***************************************************************** 05/06/02 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 10.116 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** NUCLEAR POLICY 1 UK: Coalition using nuke plant 'as gimmick' 2 US: TVA's Baxter sees future for nuclear reactor 3 Europe nuke opponents lobby Finnish MPs against reactor 4 US: Nuclear plant could be sold - 5 G8 agree need to use more nuclear energy, hydrogen cells; build NUCLEAR REACTORS 6 Japan: N-plant output cut due to malfunction NUCLEAR SAFETY 7 Radioactive particles detected near defunct German power plant NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 8 British Energy lines up deal for BNFL plants 9 US: Nuclear drums avoid 'crush test' 10 US: Waste from weapons making leaves U.S. with herculean cleanup tas 11 US: Clinton on political values, arsenic and Yucca Mountain 12 US: Competing Yucca Mountain ads to air in Utah 13 US: Dems Hit W on Plan for Nuke Waste 14 US: Berkley Democratic National Radio Address about Yucca 15 US: Opinions:Yucca plan cited as best for burial of nuclear-waste NUCLEAR WEAPONS 16 Russia to complete agreed scrapping of nuclear subs in June 17 US: Billionaire Predicts Nuclear Attack 18 Russian Nuke Minister to Visit D.C. 19 US: Warren Buffett warns on terror risk 20 Powell Says Iraq Inspections Seperate US DEPT. OF ENERGY 21 K Basin cleanup lagging, DOE report finds 22 K-25 workers back on the job after threat 23 Manny Ringer creates quite at stir at ORNL 24 Russian safety specialists visit ORNL 25 Official doesn't expect DOE changes to impact Pantex OTHER NUCLEAR 26 Brian Greenspun: R-J blinded by hate 27 DOE-G-8 statement on energy 28 Federal Contractors Misconduct Database list ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 UK: Coalition using nuke plant 'as gimmick' Irish Newspapers - FINE Gael has accused the government of using the Sellafield issue as "a cheap electoral gimmick." The main opposition party claim Fianna Fail had only paid lip-service to taking on the British Government over the controversial nuclear reprocessing plant. FG's Senator Fergus O'Dowd insisted the government had failed to take up an invitation to inspect the Cumbria facility and its anti-terrorist precautions in the wake of September 11. Mr O'Dowd said the Irish government had also not pressurised Tony Blair about strict no-fly zones at Sellafield. "The no-fly zone over Sellafield is only 2,000 feet and extends for just two miles. In America, the no-fly zones around nuclear reactors extend for at least 10 miles," added Mr O'Dowd. "A heavily laden hi-jacked passenger aircraft could plough into the British plant after spending just seconds in the no-fly zone. It is a totally inadequate situation." Fine Gael in government would also urge the EU to intervene in the dispute over Sellafield. Karl Brophy Political Correspondent © Copyright Unison ***************************************************************** 2 TVA's Baxter sees future for nuclear reactor Oak Ridger Online --> Story last updated at 11:14 a.m. on Monday, May 6, 2002 By Duncan Mansfield Associated Press Writer KNOXVILLE -- Bill Baxter, the Tennessee Valley Authority's newest director, says the proposed $1.8 billion revival of the federal utility's oldest nuclear reactor looks like a good business decision. Baxter even suggested the agency could restart Browns Ferry Unit 1 without adding to TVA's $25 billion debt. The three-member TVA board -- Baxter, director Skila Harris and Chairman Glenn McCullough -- meets May 16 in Huntsville, Ala. The agenda isn't set, but a vote is nearing on whether to bring the 29-year-old reactor back to life after a 17-year hibernation. Baxter, 48, has been on the job just five months but already is in the thick of the decision. He's finishing the term of former TVA Chairman Craven Crowell this month, then begins a full nine-year term. "I've been telling people it is like drinking from a fire hose. There is so much to learn, so fast," Baxter said in an interview last week from his 12th-floor office. "It is a huge organization. It takes a little while to get your arms around it." The TVA is the country's largest public power producer, providing electricity to 8.3 million people in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia and Virginia. With a $7 billion self-supporting budget and 13,500 employees, TVA also manages the 652-mile Tennessee River system. Though new to TVA, Baxter knows the agency. He is a former Tennessee state economic development commissioner and chairman of his family's Knoxville-based gas distributorship. "I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of TVA," he said. "And I have been a critic of TVA when I feel they have made some bonehead decisions." Restarting Browns Ferry Unit 1 may be one of TVA's smarter moves, Baxter said. "Believe me, we have asked a lot of questions about it. So far, I am very encouraged," he said. Though more expensive to build, nuclear plants can be cheaper to operate than other forms of energy and they put no pollutants in the air if run properly, he said. "I think that point has been lost on a lot of folks," said Baxter, a director of the environmental group Friends of the Great Smoky Mountains. "Sometimes you can't be green enough for everybody." TVA's nuclear staff presented a detailed analysis in March supporting the restart of Browns Ferry, a project that would add 1,280 megawatts of capacity by 2005 -- enough to light two cities the size of Chattanooga. Two recent worker accidents haven't shaken Baxter's confidence in TVA's nuclear team, which restarted Browns Ferry's two other reactors in 1991 and 1995. "I am not talking about the mistakes that were made in the 1970s and 1980s when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut them down for safety reasons," he said. "I am talking about the people who came in and said we are going to fix that, who took the program from a dead standstill to the highest industry ratings that you can achieve." Aside from where to dispose of the nuclear waste, the biggest hurdle in restarting Browns Ferry Unit 1 is how to pay for it. The cost could erase three years of unprecedented debt reduction. "Will we have to borrow more money to do it? I don't think so," Baxter said. "TVA, you have to understand, generates a fair amount of cash every year. Now what we have to decide is what are the priorities for the reinvestment of cash in the business. "Do you add generation? Do you improve your transmission system? Do you comply with the Clean Air Act. Do you pay down the debt? "Well, the answer is you do all of those things. But there is a jockeying for priority with every budget cycle on what is the most important thing now for us to do. That is the mode we are in." TVA recently scrapped an unfinished 510-megawatt natural gas-powered plant at Arnold Air Force Base in Tullahoma after investing nearly $150 million. Baxter called it the right decision, citing changing market conditions and rising gas prices. What other cuts are possible? "We are in the preliminary stages of that analysis right now," Baxter said. "But I believe there is a way for us to comply with Clean Air, to continue to make investments in the business we need and to build Browns Ferry." On the Net: [http://www.oakridger.com/dailydouble] All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 3 Europe nuke opponents lobby Finnish MPs against reactor Friday, 03-May-2002 8:00AM Story from AFP Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) HELSINKI, May 3 (AFP) - European nuclear power opponents called on the Finnish government on Friday to vote against the construction of the country's fifth nuclear reactor. About 190 non-governmental organisations, linked up as the European Anti-Nuclear Network, presented their platform in Helsinki to convince MPs to vote against the project. "This decision does not just concern only Finland but equally all of European democracy," the organisation's members said in a statement. "In seven EU countries, politicians have respected public opinion and not constructed additional nuclear reactors," they said. Members of the network include Danish Friends of the Earth, France's "Sortir du Nucleaire" and the Swedish lobby group "No to Nuclear Arms and Energy." The Finnish vote comes as a number of European countries, notably Sweden and Germany, are preparing to phase out their nuclear power. The Finnish proposal was originally put forward in the mid-1980s but was shelved after Russia's 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Finnish experts have in recent years warned of an impending power shortage, as a result of the country's rapid development in the past decade, if no new power plants are built. In a relatively flat country where the primary natural resource is vast forestland, a recent opinion poll found that 57 percent of Finns were in favour of a new nuclear power plant if it would help cut carbon dioxide emissions. ***************************************************************** 4 Nuclear plant could be sold - 2002-05-06 - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) Steve Ernst Staff Writer Richland-based Energy Northwest is considering hanging a "For Sale" sign on the state's lone nuclear power plant. The consortium of 16 public utilities is exploring the idea of selling the Columbia Generating Station, a 1,200-megawatt plant that is the only operating legacy of the state's ill-fated fleet of five proposed nuclear power plants. Energy Northwest will soon form a working group to consider its options for the 18-year-old nuclear plant, said John Cockburn, chairman of the executive board of Energy Northwest. "The complexities of selling the plant are great," Cockburn said. "It would really be a heavy-duty thing to do, but as the executive board we have a stewardship responsibility to look at every option." The possibility of selling the plant surfaced from a yearlong study that examined the feasibility of completing Columbia's dormant sister plant, known as Washington Nuclear Power-1 or WNP-1. That inquiry concluded that finishing off WNP-1 would cost upward of $4 billion and is neither cost-effective nor politically feasible. But the study also attracted several utilities and independent power plant operators that expressed interest in buying the Columbia Generating Station. "We would have liked to pair WNP-1 with Columbia, but nobody was interested, they just wanted the Columbia Generating Station," Cockburn said. He declined to say which companies might be interested in acquiring the operating Columbia plant. The unfinished WNP-1 plant was mothballed in 1982 when the Washington Public Power Supply System defaulted on $2.2 billion worth of bonds. Initially, the WPPSS plan was to build five nuclear plants around the state. Only the Columbia Generating Station was ever completed, leaving taxpayers to pay off billions of dollars in costs for four plants that were never completed. Washington Public Power Supply System changed its name to Energy Northwest in 1999. Cockburn said one organization was interested in WNP-1. A Japanese consortium was interested in building twin, 1,350-megawatt, nuclear power plants on the WNP-1 site at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The consortium wanted to build the plants and sell them to an independent power producer. That idea has "absolutely no chance whatsoever of happening," Cockburn said. "The opposition from the public would be overwhelming," he said. "It just isn't going to happen." The market for used nuclear power plants picked up when the Bush administration put a renewed emphasis on nuclear power. At the same time, many of the nation's aging fleet of reactors have applied to extend their operating licenses. But security issues raised in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks have cooled the market for used plants, analysts say. Still, in the past 18 months, five nuclear power plants around the country have changed hands. Last month, FPL Group Inc., a subsidiary of Florida Power and Light, completed a $836.6 million deal for the Seabrook Nuclear Generating Station, a 1,100-megawatt plant in New Hampshire. "There are only a limited number of companies that have any experience running nuclear power plants," said Aaron Tyler, an analysts with Reed Wasden & Associates LLC, a Bellevue-based investment bank that specializes in energy and