates the problem extends beyond Wingfoot Lake to nearby Congress Lake near Hartville. Beals said the EPA is not aware of any major problems at Congress Lake. Wingfoot Lake was examined by one federal agency in 1994. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrapped up an 11-week investigation of soil, water and fish samples that found no evidence of radioactive contamination above federal limits at Wingfoot Lake or in nearby neighborhoods. Low levels of naturally occurring radiation were detected. Goodyear closed its uranium-using facilities in the mid-1980s, and a 1986 study showed the site was clean. The company cleaned up groundwater at Wingfoot Lake that was contaminated by fuel spills from tests on rubber self-sealing gasoline tanks for military use and from a leaking tank. Bob Downing can be reached at 330-996-3745 or bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com [bdowning@thebeaconjournal.com] ***************************************************************** 34 Centrifuge gives Piketon a new future - chillicothegazette.com Thursday, December 5, 2002 E D I T O R I A L Southern Ohio got some great news Wednesday when U.S. Enrichment Corp. chose its Piketon operation as the site of a $150 million pilot project to test centrifuge technology in making nuclear fuel. The project will bring 50 new workers to the region initially but also offers the potential for many more good-paying jobs. Piketon beat out its sister plant in Paducah, Ky., for the work on the technology, which was tested by the Energy Department in the 1980s before being abandoned. The decision caught some off-guard, those who assumed USEC's historically greater investment in Paducah meant the work would go to our southern competitor. When it came down to making the decision, the corporation honchos selected Piketon because it already has a suitable building, a ready and willing workforce and the right location. A rich incentive package from the state and the fact that this stretch of Ohio is less prone to earthquakes than Kentucky didn't hurt, either. The Department of Energy's centrifuge program operated in the 1980s and USEC is banking the technology -- dubbed Lead Cascade in the industry -- will prove to be the most efficient uranium enrichment process known to man. Development of the centrifuge pilot project here also give a leg-up on landing a permanent operation with its cost of $1 billion to $1.5 billion to build and millions and millions of dollars into the local economy in the form of wages and taxes. The pilot plant is set to be operating by 2005. If built, the permanent step-up would be up and running by 2010 and create 500 to 600 jobs. Ohio's incentives included a $7 million low-interest loan, a $1 million grant, tax and job creation credits, according to the Ohio Department of Development. The cost to taxpayers is minimum when compared to the potential benefits. Everyone who had a hand in crafting the proposal that sold USEC on southern Ohio should take a bow, whether from Ohio's Congressional delegation or the county commissioners. The decision will be a bright spot in the region's economic landscape. For too long, the workforce at Piketon -- like those at other major regional employers -- has been shrinking with each round of layoffs. Now, just like in USEC's glory days, local workers won't have to leave the region to land a good, high-paying job. Originally published Thursday, December 5, 2002 [http://www.chillicothegazette.com/index.html] | ***************************************************************** 35 Southern Ohio gets boost [http://www.herald-dispatch.com] NEWS | Thursday, December 5, 2002 $150 million nuclear test facility expects to hire 50 workers by 2005 By GREG WRIGHT - Gannett News Service WASHINGTON -- Ohio beat out Kentucky on Wednesday to become the site of a $150 million uranium refinement test center that eventually could bring up to 500 jobs to the economically troubled southern part of the state. U.S. Enrichment Corp. picked the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, instead of its Paducah, Ky., facility because the 4,300-acre site already has a building that can house a centrifuge uranium-enrichment test program. Several Portsmouth plant workers also are trained to operate next-generation centrifuge enrichment machines, the company said. And southern Ohio is less prone to earthquakes than Paducah, which is near the New Madrid fault. Piketon’s location, about 80 miles northwest of Huntington, is expected to lessen the chance of a nuclear accident. But Ohio also offered a financial carrot to lure the company to put its so-called Lead Cascade project in the state, according to Ohio Gov. Bob Taft’s office. However, the governor will not immediately reveal details on these incentives because the agreement is confidential, said Taft’s spokesman, Aaron McLear. "This decision is thanks to the quality work force in the region, the united efforts of the Ohio congressional delegation, local leaders, and officials in my administration as well as an outstanding display of community support," Taft said. The Piketon plant employs about 38 people from the Tri-State, said plant spokeswoman Angie Duduit. Among the plant’s employees are 10 people from Lawrence County, one from Wayne County, two from Boyd County, Ky., and about 27 from Greenup County, Ky., Duduit said. About half of the plant’s work force lives in Scioto County, Ohio, Duduit said. The gaseous centrifuge is a more efficient way to refine uranium for nuclear power plants. It uses less than 10 percent of the electricity that the 50-year-old gaseous diffusion enrichment process does. Taft, Ohio’s congressional delegation and plant workers celebrated Wednesday. The company’s decision was a bright spot after more than a year of bad news at the plant about 70 miles south of Columbus. U.S. Enrichment laid off more than 900 workers in Portsmouth in the past year when it shifted uranium enrichment and shipping operations 400 miles southwest to its Paducah plant. The company will hire 50 more workers for the centrifuge test facility, which should open in 2005. "Folks in Ohio think this is great news," said Dan Minter, president of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union Local 5-689 office in Piketon. "We’ve been doing this (uranium enrichment) for 50 years and want to do it for 50 more years." "It’s been a rough road, but now the Piketon community is finally getting the recognition we know they’ve deserved all along -- recognition of their expertise, commitment and professionalism," said Sen. George Voinovich, a Cleveland Republican. But others said it could be bad news for the region’s work force. Vina Colley is a former electrician at Piketon. She lives near Portsmouth, Ohio, and has been treated for numerous tumors and other health-related problems she says were caused by exposure to dangerous materials at Piketon. "We are looking at another source of cancer that has already affected a dying community," Colley said. The centrifuge equipment installed in the 1980s contaminated a large part of the building it was in, and now a new generation of workers will be exposed to cancer-causing agents, Colley said. People who work at the plant and people who live near it have been exposed to radioactive materials and other dangerous material, Colley said. In 2004 the company will decide where to put its $1 billion to $1.5 billion commercial centrifugal uranium enrichment plant, which will supply uranium fuel to the $3 billion nuclear power industry in the United States, Europe, South Korea and Taiwan. The commercial plant, which would open in 2009 or 2010, would need an additional 300 to 500 workers, U.S. Enrichment officials said. Chances are good the commercial plant also would be in Portsmouth because the test building has enough room for 12,000 uranium processing machines the plant would need, said Voinovich and Rep. Rob Portman, a Terrace Park Republican whose redrawn district includes the plant. The centrifuge enrichment machines are about 2 feet wide and 40 feet tall, said Dan Stout, the company’s director of enrichment technology. Portsmouth will be the first new nuclear facility in the United States in 10 years, Taft said. But the Ohio plant eventually could have competition from Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium of American and European companies that wants to build a $1.1 billion centrifuge processing plant near Hartsville, Tenn., about 50 miles northeast of Nashville, Minter said. However, environmentalists and local groups are opposed to the Tennessee plant. And U.S. Enrichment complained to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that a Louisiana Energy Services facility would not be in the best interests of national security because of foreign company involvement. Herald-Dispatch reporter Jim Ross [jimross@herald-dispatch.com] contributed to this story. ***************************************************************** 36 USEC Announcement - [http://www.paducahsun.com/] The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Thursday, December 05, 2002 By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 The leader of USEC Inc. says the obstacles — seismic and facility-wise — that kept Paducah from getting a test gas centrifuge plant will still exist in two years when the community vies for a commercial plant employing 10 times as many people. Chief Executive Officer William "Nick" Timbers announced Wednesday in Washington, D.C., that the 50-job test plant will be built in Piketon, Ohio, in 2004, largely because Piketon already has a two-building centrifuge complex and does not pose an undue earthquake hazard. Paducah has no such building and is on the northern fringe of the New Madrid Fault zone, meaning substantial extra costs in bracing a new centrifuge building for an earthquake. Although Timbers deems confidential the dollar differences in the two cities' situations, he said they were too much for Paducah to overcome. "Those issues that apply today will be applicable in 2004," he said. "One has to be realistic that the decisions made today do have a bearing on the evaluations that will occur in 2004." That year, the roughly $60 million test plant is expected to be built to prove the ability of 240 machines that spin at high speed to separate the useful and non-useful isotopes of uranium for use in nuclear fuel. USEC expects the testing to help generate the $1.5 billion in financial backing that USEC will need to build a 500-job commercial plant at Piketon or Paducah. USEC has targeted 2004 also for a decision on which community will get the commercial plant, using about 12,000 cylinders. Besides cost savings, using the Piketon plant allows USEC to keep pace with the aggressive schedule needed to have a commercial plant running by 2010 in Piketon or by 2011 in Paducah, Timbers said. Regardless of the winning community, the 1,250-employee Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant will operate until 2010 to 2012, he said. USEC wants to replace the plant with centrifuge technology, which uses only about 10 percent of the power of the outdated, energy-intensive process used at Paducah for 50 years. Timbers said he spoke Wednesday with Kentucky Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, and Rep. Ed Whitfield to assure them the plant has plenty of life left. "I made it very, very clear that we have a commitment, even under the best of circumstances of developing the centrifuge program, that we will be running the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant for eight to 10 years," he said. "We'll be investing in that community approximately $500 million a year in payroll (at least 1,000 employees), products and power." He said USEC will work with the Department of Energy and others to develop new business opportunities for the Paducah plant, which is "still the heart of our (enrichment) business." USEC made the test plant decision after two months of reviewing economic incentive packages from the governors of Ohio and Kentucky. Timbers said each state presented good proposals. "Specifically, the contributions in the proposal by the state of Kentucky were very aggressive and very supportive of the state's interest," he said. "They went a long way, but there was a considerable degree of territory to make up to recognize the existing building at the Ohio site, and some of the seismic considerations, as well. Those were the major financial factors that came into consideration." The Department of Energy built the Piketon complex, which some estimate worth $300 million, in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the idea of replacing gaseous diffusion technology. But the project was abandoned in 1985 because centrifuge proved 30 percent more expensive than diffusion and the complex would have taken another $8 billion to finish, said John Longenecker, who headed the program as former Department of Energy deputy secretary of enrichment. Longenecker, who now does consulting work for nuclear power firms that buy from USEC, predicted earlier this week that Piketon would get the test plant because of the building and seismic issues. But he also said there is "a 50-50 chance at best" that financially troubled USEC won't find the backing for the commercial plant and will have to ask for federal help. USEC's annual earnings have dropped from $78 million two years ago to a predicted $9 to $12 million at the end of this year. The drop is partly because USEC is spending $150 million from earnings over the next five years to pay for the test centrifuge work, which Timbers said will prove to the financial world that USEC is serious about switching to much more efficient technology. He said financing for the commercial plant must be in place by 2007 and will probably involve a combination of debt and equity instruments, and perhaps partnerships. "There is five years to work out that arrangement." USEC is trying to outpace Louisiana Energy Services, a consortium that wants to build a centrifuge plant a few years earlier in Tennessee. L.E.S. is led by foreign enrichment firm Urenco and the United States' three largest nuclear power firms. ***************************************************************** 