utility work. Ten companies in the United States operate about 60 percent of the nuclear plants, according to research complied by Reed Wasden. Companies like FPL Group Inc., New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., Chicago-based Exelon Corp., Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy and Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Resources Inc. control most of the nuclear generation in the United States. "Most big utilities and merchant power companies are looking for cheap, cost-effective power in deregulated markets," Tyler said. "They get cheap generation and can sell the power into the wholesale market." Construction costs are the major expense in nuclear power plants, but most of the nation's plants have paid down their construction bonds and extended the operating life of the plants, making them attractive acquisition targets for companies that specialize in managing nuclear power plants. The Columbia Station fits that mold. The plant was built in 1984 at a cost of $3 billion. The bonds on the plant will be paid off in about 2018, and by renewing the plant's operating license, the Columbia Station may be churning out low-cost megawatts until 2044. Despite lowering the cost of running the plant and improving the overall efficiency of Columbia Station, the plant is still seen as one of the more inefficient operations in the industry. The cost of generating power at Columbia is about 2.14 cents per kilowatt, which is considered inefficient by industry standards. The industry views plants that generate power at 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour as extremely efficient, said Daisuke Ikezawa, an analyst with Reed Wasden. "I suspect that could be dramatically improved if the plant were taken over by somebody with more expertise in running a nuclear plant," he said. One reason Energy Northwest may look to sell the plant is the increasing difficulty it's had in recruiting and retaining qualified people to work in Richland. "The challenge of management is how to sustain a quality work force over the long term," said Rudi Bertschi, a Seattle-based consultant and former chairman of the executive board of Energy Northwest. "That's very difficult to do when you have a single asset. Some people are getting older, and you have to ask why a young person who is ambitious would want to work there?" Reach Steve Ernst at 206-447-8505 ext. 114 or sernst@bizjournals.com. Business Journals Inc. ***************************************************************** 5 G8 agree need to use more nuclear energy, hydrogen cells; build oil reserves AFX Europe; May 5, 2002 DETROIT (AFX) - Energy ministers from the G8 industrialised nations agreed on Friday on the need to use more nuclear energy and develop new energy sources like hydrogen fuel cells, in order to secure economical and reliable power, a statement said. The ministers from Japan, the UK, Germany, Italy, Russia, France, Canada and the US also agreed to build their own petroleum reserves in case of a major disruption of supply from the Middle East; to pursue open energy markets; and to make the latest energy technologies available to developing nations, said the statement. Herb Dhaliwal, Canada's minister of natural resources, said: "The views were very consistent not to have this volatility" in petroleum pricing and supply. He added: "A lot of the time, it's the anxiety that creates the increase in prices." The statement said the ministers agreed to pursue secure, economical and reliable power sources for their own economies and those of developing nations. "Access to secure and reliable energy is important to alleviating poverty. Now is the time for developing countries to develop clean and efficient energy sources," Dhaliwal said. He added that the Canadian government is consulting with its provinces and its power industry before deciding whether to sign the Kyoto protocol on climate change. "All the people at this conference recognize that climate change is a global problem and requires a global solution," Dhaliwal said. Environmental pressure group Greenpeace was unimpressed by the lack of concrete proposals emerging from the closed-door meeting. "We think this is all a big waste of time," said Greenpeace spokesman Steven Guilbeault. str/ld/mk/jsa ***************************************************************** 6 Japan: N-plant output cut due to malfunction asahi.com : ENGLISH New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/] The Asahi Shimbun NIIGATA-Output at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s No. 3 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant was lowered manually Sunday to about half its usual level after a turbine-control device malfunctioned, officials said. There were no radioactive leaks at the 1.1-million-kilowatt facility. At 7:36 a.m. the vacuum level in the turbine's condenser dropped below the normal level, officials said. The condenser uses seawater to cool steam used to turn the turbine. Output was lowered manually at 7:37 a.m. as a safety precaution because the cause of the trouble was not known, officials said. The turbine condenser is usually kept close to a perfect vacuum. The reactor continued to operate at half its usual output after the change, company officials said. The vacuum level has since been returned to its regular level, officials said.(IHT/Asahi: May 6,2002) (05/06) [Copyright Asahi Shimbun. ***************************************************************** 7 Radioactive particles detected near defunct German power plant Agence France-Presse ( May 05, 2002 ) MAYENCE, Germany, May 5 (AFP) - Radioactive particles have been discovered around a decommissioned nuclear plant in central Germany, local investigators said, as quoted by the country's ARD public television Sunday. The interior ministry's environmental commission president, Arthur Scharmann, confirmed the discovery of the particles around the Hanau plant, which was shut down in 1991 and has been undergoing dismantling since 1995. According to the station, researchers from the University of Giessen discovered enriched uranium, plutonium and other radioactive particles in earth between five and 15 centimetres deep (two and six inches deep) around the plant. Scharmann told the station that the particles "were not natural", and that investigators had yet to establish how they got there. Local investigators, however, considered the radioactive substances "do not present any danger to the population". COPYRIGHT 2002 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 British Energy lines up deal for BNFL plants BUSINESS.scotsman.com - Top Stories - Mon 6 May 2002 Martin Flanagan City Editor GLASGOW-BASED British Energy is being lined up by the government to take over the running of British Nuclear Fuels’ ageing Magnox power stations in a deal that could generate substantial funds for expansion. It is understood a deal could be announced by the end of this year as one of the central planks of the government’s energy policy review, which is also set to be published by Christmas. Sources close to the talks told The Scotsman yesterday that the move would see British Energy taking over the Magnox stations and employees in return for a management fee and an undertaking that it could sell the power at no financial risk. It is believed it could also pave the way for the publicly-quoted Scottish group to take over other profitable parts of BNFL. These could include BNFL’s fuel manufacturing business and its Westinghouse reactor design operation. A key attraction for British Energy would be that such an agreement could throw off substantial funds to invest in more exciting parts of the group’s business, such as expansion in North America. One industry analyst said: "The joy of the deal from BE’s point of view would be that it would get guaranteed cash flow without liabilities. "It would also certainly assist the funding of any other ventures the company wanted to pursue, such as any further stuff they might want to do in the US. "BE would be bound to welcome an injection of working cash into the company to fund interesting business opportunities rather than going the debt route." British Energy refused to comment yesterday. A BNFL spokesman declined to comment on "market rumours and speculation". It is understood the government is also edging towards the conclusion that a partial trade sale of BNFL, which is what this deal would effectively be, would achieve its stated aim of taking BNFL forward through a public/private partnership. One source said: "Such a switch of managerial control could be presented, along with the energy review as being part of a wider more coherent picture, not a one-off deal." BNFL’s management are believed to be lukewarm on such a radical change of control. They also want to see a new generation of power stations being built, but would prefer to run them themselves after a stock market flotation. But yesterday one insider said: "Perhaps they would just have to stare realism in the face." BNFL has also already effectively been prepared for such an operational change by being split between "front end" divisions that are deemed commercial, and those such as reprocessing nuclear fuel at its Sellafield plant, which are not. Its non-commercial operations are set to be taken into a state-owned Liabilities Management Authority. BE would not take on the liabilities of the six Magnox stations - set to run until 2009-10. Those will be assumed by the taxpayer via the LMA. British Energy will also hope that an extension of their influence in the nuclear industry would help a depressed share price as it has been at the centre of management upheaval and sliding electricity prices. ©2002 scotsman.com | contact ***************************************************************** 9 Nuclear drums avoid 'crush test' Denver Post.com Flats shipment could spew if ruptured, engineers warn Mike Soraghan [msoraghan@denverpost.com] Denver Post Washington Bureau Monday, May 06, 2002 - WASHINGTON - If the federal government starts shipping nuclear weapons material through Colorado this month, some of it might be hauled in substandard steel drums that could rupture in a collision, spewing radioactive material into the environment. To meet its sped-up 2006 deadline to close Rocky Flats, the Department of Energy two years ago granted itself a national security exemption to use containers that don't pass a government "crush test." Shipments to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina are scheduled to begin sometime after May 22, but South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges is suing to stop them. He says he needs guarantees that his state will not become the nation's nuclear dumping ground. The U.S. Justice Department has assigned five lawyers to the case, but no hearing has been scheduled. According to documents obtained by The Denver Post, Department of Energy engineers raised numerous objections before political appointees in the Clinton administration granted the national security exemption. Engineers said the exemption was not for national security, but to cut costs and meet the politically popular 2006 deadline, despite mistakes by Energy and the cleanup contractor, Kaiser-Hill. "I don't understand how we can use an NS (national security) exemption on material that doesn't have a clear justification for use in support National Security missions," one engineer wrote in a June 2000 e-mail. Another wrote that the exemption was "being incorrectly applied to address inadequate contractor and DOE program management at the Rocky Flats site." While forwarding Rocky Flats' reasons for the national security exemption to a colleague, the same engineer, Steven Nunley in Energy's Albuquerque office, commented dryly, "No laughing allowed." Rocky Flats, 13 miles northwest of Denver, produced explosive plutonium "triggers" for nuclear weapons until 1989. The federal government is paying $7 billion to turn it into a wildlife refuge, hauling the plutonium and enriched uranium to South Carolina and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco. Most of plutonium and enriched uranium going to the Savannah River Site is to be shipped in 1,900 containers called "3013s," about the size of two office trash cans stacked on top of each other. But Energy officials got an exemption to haul some of the waste in 77 larger, weaker containers, called DT-22s. The 45-gallon, stainless-steel drums conceal the classified shape of some of the pieces to be shipped. Energy officials also got an exemption to ship nuclear weapons parts to California in 57 of the containers. The DT-22s haven't undergone a test in which an 1,100-pound weight is dropped on them from 30 feet above, simulating a high-speed crash. According to the Energy documents, the designers of the casks say they would not withstand the impact. On Friday, Energy spokesman Joe Davis said no decision had been made to use the weaker containers to haul the waste to Savannah River. But information handed out by Energy officials at a recent Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board meeting indicates the department is planning to use its national security exemption to ship 48 weapons parts to California in DT-22s, and overall, it's planning to use more than 400 of the weaker containers. Some less radioactive material can be shipped in the weaker containers without an exemption. Supporters of using the larger, weaker casks say the material can be removed more quickly, reducing risks to workers at the plant. Cutting the parts down to size would cost an additional $50 million to $100 million, they say, because of security and other costs. Critics say using the weaker containers will put the public at risk. "We're talking about the inner container being penetrated and particulates being blown out on the highway, where people downwind breathe it in," said nuclear physicist Marvin Resnikoff, who's helping Hodges and a California group, Tri-Valley CARES, with lawsuits to stop the shipments. Ten to 20 years later, Resnikoff said, those exposed to the plutonium would be at increased risk of cancer. The documents, obtained by Tri-Valley CARES through a Freedom of Information Act request, indicate Energy engineers wouldn't vouch for the safety of the DT-22s. "You cannot predict whether an accident will occur or what type of accident would occur," says a department memo from July 2000. "If an SST (truck carrying nuclear material) was hit by a train, the crush environment would occur. If an SST was hit from behind by a large, heavy vehicle, the crush environment may occur." Energy documents indicate that the staff of Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., was informed and agreed with the exemption. On Friday, Hodges rejected legislation introduced by Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to end the state's standoff with the department. "This is a cleanup operation of a DOE site in Colorado with South Carolina as the garbage can," Hodges told Graham in a letter. All contents Copyright 2002 The Denver Post ***************************************************************** 10 Waste from weapons making leaves U.S. with herculean cleanup task Kansas City Star | 05/05/2002 | By SCOTT CANON HANFORD NUCLEAR RESERVATION, Wash. - Ah, the burping underground waste tank, with its potential for catastrophic belches and never-ending cleanup bills. It reminds one of how making the most deadly of weapons makes the most deadly of garbage. The muck burping inside tank SY 101 -- highly radioactive byproduct from the world's first atomic bombs -- in eastern Washington shows how such weapons carry consequences to last 1,000 lifetimes. In a sense, our most fearsome munitions have backfired. A chemical weapons incinerator in Utah has accidentally hiccuped small doses of nerve agent from its smokestack. In one neighborhood of the nation's capital, World War I chemical munitions turn up regularly. South Carolina is dueling with the federal government about shipping in plutonium from the shuttered Rocky Flats weapons plant in Colorado. St. Louis is still tainted by nuclear weapons work from a half-century ago. The so-called Kansas City Plant, now run by Honeywell, harbors beryllium contamination even though it manufactured the non-nuclear parts of doomsday bombs. Although the United States is not the toxic cesspool of its Cold War rival, the former Soviet Union, no region in the country escapes the lingering dangers of the last century's advances in weaponry. Those hazards pose a herculean task put mostly to the same institutions that spoiled the environment in the first place. Critics say the Department of Energy -- successor to the Atomic Energy Commission -- is culturally capable only of weapons production and has proved inept at cleanup. They say the Army has been inflexible and lumbering in moves to destroy chemical munitions. "It's our hangover from the Cold War," said John V. Parachini, a weapons analyst for the Rand think tank. "The problem now," he said, "is that money for cleanup is not endless, and sometimes you just can't bend science." Even as American foreign policy focuses ever more intently on stemming the spread of weapons of mass destruction abroad, U.S. agencies and their critics generally agree that this country has yet to figure out how to overcome the legacy of crafting its own weapons. A full accounting of the pollution continues to unfold at places such as Hanford where the urgency of World War II and the Cold War blotted out environmental worries -- and record-keeping -- through decades of breakneck production. Now any turn of a shovel can unearth surprise poisons. The consensus now is that cleaning up the killer filth of modern weapons will cost at least as much as it did to build the various warheads, and will take far longer. Legacy of a home front To explain how bomb-building created such a threat to the environment, experts inside and outside the government point to the military and political atmosphere of past generations. Consider a meeting 60 years ago last month in St. Louis. Albert Einstein had written to President Franklin Roosevelt about Germans and atom splitting. That led Roosevelt to appoint Nobel-winning experimental physicist Arthur Compton as administrator of America's atomic bomb project. Over lunch, Compton pleaded with Edward Mallinckrodt of the Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. to process uranium. Other chemical firms believed the work was too dangerous. Mallinckrodt signed on, and uranium refined in downtown St. Louis wound up in Enrico Fermi's reactor in Chicago. That gave America the know-how for the first atomic blasts in the New Mexico desert and the city-leveling bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The St. Louis uranium refinery eventually moved to nearby Weldon Spring. Contamination there still lingers, gobbling up millions in cleanup costs. By current standards, nearly everyone concedes, materials were handled recklessly at Hanford; at Oak Ridge, Tenn.; at Los Alamos, N.M.; and at dozens of other often secret outposts involved in making nuclear bombs. The price of that carelessness has been varied. For example, in spring 2000 the federal government agreed to pay $520 million to 3,000 workers poisoned in nuclear weapons manufacturing and testing. In the 1940s and '50s about 440 billion gallons of contaminated liquid -- enough to fill a pool the size of Kansas City nearly 7 feet deep -- was poured into the ground of the remote and sprawling Hanford site in Washington. The worst liquid waste at Hanford -- so radioactive that it could conjure up its own nuclear reaction and that it could soil the earth for thousands of years -- went into double- and single-wall steel tanks not much different from those now seeping gasoline under service stations. Dozens of the tanks leaked. "People have told me they felt that as long they kept the materials on the reservation, as it were, that they were not presenting any risk to American citizens," said Richard Rhodes, author of Dark Sun and The Making of the Atomic Bomb. "During wartime there's a different standard, and that applied to the Cold War," Rhodes said. "As long as this was all secret, and as long as the only responsibility was within the government, this was a nonproblem, because no one knew about it.... "Of course they cut corners....It was a matter of juggling resources and the pressure to keep pace with the Russians." Hanford, among the biggest sites in the nuclear weapons assembly line, serves as a microcosm of the system's problems. Water that passed through nuclear reactors -- the engines that played the first key role in transforming mined uranium into the plutonium triggers -- cooled briefly in the open air before passing back into the Columbia River still mildly radioactive. For years, unnaturally high levels of radiation ran the length of the river and 150 miles into the Pacific Ocean, although by 1975 those abnormalities had retreated mainly to sloughs behind dams. Now the site is home to 2,100 tons of spent nuclear fuel and 4 tons of weapons-grade plutonium -- the nastiest stuff ever made by man. Hanford has identified 1,500 waste sites, many surrounding its nine retired nuclear reactors. More than 100 square miles of groundwater at Hanford is contaminated, and officials are struggling with ways to contain it before it trickles into the Columbia and spoils a prime source of drinking water for the region. Attempts to corral the nuclear pollution show a spotty track record at Hanford. Take the burping tank, for instance. Officials hoped to make more room for highly radioactive waste in the tank -- 500,000 gallons of mostly water -- by using evaporation. But that prompted a buildup of hydrogen that could bubble up, or burp, in a way that threatened to set off a sustained nuclear chain reaction. So engineers installed a mixing pump to stir the contents of the tank and prevent those lethal belches. That formed a superradioactive meringue. So engineers finally added water back in to dilute the mixture. The tanks have been Hanford's biggest problem. Of 177 on the site, leaks have been detected in 67 and blamed for the release of 1 million gallons of waste. Reluctance to clean The end of the Cold War and the subsequent years of the Clinton administration yanked the Department of Energy off its nuclear weapons assembly line and shoved a once-secret production complex into the glare of public view. People within the department point especially to a report published in 1997 called "Linking Legacies." For thousands of Department of Energy workers and their contractors, that report was their first explanation of where their jobs fit into the larger job of making nuclear warheads. And for the first time, the full extent of how America had built nuclear weapons and the full scale of the needed cleanup lay bare for the world to see. "Many people felt like it was a betrayal," said Mike Talbot, a department spokesman at Hanford. Work they'd been under orders for decades to keep secret now was public. And, because of the widespread pollution problems, it was embarrassing. "It took a while to adjust." In fact, the report's author, Clinton administration appointee James Werner, contends that the department and its contractors still have not warmed to the new job of cleaning up. "People just came to work with this hangdog attitude. They wanted to build nuclear weapons. They hated this cleaning stuff," Werner said. "They thought cleaning up," he said, "was for communists and sissies." In his book Atomic Audit, Stephen Schwartz estimated the cost of building America's nuclear arsenal -- absent the expense of so-called delivery systems such as silo-based missiles or bombers or submarines -- at $409 billion in 1996 dollars. "The cost of cleaning up is going to be at least that much," he said. One reason the cost is so high, he said, is that the Department of Energy is ill-suited to the task. He criticized the pattern of hiring defense contractors to manage the cleanup who had built weapons. Werner likened the practice to hiring a man who pumps gas for the job of decontaminating soil ruined by leaking gasoline storage tanks. Schwartz noted the case of so-called Pit 9, an ad hoc dumping ground for radioactive material at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The Energy Department hired longtime defense contractor Lockheed Martin to clean up an acre of soil. Only after erecting a building to cleanse the soil did the contractor realize the structure was too small for the necessary processing equipment. So the contamination remains, and the government is locked in a contract dispute. "It's typical of how the department does things," said Schwartz, editor