37 What does the USEC announcement mean? @@EOM:End of Marker Required -- END OF CONFIG --> [http://www.paducahsun.com/] The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Thursday, December 05, 2002 USEC Q&A By early spring, USEC will apply for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to build a 50-job plant at Piketon, Ohio, to test up to 240 machines using gas centrifuge to enrich uranium. Assuming NRC approval, construction is scheduled to begin in 2004 and operation in late 2005. What is the significance for Paducah? The plant will test the financial and operating onal viability of a 500-job commercial plant expected to eventually replace the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. In 2004, USEC will name Piketon or Paducah as site of the commercial plant. Construction is forecast to begin in 2007. When will the Paducah plant close? The gas centrifuge plant would be operational &ready by 2010 if in Piketon or 2011 if in Paducah. USEC says it will run the Paducah plant until 2010 to 2012 but is seeking ways to diversify the use of the sprawling west McCracken County facility. Some industry observers expect the plant to run until about 2015. After that, the government must decide whether to keep the plant on standby or close it entirely. Closure Shutdown could mean hundreds or even more than 1,000 environmental and maintenance jobs for years to come. What hurdles does USEC face? Financial — USEC annual profits have dropped from $78.4 million in 2001 to an expected $9 million to $12 million this year. During the next five years, besides spending $150 million out of its profits for research and building the test plant, USEC will have to keep paying on $500 million in debts from its 1998 privatization. It will also have to borrow and find financial backing for $1.5 billion for the commercial plant. Some industry experts say USEC won't find the private support and will ultimately have to ask the federal government for help. Operational — USEC has never commercially operated centrifuge machines. Although the machines are much more cost-efficient than 17 years ago when the Department of Energy abandoned their use at Piketon as far too costly, USEC must still prove the machines can enrich uranium at a cost customers will pay. USEC's newer contracts afford a much narrower profit margin. Competitive — USEC is racing with Louisiana Energy Services to build a centrifuge plant. L.E.S. is a consortium led by USEC's chief competitor, Urenco, and includes the nation's top three nuclear power firms, which all buy enriched uranium from USEC. Urenco, a foreign enrichment firm, has used centrifuge for decades in Europe. The power companies think USEC controls too much of the domestic market. L.E.S. plans to have its plant on line a few years earlier than USEC but is facing stiff community opposition at its chosen site near Nashville, Tenn. Regulatory — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which focuses on public health and safety, will have to approve licenses before USEC and L.E.S. can operate centrifuge plants. That process is complex and can lead to delays. Also, there are serious federal policy questions regarding whether the nation needs and can support two private enrichment operations. ***************************************************************** 38 Replacing USEC jobs - [http://www.paducahsun.com/] The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Thursday, December 05, 2002 By C.D. Bradley cdbradley@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 Wednesday's announcement that USEC Inc. will locate a new test plant in Ohio rather than in Paducah won't affect economic development efforts by the city and county, officials said. "I don't see that this changes anything," Mayor Bill Paxton said. "We have the infrastructure, we have the team and we have the resources. I think we've got to keep doing what we're doing. ... If we keep doing it, if we keep working hard, we're going to get jobs in here. I'm convinced of it." Officials were quick to point out that USEC's choice of Piketon, Ohio, for the 50-job test plant to test gas centrifuge technology to enrich uranium does not mean that Paducah is out of the running for the potential 500-job commercial plant USEC would build if the test proved successful. That plant, expected to be built in about 10 years, would replace the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. "I don't see this as a major setback. I see it as a minor setback," said George Sirk, chairman of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce. "We're still in the running for the big prize." Even if Paducah loses the larger plant, the local operation will continue for at least eight years, and possibly longer. "We're awfully lucky. Most facilities don't give 10-year notice they might leave," said Ken Wheeler, chairman of a local nuclear energy task force and chairman-elect of the Greater Paducah Economic Development Council. Wheeler cited the closing of the Mattel plant in Murray, which closed months after announcing that operations would be moved to Mexico. "The fact we've got a 10-year window is a godsend." Wheeler said some communities that lose a major industry find the loss to be a blessing eventually because it forces diversification of the economy. Paxton said that will be the focus of economic development efforts now. "We have the (city-county) Industrial Park West, and we have the Information Age Park," Paxton said. "We have a couple of prospects looking at us." Paxton mentioned three prospects at a city commission retreat last month: * "Project Wayne," an industrial prospect known only by that nickname to city officials, expected to choose between Paducah and Evansville, Ind., next year. * A company seeking 400 acres for a facility that would employ up to 400 people. * A Pennsylvania company considering the city-county industrial park. Paxton also said the city and county might look to acquire more land to expand their industrial park in the next two years. John Anderson, director of the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization, said he realized in the summer of 2000 that officials needed to plan for a time when the plant would no longer be around. When USEC then decided to close its plant in Ohio rather than in Paducah, it may have given some a false sense of security. "Until (the test plant) was taken away from us, we were like Chicken Little, crying that the sky is falling," Anderson said. "I think everybody now realizes the potential for job losses at the plant. The only way to prepare for that is to have something else happen, like getting a plant at the regional industrial park." Paxton called that park, to be located in northern Graves County, western Kentucky's "ace in the hole." Several officials suggested that the announcement could help secure state and federal funds that have been requested to complete the park. "This announcement compels us to work harder on the regional park," county Judge-Executive Danny Orazine said. "It's also going to put more emphasis on the state to support the park." He cited the state's purchase of potential industrial property in Hardin County after that area lost a bid for a $1 billion Hyundai Motor Co. plant to Alabama this year. Chamber President Elaine Spalding added that "the beauty of that is that (the regional park) is the top priority of all the counties in the region." Economic development and elected officials from the Purchase area have requested $5 million each from the state and federal governments each of the next two years, a total of $20 million. Bill Beasley, general manager of the north Graves regional industrial park authority, said there are now 2,251 acres under three-year purchase options, and some of the options will be a year old early next year. While the authority is awaiting some grants sought, the state and federal funds are crucial for the next stage of development. "I think this will increase the pressure on the state to help with not only the regional industrial park, but also other economic development efforts in the Purchase area," Beasley said. "In the long term, anyway, this could mean a potentially tremendous amount of jobs lost. ... This may be a negative story, but it's a story we can take to Frankfort and say, 'We need some help down here."Now that all the anticipation is over, it's time to do some other things. Unfortunately, we lost this one. Now it's time to go fight the next battle." ***************************************************************** 39 Welcome to Yucca Mountain Update Although the political battle over the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository ended in July, Nevada’s legal fight continues – with the ultimate goal of derailing the scientifically- and legally-challenged project. With that in mind, Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency presents Yucca Mountain Update, a newsletter geared at providing readers with the latest, most up-to-date information about the State’s legal challenges against Yucca Mountain. We’ll also highlight previous transgressions and missteps by the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission not only in Nevada, but throughout the country. Nevada Fires Opening Salvo Over Yucca Mountain Repository Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, joined by Clark County and Las Vegas officials, today presented to the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., their “case in chief” against President Bush and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) concerning the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The 100-page document details the state’s claims that the DOE ignored the statutory requirements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in recommending a site that could no longer demonstrate any ability to geologically isolate radioactive waste. “Any person who continues to believe that this repository is not in serious legal trouble has simply not read this brief,” Del Papa said. “I believe we’re going to bring the house of cards down – and sooner than most people think.” Nevada has brought three claims in connection with DOE’s determination of Yucca site suitability, and several claims in connection with the project’s Final Environmental Impact Statement, which the state called “the most glaring attempted evasion of federal environmental review responsibilities in the 31 years since the Supreme Court heard the first such case in 1971.” Nevada is arguing that, upon discovering in the late 1990s that the site was scientifically disqualified under the waste statute and DOE’s siting guidelines, the DOE jettisoned its rules and crafted new rules to jawbone the site into conforming with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing requirements. In doing so, DOE altogether abandoned mandatory site characterization requirements for Yucca and stopped studying the mountain. Nevada also is claiming that the DOE failed to prepare and publish a mandatory Record of Decision; failed to define the project in accordance with law; unlawfully deferred transportation analysis; failed to secure a hazardous waste permit from Nevada; and included wastes that are not eligible for disposal under the law. The DOE also failed to timely distribute its impact statement to Nevada and other key agencies, and failed to evaluate the realistic consequences of not proceeding with the project. Because the Court of Appeals earlier permitted Nevada to bring its case on the merits to a three-judge panel, Nevada’s legal team was able to scour more than 500,000 pages of documents comprising the administrative record in the consolidated cases, dozens of which are cited in the brief. These documents indicate that, if the repository’s man-made waste packages do not perform perfectly for at least 10,000 years, the radiation doses humans will receive in the local environment will be far beyond levels permissible by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The brief also cites instances of DOE officials lying to Congress and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, doctoring repository performance analyses, and failing to produce dozens of incriminating documents in the administrative record. “This is just the opening salvo,” Del Papa said, noting Nevada’s additional lawsuits against the EPA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). At Nevada’s request, all three will be assigned to a single judicial panel in Washington, and all will be heard orally in September 2003. Nevada also is contemplating filing a constitutional challenge against DOE and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, something Del Papa is discussing with Attorney General-elect Brian Sandoval. “I can’t think of a greater way to end my tenure as Attorney General,” she said. “I’m very proud of the work our team has done, and I think we will win.” The brief will be posted on the state’s Yucca Mountain web site, www.state.nv.us/nucwaste. DOE's Broken Promises in New Mexico Fuel Nevada's Skepticism Based on the Department of Energy’s unfulfilled promises to New Mexico more than two decades ago when it established a nuclear waste isolation plant there, state officials are being urged to keep the DOE “at arm’s length” as it pursues plans for the Yucca Mountain repository and promises economic compensation for Nevada. [Nuclear waste arrives at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. (Las Vegas Sun photo)] Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, recently told the Nevada Legislature’s Committee on High-Level Radioactive Waste that the state should maintain an “adversarial relationship” with DOE based on New Mexico’s experiences with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). “The DOE left a series of broken promises (to New Mexico) and a failure to live up to its commitments” in developing WIPP over the last 15 years, Loux said. “The DOE has systematically backed away from all of its agreements with New Mexico.” In his testimony, Loux outlined a series of promises that DOE made with New Mexico beginning in 1978, regarding such issues as the state’s ability to veto the WIPP facility and DOE commitments