and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "The culture of the institution just isn't geared to dealing with environmental problems." At Hanford's plutonium finishing plant, which made the radioactive metal buttons at the heart of bomb triggers, director Robert McQuinn concedes that the dismantling job evokes a different mood than the work of making something. "It is a little harder. All of us will be grieving when this place shuts down," he said. "But the plant is 50 years old. It's time for it to finish its mission." His staff today is as dedicated to shutting down and cleaning up safely, he said, as it was to arming the country for decades of nuclear standoff with the Soviets. "It's all, now and then, important work," he said. Solution is elusive Today Hanford has stopped making weapons. Instead it ranks as the largest environmental project in the country. It is not alone, however, and a solution of what to do with the myriad wastes remains far from certain. Some plans are settled. Already 103 nuclear reactors extracted from Navy submarines and surface ships in Puget Sound have traveled by barge up the Columbia to Hanford. There, emptied of their highly radioactive fuel, the 1,000-ton devices are lined up in a trench the size of several football fields, where they eventually will be buried. Other waste is far hotter to handle -- in terms of placement on the periodic table and of politics. At the Rocky Flats plant near Boulder, Colo., workers for decades took plutonium delivered from Hanford and the Savannah River, S.C., sites to craft the pits at the core of warheads. It has been closed and is being taken apart. But for the contractor to meet its 2003 deadline to unload the plutonium pits there so that a fuller decontamination can begin, shipments must begin this month to South Carolina for conversion into fuel for reactors, federal officials say. That has put the Department of Energy at odds with South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges. The governor wants a promise in writing that if the weapons-to-fuel program fails, his state won't be stuck with the radioactive material. Last month state troopers practiced blocking deliveries to the Savannah River site. That ultimate disposal haunts everything about the nuclear weapons legacy. Construction has just begun at Hanford on a vitrification plant, an elaborate collection of buildings and equipment intended to convert volatile liquid wastes, pumped out of the leaking tanks, to relatively stable glass logs. Those logs, however, will remain highly radioactive for scores of centuries. They will probably go to Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas. The federal government has been studying a plan for years to store there the worst waste created by commercial nuclear power and military weapons. Nevadans have generally opposed the plan -- teaming with environmentalists who fear small cracks in the mountain's granite could eventually carry radiation to water supplies. Sixty years ago everything about making nuclear weapons passed in a clandestine world. The work matched scientists against the laws of physics to unleash the power of the sun. In today's nuclear hangover, government is left to clean up the physicists' battlefield with a far more environmentally sensitive world watching. Said Rhodes, the author who has spent so much of his career studying the atom bomb: "Nothing about nuclear weapons or their disposal is easy." To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 or send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com [scanon@kcstar.com] . ***************************************************************** 11 Clinton on political values, arsenic and Yucca Mountain Las Vegas SUN May 03, 2002 WEEKEND EDITION: May 5, 2002 In addition to his speech at UNLV as part of the Barbara Greenspun Lecture Series, former President Bill Clinton fielded questions from the audience. What follows are his responses. Question: What values do you believe make you a Democrat, and have your political values changed now that you are not president? Answer: Well, the answer to the second question I hope is no because I am trying to do as a private citizen what I can to advance the things I tried to do as president. The answer to the first question is not subject to a one-word answer. I was born in Arkansas at the end of World War II. At the time the state had a per capita income of 56 percent of the national average. Just about everybody was poor, white or black. And at the time, we didn't have what we have now: one of the fastest growing Latino populations in America, the big Asian population, a lot of people from Southeast Asia. And (President Franklin) Roosevelt was sort of a God in my household because he believed that the power of the federal government should be used to give ordinary people the chance to work, the chance to an education, to give the veterans the chance to go to college and Social Security to the elderly. So I had a predisposition to believing that the national government should be a partner with the private sector in making America better. When I was a young man and highly impressionable, growing up in a state that was basically Democrat and a county that was basically Republican, John Kennedy was running against Richard Nixon for president and I thought civil rights was the most important issue. And John Kennedy called Martin Luther King's wife when he was jailed. And I never got over it. So I thought, the Democrats were the party of economic opportunity and racial justice. When I got older, I began to think that a lot of my party's fidelity to old ways of doing things needed to be changed, and I joined the Democratic Leadership Council because I thought we had to make it clear that we could be pro-business, pro-labor, pro-growth -- and pro-environmental protection. And we had to be for welfare reform that was pro-work and pro-child rearing. But I never believed that it would be better for me to join a party that I found myself often in sympathy with, the Republicans, when they talked about individual liberty and the importance of the free-enterprise system. I believe in all that -- the free-enterprise system did pretty well when I was president, the last time I checked. But I thought they made a lot of votes out of persuading people to resent the federal government per se instead of trying to make a change and make it relevant to the challenge of the 21st century. No great society can do without social policy and education policy, the policies designed to create universal opportunities for responsible citizens and build a community of all citizens. In my time, that included, among other things, trying to come to grips with the challenges presented by the rise of the gay rights movement. And, it seemed to me -- as I grew up in the South and because we had so much racism, we had sort of institutionalized hypocrisy, it was part of our charm I sometimes thought -- that when gay people didn't want to hide anymore, it seemed to me that if they were obeying the law and being good citizens, they deserved to be treated just like the rest of us, so that became the big part of what I believed. So, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman made me a Democrat as a child. And Kennedy and Johnson confirmed my party's absolute fidelity to civil rights, even though it largely cost us the South. And in my time I hope that I proved that our party was capable of enough change to shepherd America into a new century, a new millenium and a new era in the way people work and live and relate to the world. Those are the things that made me a Democrat and that is why I still am. Q: Understanding the danger of nuclear waste being stored at Yucca Mountain, how would you have handled the issue if you could have served a third term in the White House? A: Well, you all know that I disagree with the position that the administration has taken, but I would like to explain why. And I would give this answer if I was in New York or Arkansas or some other place where the utilities are pushing very hard for this to be done. So, I am not saying something in Nevada that I haven't said everywhere else. First of all, when the Congress authorized the siting of a nuclear waste disposal facility, it was on the theory that it would be safer to gather up all this nuclear waste and put it in someplace where it couldn't pollute the ground water or otherwise do health damage, rather than leaving it in all these presently safe, but highly limited, repositories that are right by the nuclear power plants. So basically the legislation said it had to be environmentally safe. OK, then they identified these sites, one here, one in Deaf Smith County in Texas -- which I might add is farther from any large population site than this one is -- and one somewhere else in Louisiana, which I am very uncomfortable with because I know about the salt pits in Louisiana, there is too much water there, water everywhere. I wouldn't feel comfortable with it. So, Nevada was picked. You won the lottery. Some people think you won because you have only four electoral votes. But still, it was supposed to be safe. Then they have an earthquake out here near the site where they are going to put the dump. It is on a fault. So then they changed the rules so that it has either got to be environmentally safe or you have to be able to work around it. It is hard to work around an earthquake. ... Regarding all the promises that were made to you, let me just say this: I never promised Nevada that I would not approve the siting of this facility. The only promise I ever made to you was I wouldn't do it if I wasn't convinced it was safe based on the science. I never promised one time that I would not do it. ... But right now the last government report says there are unresolved scientific questions and America was promised when the Congress passed this that it would not be put anywhere until the science justified it. So, first they had to change the standard because they couldn't figure out how to justify it, putting it someplace that had an earthquake, and then when they said the technology itself had unresolved questions, they said, well, let's just go ahead and do it anyway. And I just think it is a mistake. I just don't think it can be justified on the merits. I know you have a big political hill to climb. Harry Reid I know is fighting, your governor is doing what he can, but I think you need to be very insistent. At least you need to make darn sure that every single member of the U.S. Senate knows what the facts are before he or she votes on this because I can tell you, you may or may not win it, but they will have to think long and hard if you ask them how would you feel on the same facts if this were being done to you. They would be screaming to high heaven and you know it. So don't give up. Just keep making the case. If I were serving a third term in the White House, I would say I am going to keep my word. The science doesn't justify this but this is a real problem for the utilities. There are things the government can do to underwrite the insurance and we could spend a whole lot more money than we are now to try to figure ways to more completely neutralize this material. So if I were doing it, I wouldn't just say I'm sticking with Nevada, they voted for me twice, that is not what I would do. I would say the science doesn't justify it, but the utilities have a problem. Therefore, America has a problem. Therefore, let's spend a whole lot of money to try to find another solution. We can't, with a government report out there saying there are all these unanswered questions, go ahead and put it here. It is just wrong. It can't be justified on any grounds other than everybody else is tired of thinking about it, tired of looking at it, tired of being scared of it and want to get it off their backs so they are just going to dump it on you. I just don't think it is right. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 12 Competing Yucca Mountain ads to air in Utah Las Vegas SUN May 06, 2002 By Benjamin Grove WASHINGTON -- As the House of Representatives prepares to vote on Yucca Mountain Wednesday, a second battle on the airwaves is set to erupt -- this time in Utah -- over the controversial nuclear waste project. Nevada officials are planning to run a 30-second television commercial in Utah as early as this week that stresses the dangers of shipping nuclear waste, sources said. The advertisement is designed to urge Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett, both Republicans, to oppose the Yucca project, although the two are expected to support the project. In response to the Nevada commercial, the Alliance for Sound Nuclear Policy, a coalition of nuclear industry and pro-Yucca groups that include the Nuclear Energy Institute, is preparing to run a 30-second spot of its own by the end of the week in Salt Lake City. The commercial touts the safety of nuclear waste shipping. "We want to make sure the facts are presented to answer the misinformation" in the Nevada ad, said Sherry Reilly, director of the alliance. "We believe the Nevada ad is unnecessarily alarmist and distorts the unblemished safe transportation record of used nuclear fuel." A media source tipped off the alliance that Nevada officials planned a Utah ad buy, Reilly said, so the alliance quickly prepared a spot of its own. The Utah commercial would be the second one paid for by Nevada officials and environmental groups. The first, run on two network affiliates in Burlington, Vt., was targeted at Sens. James Jeffords, an Independent, and Democrat Patrick Leahy, both of whom are still expected to vote for the Yucca project. At issue is the federal plan to construct the world's first permanent high-level nuclear waste dump in underground tunnels at Yucca Mountain. Nevada's four-member delegation in Congress has been working to derail the project in Congress. It is a longshot effort at best; the House is expected to overwhelmingly approve the project this week. A Senate vote is expected by the end of July. The issue of shipping waste in America has become a blistering point of contention between pro- and anti-Yucca forces. Nevada officials say the "transportation issue" is one of their best arguments against the dump. They argue that a massive, unprecedented -- and dangerous -- transportation campaign would be needed to haul 77,000 tons of waste to Nevada from 131 temporary storage sites nationwide, mostly nuclear power plants and U.S. defense sites. "People make mistakes; accidents happen," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in a national radio address Saturday. "But an accident involving nuclear waste could be catastrophic, exposing whole communities to radiation and utterly destroying the environment for nearly a quarter of a million years. The cost of evacuation and remediation would be astronomic, not to mention the unspeakable costs of human suffering." But industry officials point to their history of shipping nuclear waste in America. They say they have made roughly 3,000 shipments over 1.6 million miles since the 1960s, with only a few accidents and no releases of radiation. Among the industry officials who have joined the fray are two executives from companies that manufacture nuclear waste transportation containers. Their companies stand to win lucrative waste-shipping contracts if Yucca is approved. Nevada officials and anti-nuclear activist groups have orchestrated a "disinformation" campaign about the Yucca Mountain project that is doomed to fail, Jack Edlow, president of Edlow International Co., and David Blee, a representative of NAC International, said today at a press conference in Washington. "It will not work," Edlow said "Congress will not be bamboozled by these people into stopping Yucca Mountain." Nevada's two House members, Berkley and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., are still scrambling to line up a few last-minute votes against the Yucca project. Gibbons said today he will probably be able to muster only 20 fellow Republicans to vote against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste legislation in the House. Gibbons said he had "no illusion for the chances of success" in the House but he was optimistic that the bill could be stopped in the Senate. He estimated there will be between 100 and 140 votes against Yucca Mountain in the House. The House vote likely will be Wednesday afternoon after two hours of debate. The Nevada lawmakers may try to use a parliamentary tactic to derail the vote by arguing that the Yucca Mountain project would be an unfunded mandate for states. Like the Nevadans, nuclear industry officials continue their behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts this week. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's leading lobby group, was scheduled to host 22 House staffers Sunday and today in Las Vegas. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 13 Dems Hit W on Plan for Nuke Waste Sunday, May 05, 2002 By HELEN KENNEDY Daily News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON Democrats warned yesterday that the Bush administration's plan to truck nuclear waste to a mountain near Las Vegas will set up fat terror targets or risk "mobile Chernobyls." The House is set to vote this week on whether to override the Nevada state government and make Yucca Mountain a permanent nuclear waste dump. Most of the waste would be trucked in from the East over 25 years. "If we can't move the waste safely, then we shouldn't move it at all," Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) in the weekly Democratic radio address. GOP leaders say it's safer to bury the waste in one central repository than leave it scattered across the country. Berkley said that when Yucca Mountain is full in 3036, there will still be 44,000 tons of nuclear waste stored around the country. "We will have reduced on-site storage of nuclear waste by a mere 4%," she said. The President used his radio address to make an early Cinco de Mayo salute to Mexico. "The United States has no more important relationship in the world," Bush said. ***************************************************************** 14 Berkley Democratic National Radio Address about Yucca As Delivered by U.S. Rep. Berkley May 4th, 2002 Hi. This is Congresswoman Shelley Berkley from Las Vegas, Nevada. Next week, Congress will be voting on a plan to ship 77,000 tons of deadly high-level nuclear waste across this country to store at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada. The State of Nevada has vetoed this plan, as is our state’s right, but now the President and the Republican leadership in Congress have indicated that they are going to move ahead with the plan anyway. This nation has a serious nuclear waste problem. Every year our reactors create 2,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste. The only method of disposal this country has ever seriously studied is shipping the waste across the country and sweeping it under the carpet near my hometown of Las Vegas. But there are major problems with the Administration’s plan. First of all, contrary to what the nuclear industry would have us believe, a central repository would not mean that reactor sites around the country would be cleaned out. According to the government’s shipping plans, in the year 2036, when Yucca Mountain is filled to capacity, there will still be 44,000 tons of nuclear waste stored at reactor sites. That means that after 38 years of shipping high level waste through our cities and towns we will have reduced on-site storage of nuclear waste by a mere 4%. These figures also pre-date proposals to increase our dependence on nuclear power, so this is a conservative estimate of how much waste would still be stored at reactor sites by mid-Century. Why would we want to ship nuclear waste across 45 states for 38 years if it makes no difference in the amount of waste stored on-site throughout the country? There are also very serious scientific concerns about the government’s proposed dump. The mountain range they’ve selected for their nuclear waste dump is located in an earthquake and volcanic eruption zone. Also, studies have shown that groundwater can travel through fissures in the mountain in a very short time frame, dissolve the waste, and contaminate groundwater supplies, releasing deadly toxins into the environment of the Southwest. Recently an independent investigation found 293 unresolved scientific questions that the government had failed to address, and a technical review board expressed "limited confidence" in its success. But despite all the scientific evidence, the Bush Administration and the Republican leadership in Congress want to move ahead with the plan anyway. There is no consideration at all for sound science, public policy, the consequences of our actions, or even for maintaining a reasonably healthy environment. If Congress approves this project, as many as 108,000 shipments of nuclear waste will travel across 45 states. The government’s own statistical models show us we can expect between 50 and 300 accidents involving nuclear waste. People make mistakes; accidents happen. But an accident involving nuclear waste could be catastrophic, exposing whole communities to radiation and utterly destroying the environment for nearly a quarter of a million years. The cost of evacuation and remediation would be astronomic, not to mention the unspeakable costs of human suffering. An even more devastating incident would be a terrorist attack. We already know that Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups are looking for a "dirty bomb." These waste transports are exactly the type of target rich environment they are looking for. In the wake of 9-11 we cannot afford to be naive and believe that we are safe from people who would give up their lives to end ours. Yucca Mountain would do nothing to fix the nuclear waste problem in our country. It will likely destroy vast tracts of our land for hundreds of thousands of years. And in the end, it will greatly exacerbate our vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks. With every truck, rail and barge shipment, our homeland security becomes more and more difficult to defend. The Yucca Mountain project would put us all at risk by transporting "mobile Chernobyls" through all our communities. If we can’t move the waste safely, then we shouldn’t move it at all. Pennsylvanians have discovered an innovative approach to the problem. The PECO utility in Philadelphia has reached a kind of partnership agreement with the government, in which the Department of Energy will take title of the waste, allowing the government to secure it in reinforced facilities without moving it all around the country, and at the same time, allowing the utility to lower its tax payments and its bottom line. In the long term, this country needs to invest its resources into emerging technological solutions in which scientists can reduce the volume, toxicity, and half-life of high-level nuclear waste. And instead of expanding nuclear power in this country -- and increasing our stores of nuclear waste -- we need to focus on renewable energy sources, like we’ve done in my own home state of Nevada. Renewable energies, like geothermal, solar, and wind power can reduce our reliance on foreign energy sources, and at the same time, ensure a safe and healthy America for our children, and for their children. This is Congresswoman Shelley Berkley from Nevada, urging all Americans to get involved and call your Senators and Members of Congress. Thank you, and God bless. ***************************************************************** 15 Opinions:Yucca plan cited as best for burial of nuclear-waste Augusta Georgia: 05/06/02 Web posted Monday, May 6, 2002 Letter to the Editor I'm having difficulty understanding the eco-nuts and assorted idiots regarding Yucca Mountain, Nev. Here are the facts: 928 above and below ground nuclear explosions; Beatty, Nev., Southwest compact nuclear waste burial ground; Nellis Air Force Base Gunnery Range - tons of unexploded bombs and other hazardous materials. Condos will not be built there. Property values will never change. The aquifer is almost a mile deep. The bugs and bunnies don't care about Yucca Mountain. And after spending nearly $20 billion on a government-approved disposal site, Nevada and the eco-nuts best refund our money (news flash to all: We have been paying 1.25 cents a kilowatt-hour since 1983). This is an end game to shut down all nuclear power plants. Without a place to dispose of high-level nuclear waste, the plants will shut down and no more could be built. Politicians are playing a high-stakes game, needlessly creating panic and fear in the ignorant populace. Eco-nuts are just anarchists on an ego trip to save the world and bring man back to nature. The truth is common sense. Do you want the lights to keep burning or do you want candlelight? You can be careful but don't be stupid. We need to start up Yucca Mountain and have only one waste site. The alternative is hundreds of waste sites for eco-terrorists to strike. John Bohacheff, North Augusta, S.C. AugustaChronicle.com is a proud member of Augusta.com [http://augusta.com] . ***************************************************************** 16 Russia to complete agreed scrapping of nuclear subs in June BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; May 6, 2002 Murmansk, 6 May: Experts at the Nerpa ship repairing plant in the town of Snezhnogorsk in Murmansk Region are expected to complete the disposal of the last nuclear submarine in June 2002 as part of an international initiative titled the Common Threat Reduction (CTR), also known as the Nanna-Lugara programme, the plant's chief engineer Rostislav Rimdenok told Interfax on Monday [6 May]. The engineer said that this programme also involves the disposal of a 667BRD Kalmar nuclear submarine (NATO's Delta-III class), which represents the second generation of Russia's nuclear submarines. These submarines are also subject to disposal under the strategic arms reduction treaty. Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in English 1212 gmt 6 May 02 /© BBC Monitoring Need more business information? Ask our research team - click here EMAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR ***************************************************************** 17 Billionaire Predicts Nuclear Attack Las Vegas SUN May 05, 2002 OMAHA, Neb.- Investment guru Warren Buffett offered a bleak prediction for the nation's national security, saying a terrorist attack on American soil is "virtually a certainty." Envy and dislike of the United States have fueled rage against the country even as the ability to build a nuclear device has spread, Buffett said Sunday at the final day of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual meeting. "We're going to have something in the way of a major nuclear event in this country," said Buffett, the firm's chief operating officer. "It will happen. Whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years ... it's virtually a certainty." Washington and New York would be the top two targets because terrorists want to traumatize the country and kill as many people as possible, Buffett said. Chemical or biological attacks are similarly high risks, Buffett said. Buffett is the second-richest man in the world with holdings in Coca-Cola Co., American Express and The Washington Post, but his main business is insurance. Berkshire Hathaway's insurance companies - particularly General Re Corp. - took a $2.4 billion underwriting loss because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The companies are now writing policies on terrorism but limiting their liability in any nuclear, biological or chemical attack. Only the federal government can ultimately insure property and other damage from a major terrorist attack, Buffett said. The 71-year-old Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger met with the news media the day after they spent six hours answering questions from some of the more than 10,000 Berkshire shareholders gathered for the annual meeting. On the Net: Berkshire Hathaway: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com] All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 18 Russian Nuke Minister to Visit D.C. Las Vegas SUN May 06, 2002 MOSCOW- Russia's nuclear energy minister will try to assuage U.S. fears about Russian nuclear deals with Iran and present a new plan for cooperation with the United States during a visit to Washington this week, his ministry said Monday. Alexander Rumyantsev will meet Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and other American officials during the visit, according to Nuclear Energy Ministry spokesman Yuri Bespalko. The trip comes ahead of a summit this month between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rumyantsev, whose trip runs through Friday, will present a Russian-designed proposal for cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. "We want an agreement that will provide a durable foundation for cooperation," Bespalko said. While there are many U.S.-Russian programs in the nuclear energy sector, they are not anchored by a broad overall agreement, he said. Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran will be a "major subject" of Rumyantsev's talks, Bespalko said. "The Americans are always talking about Iran. There are many issues we want to clarify," he said, without elaborating. The U.S. government, which accuses Iran of sponsoring terrorism, is concerned Russia's $800 million contract to build a nuclear reactor at the Iranian city of Bushehr could help Iran build nuclear weapons. Moscow insists the light-water reactor couldn't be used for developing a nuclear bomb and would remain under international control. Moscow has also rejected U.S. accusations that Russian institutes or companies have leaked missile technologies to Tehran. Differences over Iran have strained U.S.-Russian relations despite an overall warming of ties since Putin offered strong support for the U.S.-led anti-terrorist campaign last fall. Anton Khlopkov, author of a book called "The Iranian Nuclear Program in Russian-American Relations," was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying Monday that it remains unclear whether the Russian government is in full control over the export of sensitive technologies to Iran. He also predicted that the United States "will shortly start using economic and political levers against Russia to seek a halt to nuclear cooperation with Iran." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 19 Warren Buffett warns on terror risk BBC News | BUSINESS | Monday, 6 May, 2002, The billionaire predicts more terror strikes Insurance companies offering terrorism cover will almost certainly face massive claims that could put them out of business, the billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett has warned. Sooner or later, the US would suffer a terrorist attack that would dwarf the losses caused by 11 September, he predicted. "Many insurance companies are exposed to ruin," he said. "We're going to have something of a major nuclear event in this country," Mr Buffet said following the annual general meeting of his company Berkshire Hathaway. Government role The risks of chemical or biological attacks are also high, with Washington and New York the most likely targets in the US, he said. "It will happen - whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years... it's virtually a certainty." Insurance companies linked to Mr Buffett's own Berkshire Hathaway empire have learnt their lesson from 11 September. General Re, which was hit by a $2.4bn underwriting loss, limits its liability for nuclear, biological or chemical attacks when it offers terrorism cover. Only the US federal government could ultimately insure against damage from major terrorist attacks, Mr Buffet said. Insurance is Mr Buffett's main business. ***************************************************************** 20 Powell Says Iraq Inspections Seperate Las Vegas SUN May 05, 2002 WASHINGTON- The Bush administration wants new leadership in Iraq even if Saddam Hussein allows U.N. inspectors to resume their search for weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday. President Bush has declared Saddam a menace and pledged to remove him from power, although the administration says it has not decided how or when that goal will be achieved. Bush has said all options are available, including a military campaign to overthrow Saddam if he continued to deny admission to the weapons inspectors. But Powell said on ABC's "This Week" that the issue of inspectors is a "separate and distinct and different" matter from the U.S. position on Saddam's leadership. "The United States reserves its option to do whatever it believe might be appropriate to see if there can be a regime change," Powell said. "U.S. policy is that, regardless of what the inspectors do, the people of Iraq and the people of the region would be better off with a different regime in Baghdad." The United States accuses Iraq of trying to rebuild its banned weapons programs and of supporting terrorism. Inspectors, whose job was to check if Baghdad has dismantled its means to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, have been barred from Iraq since 1998. Iraq claims it has dismantled all such weapons. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported progress during talks last week between Iraq and U.N. officials on Iraq's disarmament and the return of inspectors. A new round of talks is expected within a month. Iraq has raised questions about whether allowing inspectors back in would affect U.S. threats to topple Saddam. The president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, dodged a question on whether the inspections issue provides justification for U.S. military action against Iraq. "The president has made no decision as to how he is going to deal with Saddam Hussein," Rice said on "Fox News Sunday." "We're in consultation with our friends and our allies. But we have felt, the president has felt, that it's extremely important to make clear that the status quo is not acceptable with this regime." On CNN's "Late Edition," she said it is the U.S. position that Saddam "is not likely to ever convince the world, in a reliable way, that he is going to live at peace with his neighbors, that he will not seek weapons of mass destruction, and that he will not repress his own people." All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 21 K Basin cleanup lagging, DOE report finds This story was published Sat, May 4, 2002 By John Stang Herald staff writer Cleanup of radioactive spent fuel from Hanford's K Basins is behind schedule, and its legal deadlines for the cleanup may need to be renegotiated, Department of Energy auditors said. But DOE officials in Richland strongly disagree with the DOE Inspector General's report released this week. DOE Hanford Manager Keith Klein has written the IG's office to oppose renegotiating major K Basins deadlines. Those were set in the Tri-Party Agreement negotiated with the state and federal Environmental Protection Agency. The deadlines need to be kept intact to reduce the environmental risks on schedule and to keep a tight managerial rein on the project's contractor, Fluor Hanford, Klein wrote. The K Basins are two leak-prone, water-filled indoor pools that hold 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel 400 yards from the Columbia River. Work is under way to process and remove the fuel from the basins and to move it to a storage site in a huge underground vault in central Hanford. Progress is best measured by the number of special canisters of fuel -- dubbed "multicanister overpacks" or "MCOs" -- moved to the vault. So far, 63 MCOs have been moved, with the 64th ready to move this weekend. But the timetable says 80 should have been moved by now, and the Tri-Party Agreement calls for all the fuel -- about 400 MCOs -- to be in the vault by July 31, 2004. Klein said the project is about one month behind schedule with strong hopes of catching up. But the IG's report concludes it would take Hanford seven years to move 400 MCOs at the current pace. That could add up to $3.6 million in state fines for missing Tri-Party Agreement deadlines, the report said. The report said the project would have to process an MCO every 45 hours to meet deadlines, but the project is averaging 72 hours per MCO. The report also notes all the MCOs are coming from K West Basin, while the corroded fuel in K East Basin will be harder to move. The report also said equipment breakdowns are slowing the project. Consequently, it recommends the DOE Richland office revamp the fuel movement schedule and possibly attempt to renegotiate the deadlines. But Hanford manager Klein said the report doesn't take into account that the project recently went to 24-hour, seven-days-a-week operation. And he said potential trouble spots have been identified and spare parts are ready. "I take strong exception to their recommendations," Klein said. Klein said the project needs to average four MCOs a week to keep on track, and it has met that pace in the past three weeks. The schedule is aggressive, but achievable, he said. But, Klein conceded in his letter, if the 2004 Tri-Party deadline looks impossible, the Richland office will approach the state and EPA about changing the timetable. Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 22 K-25 workers back on the job after threat The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- > Story last updated at 11:15 a.m. on Monday, May 6, 2002 by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff The majority of workers at the Oak Ridge K-25 site had to undergo security checks today due to a bomb threat Friday morning. Frank Juan, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, says the checks were a safety precaution. As of this morning, local law enforcement agencies reported that no arrests have been made in connection with the threat that closed down the site that's now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park. The threat was made early Friday morning, possibly from a pay phone on state Highway 58. The male who made the call, described in the police account as "foreign-speaking," said: "K-25 gonna go boom." However, no explosive devices were found Friday during a security inspection of K-25, which included the use of bomb-sniffing dogs. Some workers at K-25, including those with BNFL Inc., were allowed to return to their jobs late Friday. Around 2,000 people are employed at the site. However, the bomb threat did halt the Secret City Scenic Excursion Train, which runs near the K-25 site. The K-25 site began operations in World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. Its original mission was to produce enriched uranium for use in atomic weapons. K-25 is now undergoing cleanup, and some facilities are being leased to the private sector. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 23 Manny Ringer creates quite at stir at ORNL By Frank Munger News-Sentinel senior writer May 6, 2002 Usually folks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory don't get too excited about pieces of equipment, unless they're exotic devices used in science research projects, but that all changed when Manny Ringer arrived in Oak Ridge. The place is buzzing about Manny. Manny Ringer is the nickname of an emphatically large crane that will be used in construction of the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source. The crane's full name is Manitowac 4600 Series-4 with Ringer. It took about 60 tractor-trailer loads to bring Manny Ringer to Oak Ridge from California, where the crane had been used in construction of the National Ignition Facility -- another billion-dollar research facility -- at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The crane has not yet been assembled at the SNS site on Chestnut Ridge, but when it's put together in the next couple of weeks folks will really start to talk. It is so big -- with a boom that stretches 340 feet -- that ORNL will have to get FAA approval before putting it into operation. Manny is twice as big as the biggest crane currently in operation at the SNS construction site, and that one is pretty doggone big. According to Frank Kornegay, the Oak Ridge project's chief of environment, safety and health, you could park Manny in one end zone at Neyland Stadium and use it to lift stuff in the other end zone. The new crane, whose body work is distinctly yellow, will be able to lift 500 tons. The SNS work probably won't require lifting that much weight, but Manny should prove particularly handy in loading the delicate (and heavy) components into the main Target Building now under construction. Indeed, construction of the conventional facilities at the SNS will coincide with the loading of scientific instruments, and the Target Building -- where several years down the road a proton beam will smash into a target of mercury and "spall" off neutrons for research -- offers special challenges. The beam lines and other components must be loaded almost vertically between walls of shielding and intricate compartments that are interleaved in the building's design. In some cases, the pieces to be installed will be long and heavy (80 tons or more), and if Manny drops the ball -- so to speak -- the results could be devastating to the project and construction personnel. The U.S. Department of Energy owns the crane, and it was cheaper for the SNS to borrow Manny than to buy or rent another one, although there are costs (less than $1 million) associated with the transportation, assembly and safety certification of the crane. Specially trained operators will be required. Thom Mason, director of the Spallation Neutron Source, said DOE originally purchased the crane for use at the Nevada Test Site. "They used to use it to drop the bombs down the holes ... for underground testing," Mason said, "and then they stopped underground testing. Livermore moved it from Nevada to California to do the heavy lifts on NIF, and now they're done with it. So we have it until whatever the next big thing is. Maybe they'll use it at Y-12 (the nearby weapons plant in Oak Ridge) for modernization or something. But it's certainly cheaper for us to move it from NIF and use it again than to bring in a whole new crane." The crane reportedly was called "Old Yeller" when used at the Nevada Test Site. The Manny Ringer nickname came later at Livermore, and that created an interesting turn of events after the crane arrived in Oak Ridge. According to one account (and there are several versions making the rounds), management types at ORNL thought the crane acquisition was a big deal and worthy of a story in the lab newsletter or something. Information changes, of course, as it passes from mouth to mouth, and soon folks were trying to gather biographical details on Manny Ringer, reportedly a new employee who had transferred from Livermore to ORNL to work on the SNS. Of course, a review of personnel records found no Mr. Ringer among the new hires, and it took quite a while -- hilariously so -- for those researching the issue to figure out that Manny Ringer was just a crane, albeit a rather large one. Welcome to Oak Ridge, Manny. Senior writer Frank Munger can be reached at 482-9213 or by e-mail at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This weekly column on science http://www.knoxnews.com/science/munger/. ***************************************************************** 24 Russian safety specialists visit ORNL The Oak Ridger Online -- Area News -- 11:15 a.m. on Monday, May 6, 2002 Oak Ridge National Laboratory was among the hosts Friday for a delegation of Russian civil defense and emergency response leaders, shown here at the lab's Fire Department. The delegation included leaders from across Russia, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Zheleznogorsk in Siberia. -- Photo by Curtis Boles/ORNL by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff Russian public safety specialists were in Blount County and Oak Ridge over the past couple of days learning about local efforts in disaster response and emergency preparedness. Oak Ridge National Laboratory was among the hosts Friday for the delegation of Russian civil defense and emergency response leaders. At ORNL, the group was briefed on the federal lab's emergency preparedness and response capabilities and got a chance to visit ORNL's Emergency Operations Center, according to lab spokeswoman Cindy Lundy. Although security has been tight at all DOE facilities since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, ORNL spokesman Ron Walli said there were "no special procedures" taken to get the foreign delegation clearance into the lab. During their East Tennessee visit, the group also toured the Blount County Fire Department and the Alcoa Public Safety Building. They are also expected to make stops in Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City and New York City The nine-member delegation included leaders from across Russia, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Zheleznogorsk in Siberia. Zheleznogorsk is the sister city for the Blount County Sister City Organization, which helped arrange the visit. Zheleznogorsk is a city of 100,000. Formerly known as Krasnoyarsk-26, it was a center of weapons-grade plutonium production during the Cold War. Zheleznogorsk is a participant in the Nuclear Cities Initiative. This program assists Russia's closed nuclear cities in efforts to prevent or slow the spread of nuclear weapons and the materials and technologies used to produce them and to redirect the work of nuclear weapons scientists, engineers and technicians to alternative non-military scientific or commercial activities. Paul Parson can be contacted at (865) 220-5533 or pparson@oakridger.com [pparson@oakridger.com] . All Contents ©Copyright The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 25 Official doesn't expect DOE changes to impact Pantex Amarillo Globe-News: Local News: Web posted Monday, May 6, 2002 By Jim McBride jmcbride@amarillonet.com [jmcbride@amarillonet.com] The Energy Department has announced proposed changes affecting its mixed-oxide fuel program, and a top Defense Department official predicts that program delays could leave some surplus plutonium stored at Pantex indefinitely. A Pantex official said, however, he expects no impact on Pantex from DOE's proposed changes. In a notice issued in last month's Federal Register, the DOE/NNSA announced it will amend formal Records of Decision for the Storage and Disposition of Weapons-Usable Fissile Materials Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Environmental Impact Statement. Under the MOX initiative, DOE proposes to convert surplus plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel at facilities that will be built in South Carolina. That fuel would one day produce electricity at several U.S. nuclear reactors. The department had proposed immobilizing some plutonium from Colorado's Rocky Flats plant for eventual disposal. But DOE announced last month that the immobilization program is being canceled for budgetary reasons and suggests South Carolina's Savannah River as a long-term storage site. Concerns about possible delays in the MOX program have cropped up in South Carolina, where Gov. Jim Hodges sued the Energy Department last week to block shipments of weapons-grade plutonium scheduled to begin arriving soon from Rocky Flats. According to The Associated Press, Hodges worries the MOX conversion program will never be funded and the plutonium will stay in South Carolina indefinitely. He wants the shipments blocked until the federal government conducts further environmental impact studies on DOE's proposed changes. Conducting environmental-impact studies could take six months to a year. Under the DOE's new proposals, the department will continue to store surplus plutonium weapons cores, called pits, in Pantex's Zone 4 instead of transferring into Zone 12, where weapons work is done. "The storage of surplus pits in Zone 4 is ongoing and consistent with the current storage practices and was evaluated as part of the No Action Alternative in the Storage and Disposition PEIS," according to DOE's notice in the Federal Register. Pantex's Zone 4, a complex of bunkers where plutonium is stored in sealed drums, had been slated for eventual closure. Zone 4 stores plutonium cores from weapons dismantlement and plutonium deemed surplus to U.S. defense needs. Pantex became a storage site after Rocky Flats halted most operations because of safety and health concerns. "Further analysis of mission needs determined that Zone 4 would likely be needed well into the future for weapons dismantlement activities and to comply with possible treaty requirements," the DOE notice states. "That being the case, cost savings initially postulated from the closure of Zone 4 would not be achieved." The DOE also said in its earlier MOX decisions that it already considered leaving surplus pits in Zone 4, pending their conversion into MOX fuel at the Savannah River Site. During a visit last week in Amarillo, Dale Klein, assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs, predicted delays in the MOX program. "It will be a long time before we see MOX fuel being fabricated. What that length of time is is difficult to say," said Klein. John R. Kirby, acting associate director for Pantex operations, said Pantex does not anticipate any changes from new DOE proposals and that plutonium shipments from Rocky Flats were completed in 1999. Mavis Belisle, director of the Peace Farm, criticized DOE's proposed abandonment of the immobilization program and said it could hamper nuclear non-proliferation efforts. 