to road construction appropriations. DOE in 1991 opened WIPP without consulting the state or obtaining congressional approval; New Mexico filed suit to stop DOE from proceeding. In 1992, over DOE’s protests, New Mexico’s congressional delegation included a provision in the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act proving the state with $20 million per year for 14 years for starting economic assistance. However, in 1999, DOE withheld the $20 million payment in a dispute with the New Mexico Department of Energy; the action cost the state $7 million in bond payments that came due while the money was being withheld. “All of these actions portend a significant example for Nevada,” Loux said. Outrage of the Week On Nov. 19-21, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Advisory Commission on Nuclear Waste (ACNW) held a transportation workshop that brought together representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), other federal agencies, and the nuclear industry to discuss various aspects of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste transportation. However, conspicuously missing from the workshop’s agenda were experts from the state of Nevada, other states, or public interest groups – i.e., anyone who might bring a broader, albeit more critical, perspective to the issue. As a result, committee members and others attending the meeting were treated to a very one-sided and potentially skewed perspective on a matter that is of great importance, not only to the ACNW and NRC, but to the country as a whole. In a letter to ACNW Chairman George N. Hornberger, Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency Director Bob Loux proposed that, before the committee reports on this matter to the NRC, the state of Nevada be afforded the opportunity to organize a follow-up workshop at a future ACNW meeting for the purpose of providing the committee with views of transportation experts not employed by DOE or the nuclear industry. We would propose a one day session, with presentations on transportation policy and planning; cask safety/cask testing; security and safeguards; and public acceptance, risk, and risk perception. With the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste set to become a high profile and potentially volatile public issue as the Private Fuel Storage project in Utah moves towards fruition and plans for nuclear waste transportation associated with the Yucca Mountain program begin to be more visible, the need for enhanced credibility on the part of organizations charged with assuring public health and safety in things nuclear becomes increasingly important. The type of meeting ACNW held on November 19th – 21st can only fuel public skepticism and distrust about government’s role in assuring the safety of such shipments and the apparently ‘cozy’ relationship between NRC, DOE, and the commercial nuclear industry. We welcome comments and story ideas for this newsletter. For media information, please contact Tom Bradley, Brown & Partners, at (702) 967-2222 or via e-mail at tbradley@brown-partners.com. For a text-only version of this newsletter, please contact tbradley@brown-partners.com To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this newsletter, please e-mail nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us [nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us] . Do not reply to this e-mail. ***************************************************************** 40 Torness nuclear power station illegally dumped radioactive waste into the sea. Scotsman.com Thu 5 Dec 2002 Nuclear station dumped waste in sea /BY SAM HALSTEAD/ TORNESS nuclear power station is facing a massive fine after illegally dumping radioactive waste into the sea off the Lothian coast. The power station, near Dunbar, which is run by troubled British Energy, illegally discharged water contaminated with radiation. British Energy today admitted the illegal discharge, but insisted any environmental impact was minimal. But critics of the nuclear power station have accused the embattled operator of playing down the incident, which happened in October last year. British Energy confirmed today that 60 cubic metres of water contaminated with radiation was mistakenly discharged from the wrong tank into the sea. However, it stressed that the water was from areas such as the plant?s laundry, sink and shower, and that the radiation levels were "low". The company is expected to appear at Haddington Sheriff Court in January charged under the Radioactive Substances Act 1993 with failing to test the waste before it was swilled into the sea. The case was called yesterday at Haddington Sheriff Court before Sheriff George Presslie. But it was adjourned after a letter from British Energy?s legal team requested it be postponed. Independent nuclear consultant John Large today called for an urgent investigation into the incident, and accused BE of playing down the illegal discharge. "This is the standard line, saying it was just laundry water," he said. "That?s nonsense. What are they running, a Chinese laundry? It is irritating for them to play it down. Frankly, I don?t care where the water comes from." "These operational procedures are in place to protect the health of the public and they breached them. If it is not serious, what are they in court for? "This is an unacceptable and additional burden on the risk to the public. Sixty cubic metres is a lot of water." Mili Bryson , spokeswoman for the East Lothian Environment Group, said: "This happened at the same time that reactor safety valves were on the wrong setting. We have raised concerns that British Energy and Torness are relying on contractors rather than qualified in-house staff and this is compromising safety." A spokesman for Friends of the Earth Scotland said: "This is one of a catalogue of failures in the nuclear industry in Britain. "British Energy may wish to downplay the incident, but it is obviously serious enough to get into court ." Today, British Energy admitted it had mistakenly discharged the wrong tank of contaminated water. But the company - which is being held afloat by government loans after being on the brink of bankruptcy - insisted the contaminated water contained just small levels of radioactivity. A spokeswoman said: " It was discharge liquid from the station processes such as laundry, sink and shower water, which contained small amounts of radioactivity. "To put this into perspective, our annual airborne and liquid and direct discharge is equivalent to emissions from a passenger jet travelling from London to New York on a single trip." The contaminated water was stored in two tanks, where it was monitored, filtered and sampled before being discharged into the sea around twice a week, said the spokeswoman. But the wrong tank, which had not been sampled, was accidentally discharged, said the spokeswoman. She said more stringent procedures had been put in place since . Torness has been plagued by problems this year . Last month, a reactor there was given the all-clear after closing in May amid safety fears. Reactor 2 at the East Lothian power station was shut since May when a fan-side plate broke off and ended up inside the circulator casing, causing vibrations. British Energy also closed Reactor 1 at Torness in August after staff noticed vibrations in the fans which cool the reactors with pressurised carbon dioxide gas. It was brought back into use within a month. The case is set to be heard next month. *Scotland: * Page 1 ***************************************************************** 41 Bill seeks to solve storage problem Taipei Times - archives Thu, Dec 05, 2002 News SENSITIVE ISSUE: The Legislative Yuan has introduced a draft bill it hopes will help settle the problem of what to do with radioactive waste By Ko Shu-Ling STAFF REPORTER Thursday, Dec 05, 2002,Page 4 In a bid to find a final depository for low-grade radioactive waste, the Executive Yuan yesterday approved a draft bill allowing the Cabinet to finalize a storage site within 63 months after the law takes effect. The draft will proceed to the Legislative Yuan for further review and final approval. Addressing the weekly closed-door Cabinet affairs meeting, Cabinet Spokesman Chuang Suo-hang (²øºÓº~) said the long-standing problem of the storage of nuclear waste is a government priority. "It's such a highly sensitive public issue that the government is obliged to help find the final storage location of low-grade radioactive waste to ensure the sustainable development of the country and to achieve the ultimate goal of a nuclear-free home," Chuang said. Under the draft, the Ministry of Economic Affairs would establish a committee in charge of finding potential locations for the site three months after the law takes effect. The committee will consist of government officials, academics and experts with the number of government officials not exceeding half of the total number. Within six months of the committee's establishment, it should present a proposal to the economic ministry regarding potential storage sites. Within 15 days of receiving the proposal, the economic ministry should make public the proposal in government bulletins or the media for 30 days, the bill says. The economic ministry and the Cabinet's Atomic Energy Council should integrate the opinions voiced by the public regarding the proposal and make necessary revisions before promulgating it in two months' time. Six months after the revised proposal is declared, the committee should reveal to the public potential sites with the committee recommending a selection of sites to the economic ministry after another six month period. The economic ministry should then hold public hearings within 15 days whilst soliciting public opinions for 30 days. In the final stage of deliberation, the economic ministry should consult with the atomic energy council regarding the final choice of the storage site within two months. Once the final storage site is picked, the ministry and the council will either choose or designate a managing unit of the site. This story has been viewed 207 times. Copyright © 1999-2002 The Taipei Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 42 Editorial: Whole U.S. served by state's suit Las Vegas SUN: December 05, 2002 In a sane world, the selection of Southern Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the "safe" place to store the nation's high-level nuclear waste for the next 10,000 years would be laughed out of court. Certainly there is no one alive who can say with certainty what will happen over the course of 100 centuries. For example, imagine the life in Southern Nevada 10,000 years ago -- Cro-Magnon man living in caves and etching his exploits, which included hunting woolly mammoths with deadly throwing sticks called atlatls. Could Cro-Magnon have imagined McCarran International Airport, the Strip, and Wheel of Fortune slot machines? Unfortunately, however, the federal government is being taken seriously as it proposes to turn a volcanic formation 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas into an underground vault for the world's deadliest material. The rest of the country has expressed little alarm as Congress and the nuclear power industry have steamrolled toward the Yucca "solution" to radioactive waste management. So it's left to Nevada to shoulder the responsibility and expense of pointing up the potentially catastrophic flaws. On Monday, Nevada took its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, filing the first of several briefs in a legal challenge against the federal government's plans. The lawsuit will point out the unpredictability of the waste's storage casks, and the scientific evidence showing that within only 50 years of any failure, ground water 1,300 feet below the mountain could become contaminated -- as well as all the areas where the ground water would flow. The dangers of transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain will be included among the suit's other major points. With its Yucca plan, the federal government is contending that it can predict the future. Nevada, by opposing the plan, is hoping that it can affect the future -- by stopping something fraught with mortal danger for the generations to come. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 43 State's chief anti-Yucca lawyer sure of victory Las Vegas SUN: December 05, 2002 By Jace Radke The Energy Department's disregard for the people of Nevada, the scientific method and the law will help the state win its legal battle to stop the federal government from storing high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada's lead attorney on the case said Wednesday. "We're not talking about small violations, but blatant out-of-the-park violations," said Joseph Egan, a Washington-based attorney hired by the state in the battle against Yucca. "I didn't know how good this case was until I took it and saw the evidence of the DOE breaking laws. "It's right there in black and white. (The Energy Department) is an agency that has truly lost its way." Egan's comments came at a news conference in Las Vegas, two days after the filing of a "case in chief" brief in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The brief challenges the guidelines the Energy Department used to evaluate Yucca, the agency's environmental impact study of the site, and the approval of the site by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and President Bush. Last February, President Bush declared Yucca Mountain, located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a suitable site for the nation's repository for 77,000 tons of waste from commercial reactors and the government's nuclear weapons program. Gov. Kenny Guinn vetoed the decision, but in July Congress overrode the veto. The Energy Department is seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and hopes to open the waste repository by 2010. In the brief the state argues that the Bush administration is abandoning a 1982 law that mandates that a site's geology serve as the primary barrier to isolate the waste. Energy Department officials have maintained that the site is in full compliance with the 1982 requirements, saying that the project relies on the geology of Yucca Mountain to contain the waste, and that additional engineered barriers will provide additional protection. Egan disagrees, and said that the Energy Department has flip-flopped from a position in which geological isolation was the main factor in determining a site to a reliance on man-made barriers and containers. "They jettison their own rules and get the Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Environmental Protection Agency to change their rules so Yucca becomes suitable," Egan said. "Because of these changes there is nothing in the rules to prohibit a repository from being located on the banks of the Potomac River." The Energy Department knows that water flows through the mountain to the water table in about 50 to 200 years, a much faster rate than the original estimate of 80,000 years, Egan said. Contamination of the water table is a real possibility if high level nuclear waste is stored at the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Egan said. "Once they discovered that, it should have been determined that Yucca was not a suitable site," Egan said. Other arguments in the brief include a failure by the Energy Department to determine how the nuclear waste would be transported to the site, and the lack of consideration of terrorist attacks. Oral arguments in the case could be heard in September 2003. Nevada officials hope that the case will result in the invalidation of Abraham and Bush's decision, void the environmental impact study and force the Energy Department to rewrite its guidelines. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 44 Piketon plant welcomes new work Thursday, December 5, 2002 The Associated Press PIKETON, Ohio - Winning a project to test a new way to produce nuclear fuel will enable a southern Ohio uranium plant to continue its long heritage of helping meet the nation's energy and security needs, the plant's union president said. The announcement Wednesday by USEC Inc. that it chose the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant for a $150 million facility to test centrifuge technology also provides a strong financial boost for the region, said Dan Minter, president of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical &Energy union. The plant in Piketon was in competition for the project with a sister plant in Paducah, Ky. Gary Hager, president of the plant's security guard union, said the announcement probably will prevent heavy layoffs of guards planned for next September. The plant now is looking for new guards to hire, he said. "This is a big boost to the whole community," Mr. Hager said. The plant's general manager, Patrick Musser, said the project will allow USEC to showcase its ability to enrich uranium. Getting the test project was the Piketon plant's first step toward securing a permanent plant using centrifuge technology, he said. USEC plans to have the testing facility operating by 2005. If all goes well, the Bethesda, Md.-based company plans to build a permanent commercial plant using this technology by 2010. A permanent operation would cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion and bring 500 to 600 jobs to the plant. Gov. Bob Taft said the 50 jobs the test project will provide will have salaries of more than $55,000. [http://enquirer.com/ [http://cincinnati.com] ***************************************************************** 45 USEC deal moving fast The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 11:44 a.m. on Thursday, December 5, 2002 by R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff The U.S. Enrichment Corp. seems on a fast track in fitting puzzle pieces together for its centrifuge development program. The Bethesda, Md.-based company Wednesday chose the Department of Energy's Portsmouth, Ohio, site for a $150 million facility to test a new way to produce nuclear fuel. Locally Oak Ridge National Laboratory in September signed an agreement with the company worth $121 million to develop and demonstrate a uranium enrichment technology. That program will be located at the K-25 site, the former gaseous diffusion plant slated for decommissioning by fiscal year 2008. In November the company sped through several regulatory hoops and came out the other side with a Finding of No Significant Impact on leasing two buildings at K-25. As the Department of Energy praised the USEC plans, the process has not been without its critics. Members of the Local Oversight Committee's Citizens' Advisory Panel have been critical of the lack of citizen input in the process and the speed at which DOE has moved on the issue, with Chairman Norman Mulvenon calling the FONSI a "done deal." J.L. Palmer, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, wrote an Oct. 7 letter to DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office stating concern for private citizens working at the K-25 site. "EPA has strong reservations about this approach and is concerned that the protection of private citizens cannot be assured," wrote Palmer, who noted the DOE was neglecting to perform a baseline environmental assessment report and a screening-level human risk assessment. The Oak Ridge Operations office responded, saying officials there disagree with the EPA, and that normal leasing protocol does not apply in the leases to USEC. In addition, Palmer noted that DOE must comply with applicable Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act requirements. "Absent these documents (CERCLA and the protocol assessments) EPA cannot support DOE's efforts." Another issue is whether the work locally falls under DOE's "Work for Others" programs. USEC is paying for the work and DOE is providing its technology capabilities through Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "It is private-sector work and should be regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and not self-regulated by the DOE," said Richard Miller, a policy analyst with the watchdog Government Accountability Project. According to the Associated Press, USEC plans to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the test facility early next year. Construction of the plant, located in Piketon, Ohio, would begin in 2004, with operations starting in 2005. The test project will bring about 50 new jobs, according to the report. The lease at K-25 could also create problems for the accelerated cleanup program, which calls for remediation and closure of the site by the end of fiscal year 2008. Meanwhile another company, Louisiana Energy Services, has run into a series of snags for its uranium enrichment facility proposed in Hartsville, Tenn. That project has come under fire by numerous national watchdog organizations for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's consideration of fast-tracking licensing, and citizens have protested the location of the facility in their town. As to USEC, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham Wednesday applauded "The progress industry is making to ensure that domestic uranium enrichment activities remain a key contributor to ensuring America's energy security and the future of nuclear energy." R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or [danielsrcd@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 46 USEC chooses Ohio The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 11:38 a.m. on Thursday, December 5, 2002 from staff and wire reports Ohio will be the site of a $150 million facility that will test a new way to produce nuclear fuel, according to an Associated Press report. U.S. Enrichment Corp., a supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants, in September signed an agreement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory worth $121 million to develop and demonstrate a uranium enrichment technology there. USEC's centrifuge technology was tested by the Department of Energy in the 1980s before being abandoned, according to the AP report. USEC was once part of the Energy Department before being privatized. According to the report, USEC ceased uranium-enrichment production at its southern Ohio plant last year and consolidated operations at Paducah, Ky. The Ohio plant remains on standby, with 1,350 workers maintaining it, doing environmental cleanup, and transfer and shipping work. The Energy Department funds the standby operations and cleanup work. The company planned to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the test facility early next year. Construction of the plant, located in Piketon, Ohio, would begin in 2004, with operations starting in 2005. The test project will bring about 50 new jobs, USEC said. According to the report, the company has pledged to build by 2010 a permanent plant that will use the new technology to process uranium into nuclear fuel for use at commercial power plants. A permanent operation would employ 500 to 600 people and cost $1 billion to $1.5 billion. The department said Wednesday that the site for a future uranium enrichment plant will be selected from Portsmouth, Ohio, or Paducah after satisfactory demonstration of the technology at the Lead Cascade facility at Portsmouth. All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 47 Costs soar at UK nuclear submarine facilities - report* / Thu December 5, 2002 07:01 PM ET / LONDON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Construction costs to upgrade Britain's nuclear submarine facilities have soared by 44 percent and taxpayers are picking up most of the bill after another private sector project turned sour, a report said on Friday. The country's public spending watchdog said the costs to improve the dockyards at Devonport in southwest England for the refitting and refuelling of the Royal Navy's nuclear submarines had risen to an estimated 933 million pounds ($1.5 billion). The National Audit Office said the Ministry of Defence and other departments must learn to minimise the risk of being saddled with cost overruns when it engaged the private sector. The government has been using private sector funding to help it improve the country's creaking public services. "Despite the stated allocation of risk in the contract, the MoD agreed to fund most of the cost increases in this project, thereby accepting back risks it had originally transferred," said John Bourn, the head of the audit office, in a statement. The centre-left Labour government has sparked outcry from its own parliamentary supporters and public sector unions over its policy of part-privatisation, ranging from the capital's underground rail network to hospitals and air traffic control. The report on Devonport comes after the government said on Wednesday it would give companies in the part-privatisation of London's ageing underground railway a helping hand in case opponents of the scheme win a legal battle to derail it. Taxpayers learned last month that they would foot the bill for the rescue of stricken nuclear power firm British Energy BGY.L . Trade unions have objected to plans to contract out naval repair work at bases such as Devonport to the private sector. The government has said transferring naval repairs to the private sector will save 300 million pounds over five years. The Devonport dockyards are owned and operated by Devonport Management Ltd (DML), which is majority-owned by Brown & Root, a unit of engineering and construction firm Halliburton CoHAL.N . The watchdog said the Ministry of Defence had obtained government approval in 1997 for funding of 650 million pounds to upgrade the nuclear submarine facilities but it has "partly funded the poor performance by DML and its sub-contractors". "Total project costs are currently estimated to be 933 million pounds but the final costs are still uncertain as construction of some facilities is still on-going," the audit office said in a report. The ministry will pay 849 million pounds of the total project costs or 31 percent more than its original budget. But the defence ministry said that under revised contracts, DML, which also counts the Weir Group Plc WEIR.L and Balfour Beatty Plc as stakeholders, must pay 43 million pounds in liabilities and will not receive any of the potential profit it could have earned under the original contract. "The company will be paying more than its maximum liability under the original contract -- 35 million pounds -- and more than twice its own estimate of its poor performance," Defence Procurement Minister Lord Bach said in a statement. Reuters The Company Products & ***************************************************************** 48 Students bring ?UC Nuclear Free? campaign to UCLA DANIEL FELDMAN/Daily Bruin Lindsay Cook and Michael Cox, third-year political science students, display ?UC Nuclear Free? bumperstickers and meeting minutes. By *Noah Grand* and *Ewan Cameron* DAILY BRUIN REPORTER ngrand@media.ucla.edu ecameron@media.ucla.edu Most UCLA students know more about weapons of mass destruction being developed halfway across the world than those their own university helps to produce. The UC manages two labs for the Department of Energy ? Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories ? that design nuclear weapons. But members of a campaign entitled "UC Nuclear Free" argue that developing nuclear weapons is immoral and the university should not be involved. "Students from Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Irvine and now UCLA are now all working on this campaign together," said Michael Cox, a third-year political science student and member of the UCLA chapter. The group has raised its profile on other UC campuses, but the UCLA chapter held its first meeting last month. "To get the campaign started in UCLA, students need a forum to voice concerns on this issue and to know about it," said Lindsay Cook, a third-year political science student. Both Cook and Cox get their interest in the campaign from UC Santa Barbara, where UC Nuclear Free has its headquarters. Cook said that it is appropriate to have this group at UCLA, a campus whose chancellor is an expert on national security and who was a negotiator for a major international arms control agreement. The UC labs are not currently responsible for the production or storage of nuclear weapons, but they do develop and maintain nuclear technology. University press aide Jeff Garberson said debate over the university's nuclear involvement has been a "regular and understandable" occurrence in his 30 years at the UC. "It is a sign of the strength of the democratic process that people can debate this publicly and openly," Garberson said. The university started running Los Alamos in 1943, as scientists gathered there to create the world's first atomic bomb in a secret mission known as the Manhattan Project. Among those protesting UC involvement with nuclear weapons is Sir Joseph Rotblat, one of the researchers of the Manhattan Project who is now lending his support to UC Nuclear Free. He resigned from the Manhattan Project before its completion after realizing that Hitler's atomic weapons program was not going to succeed, he said. In 1995 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Student activists argue that most of the international community is on their side, as the vast majority of nations have agreed to a treaty banning all nuclear testing. But the U.S. Senate voted against ratifying this treaty in 1999, allowing the labs to keep developing new nuclear weapons technology. Ironically, a nuclear explosion monitoring system in the Livermore lab is used to enforce other nations' compliance with the treaty, said Michael Coffey, the Youth Outreach Coordinator for UC Nuclear Free. Members turned to one of Carnesale's speeches titled "Rethinking National Security," delivered in February, for additional support. "It is hard to argue that others should have zero nuclear weapons, but that the United States needs thousands of them," Carnesale said in the speech. "To be credible, the United States must reduce its own nuclear arsenal." The group, which has both student and non-student members, is also concerned the UC could be inventing new tactical nuclear weapons that could be used in a possible conventional war with Iraq or North Korea. In spite of the university's long-standing support of the labs' activities, UC Nuclear Free wants the university to cancel its contracts with the Department of Energy and stop running the labs, because it questions the morality of the university. "Please raise your voices and demand that the University of California get out of the business of making weapons of mass destruction" Roblat said in an open letter he sent to the university in May. The UC Regents have yet to reply to the letter. They are scheduled to discuss the lab contracts at their March meeting, which is at UCLA. ***************************************************************** 49 How Clinton came close to bombing Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Jonathan Watts Thursday December 5, 2002 The Guardian [http://www.guardian.co.uk] Seoul braced for a biological weapons attack, US forces on high alert in the demilitarised zone and White House staff arguing over whether to launch a surgical strike on a nuclear reactor. This was the scene in 1994 during the last North Korean crisis, though the world only learned several years later just how close the peninsula came to a devastating war. Then as now, the United States uncovered evidence of a nuclear weapons programme, which North Korea initially refused to give up. Diplomats negotiated frantically for a solution but participants are now revealing the terrifying game of "chicken" that was being played behind the scenes. "The United States came to the brink of initiating war to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons," according to a recent article in the Washington Post by William Perry and Ashton Carter, who were secretary and assistant secretary of defence during the crisis. After satellites had discovered a plant in Yongbyon capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, they said they spent most of the first half of 1993 planning a war on the Korean peninsula. "We made our willingness to use military force crystal clear to the North Koreans by positioning forces to strike Yongbyon and reinforcing our military units that were deployed to defend South Korea against an onslaught from the North." But the projected casualties from a counter-strike by the North were too much for the Clinton administration to stomach. Seoul's population of 12 million, as well as 37,000 US troops, are in range of 500 North Korean artillery pieces dug deep into the mountains on the border. To avert tens of thousands of casualties and millions of refugees, a diplomatic compromise was drawn up: the agreed framework, under which the North was promised fuel oil and two light-water nuclear reactors in return for a promise to abandon its plutonium programme. Although critics condemned the agreement as a reward for an extortionist, the US administration accepted the deal in the expectation that the North would collapse within a couple of years so it would never have to live up to its side of the bargain. But eight years on, Kim Jong-il is still in power in Pyongyang, the agreed framework is close to collapse and a re-run of the nuclear chicken game is closer than it has been at any time since 1994. [UP] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002 ***************************************************************** 50 FREE GRIGORY PASKO NOW! AI Index: EUR 46/068/2002 (Public) News Service No: 225 5 December 2002 Russian Federation: Amnesty International demands the immediate acquittal and release of journalist and environmental activist Grigory Pasko Amnesty International appeals for the immediate acquittal and release of the Russian journalist and environmentalist Grigory Pasko who is serving a four year sentence on treason charges in a prison colony in the Russian Far East. "Grigory Pasko's conviction and continuing arrest solely for exercising his basic human right of freedom of expression is yet another example of the denial of justice that is the fate of other victims of human rights violations in the Russian Federation," Amnesty International said. Grigory Pasko, a reporter for a Russian Pacific Fleet newspaper, was first arrested in 1997 for passing allegedly sensitive information to Japanese media. International and Russian human rights organizations vigorously protested against the arrest and in 1999 he was acquitted of all spying charges. A court in the Russian Far East sentenced Grigory Pasko on a lesser charge and released him immediately under an amnesty. But after an appeal, a Military Court in the city of Vladivostok gave Grigory Pasko a four years sentence for treason end espionage in December 2001. Amnesty International adopted Grigory Pasko as a prisoner of conscience from the start as it considers him to be imprisoned solely for the expression of his non-violent beliefs. The International Human Rights Day on 10 December is a focal point for all its members in 140 countries around the world to take action for Grigory Pasko's immediate and unconditional release. "International pressure was crucial in the first trial against Grigory Pasko. Renewed efforts of human rights organizations may result now in his release. I am sure that the European Court of Human Rights will take up his case and its decision will be damning for the Russian justice system," said Russian human rights activist Aleksei Simonov. "The information released by Grigory Pasko did not constitute a threat to Russian national security and he should not have been imprisoned in the first place. As a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and to other international human rights treaties the Russian Federation should fulfil its obligations and protect human rights as they are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By releasing Grigory Pasko without delay the Russian government will show a clear commitment to promote and protect fundamental human rights for everybody," the organization said. Background The case - in 1993 Grigory Pasko filmed a Russian navy tanker dumping radioactive waste and ammunition in the Sea of Japan. In this film and in a series of articles he showed the threat to the environment caused by ships of Russia's decaying Pacific Fleet, including nuclear submarines. He also reported on corruption inside the fleet and he passed on public information on these issues to Japanese journalists. Amnesty International believes that his prosecution appeared to be motivated by political reprisal for exposing corruption in the Russian Pacific Fleet and the practice of dumping nuclear waste into the sea. The organization believes that the case is a clear breach of national and international norms protecting freedom of expression that the Russian state is obliged to protect. Grigory Pasko's defence team is appealing to the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court to overturn the verdict and order his immediate release. [info@bellona.no] For further information contact the Russia Campaign Press Officer Lydia Aroyo on +44 20 7413 5599 or +44 7798 555 629, e-mail: laroyo@amnesty.org; or the Russia Campaign Researcher Kim Wiesener on +44 20 7413 5618. Visit the Amnesty International Russia Campaign website: www.amnesty.org/russia information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org [http://www.amnesty.org] For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org [http://news.amnesty.org] ***************************************************************** 51 Nuclear weapons to stay, North Korea tells UN body* globeinteractive.com: Making the Business of Life Easier The Globe and Mail /globeandmail.com Thursday, December 5, 2002 ? Page A22 Seoul -- North Korea rejected a call by the UN nuclear monitoring agency for the Communist country to abandon its nuclear weapons program and allow foreign inspections. North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun said the Nov. 29 resolution was "extremely unilateral," the North Korean official news agency KCNA reported yesterday. The International Atomic Energy Agency's resolution urged North Korea to "give up any nuclear weapons programs expeditiously." /AP/ © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 52 Lab Whistleblower Complaint Upheld* * By JEFF TOLLEFSON | The New Mexican 12/05/2002 * L os Alamos National Laboratory retaliated against an internal auditor who went public with evidence that the lab was lying about emissions of airborne radioactive materials in 1996, according to a recent ruling by the U.S. Department of Labor. * The Labor Department's Administrative Review Board on Nov. 13 upheld the whistleblower complaint filed in 1997 by Joe Gutierrez, who then worked in the laboratory's Office of Audits and Assessments. The board ordered the lab to pay Gutierrez $49,000 in attorney's fees, implement a retroactive salary increase and remove negative comments from a performance evaluation. The lab has appealed two previous decisions in Gutierrez's favor. The board's ruling differed with those decisions only in that it did not award Gutierrez $15,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress. Los Alamos officials could not be reached for comment regarding the latest decision. "Hopefully the lab won't appeal this so we can get this behind us, and we can all move forward," said Gutierrez, who said he subsequently chose to leave Audits and Assessments to get away from animosity and a generally uncomfortable climate within the office. He now works on technology-transfer issues at the laboratory. The case centers on events that began in 1996, when Gutierrez went public with documentation showing that the lab was out of compliance with the Clean Air Act. In an interview this week, Gutierrez said Los Alamos officials were telling the public that the lab was in compliance with federal air regulations, but his work on an internal assessment showed that this wasn't the case. He brought this documentation to various superiors, who declined to acknowledge or act on his advisements. "I had meetings with a director, deputy director and various division leaders," he said. "As we see now, they elected to ignore it and sweep it under the carpet." Gutierrez said he felt compelled to go public with the information because the release of airborne radionuclides is an issue of public health. The lab was telling people that everything was as it should be, he said. "I had information that showed that was not factually correct." The evidence turned out to be integral to a Clean Air Act lawsuit filed by Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. A federal judge ruled in favor of Concerned Citizens and found the lab to be out of compliance with air-emission regulations on 31 of 33 major stacks that vented gases into the atmosphere from facilities where radioactive materials are handled. Citing "unfavorable customer feedback," a subsequent employee evaluation indicated that Gutierrez had lost the confidence of managers whose programs he had assessed, according to the Department of Labor. Aside from that criticism, Gutierrez received "Fully Satisfactory" ratings in six of seven categories and "Exceptional" in the seventh. Another lab memo cited by the Labor Department went on to say, "We need to be sensitive to these customer concerns and avoid media interactions leading to such coverage of internal assessment issues." The lab's ability to police itself has come under fire recently. Citing similar issues of "lost confidence," the lab recently fired two employees who were conducting internal inquiries into fraud and other illegal activities within the laboratory. One of the fired employees said Audits and Assessments often appeared to be complicit in covering up wrongdoings at the laboratory. Chuck Montaño, chairman of the Hispanic Roundtable of New Mexico, worked in Audits and Assessments when the internal audit function was operated by the University of California, which manages the lab on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. That function transferred from the university to the laboratory itself in the early 1990s. Montaño said that move only increased pressure on auditors, by making them responsible to the people they are supposed to investigate. For Gutierrez, recent allegations of cover-ups at the laboratory aren't surprising. For years, he said, lab management has heard, and apparently ignored, people's concerns regarding the lack of an independent audit function. ***************************************************************** 53 Bidding Begins for Oak Ridge Cleanup Project* December 4, 2002 OAK RIDGE (AP) -- Bids will be taken soon to decommission two old uranium enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge. The project involves the decommissioning of the K25 and K27 plants. They formerly enriched uranium for bombs and reactor fuel. BNFL is the most experienced contractor in such work. But it has said it won't bid on this project because of a contract dispute. Company officials earlier complained about plans to use a fixed-price contract. One BNFL official cites the cleanup's uncertainties and the possibility that large sums of cash may have to be invested for issues that arise during the project. The contract coming up for bids is for the second of three phases of cleanup. It involves equipment removal and disposal. The Department of Energy says fixed-price contracting gets the best value for taxpayers and supports the accelerated Oak Ridge cleanup program. (Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) Follow the Titans at WATE.com. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2002 WorldNow ***************************************************************** 54 Public has another month to comment on new, stricter Rocky Flats cleanup plan The Daily Camera: Broomfield Preliminary options for old landfill discussed By Alisha Jeter Rhines, Enterprise Staff Writer December 4, 2002 Preliminary ideas are being discussed for dealing with an old landfill at Rocky Flats. The landfill, which was used mostly for construction debris and office waste from 1952 to 1968, is located on the southwestern edge of the industrial core of the former nuclear weapons plant about five miles from Broomfield. Called the "original landfill," the dump may also contain small amounts of solvents, paint and paint thinner, oil, pesticides, uranium and cleaners, said Lane Butler, environmental restoration manager for Kaiser-Hill Co., the company hired to clean up Rocky Flats. The landfill eventually became a repository for general plant waste, according to records, but controls were in place to ensure radioactive wastes were not routinely dumped there, Butler said. The landfill may contain 200,000 yards or more of material, or enough to fill about 2,000 football fields worth. Clean-up managers expect to begin looking at a plan for the landfill in February, part of a larger clean-up document. The options may include leaving the landfill as is, said Steve Gunderson, Rocky Flats project manager for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the agency regulating the 350-acre industrial area's cleanup. Other options include shoring up part of the sloped landfill to keep it stable or moving the material off-site, which could cost up to $200 million, Gunderson said. Guiding principles in the decision would be if the cost is justified and it would be safe, he said. "Can the landfill be closed stably in place or is there a cost-effective, safe way to move it, if not?" Gunderson said. He said problems landfills can have include methane generation, leakage at the bottom or slump failure, which is the failure of slope of the landfill caused by massive piling of material. The latter would likely be the critical issue with the landfill, he said. The other two are not significant issues for this landfill. One issue of concern is a runoff-gathering trench that runs through the landfill, gathering rain and snow runoff from the material piles, and to the area of Woman Creek. The part of the trench running through the landfill is expected to be removed. The landfill discussion comes as new, stricter cleanup levels at Rocky Flats are being considered. The draft plan was formally released in mid-November, starting a 60-day public comment period that is to last until Jan. 13. The proposal would clamp down on the allowable contamination in surface soil, or the first three feet of dirt, lowering acceptable levels to 50 picocuries per gram of soil from 651 picocuries per gram, a radiation measure in place since 1996 when clean up began. However, the proposal also would limit subsurface contamination, between three and six feet underground, to under 3 nanocuries per gram of soil. The original plan had been to clean to under 1 nanocurie per gram. A curie is measure of radioactivity, and nanocuries represent one-billionth of a curie. The idea is that surface contamination is more likely to affect people on the site than subsurface contamination. The level of clean up, nonetheless, is based on protecting a 40-hour-per-week worker on the planned wildlife refuge. The approximately 6,500 acres at Rocky Flats is to become a wildlife refuge after the clean up is finished, or after December 2006. For more information about the new plan, visit www.rfets.gov under the link "Modifications to RFCA," or visit the Rocky Flats reading rooms at Front Range Community College in Westminster, 3705 112th Avenue. webmaster@thedailycamera.com [webmaster@thedailycamera.com] . Click here ***************************************************************** 55 Nickel disposal meeting called - [http://www.paducahsun.com/] The Paducah Sun Paducah, Kentucky Thursday, December 05, 2002 U.S. Department of Energy officials wants to recycle 6 1/2 tons of slightly radioactive metal but wants suggestions how to do it. By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 Representatives of at least five firms will meet with U.S. Department of Energy officials Thursday to discuss proposals for recycling more than 13,000 tons of scrap nickel, most of which is stored at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. It is DOE's latest effort to find a use for the nickel that was once used in production equipment at enrichment plants in Paducah; Piketon, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. The nickel, which has a low level of radioactive contamination, has a potential value of more than $10 million. The proposals will be limited to use in government or commercial nuclear industry because of a 1999 ban imposed by the Clinton administration prohibiting the metal's use in consumer products. The ban was imposed after environmental and health groups expressed concern that recycling the nickel for use in consumer products would cause a health risk. Supporters of recycling, however, say the contamination levels are below federal standards and don't pose a health threat. "If the ideas we receive on Thursday look promising, we'll draft a request for proposals and invite firms to submit formal bids for the recycling," said Rich Meehan, team leader of DOE's facility reuse operation in Oak Ridge. He said the request should be out by February. The firms were not identified. In the request for solicitations, DOE said it is "particularly interested in concepts that would result in beneficial impacts to local communities at Paducah, Portsmouth and Oak Ridge." The benefit would be in the form of jobs created at a recycling facility. Meehan said it is too early to predict whether recycling plants would be built at all three sites, one site or at another location. "We'll have to wait and see what is in the proposals we receive," Meehan said. Paducah has 9,600 tons of nickel ingots in storage, and Oak Ridge has 3,600 tons of shredded nickel. There is none stored in Piketon. DOE officials estimate that 21,000 more tons of scrap nickel will be generated as plants are decommissioned at the three sites during the next 25 years. A recycling plant could employ 50 or more people, according to previous estimates. ***************************************************************** 56 IEER | Comments on the Modern Pit Facility IEER [http://www.ieer.org/index.html] | Subject Index [http://www.ieer.org/webindex.html] Comments of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research on the Notice of Intent of the National Nuclear Security Administration to prepare a Supplemental PEIS on the Modern Pit Facility 22 November 2002 Mr. James Rose Supplement to the Programmatic EIS on SSM for a Modern Pit Facility Document Manager NA-53, Forrestal Building US Department of Energy/NNSA 1000 Independence Ave., SW Washington, DC 20585 fax 1-202-586-5324 James.Rose@nnsa.doe.gov Dear Mr. Rose: The following are IEER's comments on the NOI of the NNSA to prepare a Supplemental PEIS on the Modern Pit Facility. 1. Such a facility would primarily be for a vast expansion of the US capability to make nuclear weapons rather than for the maintenance of the arsenal slated to be active under the 2002 SORT treaty between the United States and Russia. The NNSA is already authorized to make up 80 pits per year. Past replacement experience due to defects has not been driven by nuclear-related aging defects in the primary. In fact, there has historically never been an aging-related safety defect in a primary throughout the history of the nuclear weapons program, as IEER showed in our 1996 study, Nuclear Safety Smokescreen. At a replacement rate of 2 percent per year, the 80-pit current authorization would allow for the maintenance of an arsenal of 4000 warheads, about double the agreed active arsenal under the SORT treaty. 2. Aging does not appear to produce safety defects in the primary. It also does not appear to produce performance defects according to recent data discussed in the December 2000 issue of Physics Today. See the article by Raymond Jeanloz in that issue. It is essential that the NNSA justify the need in relation to the technical data discussed in that paper or justify why it is not appropriate to use it. 3. The construction of a large pit facility that could make up to 500 pits per year could maintain an arsenal as large as 25,000 warheads. This would be in gross violation of the US obligations under the nonproliferation Treaty and re-start a dangerous arms race that would damage health, the environment, US security, and global security. 4. The NPT is a security cornerstone of for the United States, its allies and the rest of the world and it is part of the law of the United States under Article VI of the constitution. Constructing a large MPF that includes provision for new weapons and new weapon types is contrary to promises made by the US to other NPT parties. 5. The DOE repeatedly promised the people of the United States that it would not again put health and safety and environment in second place below weapons production. But the new push for weapons production is occurring simultaneously with an abandonment of DOE's commitments for clean up of its sites around the country. The proposals to leave large amounts of high-level waste in place on sites like Savannah River Site, Hanford, and INEEL are an alarming echo of the polices that created environmental and health problems on a large scale in the past. 6. The NNSA is therefore obliged to consider the no action alternative in the Supplemental PEIS. 7. IEER prepared a study on stockpile stewardship, including safety and reliability of nuclear weapons in 1996 based on official DOE data. The summary of that study is a part of these comments. It can be found on the web at: http://www.ieer.org/reports/sbss-sum.html [http://www.ieer.org/reports/sbss-sum.html] Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Official documents: Notice of Intent to Prepare a Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on Stockpile Stewardship and Management for a Modern Pit Facility [http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/2002/September/Day-23/i24 076.htm] National Nuclear Security Administration [http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/ ] Institute for Energy and Environmental Research [http://www.ieer.org/index.html] Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org [ieer@ieer.org] Takoma Park, Maryland, USA Sent November 22, 2002 Posted December 3, 2002 ***************************************************************** 57 Remarks by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham Plenary Session of the Planning Workshop for Scientists and Stakeholders U.S. Climate Change Science and Technology Programs Washington, DC energy.gov - Headquarters' Speeches December 3, 2002 Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here at this valuable workshop on the state of United States climate change and technology programs. I know you have already heard from some impressive speakers, like President Bush's science advisor, John Marburger; NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe; and my assistant secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Dave Garman. I want to follow on some of the things they said to give all of you a fuller perspective on the Administration's efforts to combat global climate change and the role my Department will play. Before I begin discussing our progress in this area, I want to express my appreciation to Secretary of Commerce Don Evans. I'm sorry he could not be here today. Secretary Evans has provided outstanding leadership in helping implement the President's climate change vision. From the first months of this Administration, President Bush has made the subject of global climate change a priority. The President has reaffirmed America's commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention and its central goal to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate. The challenge, of course, is fashioning a program to accomplish these goals. In this regard, the options could include anything from either outlawing GHG producing entities to taxing the use of such things in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But, obviously, any such draconian actions would surely be accompanied by drastic economic dislocation. Accordingly, we determined that the only pathway forward to address GHG emissions consistent with economic growth was to develop the science and technology needed to devise real answers to the challenges of climate change. Our approach reflects a belief that the most sensible way to slow, halt, and even reverse the emission of greenhouse gases is to harness the very best technology and science … to take advantage of the strengths of a