1996-2002 Amarillo Globe-News ***************************************************************** 26 Brian Greenspun: R-J blinded by hate Las Vegas SUN May 03, 2002 Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun. I WONDER WHAT the Review-Journal editors do when they aren't hating Bill Clinton? We may never know because it appears to be a full-time job for them. Take the former president's recent visit to Las Vegas to speak at UNLV for the Barbara Greenspun Lecture Series, for example. For those of you who are new to Las Vegas, anything that has the name Greenspun attached to it automatically qualifies for special treatment in the other paper. And, if the guest lecturer is Bill Clinton, he doesn't stand a chance. They don't know who to hate more! The former president was in town for less than 24 hours when the R-J welcomed him with an absurdly written editorial that seemed to suggest that no matter how good a leader of the Free World he was during his eight years, no matter how competent he was in ending decades-long deficits and turning them into surpluses that have already been squandered by the Bush administration, no matter how many new jobs were created while he led the way to the greatest peacetime economic expansion in history, no matter how many countries around the world embraced democracy as a way of life and governing because of his leadership, no matter how good was his service to this country and the world, he still did wrong in the Paula Jones case. Huh? The only people who looked bad on that day were the editors and owners of that silly newspaper who thought that they could convince the unconvinced in Las Vegas that Bill Clinton was bad for America and bad for our community. The fact of the matter is that the only people who sullied anything were their editorial writers, who think that reasonable and responsible Nevadans give a damn about what they say anyway. It is now painfully obvious to most people that the R-J didn't get its fill of hate-mongering last Sunday when it tried its disrespectful best to disgrace our city during Mr. Clinton's visit. A visit, I might add, that provided the opportunity for over 6,000 people to listen to one of the brightest minds on the planet talk about a vision for America and the world that will benefit us all if we only have the courage to embrace it. Obviously, no one from the R-J attended that speech with a mind open enough to pay heed, because Wednesday they fired another salvo. This time at one of the few people in this country decent and honorable enough to try to help the people of Nevada stop the nuclear waste onslaught that is being sent our way by President George W. Bush. Most people haven't lived here long enough to know that one of the greatest and most vocal proponents of Yucca Mountain has been the Review-Journal. Until the marketing people and those who sold advertising for the R-J realized that the people of this state were adamantly opposed to anyone trying to poison their children or aiding in that cause, the other newspaper was pushing for the project. It has been a recent revelation that has caused the other guys to change their tune on Yucca. Not that they are not a welcome addition, because they are. Any and all people who are willing to fight the government's efforts to bury us with radioactive waste -- even hypocrites -- are welcome. They couldn't wait, though, to attack Clinton's thoughtful answer to a question posed by a UNLV student about his views on Yucca Mountain. He answered by saying it was wrong to choose Yucca Mountain because the science was not complete enough to determine that Nevada was a safe site for the next 10,000 years. He even suggested that we approach senators from small states like Nevada and pose the following question to them: given the fact that the government itself says the science is incomplete and that the only reason Nevada has been chosen is because of its minimal electoral clout, why would they do to Nevadans what they would not tolerate being done to themselves? He made it clear to all who came to hear him that he never promised that, if the choice were his, he wouldn't pick Yucca Mountain. What he did promise, though, was that such a decision would be based on science, and in this case, the science was not done. If he were president today, he said, he would start spending money on other alternatives, because it now looks like Yucca Mountain's being in the middle of earthquake country will never allow it to qualify. Only an arbitrary and capricious -- my words -- decision to placate political goals could send those trucks and trains our way. Well, folks, that is exactly what has happened, courtesy of the Bush administration and what appears to be an overwhelming number of GOP members of the House of Representatives. What happens in the Senate is yet to be learned, but it should be apparent to all that this fight will be won or lost in the upper chamber of the Capitol Building. For sure, we have legal claims to carry on the fight, but with the Supreme Court's penchant for letting Congress do what it wants -- regardless of the fact that a sovereign state does not want it -- I think our best fight is right here and right now. That is why it is so bewildering and so counterproductive for the R-J, blinded by some idiotic rage and an inability to control itself, to take after one of the few people strong enough to help us win this fight. It is as if they really don't want Nevada to stop the dump. Like some of our political people and even some business folks, they are content to put up a good fight, just not one good enough to win. Well, that just isn't good enough for a newspaper that is supposed to serve the community in which it operates. No matter how much it still can't stand the fact that the people of the United States voted for Bill Clinton and actually liked the job he did -- and would vote him back in tomorrow if they had the chance -- it is still not reason enough to try to undermine this state's fight against Yucca Mountain. For what they have tried to do they should be ashamed and they should apologize to every Nevadan. They won't, however, because they aren't big enough people to admit when they are wrong. They also can't see the truth through all that blinding hate that plagues them. I almost feel sorry for that sorry newspaper down the street. All contents copyright 2002 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 27 DOE-G-8 statement on energy energy.gov - Headquarters' Press Release RELEASE DATE: May 3, 2002 [Print Friendly Version] Print [G-8 Energy Ministerial] G-8 Energy Ministerial: Statement From The Co-Chairs U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Canadian Minister of Natural Resources Herb Dhaliwal 1. The G8 Energy ministers met in Detroit, Michigan on May 3, 2002, to discuss issues of common interest. 2. We discussed the key role that energy plays in our economies, and how vital it is to economic and social development around the world. Access to secure, economical, and reliable supplies of energy is a lynchpin of progress. 3. We believe energy security and flexible emergency response are critically important in today's world and agreed to continue close cooperation in enhancing them. We support continued efforts to reduce oil price volatility and enhance energy security through increased reliance on market forces, diversification of energy supplies, increased efficiency of energy use, improved data, and better communications. We believe that a regular open dialogue among energy producers and consumers can strengthen energy security. We support efforts to improve the availability, quality, compatibility and sharing of energy market data. This issue will be addressed at the Eighth International Energy Forum in Osaka. 4. We reaffirmed the necessity of being prepared to respond to oil disruptions. We agreed on the importance for net oil importing countries of maintaining emergency oil stocks and of commitments to coordinate their use during significant disruptions. We recognize the value to all of us when other countries, including those in Asia whose energy demand is projected to increase sharply, build similar stocks to improve their resilience in the face of oil supply disruptions. We will share our experiences with others on effective means of doing so. We agreed on the importance of physical protection of energy facilities, as well as the value of flexible oil, gas, and electricity transport networks with multiple links between energy suppliers and consumers, to reduce the vulnerability to disruption of these critical resources. 5. We discussed how energy security, economic growth, environmental protection and, therefore, sustainable development are supported by improved energy efficiency, and diversification of energy sources and fuels. Countries can improve their ability to respond to changing energy supply conditions through increased energy efficiency and a mix of energy sources and types—oil, gas, coal, nuclear and renewables—chosen by each country as most appropriate. Most G8 members stress the value of nuclear energy in this context, providing optimal safety and waste handling are ensured. These actions also can help countries address climate change by reducing the greenhouse gas intensity of energy production and use. We reaffirm the importance of renewable energy for diversification of energy supplies, as recognized at the Genoa G8 Economic Summit. We also recognize that competitive markets and liberalized trade in energy and energy services can help us meet energy security and environmental objectives in a cost-effective fashion. 6. We believe that continued research, development, demonstration and deployment of a broad array of energy technology options will play an essential role in diversifying the energy mix and reducing the environmental impacts of energy production and use, thereby making a vital contribution to sustainable development. We will explore areas where existing cooperation among our countries in energy science and technology might be strengthened, particularly in the areas of emerging renewable energy, energy efficiency and cleaner energy technologies. We also will review ways in which technical information is exchanged and disseminated both among G8 members and between developed and developing countries, with a view toward improving that exchange in order to accelerate the contribution of technology. 7. It is important that clean, reliable, and affordable energy be available for all. We are committed to providing constructive and substantial input on energy to the World Summit on Sustainable Development and other similar fora. We will continue to encourage the development and introduction of clean energy technologies, including renewable energy, as well as improvement of energy efficiency. 8. Significant investments will be needed in energy development, production and infrastructure, as well as in improved energy efficiency, to meet growth in demand for energy services in an environmentally sound way. To meet growing energy needs, countries must foster a favorable investment climate by ensuring open markets with transparent business practices and stable regulatory frameworks. We encourage giving due consideration to energy in the formulation of development assistance programs. Ultimately, success in enhancing energy efficiency and improving access by the public to clean energy technologies depends critically on private investment facilitated by sound policies. We therefore affirm the importance of working with developing countries to share experiences with respect to legal, policy and regulatory practices that can facilitate investment and access to energy. 9. We asked our energy officials to follow up on some of the issues we have discussed, including in the areas of energy technology and cooperation with developing countries. We believe that more regular contact among our energy officials would help us to continue to make progress on our common goals. 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