robust economy … to call on the genius found in our national labs, universities, and in the private sector … and to work in close cooperation with other nations as we proceed. It is important to note that our approach is one that relies on economic growth, not one that condemns it. "Sustained economic growth," as President Bush said earlier this year, "is the solution, not the problem, because a nation that grows its economy is a nation that can afford investments and new technologies." President Bush called on nine cabinet agencies, along with other government offices, to develop a coordinated and coherent plan to seriously address global climate change. What he made clear to us was the need to enhance our scientific understanding of the climate system even as we advance the technology we can employ to help us address the problem. The Department of Commerce has been tasked with leading the government's efforts to understand the science involved in climate change. A better understanding of the climate system and the role human activities play in that system will guide and pace our response to the threat of climate change. However, since 79 percent of human-induced greenhouse gases result from our production and use of energy, our response to the threat of climate change will in no small measure depend on the development of new energy technology, implemented over the long-term. That's where the Department of Energy comes in, and that is why we are leading the government's efforts on the technology front. We are moving aggressively in those areas where the course is clear and where the technology makes sense, and we will expand our efforts as the Commerce Department moves forward with its findings. Indeed, the President's new climate management structure allows the strengths of the scientific effort - led by the Commerce Department - and the strengths of the technological effort - driven by the Department of Energy - to effectively complement one another in the drive toward solutions. In February of this year, the President spelled out the first concrete challenge. He committed the United States to an aggressive strategy to cut greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent over the next decade - a first step to eventually stopping, and then reversing, greenhouse gas growth. Doing this will avoid more than 500 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, or the equivalent of taking nearly one out of every three cars off the road. It is worth pointing out that this is comparable to the average progress that nations participating in the Kyoto Protocol are required to achieve - without the economic consequences. The Department of Energy has been moving forward on a broad front to implement our climate change policies. I would like to highlight for you several of the initiatives we are taking. First, we are looking to do what we can to combat GHG emissions from our current energy portfolio. An obvious place to start is by advancing energy efficiency and working to bring down the cost of renewable energy. Our most recent budget request sought more funding for our energy efficiency and renewable energy programs in nominal dollars than was appropriated last year or any prior year since 1981. But enhancing energy efficiency and renewable energy, by themselves, won't solve all our problems. That's why we are working on a number of other fronts, including some whose payoffs might be decades down the road, that address questions about energy dependence in addition to the environment and climate change. I'd like to discuss three of these with you today. One of the most exciting of these programs deals with transportation, which accounts for one third of U.S. carbon emissions. In January of this year the Department of Energy launched the FreedomCAR Partnership. The goal of FreedomCAR is a revolution under the hood - efficient, affordable hydrogen fuel cells powering the vehicles consumers drive in the 21st Century. FreedomCAR aims to develop the component technologies necessary to provide a full range of emissions-free, affordable cars and light trucks - in short, an approach that will end our personal transportation system's dependence on petroleum without sacrificing people's freedom of mobility or freedom of vehicle choice. As we work toward that ultimate goal, FreedomCAR will also support the development of nearer-term technologies that significantly reduce petroleum consumption and the environmental impacts of conventional vehicles - which will help us achieve the 18 percent reduction in greenhouse gas intensity called for by President Bush. Of course, there are many technological obstacles that will need to be surmounted for the widespread use of hydrogen as an "energy carrier." Cars and trucks that run on hydrogen powered fuel cells are not about to roll off the assembly lines in the near term. But it is clear, I think, that this is the wave of the future. However many years away hydrogen powered fuel cells may be, when they do finally come online they will mark a huge leap forward in our drive to control GHG emissions. To support FreedomCAR and to aid in solving the technological riddles a hydrogen economy presents, we recently announced the release of the National Hydrogen Energy Roadmap, the first step toward the creation of a revolutionary new hydrogen infrastructure that could one day be used to fuel not just cars and light trucks, but buses, ships, and perhaps even trains - with virtually no emissions. The hydrogen R programs in the Department will use this Roadmap to define directions and priorities. Next steps will include the development of detailed research and development plans for hydrogen production, delivery, storage, conversion, and end-use applications. Another critical R project is carbon sequestration, which also offers a tremendous opportunity to address the challenge of global climate change. President Bush has committed to spending $2 billion on our Clean Coal initiative over the next decade on a host of technologies to reduce the greenhouse gases and other pollutants produced by coal. Sequestration technologies are among the Clean Coal program's most promising carbon mitigation approaches. Five years ago, the idea of capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and sequestering it was considered by most knowledgeable people to be technically difficult and economically impossible. But today, in large part thanks to research conducted by the Department of Energy, conventional thinking has turned around. Today, we have more than 60 sequestration research projects underway. Our annual budget is approaching 50 million dollars, and our funding attracts another 35 million dollars annually from industry and others. And most importantly, we're beginning to see results: + Already, technology coming out of the laboratory has reduced the cost of capturing carbon from a power plant's exhaust by as much as 10-fold. + We're beginning to move into the field to test ways to permanently store carbon gases in geologic formations. + We're working with power companies to enhance the carbon uptake of soils and vegetation using the byproducts of their coal combustion plants. + We're exploring innovative concepts for turning carbon dioxide into a solid mineral - it takes nature thousands of years to do this, we've succeeded in reducing the time to 30 minutes. + And we're doing all of this with the voluntary participation - and voluntary contributions of financial and human resources - by private companies. That's the essence of the President's climate change initiative - joint government-industry partnerships working together to find sensible, low cost solutions. Two weeks ago, I announced the Department of Energy is moving our sequestration program into a new and expanded phase, setting up a nationwide network of regional sequestration partnerships. These partnerships, made up of private industry, universities, and state and local governments, will help us determine the technologies, regulations, and infrastructure that are best suited for specific regions of the country. Our goal is straightforward - we want to know which sequestration technology is likely to be most effective in a region. Will it be injecting carbon gases into active or abandoned oil fields? Or perhaps into coal seams or deep brine-filled reservoirs? Will it be processes that make forest and crop lands more productive? Or will it be new, novel concepts just now emerging from our laboratories? But equally important, we want to begin planning the permitting processes that will be necessary - on the state and local level. And we want people to begin thinking about the pipelines and other infrastructure that might be needed. We want to be ready if the science tells us that large-scale carbon reductions are necessary in the future. If carbon sequestration works, if it can be made affordable, if it can be proved practical - then it may be the long-term key to stabilizing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere or perhaps ultimately reducing it. Finally, there is nuclear energy. Fifty years ago, in the aftermath World War II, engineers and scientists began considering the civilian uses of nuclear power. It is safe to say that when nuclear energy was considered for civilian uses, the arguments recommending nuclear power were very different from the arguments recommending it today. Back then, arguments were put forth explaining how nuclear energy could be mobilized to apply to the fields of agriculture, medicine, and who knew what else the future might hold. Moreover atomic energy might be employed to generate electricity - at the time, not so much for the United States and other developed nations, it was argued - but for the "power-starved areas of the world." These were compelling arguments then, and they successfully bolstered the civilian application of nuclear energy. So successful have these efforts been that nuclear energy now accounts for 20 percent of American electricity generation, and not much less worldwide. But what I'd like to suggest is that there are additional arguments for nuclear power today that are relevant to today's realities. + First and foremost, nuclear power generates no greenhouse gas emissions. Given that fact, it must be a key element of our strategy to slow the growth of, and ultimately halt or reverse, the emission of greenhouse gases. There are other benefits as well. + Our commitment to a clean environment can be well served by nuclear energy. Nuclear power plants emit virtually none of the pollutants associated with the burning of fossil fuels. Nuclear powered plants in the eastern United States have made it possible for many states to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act. Since the mid-1970s, in fact, nuclear energy has enabled the U.S. to avoid emitting over 80 million tons of sulfur dioxide and about 40 million tons of nitrogen oxides. + Moreover, nuclear energy promises to cleanly and efficiently produce hydrogen - a potentially unlimited, clean energy carrier for the hydrogen economy. For these reasons we have been working hard to ensure that nuclear energy remains an important component of our energy future, and that it can be used safely and efficiently. Advanced energy technologies … FreedomCAR and the hydrogen economy … carbon sequestration research … enhancing the role of nuclear power - these are just some of the investments we are making to provide the breakthroughs needed to dramatically decrease our emissions in the long term. There are, of course, many other initiatives and programs throughout the federal government, along with valuable partnerships with private industry and with other nations, which aim at this goal. You have been briefed on many of these by earlier speakers. These are all part of a comprehensive, responsible strategy for dealing with climate change. We are taking a sensible approach to a complicated issue. And we are committed to dealing with it on the basis of cold facts and hard science. Make no mistake, however - the key to real progress on the subject of climate change will not be found in government mandates, nor in the activities and comments of Congress or Administration officials. Real solutions, real answers, meaningful advancement in dealing with the challenge of global climate change - that must come from the people in this room, from your colleagues around the world, and from talented men and women in our labs and in the academy working on breakthrough technologies. Genuine progress can only come about as a result of your efforts - working in the field, applying the latest scientific knowledge, and through trial and error. I hope that this week's gathering is serving you well for your hard work in the months and years ahead. What this Administration promises is to aid in this effort, to give you the resources and support and backing that are needed. This is a course of action I am convinced will provide the framework for other nations to follow in dealing with the subject of global climate change, and I look forward to working with all of you to ensure its success. [http://www.ma.doe.gov/energy/web.html] on This Service to the ***************************************************************** 58 Energy Secretary Comments on United States Enrichment Corporation Uranium Technology Announcement Domestic Enrichment of Nuclear Plant Fuel Remains Key Administration Energy Priority energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release RELEASE DATE: December 4, 2002 [Print Friendly Version] WASHINGTON, DC - Responding today to the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC Inc.) announcement to site new uranium enrichment technologies at the Department of Energy's Portsmouth, Ohio, facility, U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham applauded the progress industry is making to ensure that domestic uranium enrichment activities remain a key contributor to ensuring America's energy security and the future of nuclear energy. "As a clean, affordable and reliable energy source, nuclear energy is important to the Nation's future energy supply," Secretary Abraham said. "As a first step, the establishment of new technologies, like the lead cascade facility, will help ensure long-term, domestic capacity to enrich uranium fuel for our commercial nuclear reactors. USEC, and its partners in the nuclear industry, continue to take important steps enhancing national energy security with private sector development of advanced American technology." The site for a future uranium enrichment plant will be selected from Portsmouth, Ohio, or Paducah, Kentucky, after satisfactory demonstration of the technology at the Lead Cascade facility. With this announcement, USEC Inc. will establish a test facility for new uranium enrichment technologies and production, based on 28 years and more than $2 billion of research by the Department of Energy to establish new enrichment technologies. Today's announcement is an important milestone in the agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and USEC Inc. signed earlier this year. The agreement, signed on June 17, 2002, is designed to meet three priorities for the Bush administration. First, maintain America's nonproliferation initiative by requiring USEC to take delivery and market commercial nuclear fuel derived from Russian nuclear weapons at no expense to U.S. taxpayers. Second, ensure the future of domestic uranium enrichment operations through USEC's agreement to deploy a new advanced technology enrichment plant at Portsmouth, Ohio, (by 2010) or Paducah, Kentucky (by 2011). Third, until an economic replacement technology is deployed in the United States, continue domestic enrichment of uranium at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant by requiring USEC to maintain production at a level of 3.5 million SWU (the standard unit of measure for enriched uranium fuel) per year. Media Contact: Joe Davis, 202-586-4940 Release No. PR-02-253 ***************************************************************** 59 Department of Energy Awards Miamisburg Closure Project Cleanup Contract Cleanup to be Completed Nine Months Ahead of Schedule energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release : December 5, 2002 [Print Friendly Version] WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Department of Energy announced today the award of a $314 million closure contract to CH2M Hill Mound Inc., for the accelerated cleanup of the Miamisburg Closure Project (MCP). The Cost Plus Incentive Fee (CPIF) closure contract that was awarded will accelerate cleanup and then transfer the site to the Miamisburg Mound Community Improvement Corporation for industrial use by March 31, 2006 – nine months ahead of schedule. This CPIF closure contract represents a savings of $100 million for the scope of work included in the procurement. "I've made it clear from day one that I expect every cleanup site for which we have responsibility to dramatically accelerate the time for cleanup and the reduction of risk to communities," Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham said. "I am pleased that, with this award, we will accelerate the Miamisburg cleanup from a completion date of 2009 to no later than 2006." "The department has included in the contract both cost and schedule incentives to complete cleanup at the site before March 2006 and at a lower cost," Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Jessie Roberson said. "The work will be done in a quick and efficient way while maintaining safety as a top priority." The award of the Miamisburg contract marks the first major procurement since the department's Top-to-Bottom Review of the Environmental Management Program. This procurement process and contract incorporates many its findings to include reducing project risks and accelerating cleanup at the MCP while requiring a high level of safety performance at the site. "The acquisition process used for the MCP contract demonstrates our ability to conduct an efficient and effective procurement, and re-establishes our expectations for improved performance on current and future environmental management contracts," Roberson added. The new closure contract will take effect January 1, 2003. Media Contact: Dolline Hatchett, 202/586-5806 Joe Davis, 202/586-4940 Release No. PR-02-254 ***************************************************************** 60 DOE: Transfer of Horizon Center looks like a go The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 11:36 a.m. on Thursday, December 5, 2002 by R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff A Department of Energy official said Wednesday that the package for transfer of Horizon Center property looks like a go. The DOE's Oak Ridge Operations office has been working the issue in an attempt to transfer the property on the west end of Oak Ridge fee simple to the Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee. The ORO completed and transmitted the package to Washington Nov. 22. "We intend to have notification letters to Congress next week," said Jim Cayce, senior real estate officer with DOE, in a phone interview from Washington. From there various congressional committees will have a chance to review the issue for no more than 60 days, which would allow transfer of the property probably in late February. The package includes the fee simple transfer of about 450 acres of the approximate 1,000-acre Horizon Center, and the lease to CROET of about 520 acres considered environmentally sensitive land. The deal will be implemented under the so-called 770 process. Fee simple means that CROET would own the 450 acres. The 770 process, under Code of Federal Regulations 10, Part 770, gives authority to the department to transfer land at less than fair market value -- including giving the land away. Applicants must prove economic development need and show how the transfer will benefit the community. Cayce noted that DOE would be responsible for oversight of the environmentally sensitive property. "We retain ownership, therefore we retain responsibility," said Cayce. "CROET has a responsibility for the land too, but as landowners we are the stewards and therefore ultimately responsible." CROET and the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board await transfer of the 450 acres that would allow R Enterprises to kick off a speculative industrial building program at the site. "I'm really pleased that DOE in Washington is being diligent in trying to send that (package) out of their offices and over to Congress for review," said CROET Executive Director Lawrence Young. "We're anxious to be able to acquire that property so we can market it to the private sector." R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrcd@oakridger.com [danielsrcd@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 61 CROET gives up east-end transfer, going great guns at ETTP The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 11:37 a.m. on Thursday, December 5, 2002 by R. Cathey Daniels Oak Ridger staff The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee has withdrawn a request to the Department of Energy for transfer of federal property on the east end of town. The property, approximately 14 acres at 175 Oak Ridge Turnpike, has been home to DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information. The parcel is not on the city's list of self-sufficiency parcels. The Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee placed the Aug. 26 request under the 770 process, a little-used DOE mechanism devised to speed up land conveyance and assist energy communities with economic development. The request was withdrawn Nov. 7. "The process was becoming a little difficult to negotiate through with regard to the continued use of the buildings by DOE," said CROET Executive Director Lawrence Young. "I have confidence we could have worked through that process, but quite frankly we have so many things we're doing right now I thought it wise to let DOE come to some conclusion as to what they want to use it for first." A spokesman for the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Operations office said Wednesday said circumstances could change to make the transfer of the property and two buildings, dubbed T1 and T2, eventually possible. "We have had several negotiation sessions with CROET to explore various options," said Steve Wyatt. "Our evaluation of T-1 and T-2 indicated that we could clearly make T-2 available to CROET. However, in the case of T-1 there is a continuing need by DOE for a substantial portion of the building. "Therefore, at this time it does not appear that it would be economically viable for CROET to accept only portions of the deal they proposed," continued Wyatt. "However, as our circumstances change, we are open to reconsidering all of these options in the future." Meanwhile CROET will continue to work with DOE to transfer seven buildings otherwise slated for take-down through the accelerated cleanup program in fiscal year 2003. The organization has formally requested Buildings K-1007 and K-1330 and is currently working a request for K-1225 and K-1580. "And I suspect sometime the early part of next calendar year, should everything progress, we would request 1400, 1035 and 1036," said Young. CROET wants the square footage primarily for office space, mainly for the pharmaceutical, biological, telecommunications and motor vehicle industry. CROET works with DOE for reindustrialization of the K-25 site. Officials say that federal dollars can be saved if the buildings can be reutilized rather than decommissioned. R. Cathey Daniels can be contacted at (865) 220-5515 or danielsrcd@oakridger.com [danielsrcd@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 62 GLOBAL SURVEY FINDS EVEN ALLIES SHARPLY CRITICAL OF U.S. Mercury News | 12/05/2002 | WORLD TAKES DIM VIEW OF AMERICA [mercurynews.com - The mercurynews home page] WORLD TAKES DIM VIEW OF AMERICA ACTIONS, IMAGE By Sonni Efron Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - In the eyes of much of the world, America is an inconsiderate loner that has really good entertainment but really bad values. While anti-American sentiment in most Muslim nations is profound, there's also growing suspicion about U.S. motives in Iraq, especially among nations that know America best. Those were among the key findings of a landmark study of public opinion in 44 nations released Wednesday. The survey, by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press ( [http://www.people-press.org] ) also showed that America's global image has deteriorated sharply in the past two years and that U.S. citizens' views on world issues differ markedly from public attitudes in much of the rest of the world. While a strong reserve of good will toward the United States remains, and majorities in 35 countries say they support the U.S.-led war on terrorism, the percentage of people reporting a favorable opinion of the United States has fallen in 20 of 27 nations where benchmark data is available. ``Relatively few Americans have any idea of how critically we are seen around the world and the ways we're criticized, and what we're criticized for,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew center, who delivered the report to the White House on Wednesday. Follow-up polls last month in four countries -- Britain, France, Germany and Russia -- found substantial percentages of people saying they thought that the main reason the United States would go to war with Iraq would be ``because the U.S. wants to control Iraqi oil.'' That view was held by 44 percent in Britain, 54 percent in Germany, 75 percent in France and 76 percent in Russia. A parallel survey in the United States found 22 percent agreeing with the war-for-oil theory. The study arrives at a moment when President Bush is dispatching diplomats around the world to try to build ``a coalition of the willing'' to change the Iraqi government, by force if necessary. The Pew study finds the administration facing profound public-opinion problems in Turkey and Pakistan, two key allies in the wars on terrorism and, potentially, Iraq. U.S. defense officials have been visiting Turkey this week, courting Turkish help in any war against Iraq, but the poll found that 83 percent of Turks are opposed to using their bases to strike Iraq. In addition, a majority believe that a U.S. attack on Iraq would be prompted not by security concerns but as part of a broader American war on unfriendly Muslim countries. President Bush on Wednesday brushed off a question about the findings on Turkey and Pakistan, saying he didn't run his government based on polls. ``I hope the message that we fight not a religion, but a group of fanatics which have hijacked a religion, is getting through,'' he said. ``I understand the propaganda machines are cranked up in the international community that paints our country in a bad light.'' The poll found that Americans' concerns diverge from those in much of the rest of the world. While Americans tend to name nuclear weapons as the biggest world problem, citizens of most other nations cite AIDS and infectious diseases, pollution and environmental problems, ethnic and religious strife, and the gap between rich and poor. Crime and political corruption were cited more widely than terrorism as ``very big'' problems. Hunger remains a fundamental problem, with 44 percent of Mexicans, 50 percent of Russians and 86 percent of Angolans polled in the capital, Luanda, and surrounding areas saying they had not had enough money to buy food for their families in the past year. Large majorities in Europe, most of Latin America and even Lebanon say they like American popular culture, while people in Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan dislike it by large margins. American science and technology command near-universal respect. But in country after country where people like American technology and culture, they are displeased over the spread of American ideas and customs. With the exception of Japan, the Philippines, Bulgaria and most of the African nations, majorities or pluralities in 29 other countries, in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia said the spread of Americanism is a bad thing. But 79 percent of Americans said it is a good thing. Mercury News wire services contributed to this report. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************